The Dragon in Shallow Waters

XII

Gregory still worked obstinately among the vats. Calthorpe had tried to coax him away to the engine-rooms, but got no more answer than a shake of the head. In his secret mind, Gregory was preparing a scheme, now nearly complete, that would reorganise the whole working of the factory; he saw himself as its originator and supervisor, and was far too proud to accept a preliminary post as a unit among a number of mechanics. He was living for the day when, before an assembled board-meeting, he would lay his designs upon the table; although he could not explain them by speech, their beautiful precise simplicity would explain itself while he stood aside, arms folded, and read the effect upon the faces of the directors. (He had tested some designs upon Calthorpe,—not those designs, of course,—and the overseer had been seriously impressed. Gregory knew with calm certainty, untouched by diffidence, that his work was good.) Perhaps he would take Nan with him as interpreter to the board-meeting; she was intelligent, her small fingers flew fast, and it would be a compensation, in some guise, for the hours he had spent away from her in abstraction over his drawings.

Meanwhile, time progressing towards that day, he worked in the gallery of vats. It was a sort of grotesque vigil. He hated the nauseous, automatic work, but obliged himself to keep to it with a strength of mind that Silas wholly appreciated. Day after day he climbed the long iron ladder to the upper gallery, dressed in splashed and grimy overalls, and renewed his occupation, trundling hand-barrows, emptying an over-full or cooling an overheated vat. When he had to do this he stripped to the waist, and stirred and flacked the boiling slime with a weapon shaped like a flail. Sweat ran from him, and in the gaunt gallery of iron girders, amongst the vats of moving yellow fat, the play of his shining muscles and sculptural body stood out as a classical and noble revelation.

Regarding Nan as his chattel, he never wondered whether he was or was not agreeable to her, and in his egoism never noticed her sensitive wilting under his caresses. His pride and his machines were personalities infinitely more living to him than the instrument of comfort and pleasure that was his wife. When he had married her, he had loved her in a rough animal way, that never had in it a streak of consideration or unselfishness; it had amused him to possess as a toy something so weak, so little, and so pretty, and in the first weeks of their marriage he had devised games for his own satisfaction, to pick her up between both hands and lift her till her head touched the ceiling, or to catch her up and run with her along the dyke—such eccentric sports, that half frightened her, half pleased her instinct by his display of strength. Then he had grown accustomed to her flitting presence. He had ceased to raise his head when she came into the room, or to finger with wonderment her small hands, or to turn over with derisive affection the ribbons, cottons, and odds and ends in her work-box. She ceased to be so distinctly, so newly, Nan, and became merely one of the little knot of four living in the double-cottage,—himself, Silas, Nan, and Hannah. He watched her when he had nothing better to do, just as he watched Silas or Hannah, or, nowadays, Linnet, but within the vaults of silence his true life was turned inwards upon himself.

And Silas was studying him; Silas studying Gregory! Communication between them was almost non-existent; Silas could, indeed, write on a piece of paper and Gregory could read the message, but, beyond a clumsy finger-system relating only to elementary practical matters,—names of objects, and such,—Gregory was quite unable to converse with Silas. Silas foresaw therefore that he would have no means of judging the effects of his observations on Gregory’s mind. But difficulties only whetted his ingenuity. He needed an occupation and an opiate as he had never needed them before,—not that he allowed himself to own to this,—and the double disaster he had undergone, far from humbling him, stung him to a determination of mischief that welcomed any obstacle as an additional employment for his days. He stood at his work in the shops, before a trestle table, making the square boxes into parcels, and as he tied the string he fancied that every knot secured a further mesh in the net he was weaving round unsuspecting lives.

But all the while he was gnawed by sorrow for what he was doing. Nan! Linnet! so young, so disarming! he knew he loved them both. In his mind they were children. Could he but struggle out of the deadly groove of perversity that held him, could he but shake off the innumerable fetters of his small malignities! As well hope to shake off the physical cowardice that was his secret torment and his shame. To rise! to escape! to leave behind all the indignity of petulance and rancour! at times he fancied almost that he could hear the beating of great wings, and a kind of swoon overtook him, as one who has fasted, or has remained too long in mystic contemplation; but, emerging from it, he was instantly wrapped up again in the cold craftiness of his schemings, that tangled themselves round him as surely as he would tangle them round others.

