CHAPTER XXXV

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All throughout the rest of that evening the schoolmaster had employment in guarding Pam's bedroom door. At times, drawing long breaths to suffocate his beating heart, he listened at its keyhole, applied his eye even, pressed his hot face flat against the woodwork, and strove to elicit some filterings, however attenuated, of its occupant and her concerns.

But the door was as uncommunicative as a gravestone. Had he not seen the girl go in, and heard her close the lock upon her entombment, he would have been sick with apprehension and doubt; ready to believe that she had eluded him, and that he had lost her. More than once, as it was, he tapped at the door, but no response came to him, and he was fearful to intensify the summons lest he might betray his presence to those downstairs, and bring about an enforced relinquishment of his watch.

Evening gave place to night, and the yellow harvest moon arose. Sounds of supper things stirring and searches after Pam drove him from the landing into his bedroom. Emma Morland, less timorous of knuckle than he, and less furtive of intention, came boldly up the staircase, calling Pam's name, and rapped--after finding the door locked--a peremptory summons upon its inmate.

"Come; what 'a ye gotten door fast for?" he heard her demand of the languid voice of response that had raised itself faintly at the summons, like a wounded bird. "Is n't it about time ye came doon an' gied a 'and wi' supper things? Ah 've yon blouse to finish by to-neet, think on."

Then the wounded voice stirred itself wearily again.

"What! another?" Emma Morland cried, with more of resentment in her tones than sympathy. "That meks second ye 've 'ad i' t' week. Ye nivver used to 'ave 'em. What 's comin' tiv ye?"

"Well! ah declare!" she exclaimed, after further parley of an apparently incomprehensible and unsatisfactory nature. "It 's a rum un when a lass like you starts tekkin' tiv 'er bed, 'at 's nivver knowed a day's illness in 'er life! There mun be seummut wrong wi' ye, ah think--a decline, or seummut o' t' sort. We s'll 'a to be fetchin' doctor tiv ye, gen ye get onny wuss. Will ye let me mek ye some bread-an'-milk? Some gruel, then? Some tawst an' tea? Ye weean't? Ye 're sure ... noo? Well, then; it 's no use. Ah 've done my best. Good-neet tiv ye, an' ah 'ope ye 'll be better i' t' morn. Don't trouble aboot gettin' up no sooner nor ye feel fit. 'Appen ye 'll sleep it off."

So she was safe in bed, then. Through the sorrow his love felt at the unhappiness in which it had involved the girl--for love it was--nothing short of love, and great love at that, could have moved this nervous, self-secluded man to such courageous acts of infamy--he drew relieved breath at the intelligence. Now he could relinquish the closeness of his vigil without fear.

He would have followed Emma Morland down the staircase with less ease of mind, perhaps, could he have seen the dressed figure of the girl, curled up on the quilt, with her face plunged in the pillows; and been able to follow the fevered hurryings of her thought. For the languid, wing-wounded voice he had heard was but a lie, like all the rest of her in these days. It was no headache she had--heartache, if you like--but no headache. What her seclusion sought was thought, not oblivion;

## action, not restfulness.

With the letter back at her breast again, all was undone once more. The door of the last few days seemed opened, as with a key. With this restored to her, and in her arms, all her courage came back; all her old steadfastness and fortitude; the blinded eyes of her spirit seemed opened. This very night, while the household slept, she should steal forth--as she had stolen forth in that first early dawn of her happiness--and make restitution of the letter. Under the door by the porch, or in at that familiar window--if only it were left unfastened--she should slip it. And with this letter must go a second--that she would write--making full confession of the offence, and humbling herself before him for his pardon and forgiveness. No longer did she desire to be clad in his presence with the garments of hypocrisy. Let him look upon her in the nakedness of her sin, for her soul's true chastening. Let nothing be hid from him. Rather now his proper scorn and loathing than his ill-gotten favor, as her unrighteousness had once sought to retain it. For his favor was no more hers, at this time, than the letter she held. Both had been gained by hypocrisy and fraud. Both must be restituted for the completion of her atonement.

And then her soul, walking forward with face glorious, saw the atonement done ... and passed beyond ... and stopped.

After the atonement.... What?

Lord have mercy on her! What?

