i
she lay still asleep in her bed while gregory prepared himself for his journey. he trod in stockinged feet upon the boards of the bedroom, throwing articles of clothing into a carpet bag, and stopping to glance at his wife who, with her hair loose on the pillow around her small face, looked like some fragile child, and like a child’s too was the shape of her limbs beneath the thin covering of blanket. she lay sleeping; her lips parted. gregory had purposely not roused her. it was her undoubted business to go downstairs, light the fire, and get him some breakfast, but he would forego the meal sooner than watch her moving about the house he was that day abandoning. he did not wish to carry away the picture of her at her familiar tasks, in which, he imagined, she would so soon be watched by another. in his fancy he pictured morgan entering the house as soon as he, gregory, had safely left it. would they 235breakfast delightedly together? or would the fear of silas counsel prudence? again, as many times before, he was upon the point of renouncing his journey. he looked at nan with his fists clinched, a storm of hatred and possession tearing him. his placid inward life, running as smoothly as the machines with which it was always occupied, had been disturbed lately, disturbed with a violence he would not have suspected; he was troubled and resentful, directing his resentment particularly against nan who had brought this disturbance upon him. he glared at her as she lay asleep. he thought angrily that he should be allowed to live as a privileged designer of engines, not drawn into the fury of domestic calamity. his nature, once roused, held elements so harsh and intolerant, he knew, that it fitted him all too well for a part in such a calamity. had he been aloof, indifferent ... ah! how he coveted that gift of indifference. he had it not; he was too much of a dene. so he dressed himself, packed his bag, and brooded resentment over nan. she slept on; breathing softly; unconscious.
he was ready, but for his coat. he stood in his shirt sleeves looking at nan and wondering whether he should wake her or slip away to the station with 236no farewell. then he bent down and slid his arm beneath the pillow, lifting her bodily towards him. she woke with a cry, to find gregory’s face near hers as he knelt on the floor. it was very fortunate that he could not hear the cry, which, at first merely startled, changed to horror as she recognised him. his sardonic smile and her widened eyes were terribly close; their two faces, by reason of their nearness, seemed large to one another. she pushed with both hands against his chest, struggling silently; only half awake, she had not the wisdom not to struggle; now, she knew only his distastefulness. he held her, hardened to a cold fury by her resistance. he could see all her muscles exerted in the effort to get rid of him; even the corners of her mouth were drawn tight, and her eyes were fixed on him in concentration. she could not plead with him, as she could have with another man; their strife must be soundless; she pushed, and twisted herself within his grasp, both quite in vain, then, relaxing, she lay quiet, with his arm still beneath her. she stared up at him. she knew, and was terrified by, the expression in his eyes. he drew his hand from beneath her and sketched a rapid phrase on his fingers, at the same time moving towards her. she 237answered vehemently in the same manner, her arms pitifully slight and delicate as the loose nightgown fell back from them, and the fingers racing in gesticulation. his whole face darkened as he read; she saw that an angry obstinacy was taking possession of him. she tried to escape from the opposite side of her bed, but he seized her again, holding her down, determined, revengeful, and unshaken by pity. she sought wildly in her mind for some means of release, finding none, when she heard calthorpe’s voice calling for gregory beneath the window.
ii
she was saved, he had gone, flinging on his coat and snatching his carpet-bag, but for long she remained trembling and fearing his return. she shuddered at intervals as she remembered their struggle, conducted in that horrible silence; their antagonism had been so condensed; none of it could slip away in words. she could still feel where his fingers had gripped into her flesh. if calthorpe had not come! now, now, they were on the road to spalding; she was alone in the house, she was to breakfast with silas and linnet. her shudders of horror gave 238place to the sweet shivering she knew when she thought of linnet, an etherealised desire, a trembling of her spirit more than of her body, a going out towards a young and fit companion, who by a refinement of perfection was also a lover. gradually she ceased to think of gregory, and lost herself in the other thought, lying propped up on her pillow with an unconscious smile of heavenly happiness in her eyes and upon her lips. she rose presently, and in the same dream started to dress, delighting in the touch of the cold water she splashed over her throat and arms. the puritanical neatness of each garment, and the fibre of her laundered linen, likewise satisfied her as she became clothed. she had noticed how, without any exaggeration of fancy, small physical experiences were intensified of late,—colours were brighter, the song of birds more ringing, her flesh more sensitive to the touch, and in looking at people she had observed how the pores of their skin were distinct, or the firm planting of eyelashes, and sweep of eyebrow,—all these things, that were foolishly unimportant, but that added a vividness to daily life. she was in every detail more keenly alive; her nostrils dilated to smell the air, and she touched the sill of the window, where the wood 239was faintly warm under the sun, with a sense of comradeship. she moved, too, with a difference; her tread became resilient; her foot was springy as it poised upon the ground. her small head carried itself with a light elasticity in the air, and she was actually conscious of the soft mass of her hair that caressed the nape of her neck as she turned her head. she had a wish for woods and cornlands; to sit in the roots of a tree beside a brook, allowing the water to eddy between her staying fingers; to bathe her body in a lake or in the surf of the sea. so, in loving one man, one loved the whole company of earth? love was illimitable indeed, if it conferred that privilege, a wider thing than mere absorption in a fellow-being that was a creature, after all, of limitations as narrow as any other.
