Chapter X: Part 10

To be sentimental by moonlight was one thing, but for a man ostensibly in the marriage-bespoke department to manoeuvre a wide-awake girl into the laneways of emotion was a very different thing indeed. All their yesterday's sentimentalism was so much trade discount knocked off their relations; he was at cost price now, and something under. The whole time of their interview this morning she was unmistakably trying to shake him off; had been inventing urgent reasons why she must be getting back; had n't a word to say for herself beyond transparent excuses to get away; could n't say what she was going to be doing this afternoon; could n't say what she was going to be doing to-night; could n't say whether she should see him to-morrow; could n't say, apparently, whether she 'd ever see him again; had almost torn herself away from him in the end. What was he to think? What was he to say? What was he to do?

He was a sick man now, and no mistake. His very internals tormented him, as though he were a storm-tossed, drifting ship, and he saw land and the girl receding from him hopelessly on the horizon. How to reach her? How to get back to her? How still to save himself?

Alas, during these moments of wounded love and pride, for the Other One!

*CHAPTER XXV*

In one swift headlong descent of crime Pam had suddenly arrived at the awful pitch of robbing Her Majesty's mail.

She had vague terrorised notions of the penal code and the shameful penalty of her crime, but her horror for what the world would inflict upon her, to ease its conscience of the various offences it commits itself, was exceeded by the horror with which self regarded self. And she had horror, too, of the unutterable horror that would prevail in this house, so still and peaceful at present, supposing her crime were brought home to her and exposed. She saw the awe-struck face of the postmaster, sitting with his mouth open and empty of words under the incredible calamity of her shame; she saw Emma Morland looking at her, part in anger, part in unbelief, part in compassion; she saw James Maskill obstinately refusing to meet her eye, and pretending to whistle in shocked abstraction; she saw her one act extended and dramatised to its very close at Sproutgreen Court-house, as clearly as though her soul were a theater, luridly lighted, and she were sitting in the pit ... a horrified, helpless, untearful spectator of her own downfall.

All suddenly the course of the drama was disturbed. There was a sound of doors downstairs; voices mixed in question and answer. She held her breath and listened. Her heart gave a great bump and seemed to stop altogether. So vivid was her conception of her crime that her mind accepted these noises as indisputable notification of its detection. All the world was astir about the stolen letter. The policeman was there; the machinery of the law was in motion. They were come to take her. They would all be waiting for her below. She saw them in a blinding group, with the stragglers beyond, about the Post Office door; children flattening their noses and sticking their tongues grotesquely against the panes for a sight inside; licking their fingers and drawing slimy tracks over the glass. And then she heard her name uttered--that hateful name that was become now as a second word for sin. The sound of it sent a shudder through her to the soles of her lemon-colored shoes.

"Pam...." It was Emma Morland's voice that called her. "Pam! Are ye there?"

Instinctively she clutched the tell-tale letter in her hand and scrambled off the bed. Her first thought was for the little dressing-table. She pulled up the looking-glass (ah, that was no liar); rubbed her cheeks with her hands to try and soften their haggardness; smoothed her hair rapidly; shook out her skirts, and passed on trembling legs to the door. Her name met her a second time as she opened it, from a few steps further up the stairs, and more urgently uttered.

"Pam! ... Are ye there?"

Her mouth was dry; her lips felt cracked like crust; her tongue a piece of red flannel, but her voice might have been less unsteady--as it might also have been louder--when she answered.

"I 'm here," she said, and with an effort to divert suspicion and appear unconcerned; "... do you want me, Emma?"

A guilty person would never ask: "... do you want me?" A guilty person would know too well, and not dare to risk the question. Don't you understand? Cunning, you see, was coming to her help--now that she was enlisted in the devil's own army. When the crime is once committed, when we have taken the infernal shilling and the devil is sure of us, he does not stint his soldiers with the armament of craft.

"Did n't ye 'ear me callin' of ye?" Miss Morland inquired, with some sharpness of reproof at having been kept at the occupation.

"... I can't have done," said Pam. "... Have you been calling long?"

"Ah 've been callin' loud enough, onny road," Miss Morland protested. "What 's gotten ye upstairs?"

Pam's fingers tightened their hold of the letter in her pocket.

"... I 've been..."--she cast a beseeching look around the room for inspiration; the devil furnished her at once--"washing myself."

"Goodness wi' ye! En't ye washed yersen once this mornin'?"

