"Ha! now for the larder. Let 's see what there is to pick. Do you feel

anything in the lobster way? Here 's a pie that Pam 's cooked and

stuffed into the larder for me--knowing I should be back too late to lay

in stock for Sunday. Dear girl. Why in the world could n't she think

as beautifully for herself as she does for others? And here 's his

reverence's brown loaf, and some beet, and some herring olives. Come,

come! We shan't do so badly."

"You only got back last night?" the Spawer inquired.

"Last night only," his Reverence rejoined, dispersing his various

acquisitions about the table. "Came along with Friend Tankard from

Hunmouth. Poor Friend Tankard! I think he gets slower and slower.

Some day, mark my words, he 'll set out from Hunmouth, and never reach

Ullbrig at all. That 'll be the end of him. However, he did just

manage to pull us through this time, and for the rest of the evening I

was interviewing our errant sister. But she stood firm. I tried to

shake her on all points; had her in tears even. Yes, poor girl, had her

in tears. She rained copiously, but it only seemed to water the roots

of her resolve. She used the tears of my making to beg to me with. Ha!

Let 's see ... to be sure! The beer. You 're a beer man, at least, are

n't you?--even though you stop short of whiskey. Capital! capital! I 'm

going to offer you a little specialty of my own. It 's a local

beer--not Ullbriggian, by the way--but from the district, and you 'll

say you never tasted its equal. Foams like champagne and bites like a

nettle. Mild withal."

He disappeared from sight on this new errand, and returned, after a

remote sound of clinking, with half a dozen bottles of his specialty,

three by the neck in each hand.

"Here we are! If the light were n't so bad, I 'd ask you to examine the

color. But that 's no use. We 'll let that go, and judge by the taste

alone.... And so--" By a skilful intonation he cleared his voice of

the beer, and skipped back to the old topic where they had been before.

"... In the end we allowed the matter to stand, and deferred judgment."

"And they will be married..." the Spawer began.

He was thankful beyond measure that the Vicar picked him up without

delay, for his voice went suddenly as husky as bran.

"Not yet! not yet!" his Reverence said. "That's quite another thing.

Though, for that matter, the girl wished to prevail over my scruples

even there, and persuade me to an actual date and definite consent. But

no. They must possess their souls in patience until I 've had

opportunity to study them under these new conditions. I 'm prepared to

let her go, since her happiness requires it, but I 'm not going to throw

her. Besides ... a little object lesson of this kind appeared to me

desirable. As I pointed out to Pam, the man's conduct in the matter

left much to be desired. Had he been possessed of the natural instincts

of a gentleman he would have approached me first, before intruding

himself upon the girl's affections."

"Of course," the Spawer acquiesced hurriedly.

He loathed himself for a cowardly renegade as he did so, but the

priest's eye, to his guilty vision, fixed him with such a meaning glance

of severity that he felt anything short of verbal agreement would betray

him.

"Of course," Father Mostyn repeated, with renewed emphasis. "The proper

way--indeed, the only way for a gentleman--would have been to approach

me in the first instance, and receive my sanction before unsettling the

girl with a suit which subsequent events might prove to be undesirable.

But there, of course, you have the man, unfortunately. I daresay his

nature would be quite unable to appreciate the niceness of the

point--even if you explained it to him. Now you and I"--here the

terrible condemnatory look seemed to be fixed on the Spawer again--"know

these little matters by instinct, as it were. Such things as those are

in our blood. We don't work out our conduct by free-hand and rule of

three. It 's inbred in us. We act upon them as spontaneously as a

pointer points. Ha!" He ticked off the first and second fingers of the

left hand with the magnetic index-finger of the right. "Bread ...

corkscrew..." and hesitated at the third as though uncertain whether

there did not exist some still further necessity. "Ha! to be sure," he

said, and wagged his shoulders, "cheese." He ambled genially out of the

room again, and returned presently with a loaf of white bread on a

wooden trencher, a corkscrew, a lever, and a dish of Cheddar.

"Now, come along! come along!" he said, all his being fused in the

glowing warmth of hospitality, and sending forth its comforting rays

even to the Spawer's chill fibres. "There 's nothing to wait

for--except grace from Heaven. That's it. Draw up your chair and make

yourself at home."

