He passed out of the house, guiding himself by his finger-tips that
brushed lightly against the doorpost. Not daring to disobey by following
him, Nan saw him thus lower himself to the doorstep, whence he set out
down the street in the direction of the factory, slipping his fingers
along the walls of the houses. She wondered whether she might venture to
follow at a distance. Inactivity seemed, in that pregnant hour,
intolerable.—Slowly she put her shawl over her head and stood in the
doorway holding the edges of the shawl close under her chin, and
exerting her eyes to keep pace with Silas. He strode on as though
confident in perfect vision; only that outstretched hand slipping
rapidly from house to house set any peculiar mark upon his progress. But
Nan, with a solicitude whose almost maternal quality she recognised with
a shock of dismay, thought, “He’s going much too fast,” for she made no
allowance for the quickening of all his instincts under the exalted
condition of his mind. She had now no enmity towards him. She was too
well-used to his violence to bear him any grudge for that, and moreover,
in her eyes, if he intervened on her behalf and Linnet’s, he was
redeemed. She recognised obscurely that he had considered himself
shamed,—shamed to the extent of catastrophe—but this problem she
banished as beyond the scope of her understanding. If he would but come
to her aid and Linnet’s she would accept,—oh, with what
thankfulness!—the benefit at his hands without perplexity or
investigation.
He had turned the corner, and, keeping her distance, she began to
follow.
V
When the factory came in sight she realised from the absence of movement
about the buildings, that six o’clock had long since struck and that the
work-people, in consequence, had left their employment for the day. The
evening shift, reduced to a minimum, would be occupied in one or two
specialised portions only,—in the boiler-rooms, for example, or amongst
the engines. For all practical purposes the Denes had the place to
themselves. A terrible doubt overcame her: might Silas, still, be
playing the double game? She pressed onward, dwarfed by the immense
sheds and chimneys that bulked around her. She could see Silas as he
crossed the tessellated square. He advanced with scarce more caution,
although he had now no wall to guide him, and, having no stick, held his
hand at arm’s length before him until some contact should bring him up
short. She had the dread that, did he but turn round, he would perceive
her. She walked on tiptoe, skirting the sheds under cover of the great
water-butts. Sick terror possessed her, and the imminence of disaster
weighed her down.
She saw Silas reach the foot of the long, outside, ladder-like stairs
that led to the upper gallery of the main building, and, setting his
feet confidently upon the iron steps, begin to climb.