"I 've been ... having another. It 's so hot outside."

"Ye mud be a mucky un bi t' way ye stan' i' need o' soap an' watter. Ye do nowt else, a think. Come down wi' ye noo an' set dinner things, will ye? It 's about time."

Only that! Not detection; not discovery and shame. Only to lay the dinner things. And she had been paying for that moment with all the horror and heart-burning and trembling of knees for the real shame itself. What prodigality of terror! What an outrageous price to pay, for a mere worthless alarm!

Now it seemed to her her body was turned to glass. Every thought within her she felt must be visible through its transparent covering, as though she had been but a shop-window for the display of her delinquencies. Down at the bottom of her pocket, smothered beneath her handkerchief, and her hand most frequently over that, lay the object of her crime. She dared not turn her back for long lest they should see it through her clothing. If it had been buried under the red flags of the kitchen their eyes would have been drawn to it and found it. They had lynx eyes, of a sudden, all of them. They pricked her through and through with strange test-glances, as though they were trying the flesh of a pigeon with a fork. When she put her hand to her pocket to reassure herself, at some horrid suspicion, that the letter was still there ... their eyes taxed the action and charged her at once, seeming to say: "Ah! ... what 's that? Did something crinkle?"

Even the handkerchief, in which she had placed her trust to hold down and choke the evidence of her guilt, narrowly missed betraying her outright into the hands of her enemies. It was after dinner. They were all rising from the table, and for some reason, Pam could not say why--unless it was that she felt some concentrated look upon her from behind and wished to perform a trifling act of unconcern to divert suspicion--but all at once she found herself with the handkerchief in her hand, and heard, at the very moment that her own fear shot like a dart through her breast, the keen voice of Emma:

"See-ye; what's that ye 've dropped o' floor? A letter bi t' looks on it."

In a flash Pam spun round upon the white square upon the red tiles. The schoolmaster had already perceived it, and come forward to relieve her of the necessity for stooping; his hand was outstretched when she turned, but she almost flung herself in front of him and snatched the letter from under his fingers. It was a dreadful display of distrust and suspicion. Her breath came and went, between shame for her act and terror for the alternative, while she stood before him, thrusting the letter into the pocket at the back of her, with a face like a flaming scarlet poppy, and a breast rising and falling, as though he had been seeking to wrest the missive from her. As for Emma Morland, accustomed as she was growing to novel demonstrations of the girl's character, this present act so eclipsed all previous records, and ran so counter to everything that experience had ever taught her of Pam, that she gasped in audible amazement. The schoolmaster, on his side, awkwardly placed--as one whose undesired services seem to savor of meddlesomeness--flushed up to the high roots of his hair, and then slowly, very, very slowly, commenced to whiten all over till his face, his lips, his neck even seemed turned, like Lot's wife, into salt.

If Pam had but allowed him to return the letter, it is quite probable that he might have had the good feeling to raise it from the floor and hand it to her with his eyes upon hers, as a guarantee of good faith. On the other hand, it was equally probable that he might not. In any case, the risk would have been truly a heavy one to run. But now, though Pam had saved herself from open detection, it was only at the cost of a suspicion that henceforth would keep its wide eye upon her every action. Love is a terrible detective; it has no conscience; knows no more than a criminal to discern between right and wrong. Everything that it does it does for love. The things done are nothing. The thing done for is all. Back into Pam's pocket went the accursed germ of crime and misery which she must hug so closely--though she would have given her unhappy soul to be rid of it.

But there was no safety in her pocket now; all her confidence in a personal possession fled from her. Her hand seemed sewn into her dress, by its anxiety to keep assured of the letter's safety. For everything that she did with her right hand she did half a dozen with her left.

And even that tried to betray her.

"What 'a ye done at yersen?" Miss Morland asked her tartly, when she saw her collecting the glasses lamely off the table with the left hand, and the other one missing. "... 'A ye cutten yer finger?"

"No...."

Pain jerked it quickly into use and showed desperate activity with it. Also, she cast a fearful look over her elbow, lest she should see the condemnatory square of white lying on the floor at the back of her, blinking maliciously at her discomposure. The letter seemed, in her imagination, suddenly instinct with the diabolical desire to work her ruin. She could no longer trust it about her. Up to her room she betook herself at the first favorable opportunity--which was the first that Emma's back happened to be turned. In the low, long drawer of the wardrobe, deep beneath confidential articles of personal attirement, she buried it in the furthermost corner, as far as arm could reach. Then she squeezed the drawer to again noiselessly, and standing back, applied her gaze in terrible assiduity to see whether the wardrobe showed any outward and visible signs of having been tampered with for improper purposes. There was nothing suspicious that she could discover. The knobs spun wickedly, and winked at her in devilish confraternity:

"Aha, not a word. Trust us. We know; we know!"