And bending his head over the tinned lobster: "In the name of the

Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

And now, thinks the Spawer, with the fine egoism of wounded love, there

is not in the whole world a heart so heavy as his.

But he is wrong, for here in Ullbrig hangs a heavier.

Heaven knows Pam had sinned in a hard market, and bought her iniquity

dear. Other people, worldly people of experience and sagacity, know how

to obtain all their sins below par, at the expense of the widow and

orphaned. Pam, knowing nothing of this moral stock-and-share market,

was paying for her shares with everything that she possessed. To the

last penny of her self-respect she was paying for them. Of all moral

and conscientious coinage she was void and bankrupt. There was nothing

left her now but the body she lived in--all its beautiful furnishment of

soul had been distrained and bundled out by the bailiffs long ago. And

the body was mortgaged.

For this marriage--that to the Spawer looked but a callous flaunting of

her bliss before his stricken eyes, a cruel demonstration of how little

she was dependent upon him for any share of her happiness in life--what

was it but a foreclosure? She who had preached the gospel of true love,

of the necessary unity of the body and the soul in marriage; who had

proclaimed to Ginger that "there must be no chance about it, Ginger!

..." she who above all girls knew a love as free of carnality as any

earthly love can be--she was selling her body now for its price.

Would she ever forget the night of horror that saw the compact made.

The lonely, dusty highroad to Hunmouth, with its wide grass borders

sloping down to the ditch bottoms, between the trimmed, stunted

hedgerows, where the schoolmaster led her; the rising moon; the sickly,

suffocating mist of harvest; the dim stars. And there, backward and

forward over the powdery road, she had fought that last fateful fight

for her soul's freedom--and failed.

Give her the letter back ... only give her the letter back ... and she

would try to love him in earnest. She would force herself to love him.

This time she should not fail. Give her the letter back. It was not

his; it was not hers. Come with her himself if he doubted, and see her

hand it in at Dixon's door. She swore she would give it. He did not

understand. It had been all a mistake. She had not meant to take it.

If he only knew the horror she had felt of herself. Oh, she promised!

she promised!

But the man would have no promises. She had made him promises before

and broken them. Here was the letter--here in his possession--and here

it should remain, for witness against her, if need be, until the thing

was settled. Let her call him what she would now; abuse him as she

liked; hate him--all was one. This night she must let it be proclaimed

in the family that they were plighted. As soon as Father Mostyn

returned, she must plead for them both with him. Not until she had

pledged herself publicly beyond all prospect of withdrawal would he give

the letter up. Promises availed nothing. He was done with promises.

If she would not accept him on these terms it was a plain proof that she

did not mean to fulfil them, and unless she was prepared to fulfil them

she must abide by the consequences.

And more tears; and more entreaties; and pitiable shows of rebellion,

quickly subdued; and petty resistances; and tortured turnings to and fro

over the road; and at last surrender.

At last surrender!

Death even, had death been his condition, she would have accepted sooner

than this dire alternative. Only one idea possessed her now--that the

Spawer should never know the presumption of her love.

But the letter! Till he got that ... he would not go at all. The

longer its restitution was delayed, the longer must she endure her

agony.

Strange reversal of misery. In the beginning she had suffered with the

sickness of his going. Now, in the end, she suffered doubly with the

sickness that he should stay. Of a truth, she was snared in her own

wicked net. The sin that she had committed against him was turned into

an all-sufficing punishment more than meet for the offence. And when

would she be able to ease her pain in delivering the letter?

She did not know. Since that night of shameful surrender no further

mention of the letter had passed between these two guilty partners, and

because of the cruel mercy at which this man held her she would ask him

nothing. To appeal to him respecting his intentions respecting her--to

inquire of my lord's pleasure, as though she were a bond slave,

purchased with gold ... no, no, she could not! When he deemed the time

ripe to return her his ill-gotten seal of authority--once it had stamped

the bond to his service--let him do so, and she would take it. Till

then, let them both keep silence respecting their compact.