He must forget Lady Malleson. He wished that the cause of his disgrace could have been different; those words, “a coward and a sham,” left a bad taste in his mouth; there was no getting round them, and no getting round the incident of the fire; he wished passionately that the whole thing might be blotted out: there was Nan’s knowledge, Morgan’s knowledge, Lady Malleson’s knowledge,—that was the worst,—and lastly Hambley’s knowledge, but his contempt for Hambley was so great that he could disregard everything from that quarter. But he could not pretend to himself to disregard the knowledge of those other three; it infuriated and mortified him. Lady Malleson knew him for what he was; knew him for worse than he was, despised him more than he deserved. He had to bear this, added to his loss of her; and he found it hard. Once his angry pain drove him to write to her, as lackadaisical a letter as he could compose, flicking at her the phrases that he had been slightly drunk on the occasion of his last interview with her; that he apologised for presenting himself to her in that condition, also for whatever wild statement he might have uttered; he sent the letter; in his mind he followed its journey; he wept bitter and angry tears on the morning when it must be received.

Warily, above all, must he tickle Gregory’s suspicions.

No one knew of the system that grew up then in that house. The house was secret enough at any time; now it contained a secret within its secret. It contained the pursuit of Gregory by Silas, the difficult tracking-down, the requisite, progressive measure of suggestion, the pieces of paper bearing the poison of a phrase, the impotence of the dumb man, his efforts to escape from his tormentor, then his return in his cravings for a greater certainty. Silas was intent upon his own skill; a touch here, a touch there; he placed them with a sharp and delicate artistry. His only fear now was that Gregory might refuse to go with Calthorpe, and to forestall that danger he got hold of the overseer.

“I hope, Mr. Calthorpe, you’ll keep Gregory to this job. You know he’s diffident,—to look at the way he sticks to those vats, he who’s fit to manage the engine room!—and now he’s saying that you’re wanting him to go out of charity, like, and if he thinks that, he won’t be beholden to you.”

“I’ll go in to him now, and fix it up once for all. There’s no charity about the matter; I don’t want Gregory to talk to the plants, I want him to look at them.”

“I knew I only had to mention it to you,” said Silas demurely.

V

Gregory was torn. He was bitterly unwilling to forego the chance offered to his solitary ambition. He was forty-five, and he had given the whole of his youth to the patient, meticulous study of machinery; could he decline the chance, on the strength of a few words from Silas,—roguish, busy old Silas! always meddling at something, never letting well alone—a few words that perhaps were rooted in nothing but Silas’s imagination? No, he couldn’t decline it! But what if Silas were right? Nan was young, Morgan was young, he constantly saw them talking together, talking when Nan should have been working and when Morgan, more naturally, might have been kicking a ball with other young men on the green. Here he became full of gloom. Should he charge Nan with it? no, women were too artful; he would learn nothing through charging Nan. Better to trust Silas, then by the time he came back from Birmingham Silas could tell him as a sure fact whether or no.... For the first time he began to think of the consequences, of the obligation that might be laid upon him.... Perfectly honest, he envisaged facts unflinchingly, in the sole light under which they offered themselves to him. He was not a man to admit alternatives.

He had only one slight hesitation: was it fair to lay a trap for Nan? But he discarded the doubt. If she were innocent no trap could catch her; if she were guilty, he had the right to protect his interests as best he might; he and Silas both had that right. They were both handicapped; their whole lives were, in some measure, the lives of animals at bay.

He spent the interval before his departure in making observations for himself, prowling round when he might least be expected, entering his house, suddenly and noiselessly, or even looking in through the window,—which, being tall, he could do with ease,—and sometimes on these occasions he saw Nan and Morgan together, talking, in the midst of their occupations, but he never saw more than that. To see them talking was, however, a source of exasperation to him; he fancied that the most tender words were passing between them under his very eyes, an affront, an outrage, that drove him to gnaw his finger-tips in the same way that Silas did, and to fly the house lest his black looks should arouse their vigilance. His behaviour became wild and unaccountable. When he was alone with Nan, he turned roughly demonstrative, while behind his caresses lay the intention of finding out whether she would wince. It was all too clear to him that she did wince. More than once he was upon the point of questioning her, and again upon the point of refusing to leave with Calthorpe, but he crushed these impulses. If he remained, he might never know, so wily and circumspect would they be; if he went, they would throw off much of their caution before blind Silas. Silas was a good watch-dog, who in ten days would nose out certainty. To the suspense of those ten days Gregory would expose himself; a martyrdom which he undertook in the bleak spirit of a martyr, grimly, without heroics, in the stern desire to win truth at the cost of pain.