The afternoon drew on with a humming and a droning, and a buzzing and a whirring, and a tick-tacking and a hammering, all mixed up sleepily together in thick sunlight, like the flies in Fussitter's golden syrup. The postmaster slept on his little bench in the shoemakery, with his head back against the wall, and his mouth open like the letter-box outside, and Ginger Gatheredge's left boot between his knees, sole upward, and a hammer in one hand and the other thrown out empty--with the sort of mute, supplicating gesture towards the inexorable that one associates with rent-day. Mrs. Morland had slipped out to Mrs. Fussitter's, and would be back in a minute--without committing herself to say which. Emma was in the trying-on room, with her mouth all pinned up; there must have been, at one moment, a dozen tucks in at least. The schoolmaster was in the second kitchen. Pam was in the first. She knew where he was; her ears were alert to every sound in the house, but she did not know that he was keeping guard over her with a terrible check of concentration and listening apprehension. She was frightened he might be going to seek a conversation with her, but she need have no fear of this had she only known. He was as frightened of such a meeting--for different reasons--as she. Suspicion was consuming him again in silence, like the old former flame of his love. He dared not trust himself to words; he could only listen. Only desired to listen and keep always near her. He trusted her no more than if she 'd been a declared pickpocket. Love without any foundation of faith is a terrible thing, and his love was a terrible thing. He had loved her before as he would have loved an angel; his own unworthiness alone had made him fear for the getting of her. Now he loved her no less--deeper, indeed--but it was the love for a beautiful and treacherous syren. His love was as unworthy as he believed hers to be. He knew not to what extent she would practise her deadly deceptions, and in holding himself prepared for any, his mind outstepped them all. He opened a book--it was a volume of Batty's hymns--and laid it on the table to be ready as an excuse, should any be needed. And there he sat, with the flat of his face strained towards the kitchen beyond, where he heard the girl astir.

For a while, so far as Pam was concerned, in her solitary occupancy of the kitchen, she was free from actual alarms. Only her mind troubled her; asking her how she was going to repair this great wrong that she had done--for she had no wilful intention of retaining the letter. All her mind was concentrated upon the hazy means of its safe delivery. All her fears were lest shame of discovery should fall upon her before she could make redress. And these fears were not groundless. The task of redress seemed more difficult as she looked at it. In the first place, the letter bore the date of its Hunmouth stamping conspicuously on its face. Had the Ullbrig office had the stamping of its own letters, how easy it would have been to re-stamp over the old postmark. But coming and going, all the letters were stamped in Hunmouth. Oh, why had n't Government trusted them with the stamping of their own? So much better it would have been--so much better. Yet since there was no possibility of altering the tell-tale postmark, what was to be done? If she took the letter as it was ... he might remark the date, remember having come upon her when she was reading something, remember having seen her put something hurriedly into her pocket, remember her confusion when he asked whether there was any letter for him ... piece it all together and learn that she 'd robbed him.

And till he got this letter ... he would stay at Cliff Wrangham.

And there might be other things in it besides.

Money, for instance. Notes that She wanted him to put into the bank for her. That made Pam feel very ill. Notes--bank-notes! Those would mean transportation ... or something, for life, would n't they? The kitchen felt of a sudden so small and hot and cell-like that she could bear it no longer. She slipped out feverishly into the garden. There, among the potatoes and cabbages she made a turn or two, but it was such an unusual thing for her to do, and she was so afraid lest its strangeness might set other eyes to industry concerning her altered state, that the fear that had driven her out drove her in again. Back she came from under the burning sun into the stewpot of a kitchen. And there, all at once, she heard a horrible sound from overhead that stunned her intelligence like a cruel box on the ears. The next moment she was racing up the little twisted staircase with the horrid stealth and the concentrated purpose of a tigress. To her bedroom she fled on swift, noiseless feet; crouched by the door for a moment to make sure, and prepare her spring, and pounced in terrible silence upon the curved figure of the postmaster's daughter, on her knees by the fatal drawer of the wardrobe.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

"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.