Hardly a word, indeed, passed between them on any topic. And by

trifling, wordless actions the schoolmaster tightened his hold upon the

girl's shrinking muscles, and held her to him as in a vice. Mere little

attentions of courtesy they were, for the most part, that the household

regarded--and kept watch for--with significant looks to one another,

seeing in them the pleasant ripples on the seductive surface of true

love--but to the girl they were but bolts being driven home, one by one,

into the padlocked door of her prison. For she was this man's prisoner

in thought, word, and deed. Whenever she moved, he moved with her. If

she hid herself from him in her bedroom, be sure he was keeping safe

guard over its door from his own. If she changed rooms, he was after

her like thought. In all except the derision of the outer world she was

a felon, convicted, imprisoned, and under close surveillance; unworthy a

grain of trust or credence. When he handed her an apron, or helped her

into her mackintosh, she felt the act as keenly as though she were being

given a gaol garb to wear. Oh, the degradation of it all! lacking only

the degradation of men's eyes. But for that one pair of eyes which held

her to her purpose, she would rather have gone to a real prison than

suffered this horrible incarceration. And yet, it was plain to see, the

man was only doing his best to gain her love. He had trapped her like a

bird, cruelly, no doubt; but now that she was his, and caged, he was

ready to whistle to her, to give her sugar; gild her captivity the best

he knew how. Her love to him was like the lark's song; he had snared

her for that, and counted on hearing her sing to him. Once she was his,

and he would save her life with his own if it might be. But meanwhile,

teaching her and taming her, he made sure that the cage was secure;

passed his fingers feverishly over its wires a hundred times a day to

assure himself that he had overlooked no loophole for her escape. There

were letters for Ullbrig during those days of rain, and he proffered to

take them in the girl's stead. With a rain like that there was nothing

to be feared. But the girl would not. To his cruelty she had had to

submit, but to his kindness never. So they went, the two of them--for

though he could venture to leave her behind, he dared not be the one

left--battling through the downpour beneath mackintoshes and umbrellas,

with their heads down, the whole roadway apart, exchanging never a word.

And Ullbrig, safe at home, behind its starched curtains, saw the letters

come thus, and smiled.

Truly, many waters cannot quench love.

Sunday--that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, that seemed like the climax

of the girl's shame, when to her horror she had found the Spawer in his

pew beneath her; bless Heaven for the timely storm that kept them

apart--Sunday came and went.

Monday replaced it; a promiseful, rainless day. All the sky was heaped

up with great broken masses of cloud from yesterday's storm, that a

persistent warm breeze swept over the cliff edge and across the sea, in

ceaseless waves of sunlight and shadow. Throughout the day figures were

moving about the fields, turning the limp and soddened sheaves to catch

the wind. Still the breeze blew, and the countless host of clouds--like

another Exodus of the Children of Israel--passed steadily over the land

from the west to the east; to the brink of the sea and beyond. By

evening they were nearly all gone over. Only detached bands of them here

and there rode up silently from the great west, as though they had been

horsemen of a rear guard, and moved slowly across the sky in the wake of

that mighty passage. And as the last of these departed, the sun, like a

great priest garbed in glorious gold vestments, rose to his height on

the far horizon with arms extended to Heaven, and pronounced a

benediction over the land.

Rest in peace now, oh, Ullbrig farmers! Have no fear, oh, faint-hearted

tillers of the soil! Rejoice, ye harvesters, for the Lord God of the

harvest-field is come into His own again. The corn shall ripen in the

ear; there shall be reaping, binding, and gleaning, and an abundant

return for all your labors.

That same night, while the land lay still under the sacred hush of that

benediction, in the little front parlor, all flushed glorious with the

exultation of the sun's message, the schoolmaster returned to Pam what,

on just such as evening as this--millions of ages ago, in some remote

epoch of the world's history--he had taken from her.

Not a word accompanied the restoration. In silence the girl's hand went

forth--with not even her own eyes watching its shameful errand--to meet

it and receive that precious, hateful pawn that she was redeeming with

her body. For some seconds they stood, maintaining their respective

attitudes in that surreptitious transfer; the man with bent head and

averted gaze as he had given; the girl with high, rebellious bosom for a

great grief, and her chin shrinking in the nest of it, while the

recipient hand at the back of her worked slowly downward in the depths

of her skirt-pocket.

