When they came to tell her that he had arrived she had glanced at
herself in the mirror, then remembering that he was blind, she thought,
“Absurd!”
“Who is with him?” she asked the servant.
“A young woman, my lady.”
“Very well; give her some tea in the housekeeper’s room. Bring Dene up
here.”
She lay on her sofa, waiting for him to be brought up. She hoped his
blindness was not disfiguring, and suddenly the matter lost its almost
mystical value, and she saw it in a prosaic light: why had she been so
foolish as to obey her whim and send for this man? she knew that she was
very unskilled at talking to what she called “common people,” even when
she came across them accidentally, such as gardeners; they were always
taciturn and hostile, and she thought vaguely that they would be more so
within four walls even than in the open air. The prospect of being
closeted in her sitting-room alone with a factory-hand,—he was nothing
else,—appalled her. Perhaps he would spit. Perhaps he would smell.... In
any case, what should she find to say to him?
He was there, standing by the door where the servant had left him, with
the special stillness of the blind in a strange place. Contrary to her
expectation, he did not wear a beard. She saw at once that he had an
extraordinary proud, fine-featured face, and that his blindness was not
in the least disfiguring. Indeed, his eyes were so dark and so full of
fire that it was hard to believe them sightless. He had nothing of the
smartened-up appearance that she was accustomed to associate with the
poor when visiting the rich. He had so clearly taken no trouble either
to brush his hair or change his coat, that she remembered with a twinge
of annoyance her own glance into the mirror when his arrival was
announced. Her embarrassment diminished as she realised that he was
himself neither intimidated nor impressed.
“Oh, Dene,” she said, “I am glad to see you. Sir Robert has been telling
me a little about your circumstances, and I wondered whether I could
help you in any way? So I asked you to come up here to speak to me.” She
was satisfied with her opening, but felt the last phrase to be weak, a
falling away; his quietness, and the knowledge that he could not see
her, disconcerted her.
“In what way did you mean exactly, my lady?” he asked.
How could she answer that question? Mention of money was impossible; she
knew that already, although she had only heard him pronounce nine words.
She was driven up against the truth that she had wanted to see him for
no other purpose than her own distraction, that any other reason would
be a mere pretext, and she had a swift impulse to tell him this,
confident that he would not misunderstand. So much already did she feel
him to be not only her social, but also her intellectual equal. (Social
was a wrong word, an absurd word; it could never be used, with all the
artifice and fallacy that it implied, in connection with Silas Dene. Her
discoveries went rapidly. But she must give some sort of answer.)
“I meant nothing exactly. I thought that if there was anything I could
do, you would tell me.”
“This is the first time, my lady, that I remember your sending for any
one from the factory up to Malleson Place.”
She was astonished at that; his tone amounted to an accusation. He was
so grave, and she used in her mind the word “chained,” as most nearly
expressing his obvious reserve of force.
“The truth is,” she said, ceasing to lie at full length upon the sofa,
and sitting upright, “that I was very much interested in what Sir Robert
told me, and thought I would like to see you for myself.”
“As your ladyship has seen me now,” he suggested, “and there is nothing
I want, I can go?”
As soon as he wanted to go, she wanted him to stay. She got up and came
to help him, saying, “But I should like to talk to you for a little,
Dene; give me your hand and I will take you to a chair.”
He shook his head, and said that he preferred to stand. She had to go
back to her sofa thwarted, though in so small a thing, while he remained
by the door. He made her sitting-room appear tawdry, with its little
gilt chairs and lacy cushions and pink carpet, so much did he rob people
and objects of all but their true significance. She was almost ashamed
of her surroundings, and was thankful that he could not see them, but
she thought that it would take more than mere blindness to stay his more
perilous vision down through the embellishments into anybody’s soul. She
was conscious of saying to herself, “This _won’t do_,” and of taking
herself sharply in hand. “This is to be _my_ game,” she insisted, “not
his.”
X
She had failed entirely to make him sit down, for he continued to refuse
her invitation with the same haughty gravity, and responded not at all
to the one or two phrases with which she tried him.
“I have heard reports of your fame as a public speaker, Dene,” she said
with a propitiatory smile, forgetting for the moment that her smiles
were wasted on him.
“A lot of the chaps speak, my lady.”
“But without your advantages. Sir Robert tells me you are a very
highly-educated man.”
“No such luck, my lady.”
“Oh, come, Dene? Sir Robert says you are a great reader.”
“Somebody must ha’ been kiddin’ Sir Robert, my lady.”
She delighted in him. He was perfectly grave, and affected a
Lincolnshire accent, which he certainly had not possessed when he first
came into the room; a subtle insolence, but one which she did not
resent, for it demonstrated him as unwilling to prance out his tricks,
cheaply, at the bidding of a sophisticated curiosity, and she was a
woman who knew how to esteem superficial, although perhaps not
fundamental dignity. (Malleson had fundamental dignity, which, poor man,
had not served him to very much purpose with his wife.) Also, she was
emphatically a woman who maintained that the first duty of sex in the
game was to be a danger to the opposite sex. Dene—certainly Dene
fulfilled both these conditions! Acquaintance such as hers with him was
like a sojourn at the foot of a volcano which might at any moment erupt.
She relished the peril of the game. How she stirred him to extravagance
after extravagance! how she poked and probed and decoyed his mind!
encouraging, insinuating, blowing upon the ready spark; “baiting Silas
Dene,” she called it, as a baron might have said, “baiting the bear”;
all the better sport because she knew it to be so quick with danger. She
sent for him as often as she dared, and when he was absent she thought
about him, but always as an experiment, an intellectual exercise. She
was too cold-blooded a schemer to allow herself to think of him now as
anything else....