*CHAPTER XXVII*

Soon all was abustle at the Post Office in preparation for the departing mail. The kettle commenced to throb upon the red embers of the little kitchen fire, and pushing out a blithe volume of steam through its pursed lips, appeared to be whistling light-heartedly at the immediate prospect of the cup that cheers. From the second kitchen came the melodious clink of the cups and saucers and tea-spoons; gladsome tea-table music, heard at four o'clock on a hot summer's day, with its queer cracked thirds and minor intervals and faulty diatonics. James Maskill rattled up to the Post Office door again, over the great round cobbles, and tying the reins up into a loop, stimulated hot and dusty letter-bringers to frantic final efforts with fierce cries that he was on the point of departure.

"Noo then, ye need n't gie ower runnin' if ah 'm to tek it."

"Ah s'd sit down, if I was you, an' watch me gan."

"Ay, theer, ye 'll 'ave to mek use o' yer legs."

"Noo, ah 'm just away an' all, so ye know."

Whereupon, at Pam's invitation, he retired to partake of a cup of smoking tea on the Post Office counter--that reappeared immediately upon his forehead in the form of globules--and doubling up plum-bread and butter by laying it flat on his great outstretched palm and closing his hand upon it, slipped it down his mouth cornerwise, as easily as posting a letter. Every now and then he gave his tea-cup a vigorous stir to shake up the sugar in it, and darting to the door of the Post Office, scanned the street up and down for distant letter-bearers on its horizon.

"Noo then," he cried out at Ding Jackson, lurking onward from afar. "'Ow much longer div ye think ah s'll wait for ye?"

"Ah don't know, an' ah don't care," Dingwall Jackson responded irreverently.

"Don't ye?" shouted the postman, with sudden ire.

"Naw," Ding Jackson shouted back at him, going better. "Ah 've no letters."

"Ay, bud ye 'll know if ah get 'old on ye," James Maskill cried threateningly, shaking a doubled fist like a great red brick at him, and as heavy. "An' ye 'll care too. Ye dommed saucy young divvle."

"Gie ower sweerin'," cried Ding Jackson, as loudly as he could. He almost twisted his interior in the effort to publish the postman's offence throughout Ullbrig. "Feythur, James Maskill 's sweerin' at me."

"Ay, ye sewd try an' curb your tongue, Jaames," the postmaster counselled him as he scowled back to his teacup. "It's a 'asty member wi' all on us, an' stan's i' need o' bridlin'."

"Ah 'll bridle 'im," said James morosely, stirring up the sugar again, this time like the dregs of discord. "... When ah get 'im. An' ah know very well where ah can leet of 'im" [alight on him].

At other times this wicked conduct of James's would have grieved and disappointed Pam, particularly in the face of his recent struggles and improvements, but to-day she felt no right to be grieved. Indeed, this sin seemed so inconsiderable by the side of her own that she envied the postman his comparative state of sinlessness. To call somebody a "devil" (which Ding Jackson undoubtedly was, at any time that you used the appellation to him; morning, noon, or night), what was that? But to steal something from somebody who 'd been your best friend. To be a thief. She knew by her sorrows what that was. And James Maskill had been reproved and shamed and corrected for the one, while she, for the other--that could have sent her to prison and shamed her before Ullbrig for ever--she was here, acting the saintly hypocrite.

Oh, no! Whatever James Maskill did now she could never reprove him. The very worst that his temper could do would always be above that level to which, through her sheer sinful tendency, she had sunk. James would never steal. James would never be a thief. From that hour forth she looked up to James Maskill with a new-born reverence and respect, as to one whose life was pure and hallowed.

"Thank ye," said the hallowed one, thrusting the cup and saucer and plate through the kitchen door, and holding them there until he should feel himself relieved of them.

"You 're very welcome, James," Pam answered him, in the softest voice that was left to her. Even her voice, it seemed, was becoming hard and sinful and metallic in these days, to match her soul. "Will you have any more?"

"No, ah s'll 'a my tea when ah get back," the hallowed one responded; and in a lower tone, according to custom: "Is there owt 'at ah can do for ye o' my way?"

Dear, faithful, honest, good-hearted fellow! How he loved her, Pam told herself bitterly. How he trusted her, vile character that she was. How his goodness ought to stimulate and strengthen her own, and draw her back, if so might be, to the old paths she had trodden once.

"No, thank you, James," she said after a pause--in which James only imagined she was trying to think of something.