iii
they were alone, the three of them, the absence of gregory so startlingly unprecedented that despite silas’s presence she obtained a foretaste of complete and sudden solitude with linnet. she was admitted, she, the starved, to a feast of dominion. she found herself translated into a world where she, most marvellously, 240was the object of reverence and solicitude, and under this warmth of spoiling her natural grace expanded even beyond the anticipation of his delight. aware that those ten days were but a reprieve, she gave herself up to making the most of them,—in so far as was consistent with the narrow rulings of her conscience. linnet, exasperated at times, but ruefully submissive always, acknowledged and obeyed her imperious orders. she was very happy in her control of him; all the happier, perhaps in the knowledge that she owed it solely to the consent of his chivalry, without which (o exquisite danger!) her security would, like glass, be shivered.
there was, unforgettably, silas. silas proclaiming himself a friend, but, nevertheless, remaining a spy, a jailer. silas who seemed to come upon them with a queer noiselessness; who cried, “well?” over their shoulders, and who then, suddenly swooping down upon them, swept with his hands to learn whether they were sitting close together, or apart. they were always apart. angered, he would say, “well?” again, this time with a forced benevolence in his voice; and sometimes he would amuse himself by walking along between them, hilarious, taking an arm of each. this method of surprising them, this 241sham benevolence, this reasonless hilarity, struck cold terror into nan as something indefinably sinister. once, too, when she met silas tapping his way over the cobbles towards the letter-box, on the envelope which he carried in his hand she read the name and address of gregory. (silas had adapted with delight this method of communication. he rubbed his hands together when he thought of gregory, in birmingham, tearing the flap open and scanning the lines of those able, indefinite letters.) but at other times she was puzzled by the hungry interest with which he questioned her, and in which her ear did not detect the usual unalloyed malignity, but rather a wistfulness, a desire to be admitted to a lovely secret, a genuine craving for participation, however humble, however incomplete, and beggarly upon the fringe of riches. at such times an eagerness crept into his face, as he bent forward to question her, his hands hanging loosely interlaced between his knees, the strong cords of his throat standing out in sculptural masses of light and shadow; words came from him almost timidly, as though he feared to presume or to give offence, but must nevertheless urge his examination, irresistibly tempted and allured. nan, who sat sewing, looked 242into his face with wonderment. experience taught her mistrust, but instinct taught her a heart-searching pity. there was always that same feeling which she had for silas, which she could not explain, and which nothing,—no dread, no premonition, no knowledge,—could permanently destroy. it reawakened always at the sound of his yearning voice. once it led her to put her fingers on his forehead, “how much you’ve missed!”
he sprang away, detected at the very moment when forgetful absorption had suspended his defiance.
“i’ve had all i wanted. make no mistake. you’re wasting your sloppy pity....”
iv
gregory had been so suddenly and so completely withdrawn! she adapted herself without bewilderment to the new order. she became as a girl, betrothed to linnet. their relationship had all the innocence of a betrothal. her past life might have been blotted out, the future so far distant (down a vista of ten days!) as to be, for all practical purposes, negligible. she could have drawn from this a proof that the violence of the years lived between 243gregory and silas had made upon her being only a mark such as might be soon effaced. she, the true nan, had slipped away from violence, because violence was so unalterably alien to her. the lesson of violence was a lesson she might provisionally learn, but would never long remember. she went out now to meet the condition she had always wanted: the secure tenderness, the settlement, once and for all, in her choice; she was not one who would demand variety upon the face of existence. variety! she had had it; excitement, uncertainty, passion, and the weight of failure all around her, reckless because resigned; she had had all that, compressed within the limits of an iron circle; those were not the things she wanted. the things she wanted were the things that linnet could give her.
the subtle sarcasms of silas were incapable of troubling her quiet discernment.
