“Are you so sure?” He had intoned, but now, seeking effect with the
skill of a natural speaker, he dropped his voice a full octave as he
swung out into the current of his theme, “It seems to me a paltry sort
of thing, to die by misadventure. A paltry ending, to be taken away
willy-nilly, like a brat from a party! Why, a man might be leaving many
things incompleted, many things he had set his heart on doing before he
died. Death by misadventure! I wouldn’t set much store by the man that
couldn’t look after his own life better than that, owning himself the
sport when he ought to be the master. It’s a shameful thing to be
beaten. It’s a shameful thing to give up your right of choice. Death by
misadventure! a blunder, a clumsy mismanagement, a failure to carry
through to the end, that’s all.”
His audience was amazed at the scorn he contrived to infuse into what
was, to them, nothing but a trumped-up thesis. They could not admit that
this unexpected, unnecessary, far-fetched thesis could be anything other
than trumped-up. Even Silas Dene, full of surprising opinions as he was,
could not, with the longest plumb-line, have discovered such an opinion
as this anchored in the wells of his heart. He must be joking at their
expense—deluding himself, perhaps, in his effort to delude them. A
practical joker, Silas; even, it would appear, over his wife’s body!
He had paused after his preamble, gathered all his thoughts up into his
grip, and began to deal them out to his audience.
“Suicide, now—there’s nobility in that. That’s grand. That’s escape;
true escape from a prison. The man who doesn’t care a damn for his own
life is no prisoner. I call him the contemptuous man. He’s a conquerer;
he’s free. How many of you have got that freedom? and how many have got
snivelling, timorous little spirits that cling on to their miserable
breath as a treasure? So long as you do that you’re bound slaves and
prisoners. There’s no escape for you.
“You’re angry? I shouldn’t bait you and gibe at you? Every one of you is
man enough to live up to my principles? Well, the floods are out;
they’re handy; there’s nothing to prevent any one of you from proving
his manhood and his independence. The floods over the fields, and
there’s the Wash for anybody who’d like something a bit deeper.”
He launched this invitation at them with a trivial insolence. “He’s
mad,” they said, and shrugged, crossing their arms in resignation, but
they were troubled for all that; he was poking fun at them, a grim kind
of fun, and their annoyance increased as they remembered his superiority
over them: one couldn’t answer Silas Dene, he had read too many books,
he returned fire with too many arguments and quotations. He stood there
now, apparently ready to go on talking for ever, his only difficulty
abiding in the variety of his topics, which to choose and which to
discard. A little smile played across his lips as he paused, mentally
turning over his wares, and surveying the audience which he could not
see.
“That’s suicide. I see no reason why the man who, so to speak, has
always got his finger on the trigger of his revolver and the muzzle of
the revolver tapping between his teeth, should fear any pain or hazard.
He has his way of escape always open. But there’s a braver man than
that,” he said loudly, “the man who abstains from the death he doesn’t
fear. Not from religion, not from thoughts of the hereafter; simply from
contempt of the easy path. Too proud to avail himself of the remedy he
has at hand. All of you who have troubles,” he said, pointing his finger
at them and letting it range from side to side, sweeping across their
rows as they sat, “wouldn’t you like to shake off those troubles by the
easy way? never to suffer any more? to leave the responsibility to
others?”
They could scarcely believe that a few minutes previously he had been
inviting them to cast themselves into the floods.
“I should roar with derision at the man who killed himself to escape his
pain,” he went on, as though possessed by a demon of mockery, a cold
demon that enjoyed goading their bewilderment. Mr. Medhurst frankly
thought him diabolic; Calthorpe wondered whether he was in his right
mind. “I have the right to speak of it,” he exclaimed, suddenly angry;
“I spend my life in darkness; let any one dare to say that I have got no
right to speak of pain! I don’t complain or ask for pity; I don’t want
pity, I’ll fight against pity so long as I have breath, your pity
insults me. But I can speak, because I know death as well as any man who
has once stood on the gallows with the rope round his neck and been
reprieved at the last moment. I’ve leant across the border like one
leans across a ditch, and touched fingers with death, and then drawn
back my hand. You can’t say as much. But shall I tell you something?” he
added sombrely. “I mistrust myself, whether I have that true freedom; am
I truly the contemptuous man? I wonder! but I wonder without very much
confidence.”
They were impressed, and as he ceased speaking they remained very still;
the men thought “Poor devil!” and the women shivered. Calthorpe saw that
Nan was straining forward in her place, her breath coming quickly, and
her eyes full of tears. As she caught his glance she murmured, “Oh, can
no one get him away?” but Calthorpe shook his head, for Silas had
already begun to speak again.