IV
He passed out of the house, guiding himself by his finger-tips that brushed lightly against the doorpost. Not daring to disobey by following him, Nan saw him thus lower himself to the doorstep, whence he set out down the street in the direction of the factory, slipping his fingers along the walls of the houses. She wondered whether she might venture to follow at a distance. Inactivity seemed, in that pregnant hour, intolerable.—Slowly she put her shawl over her head and stood in the doorway holding the edges of the shawl close under her chin, and exerting her eyes to keep pace with Silas. He strode on as though confident in perfect vision; only that outstretched hand slipping rapidly from house to house set any peculiar mark upon his progress. But Nan, with a solicitude whose almost maternal quality she recognised with a shock of dismay, thought, “He’s going much too fast,” for she made no allowance for the quickening of all his instincts under the exalted condition of his mind. She had now no enmity towards him. She was too well-used to his violence to bear him any grudge for that, and moreover, in her eyes, if he intervened on her behalf and Linnet’s, he was redeemed. She recognised obscurely that he had considered himself shamed,—shamed to the extent of catastrophe—but this problem she banished as beyond the scope of her understanding. If he would but come to her aid and Linnet’s she would accept,—oh, with what thankfulness!—the benefit at his hands without perplexity or investigation.
He had turned the corner, and, keeping her distance, she began to follow.
V
When the factory came in sight she realised from the absence of movement about the buildings, that six o’clock had long since struck and that the work-people, in consequence, had left their employment for the day. The evening shift, reduced to a minimum, would be occupied in one or two specialised portions only,—in the boiler-rooms, for example, or amongst the engines. For all practical purposes the Denes had the place to themselves. A terrible doubt overcame her: might Silas, still, be playing the double game? She pressed onward, dwarfed by the immense sheds and chimneys that bulked around her. She could see Silas as he crossed the tessellated square. He advanced with scarce more caution, although he had now no wall to guide him, and, having no stick, held his hand at arm’s length before him until some contact should bring him up short. She had the dread that, did he but turn round, he would perceive her. She walked on tiptoe, skirting the sheds under cover of the great water-butts. Sick terror possessed her, and the imminence of disaster weighed her down.
She saw Silas reach the foot of the long, outside, ladder-like stairs that led to the upper gallery of the main building, and, setting his feet confidently upon the iron steps, begin to climb.
VI
He climbed without pause, dwindling to a small figure aloft, to Nan so far below. She leant in collapse against a huge tarred water-butt, pitiably undecided whether by ascending after him she would do more harm or good. The question was of such importance to her, but its resolution depended upon her poor unguided wisdom, and she shrank from the responsibility. Still Silas climbed, and stood at last upon the topmost landing, and disappeared from her view.
When he disappeared she hesitated no longer, but ran from her shelter of concealment, and started pulling herself up on the ascent. She went up the steep stairs, pulling hand over hand on the iron rail that served on one side as banister. She thought that she would soon be on a level with the black smoke floating from the chimneys. Through the perforations of the iron steps she could see the ground below, and when she turned her head she found that the roofs of the village had become apparent. She had never been up this way before, but always by the inner staircase. But Silas, of course, had chosen the more gaunt, the more perilous method of approach.
Landings on the way up admitted to two other storeys; these she passed, having a glimpse of machinery within. The top windows, square and bleak, were those of the gallery,—Gregory’s gallery. She was upon the landing, and slipped in through the door which had been left ajar. Everything moved quickly now, too quickly to admit of any interference or direction, and what would be done now would never have the chance of being undone, nor would there be time for any reckoning or dexterity, in the vehemence of colliding passions that listened to no argument and were endowed with a strength beyond the reasoned energy of will.