“Build!” he said passionately, earnestly, “build with your sanity and your health. Leave query and destruction to the tormented spirits; there will always be enough of those; and if you did but know,—oh, world!” he said, clasping his hands, “if you did but know, you would pity the precursor, solitary and bold. Then comes the army of the workers, with honest tools, and their flowing quietness.—Why should you struggle, you two, beside Gregory and me? You should be side by side, perfectly matched, amongst children who should resemble you. Tell me,” he said, bending down to them, “you love?”
When he reduced it to those naked terms, they were ashamed into honesty, both towards him and towards each other; they assented, as though he were a priest reading over them a terrible and simple marriage-service.
“Then you shall have the courage to love. You shall go unmolested. You were intended to fulfil, not to renounce. Who pretends to one law for all? Not I; I wouldn’t dare utter such a heresy of intolerance. Not in my sane moments. Who would take a field-bird up into the mountains? His place is simpler; sweeter....”
He suddenly put his hands over his face, and his voice faltered, as though he were spent and had nothing more to say.
“Go away now,” he said fretfully, “I’m tired out.”
XI
I
This wound, this gash, to be exposed to the village! How greedily they would lick up his blood! they would set upon him with claw and fang as upon a lion brought low. No delight could equal the delight over the dictator shamed, or the eagerness with which those in subjection would pounce upon the infallible taken in fault. But, while knowing the story of the fire to be common gossip, he would grant no concessions; he stalked about the streets in challenging pride, more than usually unkempt, more than usually fierce, an object of whispered comment for all those who had expected him to keep himself at last within bounds. It was noticed that when spoken to, he threw back his head as though it had been crowned with a mane, and his answers were too haughty to be set down as the cheaper insolence. The men were a little impressed, but to give themselves determination they continued to mutter against him. Calthorpe knew it, and was concerned. He hinted something to Sir Robert Malleson, but Malleson had received an anonymous letter which disturbed and occupied every energy of his mind, and was unsympathetic. The only person with whom Calthorpe could get a hearing was Mr. Medhurst, who called at Silas’s cottage, and came away saying blandly that Dene was an altered being. Why had Calthorpe so distressed himself over Dene’s state of mind, and the attitude of the village? He could not understand. Calthorpe in his kind-heartedness had surely been mistaken.
“Why, Dene, I am very happy to find you in so Christian a spirit.” Poor Mr. Medhurst suffered greatly from the trap of his phraseology; it made all intercourse with his fellows a source of self-consciousness so acute that he felt justified in counting every visit as a mortification. Yet he was unable to control it. Visits to Silas Dene were a special mortification; he had to pray for strength before setting out, and now Mrs. Gregory Dene, a good little soul, was not there to help him. “Of course, you are a church-goer; I often see you in the abbey,” Mr. Medhurst pursued.
“Yes, sir,” Silas replied gravely.