“You’ll be happy soon: you’ll have the spring,” Silas said to Nan. He did not speak with the customary note of derision in his voice,—this was the newer Silas,—but she thought she detected it very painstakingly concealed.
She went away from him, and her going was after the manner of a flight. Had she followed her impulse, she would have gone running, with her head bent down between her protecting hands. It seemed that she could keep nothing from Silas; he laid his grasp without mercy upon her shyest secrets. She had tried to keep her joy in the coming spring a secret; although reserve was hard of accomplishment to her, she had achieved it, hiding her delight away in her heart, or so she believed, not knowing that her laughter had rung more clearly, or that she had been singing so constantly over her work in the two cottages. She was conscious of no impatience and no desires. She would not, by a wish, have made herself a month older. She was happy now, she told herself, because the country would presently become a refuge from the factory, instead of its dismal and consonant setting, wide and level as the sea itself, in its centre the sinister hump of the abbey and the factory. By walking a little way in the opposite direction, and turning her back upon the village, she would dismiss the factory and look across the liberated country, as it was impossible to do in these days when the floods accompanied the factory for miles around as a reflection of its spirit. She told herself that she wanted nothing more. She knew that she could be happy,—perhaps not indefinitely, but she did not look far ahead, the present was too buoyant and suspended,—happy for the moment if Silas would but leave her alone.
V
For a few days he kept up his new smooth-spoken tone; it was “little Nan” this, and “little Nan” that, and whenever he could get hold of her hand he stroked and patted it, and joined his fingers round her wrist, saying that it was fragile. “You’re very slight, Nan,” he said, feeling her arm and shoulder, and once he laid one hand against her chest and the other against her back, and said that there was no thickness in her body. She withdrew herself, shuddering, from his touch. “I’m blind, you know,” he whined, and then laughed, “Bless you, blind or not blind, I know any of you in the room before you’ve spoken; there’s very little Silas doesn’t know. I know all about you, Nan, and I’m a good friend to you, too.” “But Silas ...” she began desperately. “Hush!” he said, putting his fingers to her lips and looking mysterious, “no need to say anything; we understand one another.” Just then Linnet Morgan came in, throwing aside his cap, and Nan clasped her hands in terror lest Silas should continue. “Linnet?” said Silas instantly, “you’re back early to-day.”
Linnet had work which could as easily be done at home. He began at once getting books and papers out of his cupboard, and disposing them on the table. He and Nan observed one another stealthily and quickly; he saw that she wore her dark red shirt and black skirt, and that on his entrance she had become silent as though confused, but meanwhile he talked to Silas and made him laugh, and ran his fingers backwards through his hair. Nan noticed that his crisp hair was quite golden at the roots, and that a fine white line followed the beginning of its growth. He was very fair-skinned, and the back of his neck where it disappeared into his collar was covered with a fine golden down. He was always busy; when he was not working he was talking and laughing; Nan supposed that he had never in his life had time to think about himself.
“There’s something I’ve always wanted to know,” began Silas, resting his arms upon the table as though he were watching Nan and Linnet, “what were you two doing here the night Martin came? while I was at the Abbey?”
“The night the donkey was maimed?” asked Morgan.
“Why, fancy you remembering that!” said Silas negligently.
“I was clearing up, and we talked for a bit,” Nan put in.
“There was nothing to clear up; it was Sunday evening and you’d been singing and playing your zither. You talked mostly,—now, didn’t you?”