She winced—oh yes! she winced. She turned away from him, said he bothered her, kept herself unnecessarily busy. The more she evaded him, the less willing was he to leave her alone; he followed her when she fled into the scullery, and with a gasp she became aware of his silent presence as his hands were laid from behind upon her shoulders. This was a persecution worse than the verbal persecution she had endured from Silas! She prayed ardently and with terror for the day when he should go. The ten days’ reprieve stretched luminous as a lifetime—but even then there would be Silas, Silas honeyed again, when, all her wits cried to her, he was fifty times more dangerous. She thought that without Linnet she would have become truly distracted; yet even to Linnet, at home, she dared not speak overmuch. She could have kissed the forewoman of her department who again sent her to his room with a message.

She knocked at his door with no less timidity than she had done the first time, her hand clasping her beating heart. His voice called “Come in!”; she slipped in; his dim room and the shining alembics were lovely and mysterious, like a fairy-story, after the chill of the bare linoleum-lined passage she had just followed. In a moment they were close to one another, their fingers wove together without knowing how it had so come about; the fact of being unexpectedly alone came like a draught of water to the thirsty.

“I hate that passage leading to your room—it’s like a prison,” she murmured, raising her hand to his bright hair; “it so cool and dim in here; I wish, oh, how I wish I could work in here helping you.”

“It might be arranged ...” he began enviously.

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head, “we mustn’t think of it.”

“We’re never really alone,” he said.

“No.”

They looked at each other gravely and pitifully.

“It does seem so hard,” her small voice took up again, “that you and I, who have never done any harm, should be spied on and hunted, because that’s what I feel: hunted. We haven’t done any harm, have we? only in our thoughts, that is,” she amended, scrupulous, “and even then I don’t think it’s terrible harm to wish we might sometimes be alone. I try not to wish for more than that, Linnet; I do indeed. You mustn’t come so close to me, please,” and she put out her hand to push him away a little.

“Why mustn’t I?”

“You know quite well: I can’t bear your nearness.”

“Nan, you are the most provoking mixture of frankness and prudery....”

“I don’t mean to be. I came straight to you when I got into the room, because I was happy and forgetful, but I am sorry; that wasn’t encouraging you to behave as I want you to behave. You know what I tell you: we can talk, no more.”

“But talk can lay up trouble too, you know, Nan.”

Her face took on a startled look, as a dismayed child’s.

“What! do you mean we ought to give that up too? Oh, no, Linnet, I couldn’t bear that, indeed I couldn’t; you mustn’t suggest it.”

“Of course I don’t suggest it; is it likely? Only I think you trick yourself into believing what you want to believe, and if your conscience does prick you, you try to salve it—and I dare say succeed—by imposing some quite hypocritical limitation.”

“Are you laughing at me or not? Or are you serious? do you mean that I ought not to see you at all or talk to you? perhaps you are right....”

“Nan, you are too perverse! I only mean that if you allow yourself to talk to me, and allow me to talk to you, and to make love to you, you might consistently allow me to go further, to take your hand, for instance, without pushing me away when I stand quite respectfully beside you.”

“I see what you mean; I can’t argue, but I think, please, I would rather go on in the same way as before.”

“Very well,” he said ruefully.

“And why do you say ‘make love’?” she harked back after a little. “As though it were just a way of spending the time? Anyway, I think I would rather you did not; we can talk quite well without that, and then you need not think I am hypocritical.”

“You do keep me in order, Nan, don’t you?” he said.

“No, I am often very weak and cowardly.”

“You are only cowardly when you won’t face what is to become of us,” he replied, with more seriousness.

Again she looked startled.

“Oh, please, Linnet, I don’t like talking about that.”

“Well, but, my dear,” he said, “you know quite well that we cannot go on indefinitely as we are at present; you ought to be the first to realise it, with your scrupulous mind always splitting hairs and dwelling on niceties. If it were light come, light go, between us—there a kiss and here an arm round you—it would be different. But you know it is not like that. It is perhaps your very prudery that puts the whole thing on a different footing. Anyway you know that it is a matter of all our lives....”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she said, with a contented sigh, and leaning up against him.

“Nan, you distract me!” he exclaimed, “I say that it is for all our lives, and you murmur with pleasure, as though the whole thing were thereby settled. In the meantime I am neither one thing nor the other; I am neither your friend, nor your husband, nor your lover.”

“Oh, but you are surely....”

“Well, what am I? I wish I knew!”

“My lover,” she said in a low voice.

“Nan, don’t hang your head so; for pity’s sake don’t; you are too charming when you do it. No, I am not your lover ... worse luck....”

“But you do love me, don’t you?”

“Good God, do you doubt it?”

“Well, you never say so. You never said it. Silas had to say it for you.”

“But I’ve said so since.”

“Oh ... since!” she said.

“But, my darling Nan, a little way back you forbade me to speak of love to you.”

“Yes, you see,” she said with another sigh, less contented, this one, “I want to have nothing on my conscience, nothing, nothing, nothing—except my thoughts, and I can’t help those.”