Then suddenly, before the man had time to realise or utter the words his

mind was slowly coining, the girl's high breast fell in the convulsion

of silent sobs. With both hands pressed to her cheeks, and the tears

streaming fast through her spread fingers, she brushed abruptly by him.

At the door, for he had something to say, he spoke her name and laid a

restraining hand upon her shoulder, but she shook it off with the

hateful shudder for a serpent, and passed swiftly from him up the Sunday

staircase.

*CHAPTER XXXV*

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!

*CHAPTER XXXVI*

The schoolmaster, never a sound sleeper at the best of times, this night

slept his worst. Being but a novice in practical iniquity, and lacking

yet the reposeful assurance that lulls the veteran evil-doer upon his

pillow, and gives him slumber unknown of the godly, who have consciences

to lie upon their breast like lobster, he tossed hotly between his

sheets. Sleep came to him, indeed, but it was a troubled sleep, blown

across his mind's sky in fitful patches, like the clouds that had

scudded seawards over the land this day, and gave him no repose.

Thoughts, like teetotums, spun too fast for the mind's eye to recognise

the figures on them. But always the basis of his delirium was Pam; the

ceaseless desire of her possession; his love of her; his remorse of the

evil that had been done to get her; her horror of him that his act had

inspired in her; wild resolutions to atone to the girl for his past

iniquity by his future dedication to her worship; to justify the means

by the end, and make her bless him at last for the sin that had brought

them together.

So his mind was spinning on its unchecked dizzy orbit in space through

the hours, like a star through the centuries, when all at once, with a

shock that shuddered him from head to foot, some unseen power arrested

its flight as with an omnipotent hand, and left him wide-eyed and

wakeful on his bed; no star at all now, but the bed-bound, trembling

body of a man, filled with sudden fear and apprehension.

What had happened? Had his being just wrested itself from the bonds of

a horrid nightmare? Had he been dreaming or thinking when the shock

came? He could remember nothing, whether it had been dream or

reflection, to which he could attribute the alert horror of this moment.

It had dropped upon him from somewhere without himself; as though it had

been a mighty, soundless peal of thunder, shaking his soul to its

foundations. His thoughts he could recall with equanimity; there was

nothing in them to cause him fear--and still fear filled him, the more

greatly for having not form nor expression. Fear, or apprehension,

filled him to such extent that the cold, tingling fingers of terror

crept up his scalp, from neck to forehead, brushing all his hairs the

wrong way; and a great, boiling sweat burst out next moment upon his

face and body. So men have been made aware at times of the doings of

death, and the schoolmaster, recalling cases of the kind, drew himself

up palpitatingly in his bed. On the cane-bottomed chair by the head of

it, it was his nightly custom to set his candle, which he thus

extinguished, with a hand thrust out from between the sheets. Thrusting

out the same hand now, he possessed himself, in agitated haste, of the

match-box, struck nervously for a light with the match's unphosphorused

end, and with the red tip of phosphorus on the unsand-papered side of

the box; and lastly, after much work of the sort, drew into existence a

fitful, wavering flame, that died in giving light to the candle. Then

he pulled forth his watch by its chain from under the pillow, and

holding it out from him, fixed a disturbed eye upon its face. Half-past

twelve.

Half-past twelve! No more than that! Ages he seemed to have been

battling with the fever of thought. Could the watch be true? He pressed

it to his ear, and heard the active click-click, click-click heart go

beating in its busy little body. It had not stopped then. It spoke the

truth.

He replaced it under the pillow, and remained drawn up in bed, with both

arms outstretched on the coverlet, as though debating action--though

what to do, or what might be supposed to be required of him, he knew

not. His heart, thumping against his ribs, gave abundant evidence that

he had been rudely roused--if otherwise he had had any inclination to

doubt. And there was the relaxed weakness about his legs, too, and his

limp arms, that bore witness to the sharpness of the shock. Had the

shock come upon him standing, his first instinct would have led him to

sit down. Over and over in his mind he kept turning this awakening like

a strange, unknown coin, seeking to find some decipherable

superscription upon it, and learn what it might presage. It had come

upon him suddenly. It was like to a clap of thunder without noise; the

boom of a gun; the slam of a door. Something whose sound he had not

heard, but whose shock had stirred him. Yet all he could think of was

death. Somebody was dead; somebody was dying; somebody was going to die.

