CHAPTER XXVI

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"What are you doing there?" she panted breathlessly.

"Lawks, lass." The figure of Miss Morland sprang upward like a startled Jack-in-the-box and caught at the open drawer to prevent an overbalancement on to her back. "What a start ye gied me, comin' in on a body like that. Y' ought to 'ad more sense. Ah thought ye wor far enough."

"You have ... no right here," Pam said, desperately trying to justify her entrance. "This is my room. You have no right in my room. What are you doing in that drawer? You ought to have ... asked my permission."

For a moment Miss Morland's face was a kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions. Her mind apparently was in such rapid progress that her words could n't descend, like passengers at the door of a railway carriage, until the train had sufficiently slowed up.

"Oh, mah wod!" she ejaculated, rising to her feet at length in rare display of dudgeon, and wiping the unworthy lint of Pam's carpet off her knees as though it were contamination. "Things is come tiv a pretty state when ah 've to ask ye whether ye 've ganned an' putten mah red petticawt i' your drawer by mistake. Mah wod, they 'ave an' all. Ye mud think a body wanted to rob ye. What 's come tiv ye?"

Even now, with that fatal drawer thrown open, and the signs of rummaging visible about the surface, Pam dared not retreat from her standpoint. (Oh, my Heaven! it was n't her standpoint at all. She had n't made it. Had n't wished it. Up till now Emma had had the run of this room unchallenged. But Pam was but a poor, unresisting tool in the hands of her terror.) She dared not give Emma permission to continue the search. She dared not say she was sorry. She dared not abate one jot or tittle of her loathsome simulated indignation. She could n't breathe until that drawer was safely shut.

"If you had asked me..." she began.

"Ah don't want to ask ye nowt," Miss Morland said contemptuously. "Ye tell me nowt bud lies."

Pam's lip quivered with fear and reproach. How much did Emma suspect? How much did she know? How much had she seen?

"You have no right ... to say that, I think, Emma," she protested.

It was less a protest than a tremulous feeler, to sound the depths of Emma's knowledge. But she quaked for results.

"No, ah en't," Miss Morland acquiesced, with the terrible force of agreement that means so much dissent. "Ah s'd think ye was just comin' upstairs to get yersen washed again, when ye dropped o' me."

"I will look for the petticoat ... if you wish," Pam offered humbly. "But I don't think it 's here. Which one did you say it was, Emma?"

"Ah did n't say it was onny un," Miss Morland declared, repudiating the olive branch. "Ah don't want ye to look for owt. Ah 'll do wi'oot petticawt sin' ah 'm not fit to be trusted. Ay, an' ye need n't trust me. Ah don't trust you. Ah know very well ye 're agate o' seummut ye 'd for shame to be fun' [found] out in. Where 's waiter ye washed i' this mornin' before dinner? An' 'oo's been liggin' [lying] o' t' bed? Cat, ah s'd think. Folks is n't blind if ye think they are.... Noo, get yersen washed agen. Ah 'm about tired o' ye."

At which Miss Morland slammed to the drawer peremptorily with her knee, and flounced past Pam in a fine show of injured pride and indignation. And Pam never questioned the justice of her wrath. Emma was right to be angry. Pam had treated her shamefully, shamefully, shamefully. Oh, never did she think in the hours of her happiness that she would ever have come to treat Emma like this. To suspect her; to approach upon her by stealth; to use harsh words to her; to offend her so needlessly and so cruelly.

All the same, as soon as the feet of the postmaster's daughter had departed downstairs, telling the tale of their indignation loudly to every step on the way and banging it into the door at the bottom, the girl dropped on her knees, opened the drawer anew, and commenced to examine the depth and nature of Emma's exploration. Heart, soul, and body, suspicion now was eating her up piecemeal. With the lapse of her own trust she trusted nobody. Carefully she turned up the articles one by one, to see how far signs of recent disturbance extended. Thank goodness, they were mainly at the top. She sent her wriggling right arm to that furthermost corner at the bottom of the drawer, and the letter was there; there (relief and reawakened misery) flat as she had laid it.

But this incident had shaken Pam's nerve. Her faith in the room was shattered, and in agony of spirit she cast her eyes about on all sides of her to decide where now she could best deposit this horrid possession. Thoughts of sewing it into a little flannel band and wearing it across her breast occurred to her. But all sorts of dreadful things might happen. She might fall; she might faint; some sudden accident might overtake her; she might drop down dead even, or dying; willing hands might tear open her dress-body and exhume this frightful secret from its shallow grave. To such an extent did she foresee disaster of this sort, that the mere wearing of the letter seemed a courting of it. It was like shaking her fist in the face of Providence.

And then of a sudden she bethought herself. In the front parlor downstairs was a little inlaid brass and mother-of-pearl writing-desk that Father Mostyn had given her. Once she had made regular use of it for such small writing as she had, but now never. It had become elevated from an article of use to an article of household adornment; one of those penates--ornamental fetiches, with which all rustic parlors abound. To open it almost was an act of profanity, except for Pam. Pam had one or two little treasures of a personal nature that she was guarding zealously, and the household law could be stretched a point to allow her a sight of these possessions from time to time, so long as she did not abuse the privilege. True, there was no key--but then, respect of sacred tradition was as good as any key. Nobody had ever looked into the desk but Pam since its sanctification. Why should they look now? Down to the front parlor she worked her way, disguising the directness of her journey with the cunningest side errands, doublings and confusings of her tracks.

