The Dragon in Shallow Waters

by V. Sackville-West

“I’ve had all I wanted. Make no mistake. You’re wasting your sloppy pity....”

IV

Gregory had been so suddenly and so completely withdrawn! She adapted herself without bewilderment to the new order. She became as a girl, betrothed to Linnet. Their relationship had all the innocence of a betrothal. Her past life might have been blotted out, the future so far distant (down a vista of ten days!) as to be, for all practical purposes, negligible. She could have drawn from this a proof that the violence of the years lived between Gregory and Silas had made upon her being only a mark such as might be soon effaced. She, the true Nan, had slipped away from violence, because violence was so unalterably alien to her. The lesson of violence was a lesson she might provisionally learn, but would never long remember. She went out now to meet the condition she had always wanted: the secure tenderness, the settlement, once and for all, in her choice; she was not one who would demand variety upon the face of existence. Variety! she had had it; excitement, uncertainty, passion, and the weight of failure all around her, reckless because resigned; she had had all that, compressed within the limits of an iron circle; those were not the things she wanted. The things she wanted were the things that Linnet could give her.

The subtle sarcasms of Silas were incapable of troubling her quiet discernment.

XIV

I

Their last afternoon, a Saturday. They believed that Gregory was to return at seven; only Silas knew that he was to return at five. With the hoarding instinct that this knowledge might be useful to him, he kept it a secret. They were very silent, and remained close to one another, holding hands. How grave they were! They were very self-contained, husbanding all their strength. He knew that they meant to beard Gregory that evening, but he, Silas, equally, meant to outwit them, and he thought with satisfaction that his cunning was greater than theirs. He considered their silence with an irony more tragic than any of them knew. The pain that their company had cost him during the last ten days; the pain, too, which his own desire for their happiness had cost him; his angry, resentful love for them both; the strain of remaining true to his principles, and his vindictiveness (Christine! Christine! always Christine, recurrent, gnawing,) all this mingled in his mind to a state of folly with which he was almost unable prudently to deal. He acknowledged that he had been partly to blame. He had drawn out Nan’s confidences. But his temperament inclined him harshly towards self-flagellation....

“Only a little time now, Nan, before he’s here,” he said. “You’ll have much to tell him, much that’ll interest him. Remember, if you want any help, I’m here: Silas is here. Him being my brother, we understand one another, like you and Linnet understand one another. Blood brothers is close like lovers. Close as lovers.—But what call have I to talk of love, seeing I never knew it, nor wanted it?”

He went outside and sat on the doorstep, leaning his back against the closed door. The village street was deserted, distant voices sounded from the green; in the faint warmth of the April sun the paint of the door smelt hot, and flies buzzed stickily in the corners of the woodwork. Silas sat there clasping his knees, and swaying slightly to the ironical rhythm of his own thoughts. He felt like a jailer, keeping those two imprisoned inside; they were happy, in spite of the imminent crisis; merely and childishly happy because they were together,—that sufficed; he had learnt during those ten days the perfection of their happiness. Nan had betrayed, under his questionings, more than she had probably intended to betray, and under the pain of defrauded envy he had accumulated a store of knowledge. They seemed to be one another; it was not so much sympathy that they enjoyed, as identity. Silas swayed himself slowly backwards and forwards; he put the tip of his tongue between his teeth and held it there; he tapped his boots softly together because of his enjoyment. They were inside, talking; Gregory would be home soon. It tickled Silas’s fancy to think he had a surprise up his sleeve in store for them; he, the unwanted third! he, the ostracised of the village! they would soon learn, all of them, that he still had fangs. He strained his ears to catch the first sound of the train, which, after stopping at Spalding, crossed the fenny country at some little distance. He wished for the dulled rumble indicative that the train was upon its journey and therefore that Gregory and Calthorpe were upon their way to Abbot’s Etchery along the dyke, but at the same time he wished this hour prolonged, an hour so entirely after his own heart. He had so many revenges to take, so many old debts to wipe off, that no luxury of procrastination could be too great. Provided only, indeed, that the completion was sufficient, and sufficiently inevitable; and as to this he had no misgivings.

He never heard the train. He continued to hear only the distant shouts from the green, the small noises of insects, and the murmur within the room—not a continued murmur, only an intermittent one—and the first sound that drew him from his torpor of satisfaction was that of footsteps on the cobbles and Calthorpe’s voice, in its somewhat irritatingly cheery tones, “Friend Silas! well, I’ve brought back Gregory safe and sound, and how are you all at home?”