"Not to-night?" said the hallowed one.

"Not to-night ... thank you," Pam told him.

If a kiss would have been any good to him ... and he 'd asked for it, he would have got it then. Poor James! Lost a kiss because he never dreamed of thinking it would be there, or asking on the off chance.

"Ah 'm still ... tryin' my best," he assured Pam, round the door-post. "Ah 'm not same man ah was, bud that d ... Dingwall, ah mean, gets better o' me yet. Ah know ah s'll not be right while ah 've fetched 'im a bat across 'is lugs. Nor 'e won't, saucy young ... sod. Bud ah 've not gidden up tryin'."

He had not given up trying. And she--was she trying?

Oh, James, James, James! After many days you are bringing back her soul's bread to her. Pray that she feed upon it and be strong. She needs it.

"Good-neet," said James.

"Good-night, James," said Pam.

The postman raised his voice.

"Good-neet, Emma."

"Good-neet, Jaames Maskill," Emma responded.

"Good-neet, Missis Morland."

"Good-neet, Jim lad."

"Good-neet, agen," James said to the postmaster.

"Neet, James. Ye 'll 'ev another nice jonney," the postmaster told him.

"Ay, neet 's about best part o' day, noo," James responded.

He took up the bag, and lingering, cast one extra "Good-neet" over his shoulder towards the door-post once more, in his second and softer voice. It did n't seem for anybody in particular, but more as though he had it to spare, and might as well leave it at the Post Office as anywhere. Pam's voice, however, registered acceptance of it from within, with the grateful inflection for a very welcome gift.

"Ay, good-neet," said the postman, giving her another forthwith; and after hesitating on the impulse of a third, hardened his mouth, swung the bag off the counter by its narrow neck, lunged out into the lurid sunlight, pulled the cart down to meet him, sprang into his place, said "Gee" and "Kt," and was round the brewer's corner in a twinkling, leaving golden clouds behind him.

And as soon as tea was over and the things were cleared, and the house commenced to slip into its peaceful evening mood, she set her plans in motion for the carrying out of her resolve. Viewing the recent discredit into which her washing had fallen with Miss Morland, it required all her nerve to brace herself for a visit of this nature to the bright bedroom overlooking the garden; but stealing a moment when Emma was absent, she did it, changed her light dress for a darker of navy blue, and descended, prepared to receive all Emma's scorn now that it could no longer deter her from her intention. But Emma was nowhere visible when she reached ground-floor again; her accumulated reserves of meekness and charity had been vainly stored. And now her first object was to secure the letter. She reconnoitred the rooms once more, with the end that she might possess herself of it, and hold it in readiness for the first suitable moment that might offer her a chance of departure without being seen. Such departure would not be yet, of course. It would not be till the dusk was well fallen, and the moon on the rise. Until that time there was always the fear of coming into collision with the Spawer about Dixon's farmstead. Above all, she must avoid that. And meanwhile, the letter must be in her keeping against all chance that the one moment most favorable to departure in all other respects should be the least favorable for the procurement of the letter itself.

To her consternation and dismay, she found that the parlor, though she had imagined it to be unoccupied when she listened outside the door, was held in the hands of the schoolmaster. He was seated, reading deeply at the round table, with his elbows on the edge and his hands over his ears, when she wavered upon the threshold. This first frustration cast a terrible shadow over her. She did not know where to go to keep vigil. If she dallied too openly about the house, there was ever the dread that it might involve her awkwardly with one member or other, and rob her of her chance a second time, just at the very moment that the schoolmaster should leave the coast clear. Apparently he had not heard her push the half-open door and stop dead upon the outer mat, for he had never raised his head. Dejected and anxious, she stole back to the little kitchen and twisted her knuckles by the window, watching the slowly deepening sky--so reflective of her own sinking gloom. From here the postmaster's approaching steps drove her into the second kitchen. From the second kitchen the sound of Emma Morland, humming a hymn-tune severely through her tightened lips, and advancing by the passage door, drove her back again, and--as Emma still pushed her advance--up the corkscrew staircase for the second time this night.

"Where 's Pam?" Miss Morland inquired acutely of the postmaster, when she entered--not that she was in active pursuit or need of her, but that the girl's absences now were always a source of suspicious inquiry and speculation.

"En't ye seed 'er?" the postmaster asked innocently. "She 's nobbut just this moment come oot o' kitchen an' ganned upstairs."