Should she come back to this house, return to this bed, go on living this life of shame and dishonor, give herself ultimately into the arms of this man? Should she celebrate the sacrament of atonement this night, only to enter upon a fresh course of unrighteousness to-morrow?

Oh, no, no, no! She could not. A thousand times no! She could not.

By fraud he had got her. By cruelty he had broken her resistance. If she were going to pay openly for her sin, by just atonement before the proper tribunal, why need she pay a hundredfold in secret to this unrighteous extortioner? What she had undertaken to do she had done. She had bound herself by no promises, for he would not accept them from her. She had tied herself to him publicly, and pleaded with Father Mostyn as though she had been pleading for her life's blood; had submitted to the degradation of this man's authority ... only for the letter that she held. Rather than give herself up to him she would cast herself over the cliff and seek refuge in death.

And so thought ran on with her, and the further it traveled the further it seemed to take her away from the scene of her guilt and the man who had wronged her.

Yes, slowly but surely--as though, all along, it had been aware of its destination, and kept it only from the girl herself--her mind, traveling over its miles and miles of railed purpose, arrived at this dark terminus. She would go.

She wept when she saw at last where it was she must alight, and said good-by to herself as to a dear friend. But the parting was inevitable, and weeping, she bowed to it. To pour new wine of life into this old burst bottle of hers, how could she? Without open proclamation of the truth, her life in Ullbrig would but be days and hours and minutes of wicked, unbearable deception. But in a new place, away from the old sin and the old temptation, she might better succeed. She could never be happy again; that she knew. Happiness was gone from her for ever, but she could be good. Goodness should be her adopted child, in place of the one she had lost. The Spawer was good; like him she would try--oh, how patiently--to be.

Maddest of madness. The girl thought she was arriving at it all by processes of reason; she was merely delirious. Grief had been a five-days' fever with her, and this was the crisis. But there were no kind hearts to understand her sickness; no gentle hands to restrain her. Delirium, that she took to be reason, dictated "Go," and she was going.

Vague dreams of vague work in vague towns blew through her comprehension, like drifting mists from the sea. She would go here; she would go there; she would get work as a dressmaker; as a cook; as a clerk in some other post office; as a secretary ... as God knows what.

Night drew on as she fashioned her plans. One by one the familiar sounds acquainted her exactly with the progress of it. In the darkness of her pillow, before the moon got round to her window, she needed no clock. She heard the clatter of pottery; "good-nights" exchanged in the kitchen; creaking of the twisted staircase to the postmaster's stockinged feet, with the hollow bump of his hands as he steadied his ascent; the amiable gasping of Mrs. Morland, gathering up her forepetticoats and laboring in the wake of her husband's ascent; the unutterable sound of the schoolmaster's footsteps, that sent pangs through her, each one, as though he were treading all the way on her heart; the cruel catch of his bedroom door, so hard, remorseless, and sinister. In such wise he had shut the door of his compassion on her soul's fingers, and heeded not. And last of all, the sounds of bolts shot beneath; journeyings of Emma to and fro between the two kitchens. Now she would be extinguishing the lamp; now she would be lighting her candle; now she would be putting the kitchen lamp back for safety on the dresser by the wall; now she would be coming upstairs ... ah! here she came. The flickers of her candle winked momentarily in the keyhole of Pam's door, as though she were listening at the head of the staircase to gather assurance of her sound repose. Then the keyhole closed its blinking eye, and there ensued the click of Emma's own latch.

At that last culminating sound, Pam's heart turned palpitatingly within her, part exultant, part terrified; seemed almost to come into her mouth like a solid materialised sob. Now all the path was clear. Its clearness dismayed her. Soon slumber would prevail over the post-house, and act sentinel to her purpose. But though purpose, standing like a bather by the brink of wintry waters, shivered at the prospect of immersion--yet did not falter. Purpose had vowed to go, and purpose was going. Another hour the girl kept stillness upon her bed, and the half of an hour after that, listening until the rhythmic _ronflement_ of the postmaster's snore was established, and the intervals between that horrible menaceful cough--short at first--had spaced themselves out into ultimate silence. Then from her bed she rose.

