“You’re not Nan,” he said, “not Nancy Dene; you’re just the victim of my curse. What does it matter that you never knew Lady Malleson? Blind, you call me? why, I think we’re all blind—blind instruments, not more blind one than the other.”
“Gregory only breaks my things,” she cried out, kicking with her toe at a fragment of china, “but you’re putting all my happiness in pieces.”
“Yes,” said Silas, “I told you he was an honest man.”
“That’s why we would have put everything to him honestly,” she began with extreme earnestness; “we would have told him we hadn’t sought one another out, but that something led us.... We had talked it all over, what we would say. Silas, will nothing soften you? You talk about courage: we meant to be brave, not deceitful; you even urged us, once, after the fire, to hold to one another if we loved truly. You said we were the builders; you talked beautiful. I never knew a man talk like you talk, sometimes, Silas. You seem all lifted-up.... Maybe you wouldn’t see so bright if you didn’t see so black. I had a feeling for you; oh yes, I had! Though all the while I knew about Hannah, and after Hannah, Martin. But I didn’t know then that after Hannah and Martin it would be me and Linnet—and Linnet! You seemed kindly to us, of late. Was it all a trap? did you never feel kindly while you spoke us fair? Oh, Silas, everything’s going from me. It’ll go badly between Linnet and Gregory. If I was there, I’d manage; you fight things as they come along; and Linnet, he needs me to look after him. He’ll be stiff and buttoned-up with Gregory, but that’s not the worst: it’s Gregory I’m afraid of. Not speaking, he puts everything into his fists; you know what he’s like, Silas. And Linnet’s my life,—my life. I’m telling you more than I ever told him, save once. Won’t you let me go?” She moved her wrist tentatively within the clench of his fingers.
“I waste, I fail,” said Silas, holding her wrist more closely than before; “the day you came from Sussex to Abbot’s Etchery you were meant to fall in with me. I told you already, you’re not Nan Dene; you’re a thing. You’re part of my design. You, and your little loves, and dreams and what-not—I’ll grind you. When I was a boy, I set out to give people as bad a time as I had myself. My mother hated my father and was afraid of him; he used to jeer at her when he saw how much she hated Gregory and me. Because we were deformed, you understand. Once I was given a rabbit for a pet; well, I put out its eyes with a needle. That makes you shiver: I hold that it was only just. Now I’ve got you; you’ll be better game than Hannah, because that was over too quickly; but you, once Linnet is taken away from you, and you’re brought back where you belong, to my brother, to be my brother’s wife, his faithful, broken, submissive wife—I’ll know that every day your prettiness will wither, you’ll never sing, you’ll never put out china for Gregory to break, you’ll shun young men because you’ll have known the pain of love, you’ll bury your heart below a mound, and your hopes beside your heart, and so you’ll grow old between Gregory and me, and we’ll speak less and less, until you and I sit as silent as Gregory himself.”
He paused, but she gave only a small moan.
“You were right,” he went on, “Linnet is with Gregory now. I sent Linnet off, and now I’ve sent Gregory to join him. You won’t see him again,—not if I know Gregory. Gregory won’t tell us what took place between them,—not he! He’ll come home presently, and you’ll get our supper, and have yours between us, and after supper Gregory’ll get out his drawings. And every evening afterwards will be the same,—exactly the same. Maybe you’ll have children and watch them growing like me; you don’t know, yet, what seeds might be lying in your children’s minds. I’d watch over them, never fear; I’ll not have my nephews grow into milksops, into sentimental dabs....”
He spoke with such virulence that Nan cried out, unbearably slashed. That seemed to gratify him, for he settled down into an intermittent growl:—
“Your children.—Your sons.—But Denes, all the same.—Who stands alone?” he muttered, taken up on that revived train of thought, “Who stands single? no one, it seems; your sons wouldn’t be solely yours. Where’s independence? not in this world. O folly! to let it slide, even in part, into another’s keeping. Where would be your trouble now, if Linnet hadn’t your heart? Freedom goes when the heart goes.—Not strong enough.—Loneliness and labour,—yes, surely.”
“’Tisn’t all that, ’tis happiness you grudge,” said Nan, suddenly bitter.