"Ay, to wash 'ersen, ah' s'd think," Miss Morland reflected shrewdly to herself. "Ah 'd gie seummut to know what lass 's after."

At that moment, if it could have been revealed to her, the lass was after listening at the top of the staircase with a twisted ear to their solicitudes concerning her whereabouts. Once upon a time, she told herself while she did it, she would never have listened to anything that anybody said, whether she had been the subject of it or not. But now, listening seemed part of her natural defence; she listened with no interest in the thing heard, except only as a means for her own intelligence and safety. At the first sound of words her suspicious ear was up like a cat's at the chattering of birds.

From her place at the head of the twisted stairs she was driven into her bedroom once more by Mrs. Morland. Then, when calm had been restored to the recently ruffled atmosphere of the post house, and it was possible to probe by ear to the uttermost corners of it, she slipped out a cautious head, chose her moment, and stole down by the Sunday staircase. Very gently she pressed upon the parlor door with her cushioned fingers ... very gently ... gently, gently, just so that she ... gently ... gently ... could catch a glimpse.

Ah!

The treacherous door had cracked, all at once, like a walnut-shell under her boot-heel. She was halfway up the stairs again in a trice; holding her palpitating heart and listening terribly over the bannisters for the sounds that should proclaim discovery of her attempt. But none came. Baffled, goaded with desire, half-crying with fear of her enterprise's failure, and yet unable to cry because she lacked the tears to cry with, being only able to pull painful faces; desperate to achieve her purpose and terrified with her own desperation, she was up and down the staircase after this a dozen times; back into her bedroom, listening at the head of the corkscrew stairs; holding her ear to every point of the compass. But never dared she essay entrance of the parlor. That door, just ajar on its hinges, held her more effectually at bay than had it been bolted with great bolts and locked and barred. Dusky night descended, the time was getting ripe for her purpose ... and still she lacked the letter.

Then the greater terror out-terrorised the lesser. Fear of what the consequences might be should she not achieve her purpose to-night drove her downstairs for the last time, and into the parlor. With an air of reckless innocence that pretends it has nothing to be afraid or ashamed of, she pulled the door wide and strode into the room. In the simulation of guiltlessness her bearing for the moment was almost defiant, as though she were braced for going into some hated presence. And indeed, for all the assuring silence of the parlor, she advanced with the full expectation of seeing the schoolmaster's figure looming forth from the table, with his hands to his ears and his back to her, as he had been on her first arrival. But no black shadow interposed itself between her and the window; the chair was empty; the room was void. Gone all this while.... And she in her terror had been letting the precious moments slip through her fingers like water. Her heart, in spite of the misery of her lost opportunities, gave a great bound of exultation when it found the way of its purpose clear.

She sprang across the room and laid hold of the desk. The pleasure of feeling it in her possession again after all her dividing anguish; this union of purpose with opportunity; this path unto righteousness--were more glorious than untold riches. Tremulously she deposed the china shepherdess, and opening the desk thrust in her feverish fingers.

And then, all of a sudden, her heart seemed to stand still. A great sinking, swaying sickness seized her.

The letter was not there.

*CHAPTER XXVIII*

The letter was not there.

Like a wild animal bereft of its young, when the first shock of discovery had had its way with her, she set herself with both hands to rummage the contents of the desk, as though sheer frenzy of desperation alone could restore to her that which was lost. Scarcely even did she regard the objects that her delving brought to the surface, but dug and tore at them all with a blind, consuming energy that revealed the unreasoning horror of her mind; turning and returning and overturning; now above, now below; selecting each thing seemingly with the prefixed idea to reject.

It was not there. The letter that all her life and honor hung upon, that she had thought to place there with her own hands, was not there. It was gone. There did not remain a trace of it. On the floor, upon her hand and knees, she sought distractedly, stroking the carpet with passionate solicitude to deliver her the letter that was not hers--as though it were a great, rough-coated beast that she was coaxing.

And there, on her hands and knees, the schoolmaster came upon her. Through the thick walls of her engrossment she never heard him; care she had thrown to the winds.