Stealthily, seated on the side of it, she unlaced her shoes and laid them on the quilt, that her feet might be noiseless upon the floor. Then, letting the weight of her body slide gradually on to the rug by the side of her bed, she moved forward, balancing with outstretched hands. The clear beams of the moon filled her white bedroom by this time, as though it were day. And now that the actual moment of flight was upon her, its keen, constricted space in eternity acted like a pin-hole lens, through which, magnified, she saw the difficulties of her task.

What, in the nature of personalty, should go with her? She would have need of her bath, of her big sponge, of her toothbrushes, of her dentifrice and powder, of her brushes and comb, of her night-gowns, of her dressing-gown, of changes of underlinen, of her blouses, of her best dress, of her Sunday shoes, of her walking-boots, of pocket-handkerchiefs ... these only concerning her toilette.

And she would have need of her mother's books, and her own little library; her own little stock of French grammars and easy reading books; the music that he had given her ... heaps and heaps of precious, inconsiderable gifts and souvenirs that in this hour of severance her soul clung to tenaciously, as to dear, human fingers.

Alas! of such latter, it seemed, she had none to cling to.

But all these things she could not convey with her. Flight could not hamper itself with baths and books, and boots and blouses. All that hindered it must be cast aside. And these things ... the only trifling landmarks in life to remind her who she was, and what small place she held in the great waste of existence ... these must be cast aside too.

These must be cast aside!

What a severance!

How would her soul know itself without these familiar tokens? Without these, without Ullbrig, away in strange places, in strange surroundings, she might be anybody. She was no longer Pam. She was simply a life ... an eating and a drinking; a sleeping and a waking. She wept.

Stealthily withal, but bitterly, and without any abatement of her purpose, like a child weeping its way to school, that never dreams of contesting the destiny that drives it there.

Yes; all these dear things of her affection must be left behind. For the present, at least. But they were not robbers in this house; they were honest people, who had loved her in the past, and been kind to her. They would guard these things for her, and if some day she wrote to them and asked as much, they would cede them to her without demur. Only what she positively needed must she take with her. A night-dress, her tooth-brushes, her sponge (that, at least, would squeeze up), a collar or two, some stockings, one change of linen, one brush and comb, one extra pair of shoes. Just such a parcel as she could carry without causing too much fatigue to herself, or too much comment from others. And she would need money.

How much had she?

In her purse she had four shillings, sixpence, and coppers; in the pocket of her old serge skirt, three half-pence. Five shillings odd to face the world with. Oh, it was very little!

But in an old chocolate box she had one pound ten shillings in gold, and a fat five-shilling piece--all her recent savings; the proceeds of little works for his Reverence, and dressmaking assistance for Emma. From various parts of her bedroom, she gathered all the items necessary for her outfit and essayed upon her most terrible enterprise of all--the descent of the staircase.

Slowly, slowly, slowly ... oh, agonisingly slowly ... she turned the handle of her door and opened it upon its hinges. In those early days she had done this same thing--with trepidation, indeed, and compression of lip--but never with the blanched horror of to-night. To stumble now, or betray herself; to arouse the house to her flight, and be caught disgracefully in the act--with nothing but shame and exposure as recompense for her anguish--that must not be. And yet all the boards cried out upon her, sprang up, as though she had startled them sleeping, and called: "Pam! Pam! What! is it you? Where are you going, Pam?" And she dared not hush them.

And the wooden walls, when she laid a guiding hand upon them, rocked and yielded to her weight; it seemed they must inevitably shake the sleepers on their beds. And the stairs--treacherous stairs--each one of them tried to betray her; promised fair to her foot, and called out when she confided to them her body: "Noo then; noo then! where 's ti gannin' to this time o' neet? Mester Morland! Mester Frewin! y' ought to be stirrin' alive noo! There 's this lass o' yours away seumweers wi' a bundle o' claws [clothes]." Oh, the slow sickness of it; step by step, foot by foot, stop by stop, rigid as a statue, cold of heart as of clay, burning of head, tingling of ears. But at last her feet found the friendly kitchen mat, solid on the red-tiled floor.

Long, standing there, she listened, panting and sifting the overhead silence for the slightest sound that might betide discovery of her flight. But none could she catch, though the meshes of her hearing were drawn painfully fine. The worst of her task was over. Now were only a few concluding things to do ... and then the going.