“Won’t you tell them to me?”

“If I told them to you, they would be on my conscience, and that’s where I don’t want them to be.”

“You are deplorably logical, when it is for my undoing,” he said, sighing in his turn.

“If I had a laden conscience, I should become a coward. If I became a coward, I should never have the courage to face Gregory,” she said, checking the points off on her fingers. “No, stop: I know what you’re about to say, ‘then you do mean some day to face Gregory.’ I can’t answer that, and you must be patient to let these ten days go by; maybe by the time we’re in the middle of them I will have got back my wits. I’m too scared now to have any wits at all. What is going on in our house now? you know no more than I do, and yet you know just as I do that there is something strange. It’s something between Silas and Gregory. Oh, it’s dreadful to think that there should be something between them which they are working out for themselves, with all their difficulties, because they can’t ask our help, either yours or mine. It frightens me so. Oh, my dear, it’s horrible to be afraid! Linnet, you must take care of me.”

“You don’t give me much chance....”

“No, I know I don’t; I’m bad to you, I know. I seem to turn this way and that for a way out, and things press upon me, and then I make you suffer for it. Put it down that I scarcely know what I’m doing....”

“No, I know you don’t, my pretty, my poor pretty, only tell me about it, if that’s any help, and don’t let things get magnified in your mind bigger than they ought to be; hills look steeper than they are, you know, before one starts going up them.”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes brimming, “you’re good and patient, indeed you are. I hardly understand, yet, what’s come over us, that sometimes my breath comes short and I shut my eyes and think I must faint away with the longing to see you. I wish, sometimes I wish that something would happen—something quite outside this life, I mean,—to relieve us; I don’t know what I mean, rightly. But it’s the weight ... and the longing ... I can’t keep still under it, at times; I have to get up and move about ... the longing ... the burning.” She put her hand up to her throat as though she were physically oppressed. “And I put questions to myself—about you, I mean—and the answers come springing without my having to think. They leap out, the answers do. Would I die for you? Oh, so gladly! would I starve for you? yes, and never a word to let you know. Would I die if you died? I’d pine if I lived an hour after you’d gone. Would I give myself up to you? yes—to beat me if you chose; I’d shut my eyes and let you.... That’s love, isn’t it? It’s like striking a bell; it clangs back at once. And now—I can’t help saying it—for ten days there’ll be times when we’re alone, and I’ll be less starved than I am now; it seems I’ve just been keeping alive for this, and reach it all spent and gasping. Oh, nothing, nothing more! only to talk to you, and look at you; we’re strangers still. I want to drink being with you. Then I’ll be able to think, and we’ll sort everything out, and get it clear. Only now I’m too parched for you, and too frightened of them. You must decide everything for me, and tell me what to do, and then take me away,—oh, take me away!”

She clung to him as she besought him, abandoning herself like a frightened child, and putting her arms up round his neck exactly like a child.

“My God, I didn’t know you could speak so, or feel so. I felt so, but I didn’t dare to tell you.”

“I didn’t know either ... one doesn’t know....” She had sunk so unrestrainedly against him, that but for his support she would have slipped down without resistance upon the floor. He felt that she would lie there, like a shot bird, at his feet, making no effort to rise, and letting her will glide away from her in a passive extinction of self; it would be for her the most exquisite, and at the same time the most spiritually voluptuous experience of her life. As it was, she had never known anything like the wild, fainting rapture of this half-surrender. “Linnet, Linnet,” she said, pushing him away, “where are we? it won’t do; we’re being swept along; I’m afraid. Go right over there, to the other side of the room; no, farther away than that.” She directed him with an imperious urgent finger. “You mustn’t come any nearer. Promise. Sit down on that chair. I’ll stop over here.” She leant her head back against the wall.

“Now we couldn’t well be farther apart,” he said, having obeyed her. They were both pale as they looked at one another across the width of the room, and their breath came and went quickly between their parted lips.

“It’s to be like this the whole time that Gregory is away. Then when he comes back I can tell him everything. If we had been different, I should tell him less easily.”

Morgan was just able to follow the ethics of this argument.

“Now I’m going away,” she continued; “you mustn’t move. If you moved, I should run to you....”

“Oh, Nan!” he said, stretching out his hands to her across the room.

“No, no, no,” she cried, vigorously shaking her head from side to side, the shake becoming more vigorous as her need for determination increased. “Oh, my darling heart,” she cried, “I want so to come to you,” and she fled from the room, leaving him unbalanced and perplexed, and in half a dozen minds as to whether he ought to submit as he did to her directions, or to take the law away from her by adopting a bolder course.

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