For who amongst men and women lives without the secret vision of some
spot, either known or merely conjectural, whether of red moors or
sheltered meadows, mirrored coasts or battlemented mountains? Hers was a
pitifully simple dream. Sun and water, and always light: light
everywhere, streaming and pouring in, because light to her meant
happiness. The house must be small, the rooms low; size alarmed her. She
would be too timid to dwell beneath vaulted roofs. In her mind she knew
its geography intimately, and the disposal of its garden; it stood in
the heart of undulating cornlands, not very far from the sea. She had
never seen it. And with whom she shared it she did not know. Certainly
not with Gregory. Gregory’s exclusion was not deliberate; it was
unthinking, and, had it been put to her in words, might have perplexed
and dismayed her; nevertheless, it was a fact that Gregory’s step never
sounded upon the tiles of her dream-passage, nor did his belongings lie
in the litter of joint-proprietorship about the rooms.
V
Instead of this she was given flooded, low-lying country, a dark and
ancient abbey, and the clanging factory served by fire and iron. She
shuddered at the cranes which discharged the coal from the slow
canal-barges of the factory’s private canal. She compared the barges to
beetles, and the cranes that poised above them, to the pincer-armed
antennæ of some gigantic spider, descending to devour. When they pivoted
slowly with their dangling burdens, she shrank, thinking that the cable
must break, either from accident or mischief, and drop the weight upon
the men below. She thought the factory would relish that. She never went
near the canal wharves or the railway line if she could possibly avoid
it, but sometimes she had to take Silas to the “shops”—the packing sheds
where he worked, and which were near the railway. He seemed often to ask
her to take him there since Hannah had died, and on the way there he
would talk about the accident. Nan was unable to answer. She led him
conscientiously, holding her black shawl about her head with her free
hand, and turning her profile away from him; but though she was careful
of his steps she could never force an answer between her lips. No, not
if she had known that he would guess his secret had been surprised;
nothing could have loosened her response,—yet her terror of him was
extreme. She had often to constrain herself from crying out. He walked
boldly, really knowing the way without her guidance, and talking in a
loud voice, swinging his arms, so that sometimes people stopped to stare
at him. He rehearsed and repeated every detail of that day, making a
grievance that he had not known of his wife’s death until three hours
after its occurrence, and Nan shuddered, wondering how he could infuse
so much vehemence into a lie. Had he perhaps persuaded himself of its
truth? But she little knew the rotations moving in his brain, that dwelt
upon the murder as a vindication of his own cunning and courage. That
was a deed planned and executed by no bungler and no coward! He
delighted fearfully in its elaboration. With every phrase he was risking
a slip, as a man walking in a dangerous place risks his limbs with every
step. True, he held Nan in contempt, but she did well enough for him to
practice on; any suspicion that might raise its head in her mind could
easily be laid again by his inventive brain. And after she had left him,
he felt flattered and gratified by his own daring.