It was but the work of a moment to open the desk, but quick as she was about it the door of the second kitchen, that led out into the passage, opened in the meanwhile, and she heard the schoolmaster emerge. There was no time to dwell upon the details of the letter's concealment. Between the two leaves of the desk she thrust it, pushed the desk back into its place, reinstated the china shepherdess on its polished top, and picking up the crystal letter-weight, with the vivid picture of Southport in colors beneath its great magnifying eye, engrossed herself in the examination of this--her scarlet neck and burning ears turned resolutely towards the doorway.

For some moments, standing silent, a statue of guilt surprised, with her heart turning somersaults inside her and her voice miles away had it been called upon--she almost believed that the schoolmaster had entered the parlor. It seemed she was conscious of his presence advancing behind her; could feel his eyes boring through and through her like live coal. So tense was her feeling, and so imperative the summons of that unseen gaze, that in sheer self-defence she was constrained to lay down the letter-weight and turn round quaveringly to meet her accuser.

But there was none to meet. The room was empty of any but herself. For all she knew, the whole circumstance--from the opening of the kitchen door to the schoolmaster's entrance--was a mere fabrication of her tortured nerves. And now she would have liked to bring forth the desk anew and do her hiding over again more thoroughly, but she dared not, lest she might be disturbed in real fact. Minutes she waited there, with her hand on her bosom, listening for the selection of a moment that should seem propitious. "Now," she kept urging herself; and "now," "now," "now!"

But whenever she extended an arm some warning voice within her cried: "Wait ... what was that?" At times it was but the creaking of her own corset; the straining of her leather belt; the rustle of her dress. But it always arrested her short of her intention; it always seemed that the house woke into movement the minute she sought to revise her work.

And last of all, when she had wasted enough favorable moments for the doing of her work twenty times over, she grew frightened that this continued propitiousness of circumstance was too good--like summer weather--to last. Every moment now must see its break-up and dissolution; every moment added to her risk. And in this she was right. Of a sudden the sewing-machine stopped with a premonitory abruptness, and she heard its owner astir. With a haunting sense of dejection and misery for what she had failed to accomplish, Pam whipped from the room back to the little clean kitchen.

And the moment after that, her chances for this time present were ruthlessly snatched away from her. The postmaster awoke to find his neck and his left arm and both his legs asleep, and something wrong with his swallowing apparatus, and became very busy all at once on his little bench. Mrs. Morland came bustling back from Fussitter's and said, "Good gracious! yon clock 's nivver right." Not that she doubted for a moment that it was, but as a kind of reproof to Time for having slipped away from her this afternoon, and got home so much in advance of her.

And Emma Morland emerged from her trying-on room, and came into the little clean kitchen, apparently searching for something, and resolutely keeping her gaze clear of Pam. Pam knew at once what she wanted. It was not anything that eye could see or hands could lay hold of; not pins or petticoats or needles or darning thread. It was counsel and advice, locked up so securely in Pam's own delinquent body, and because of her conduct this afternoon, the girl for very shame and contrition dared not offer to give it. She besought Emma's eye with a pathetic, supplicating look to be asked some favor, however slight, by which she might hope to work back her slow way into Emma's good graces, but that eye knew its business to a hair's-breadth, and went doggedly about it without stumbling into the least collision.

Last of all:

"Do you ... want me, Emma?" Pam asked, in an almost inaudible voice of sorrow and repentance.

"Eh?" said Emma sharply, turning as though she had not rightly heard, and could not imagine what possible subject should lead Pam to address her. "Did ye say owt?"

"Do you want me, Emma?" Pam begged again humbly.

She would have liked to throw herself at Emma's feet and pluck the hem of Emma's skirt, and cling there till Emma poured upon her the benedictory grace of forgiveness.

"What sewd ah want ye for?" Emma asked incomprehendingly. "Naw; ah can do wi'oot ye, thanks."

No; she could do without her, thanks. She who had been so glad to have Pam's help and assistance in the past; who had never done a stitch on her own account without discussing it first with Pam, and whom Pam had always loved to help, could do without Pam now. Pam was no longer necessary to her; was no longer worthy to render assistance. No longer, for very shame, would she be able to enter Emma's little trying-on room, and know the happiness of helping; no longer be able to enter Emma's own heart and talk with her as to a sister.

It was all ended. The lights of life were dropping out one by one like the lights of Hunmouth when you drive away from it along the roadway by night. Into the great darkness of shame she was journeying; it seemed all the old landmarks were being left behind her. In a strange land she would soon find herself. She was on its borders now--but a twist of the road, and her old life would be for ever lost to her.

And then suddenly a vivid flash of resolution shot out and pierced her darkness with golden purpose, like a shaft of sunlight into the dense heart of a thicket. Why should she go on suffering like this? Why should she go on bearing her shameful burden of secrecy and silence round all these tortuous paths and byways of indecision? If she had an aching tooth, would she tramp through the wet and the wind in ceaseless rounds, of which the dentist was the fixed centre? This very night she would take the letter up to the Cliff and leave it at Dixon's. Let him think of her as he would. It was better to bear honorable open pain than ignominious secret torture. The simplicity of the resolve came upon her like a revelation. To think she could have been beating about the threshold of this decision so long without the courage to enter. But that is always the way. When the pain of the tooth first takes us we submit to its suffering. It is only when it has broken our spirit that we are driven on weak legs to the fatal brass plate, and bemoan the many hours of wasted anguish that might have been saved had we made use of the true light when it first illuminated us.

Alas! Pam was not at the dentist's yet, and there was still more suffering for her in that aching molar of crime.

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