To such extent did the idea of death possess him that it seemed to

expire from him like a mighty stream, whose fount was in his brain. The

whole room was filled with the awesome presence of it. Death was at the

bed-foot; at the window curtain; shrouded the candle. And then, of a

sudden, thoughts of death and thoughts of the girl, circling round each

other, came into horrible collision, and commingled, and lo! death and

the girl were one.

In his guilty state of mind, he was an easy prey for terror. He tried

to rid himself of the idea with a hundred assurances drawn from pure

reason. How could she be dead? She had never died before ... why

should she die now? She was sleeping safely in her own bed, not four

yards from him. Draw a bee-line through the wall at his head, through

the landing beyond, and through the wall of the girl's room, and there

she should surely be. Only last night he had been speaking to her;

hardly more than four hours ago he had heard her voice. Death could not

have come to her so soon. The idea was nonsense. But like a child,

terrorised by things unseen, that the wisdom of grown-up logic cannot

pacify, the more he reasoned the more his unreasonment grew. For all

this ill-gotten authority over her that he had been wielding so

unmercifully these days past ... to what might it not have driven her?

Desperately he listened--with his face turned toward the wall--as though

death were a thing audible, like the tick-tacking of the big clock in

the passage below. But the tick-tacking of the big clock, and the

irregular thudding of his own heart, and the long-drawn snores of the

postmaster, were all that he could hear. This trinity of sounds hung

like a creaking door before his hearing. He was sensible of a deep and

deadly silence beyond, flowing like the sea of eternity; but despite his

desperate fishing, he could draw up nothing from its depths. Last of

all, wrought to the supreme pitch of suspense, he threw aside his

coverings, slid from the bed, and stole across the room towards the

door--a miserable figure of inquietude in his thin, bare legs and short

scholastic night-gown, that took him pathetically somewhere by the bone

of the knee. Again, at the door itself he listened for a while, trying

to cancel those three intrusive factors--the snore, the clock, and his

own heart--and base his calculations on the silence beyond; but he could

not. If he would gain any reassurance for his disquieted spirit, he

must go forth and inquire deeper of the surrounding stillness than this.

And he went forth, and saw the moonlight bathing all the landing through

the little staircase window and issue idly in a pale, phosphorescent

stream round the three sides of the girl's part-opened door.

Like a wide-mouthed statue of horror, he stood marble in the white

moonlight and stared. Her door was open; her door that had been closed

and locked upon her last night was open now--open so emptily and with

such desolation, while the moonlight flowed placidly through it, like

sea-water through the hollow hulk of a submerged vessel--that it seemed

as if never it could have held the live, blood-warmed body of the girl.

For a moment, the shock of what he saw was twin to the shock of what--so

short a while back--he had failed to see. Then in his little, wasted

cotton night-dress and his bare legs as he was, he started forward into

action, pushed open the panels unhesitatingly with his fingers, and

entered.

All to itself the moonlight possessed the room; filled it from floor to

ceiling, from corner to corner. There was no girl. Her bed had been

merely laid upon from the outside; she had not slept in it. There was

her night-dress untouched in its embroidered case. Except for the

callous, white moonlight, that showed him these things without a thought

for his anguish, the room was empty as a sieve. The girl had gone; gone

where and why and when, he could not tell. Whether with thoughts of

death, or thoughts of flight, or thoughts of treachery--he could not

tell. The discovery flew to his head like the vintage of bitter grapes.

He searched madly about the room; threw up the white valances of her

bed, lest perchance she were but hiding from him; opened her cupboards

and beat his hands wildly among the darkness of skirts and hanging

garments for some clasp of fugitive flesh and blood; part shut the door

to assure himself she was not lurking behind its hinges, with her face

in her hands and her forehead against the wall.

But she was not. He knew she was not when he searched. She was gone!

she was gone!

And thence, with his thin, worn, calico lapels blowing about his legs,

he scurried down the twisted staircase to see what the lower regions had

to show him.