The moon filled the little clean kitchen and the kitchen parlor--all this back part of the house, indeed--with its great white beams, as it had filled her bedroom upstairs, and gave her no need of lamp or candle. Speedily moving over the red tiles in her noiseless stockinged feet, she acquired her few remaining necessaries from drawer and cupboard, made up her effects into as neat a parcel as they would let her, put on her old, faded, blue Tam-o'-Shanter, laid her brown mackintosh ulster on the dresser, and got ready her thick-soled walking shoes. Now she had only a little writing to do, and she could be gone. First of all, with her tears intermittently running, she must write her letter to Him. And she must write also to Emma Morland. And a line must be left for the postmaster, and one for Mrs. Morland, and a farewell to the man upstairs, who had wrought this havoc with her life. And Father Mostyn ... he must not be left in ignorance. And James Maskill too ... poor hallowed James, who looked so sadly at her in these days; and Ginger. At this sad hour of her parting, her heart wished to make its peace with all against whom it had offended; all that had offended it; all that had showed it kindness. To everybody that had given her a good word or a bad she felt the desire to leave a little epistolary farewell. But she could not write to them all now. Later, perhaps. To do so would be to keep her hand at work with the pen till daybreak, and now every moment was of importance. Ullbrig would be early abroad to-morrow. Eyes would be scanning the earth from every quarter long before sunrise. Not the most that her heart wished to do now, but the least, for her purpose, that it might, must be her rule. She would write to the Spawer; he, at least, must be written to. And to Father Mostyn, and to the schoolmaster, and a word to Emma.

So deciding, she got pen and paper and ink, and set herself to this final task in the broad white band of moonlight over the window table.

With writhings, with fresh tears, with bitings of the pen, with painful defections of attention to the regions upstairs, in the flood of clarid moonlight, she coped with her labor. But at last that too, like all suffering in the world, had an end. The letter was written and sealed. And next, more fluently, was penned the epistle for his Reverence; and succeeding that, her farewell to the schoolmaster; and her sorrowing penitence to Emma. The first two she gathered to herself; the second two she left, displayed on the table, to be found of their respective addressees in the morning.

And now she was on the brink of departure. All her work in this house had been accomplished except the mere leaving of it. She had looked upon this as easy, by comparison, but how truly hard it was. Dear little kitchen, that swam away from her eyes as she gazed upon it--like a running stream under the moonlight. So the glad current of her past was racing from her. Dear little blurred dresser--friend of hers from her childhood upward. She stooped her lips to it on an impulse, and kissed its hard, scarred cheek again and again, in one last sacred farewell. Never more, perhaps, should her eyes rest upon it. Dear little warm-hearted oven, that had done her so many good turns in the past. Sometimes, perhaps, it might have been a little too short with her tarts, and a shade crusty with her pies--a little hot-tempered with herself even, but that was nothing. What were its faults by the side of hers! She held its round, bright knob in a lingering grasp. "Good-by, little oven.... Oh, little oven, good-by! Do your duty better than I have done mine ... and take profit by me. Be kind to Emma ... and Mrs. Morland ... for my sake ... and brown your very best."

And to the little fender also, her soul said good-by; and to the lamp that had lighted so many nights of her happiness in the great agone; and to the brass boiler tap; and to the warming-pan. All over the house she would have liked to wander, raining her mild, sorrowful tears ... and saying her spiritual good-bys to these dear, inanimate friends of her vanished happiness; but it might not be. Into her mackintosh she stole at length--that rustled like marsh flags, for all her care--slipped on her shoes, gathered up her parcel, and passed out of the kitchen on cautious tip-toe. But a few more moments and she had renounced the comfortable roof of red tiles that had made so pleasant a shelter over her head these years past. Now there intervened no shield between that dear head and the stern, starry sky; so severely calm and clear and dispassionate. No hope from there, dear child, though you lift your lips to it and invoke its mercies. Others too, as tender--though not more fair--have confided themselves so, and sunk in the great world's ocean beneath these self-same stars.

And thus, with one long, drenched, searching gaze of tears, sideways up the wall of the house that had held her, good-night and good-by!

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