Failing to understand what she had brought about, she sat watching him,
alarmed, perplexed, but, through her confusion, something stirred, which
might perhaps not be called hope, but which was at least removed from
the despondency of death that had lately descended upon her. He
maintained upon her wrist a grasp that had now become automatic; he sat
bent, covering his eyes with his free hand. She recognised only that he
must work his way towards his decision without interference on her part;
he was beyond such interference, and although the stealing away of time
roused her anxiety to the pitch of physical pain, she constrained
herself to wait, tense, in the knowledge that Silas passed through a
crisis no less momentous than her own. He moved his body uneasily about,
and unintelligible mumblings like groans escaped him. He fought; he
wrestled. He fixed that sightless gaze upon Nan, saying in tones of
reluctant abnegation, “And am I to end so?” He cried out once, startling
her by the anguish that tore his voice, “Failure! failure! beaten by a
jeer! weakness beats me; poor blind Silas, poor weak Silas, couldn’t
stick to his purpose even when his end was in sight!” One thing was
clear, that he suffered intensely; but the complexity of his sufferings
was hopelessly beyond her comprehension. She could only wait, and,
trembling, watch. She no longer tried to free her wrist, fearing by that
mere flutter of self-assertion to recall his former mood. She tried to
pray, and her mind produced a prayer like a child’s, “Please, God....”
His ravings had ceased, and nothing now came from him but the small
phrases that jerked themselves to the surface, after which the riot and
despair of his thoughts were again submerged. “Flotsam and jetsam,” he
muttered. Striking his chest, he said, “Here stands Silas Dene, who
helped two children to happiness,—let that be my epitaph!” “Where’s
truth? do I know my own mind, or don’t I?” After these disjointed
remarks, that emerged at intervals, like milestones marking off the
painful road he was travelling, he released her and stood up. “I’ll save
you yet,” he pronounced. “Stay you there and let me manage things my own
way. You’ve nothing to fear now,—once there was something to fear in me,
perhaps, but that’s a thing of the past. That’s finished. You stay where
you are, and I’ll bring Linnet to you.”
“You may be too late,” she said.
“I’m not too late,” he replied, with such certainty that she was misled
into thinking he had some inner knowledge.
He put her quite gently away from him as she tried to detain him,
pleading to be allowed to help.