Thus, always. He hated his bondage, he despised while he coveted the
woman, he hated her for holding him bound, but nothing, nothing was
comparable to his hatred and disgust of himself in his inability to get
free. Often he raved audibly, shaking his fists; and those who saw him
stopped to listen to his mutterings, and thought what an alarming sight
Silas Dene presented, with his wild blind eyes and furrowed mouth that
mumbled and let drop the tiny river of saliva. He was often to be seen
thus in the abbey, of an evening, prowling in the aisles; where
occasionally on a Sunday he would be perceived by the rare visitor
attracted to Abbot’s Etchery, that strange island of factory and Norman
abbey emerging amidst the floods, sufficiently singular to be worth the
journey out from Lincoln; and those who saw him there went away saying
that not the least arresting sight in the desolate encampment was the
blind man who in savagery and loneliness haunted the precincts of the
abbey, and whose incoherent ravings could be readily changed by a little
encouragement into a tirade of such vehemence, such angry bitterness,
such bewildering aggression. They went away wondering what ailed him, to
have made of him so baffling and solitary a figure.