As soon as his feet flinched on the bristles of the fibre mat, they

showed him all that they had to show. The two letters spread out side

by side on the window table, white as driven snow in the moonlight. It

needed no slow investigation to assure him what they were. Gravestones

did not more certainly indicate what lay beneath them than did these two

pallid envelopes. He was on them at once, like a hawk. "To Mr.

Frewin," he read on the first, in Pam's neat, well-known script, and

ripped it open regardlessly, as though he were gutting herrings. So did

his heart beat at him from within, and so did his brain contract and

swell, and so did his apprehensive hand tremble, that for some seconds

the piece of paper, for all the words he distinguished on it, might have

been a white, waving flag. But in the end he got control over himself,

and wrested the girl's last message to him from the paper on which, to

all intents and purposes, it was scarcely dry.

"When you get this..." he read. Ah! that familiar, time-worn overture

for stricken messages of grief. How many miserables, by water-sides, by

lone lochs, by canals, reservoirs, and railways, have prefaced their

journey to eternity with these four words. Scarcely a suicide so

unliterary that, at this last moment, he cannot call them to his aid for

epitaph to his misery. As soon as the schoolmaster read them, he knew

all. Death or departure ... this was the end.

"... When you get this" (he read), "I shall be far away from Ullbrig,

and you will know why. If you had done differently with me, I might

have done differently with you. But it is too late now for regrets.

After the sin you have forced me to share with you, I could never, never

love you. The future frightens me. For all you have made me suffer I

forgive you freely, but I pray God we may never meet again. I have been

as wicked as you, and for this reason I dare not join our wickednesses,

for fear of where they may lead us. Please forgive me for the things in

which I have sinned against you, and beg God to forgive us both for the

things we have done against Him. Pray for me too, as I will pray for

you. Perhaps your life may be all the brighter and better for my

absence. Strive to do your best that it may be so; and please remember,

if at any time you are tempted to think hardly upon me, that I am not

angry with you, and that I do not blame you. Good-by for ever. PAM."

That was all the letter told him--but it was enough. His face was like

the face of a snow-man when he had finished reading. Not only was he

smitten to the heart with the lost love of the girl, after all his

lavish outlay of unrighteousness and sin, but now she was gone, and he

was here in Ullbrig to bear the brunt of his deed. For he had no

misconceptions as to his true position in the matter, as Pam had. He

knew his conduct for what it was, and his hold over her for what it was,

and the world's judgment for what it would be. Her very going was a

declaration of the thing he had held over her in his wickedness, and

would have never dared employ. The worthless blackmail with which he

had threatened her had served its purpose only too well. To such extent

had the girl believed its power and feared it, and accredited him with

the intentions of its use, that she had been terrorised into flight from

him. And now the full responsibility of his act pointed at him with

awful finger. To-morrow, tidings of the girl's departure would be out.

Tongues would be busy. She who had been going to wed the schoolmaster

had loved him so little that she had fled from him. Why had she fled

from him? Because he had held a letter over her head that he had robbed

from her desk--a letter belonging to neither of them--and by withholding

it from its proper owner, and threatening the girl, he had got her to

submit to his terms. When once that became known he was a ruined man.

His love was ruined; his life was ruined. The death that had so

terrorised him already must have been none other than his own. For

rather than face this terrible exposure and degradation, he would die.

He was a wild and desperate man now, holding the slipping cable of life

and honor in his hands. To avert this catastrophe, to find the girl--at

scarcely anything would he stop short. But what must he do? Where seek

her? How act?

To cast his eye on the second letter was to seize upon it as he had done

the first, and tear open its contents without a moment's hesitation.

Emma Morland would never know what had been left for her this night, and

beneath this envelope there might lurk a confession of the whole history

of the girl's departure, with his own share writ incriminatingly large;

at the least, some word or sentence that might give him a clearer clue

to her intentions than her own letter to him. But he was disappointed.

