“We both come from sheep country, then,” he said, but the images evoked in their minds were different: his of rough hills with their summits lost in mist, and lochs lying amongst the windings at their base; of dirty huddled flocks swept by wind and sleet; while hers were of cropped downland under a blue and white open sky, with the shadows of the clouds bowling across the downs and over the clumps of trees and little church-steeples in the valleys. He realised the disparity, saying “When I say that, we see different pictures,” and he smiled, but in his heart he longed for their childhood to have run side by side either in the Sussex or the Highland village. “Have you ever been back there?” he asked.
“Oh no; it’s a long way from Lincolnshire. I was always at the factory after I left school, and then when I was eighteen Mother died and I married.”
“Only eighteen?”
“A week after my birthday.”
“How young!” he said, with such rich and wondering compassion that she looked suddenly as it were into the depths of a cool inexhaustible well, always at hand for the quenching of her thirst. He was sitting on the table near her, while their conversation flowed on in its effortless interest, so that time and his books were forgotten. He seemed quite absorbed in what they were saying, looking down at her with intent consideration. They had attained an intimacy in which they could talk untroubled; she found it very precious.
“Now, Linnet!” said Silas’s bantering voice, “making love to my sister-in-law?”
VI
Silas became unwontedly withdrawn into himself, neither Nan nor Morgan knew what to make of him. At times he avoided them, at other times silently sought their company. Gregory, to whom Nan turned, after one glance at his brother, replied, “Let him alone,” and she followed the brief formula as being the best advice, finding that Silas only snarled at her whenever she spoke to him. She was relieved rather than dismayed; Silas surly was preferable to Silas honeyed.
He roamed alone, spending hours in the abbey after dusk; or ordered up Hambley, and under the little man’s guidance made his way to the secluded summer-house at Malleson Place. Lady Malleson was also at a loss to understand his altered manner; towards her he relaxed his taciturnity, and his speech was more than ever wild and varied, but although he ranged erratically she had the impression that his mind rarely departed from one central subject, and she had also the shrewd idea that that subject was his little sister-in-law, whom she had once seen, and whom she vaguely thought a pretty, delicate, rather appealing girl, unimportant until she had become the preoccupation of Silas’s thoughts.
So long as she had Silas with her, however, she cared very little what he talked about. The utmost that she deplored, sometimes, was his restlessness. It made her wonder whether she really held him. She wondered, indeed, sometimes whether her hold on him was too light to satisfy her vanity, or too secure—all too secure!—for the preservation of her safety and her convenience. She liked danger well enough, but there was a point where danger might become too dangerous.