Still groping and coaxing, and peering over the floor in the fast gathering dusk, she saw for the first time the shadow that watched her. It said no word at the moment of her rising. Slowly and tremblingly she rose upward, like a faint exhalation, a phantom. Had she continued her vaporous ascent through the ceiling, and through the bedroom ceiling above that, and through the red-tiled roof, and forth into the great eternity of dissolution and nothingness, it would scarcely have been out of keeping with the strange slow spirituality of her rising. All the passionate heat of her search cooled before that presence; her body, that had been so assiduous in its enterprise, froze suddenly to ice; the very life seemed to have been smitten out of her, and her rising but the last muscular relaxation of a body from which the soul had fled.

"Are you ... looking for something?" the shadow asked her, after a terrible moment's silence, when the girl's guilty heart seemed trying to cry aloud and betray her.

It was the old schoolmaster's voice that uttered the question; the tight, hoarse whisper that seemed to strangle his throat in the utterance like a drawn cord. And it was the old schoolmaster's figure that waited upon her answer; the remorseless, condemnatory figure with its hands to its collar, that always, whatever she did, threw her in the wrong. All their intervening relations seemed cut out and done away with. They were back again, splicing their lives at the point where these had broken off on that memorable night in the kitchen. He was above her once more, on the great high judgment seat, and she ... down here--a poor, frail, inconsequential sinner--struggled and wrestled in the bondage of silence before him.

"I?" She spoke in an unsteady voice, all blown to pieces with short breaths, as though she had been running fast and far. "No, no! Only something that I ... that I ... I thought I 'd dropped. Nothing at all ... thank you. It does n't matter."

She wanted to pass him quickly on the strength of that denial--a lie on the face of itself--and get away somewhere, to her bedroom again, before he could question her further; but he stood there without moving, as he had stood in the moonlight, and she dared not advance. She had the fear within her that he might yield her no place.

"You ... will not find it on the floor," he told her.

"I don't ... know what you mean," she found strength to say--but only just.

"The letter," he answered. "You are looking for a letter."

In dead silence, like an executioner's axe, the charge fell, and seemed to sever her anguished head of evasion at one sharp blow from its trembling trunk. She had no power for struggling now; her life of tortured anticipation and mental activity was at an end. It was only a poor, soulless, quivering girl's body that the schoolmaster had in front of him. He might bend and bruise it as he listed; it should show him no resistance.

"It was a letter you were looking for," he taxed her again, his voice gaining severity, it seemed, from her admissive silence, as though he meant forcing her to confess with her lips what she had hoped to let her silence say for her.

"... Have you ... got it?" she inquired, in a dry, empty whisper.

Had she spoken the words with a hollow reed under her lips the tone would have been no more empty.

"It is safe," he said.

And something in the malicious utterance, something significant of exultation for a victory unfairly come by, revealed to the girl in a flash, when, and by what abominable means, it had come into the man's possession.

"You took it," she cried at him, flinging the accusation into his face as though it were a glove from the hand of outraged honor. "You stole it out of my desk!" With all the rapid process of moral despoliation that had been at work upon her during these latter days, and with all the resultant complaisance for crime, the old indignation rose up strong in her against the idea of a mean, petty theft like this. It seemed she might never have sinned or known sin herself, so clear and righteous was her moral eye become of a sudden. "You thief!" she threw at the man. "Coward and thief!"

He made no attempt to resent or defend himself against these puny javelins of her anger. Possession of the letter was so impregnable a position that he could afford to let her expend her ammunition fruitlessly against the walls of his silence.

"And if I did take it?" he asked her merely, in tones of gathering assurance.

"It was not yours to take," she panted at him. "It does not belong to you. Give it me back. You have no right to it."

"It belongs to neither of us," he said, yet without anger. With such a power as this letter in his pocket gave him, he had no need of anger. And of justification he sought none. "My right is as much as yours ... and I am prepared to stand by it. Call me a thief if you like; mere names won't hurt me ... your own harsh treatment has hardened me too much for that. We are both of us thieves."

"... I was going to take it back to-night..." the girl protested, part in asseveration of her innocence, part in supplication that he should restore her the letter.

"Perhaps you were," he said, with a callous indifference to her intentions that boded ill for his own. Apparently he was little concerned with the girl's atonement or questions of restitution. "But I have something ... to say to you first. We cannot talk here. Put on your hat ... we will go outside."

His assumption of authority and dominion roused the last red cinders of the girl's independence. Now that her back was to the wall and further retreat was impossible, the energy, hitherto dribbling away in futile skirmishes, accumulated itself in frontal activity. She was shamed--bitterly, horribly shamed--but even shame has its pride.

"Give me the letter..." she said doggedly, and held out her hand.