She sat at the table, under the lamp, Silas and Gregory on either side of her, the remains of supper before them. She sat twisting her hands; swallowing hard.
She began, “Shall we be here always?” then stopped, then plunged on again, “living always here, with the floods every winter, all the winter through? Why shouldn’t we go away, somewhere else, if we choose? Why shouldn’t we?” she cried suddenly, in a frightened voice, as nobody answered.
She looked at Silas and Gregory; Silas was smiling, and Gregory was smiling too, in a twisty, derisive way, as though he knew what she had been talking about. Yet he couldn’t know. Silas had a look of surprise and amusement; grateful surprise, as though she had provided him with an unexpected amusement in an hour of boredom.
“Go on!” he said to her.
At that she felt all her source of boldness, of inventiveness, dried up within her. What was the good of this struggle for escape when she was hemmed in, not only by the floods and the dykes, but by those two immovable men who owned her? But her terror urged against her hopelessness; and was the stronger.
“Can you like living here?” she appealed to Silas, trying to touch him upon his own inclinations.
“As well here as anywhere else,” he answered. “I work here.”
She knew the bitterness that edged his voice whenever he mentioned his work.
“You tie up parcels in a packing-shed,” she said, “always the same,—work that a half-wit could do. Yes, a poor wanting creature could do your work. Why don’t you bestir yourself? Why don’t you come away?” She talked so, knowing that she strained to pull a weight that lay solid against her small strength.
If only Silas or Gregory would get up, she thought that with that insignificant display of mobility her hope would revive; but they sat on either side of her, cast in bronze. If they were doomed men, then they made no effort to escape their doom. Too proud, perhaps. They sat and waited. They seemed too indifferent to care.