“You are a demon!” broke from Lady Malleson.
Silas smiled a bitter, gratified smile; he had at least succeeded in making her angry. Having done so, could he reconquer her? Should he risk the affront of failure? She was all he had. No! if she cared so little, let her go. He would not submit to being patronised, to being kept on sufferance by the woman who alone had the privilege of twisting the strings of his heart. If that privilege, so grudgingly, so agonisingly accorded, were to be so little esteemed, let her go! What matter? A loneliness the more.
“I thought at first that I would tell Emma to bring you to the abbey,” she resumed, more quietly; “I thought that the setting would please you and satisfy your sense of histrionics. It would have been so thoroughly Silasian. For you are histrionic, aren’t you, Silas?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“You and I, sitting on two cane chairs, in the dark abbey,” she went on, “while I poured out to you in an undertone all my opinion of you, my new opinion, for the first time, my true opinion, and then, who knows? the organist might have come in to practise, and so provided an accompaniment for your answer. I really believe your answer would have varied according to the music. It would tickle you to sway your life on a dainty chance like that. I wonder that I overcame the temptation.”
“A great pity,” said Silas indifferently, but as though he had allowed himself to be beguiled a moment by the charm of the suggestion. She was annoyed with herself; she felt that she had allowed her irony to run away with her, to become a little too wild, especially when he continued in a tone of irreproachable conventionality, “I must now thank your ladyship for the kindness shown in the past and for the many hours I have been allowed to spend at Malleson Place. I appreciate that it isn’t many poor chaps like me that’s given the advantage. It’s been a gift blown me by the ill wind of my wife’s death and my blindness. Your ladyship has a kind heart,—they all say so in the village when they hear of the favours shown to blind Dene.” As he spoke he made small staccato movements with his fingers, bearing a resemblance to the dart of Gregory’s pencil in some minute alteration of his designs, a family resemblance, that in its finicky precision was equally incongruous to both brothers; in Silas the gestures seem to indicate the finishing touches to a work of art about to be laid aside; the touches were given, possibly, with regret, but still with a certain affectionate satisfaction, as to work well done, and opportunely completed; (he marvelled at himself even as he spoke and gesticulated); they irritated Lady Malleson with a small, wiry irritation, like some insignificant but exasperating physical pain, causing her to forget what she had called the grandeur of Silas, and to remember only the warped, malicious artistry in which he appeared to take delight.
Then he changed; he towered; he dwarfed her; all her superiority went in a flash.
“Listen,” he said then, so suddenly that she had the impression that he had stepped bodily out of a disguise,—“Your interest in me may have been unreal to you,—how could it have been otherwise? You are a fine lady, you have been through many experiences; I’m a rough fellow, and I dare say bitter and brutal enough....”
“You like to think yourself brutal, don’t you?” she interjected.
“Such as I was,” he said, “you had me; are you proud of what you made of me?—Oh!” he said, hearing her movement of impatience, “I won’t make you discourse; only that question I wanted to ask you: are you proud of what you made? Only this: was I so unworthy of your ladyship? Have you been sullied by my contact? Or have I, by God,” he thundered at her, “been sullied by yours? I’m not so sure. What are you wondering in your mind now? whether you can trust me to go away and hold my tongue? You think you won’t risk putting the idea of indiscretion into my head; you probably think it will come there quite soon enough by itself. Are you any less of a coward than I? You need have no anxiety, I’m not tempted to revenge myself on you in that way,—you think of that, you’re preoccupied with that, but do you think at all of what you may have done to me? You picked me up casually, and you think you can put me down in the same way. But, between picking me up and putting me down, you’ve worked on me; you don’t leave me quite the same as you found me; and I’m not an easy metal.”