Beyond beginning: "Dearest Emma," this second epistle told him nothing

that he consumed to know. It was a mere farewell of sorrow for all the

sin Pam had committed against Emma, particularly during these last few

days, and a pathetic begging for forgiveness. Emma did not know how

unhappy Pam had been--Pam hoped Emma would never, never know such

unhappiness. She was not the girl Emma thought her. She was a living

lie, full of wickedness and deception. The only thing for her to do,

she felt, was to blot out such a horrible lie from the face of Ullbrig

and be gone. Then followed assurances of undying love to Emma, and to

the postmaster and to Mrs. Morland, with a list of such things as Pam

bequeathed to Emma for her own use and possession. To all intents and

purposes, it was Pam's last will and testament, pathetically worded

enough, had the man been in any mood for pathos other than his own. To

the postmaster, Pam left this; to Mrs. Morland, that; to James Maskill,

the other; to Ginger--if he would have it--some further token of her

affection. Only the schoolmaster's name was absent. And at the end was

Pam's own name, blurred and spotted with the tears that had fallen fast

at this juncture.

But for these the man had no heed. He had read the letters, and they

had told him nothing; now he must decide quickly, as he valued his life.

And first, he could accomplish nothing as he was. The remembrance of

his ungarbed condition came upon him suddenly, and he cursed himself for

his bodily unreadiness--although his mind had as yet no commission for

his limbs to execute. Up the twisted staircase he pattered again,

employing his hands on the steps in front of him like paws, to

accelerate his pace, and thrust himself wildly into his clothes. Then

he scurried down again to the little kitchen. There he sorted his own

boots from the disorderly gathering for the morning's clean, strapped up

their leather laces with the speed of desperation, stuffed the two

letters into his coat pocket, caught a cap from the row of pegs where

the postmaster's official regalia hung, and scuffled down the passage to

the front door.

There was no mistaking signs of the girl's flight, or the way by which

she had fled. For him there was no necessity to work back the big

square bolt, or turn the traitorous key. Pam's fingers had done that

service already. He was out in the street with scarcely a moment's

delay, on the whitewashed step where Pam's own feet had rested less than

fifteen minutes ago--could he only have known--closing the door upon him

by stealth, as she had done, and looking up and down the roadway,

divided lengthways between its far white band of moonlight and its

nearer black shadow, with its serrated line of broken roofs and

chimney-pots--like the keyboard of a piano--as she had looked before her

purpose made its final plunge.

Which way had she gone? he asked himself, in frenzied supplication. For

all he knew, she had been gone an hour, a couple of hours, three hours

... four hours. Even now, while he was making this vein-bursting

struggle to come abreast with her and stave off that awful exposure of

to-morrow, it might all be ended. Destiny might have this shameful

history written to the full in the book of record, and the book

inexorably closed. Perhaps the girl's purpose had been maturing all

these days past. Perhaps her plan had been prepared from the first ...

and in abeyance, pending restitution of the letter. Fool that he was

ever to give it! Why had n't he adhered to his first project, and given

it to her only when they were in sight of the house, and he was with

her, or left it there himself by night, with a message that it had been

overlooked in a corner of the post-bag? Now what had she done with it?

Had she restored it? That would mean the Cliff Wrangham road she must

have taken. Or had she fled with it, bearing all traces of her guilt

with her? That might mean any road ... the Hunmouth road, the Garthston

road, the Merensea road. Or had she gone to cast herself upon the

protection of the Vicar? Accursed old busybody! who had drilled and

questioned and cross-examined him about the wedding like a school-thief

under suspicion. There was probability about this latter surmise, and

at least, to put the speculation to the test would not take him far out

of his way. Full of the wild, unrestrained desire to do something, with

tumultuous, incredulous hope in the desire, he quitted his place on the

doorstep, and set off in madman's haste for the Vicarage.

But the moon poured down in sublime, unpitying indifference upon its

unlighted windows. The house was as still and unawake as the church at

its side and the white graves beyond. Baffled, he stood and glared

hatefully, with his hands twitching about the upturned collar of his

coat, and his face working as though the house were human and he would

have throttled it. Of all men in the world to help him, here, behind

these luminous opal windows, was the man, and he knew it, and was

powerless to evoke his assistance, grinding his teeth together in the

fierce agony of despair.

Motion took him in the legs again, and drove him down the narrow,

crooked side-street towards the low road and Merensea Hill, between the

rows of tumbled cottages, with their yellow window squares. He could

have drummed on them with his fingers, and in his desperation and need

of assistance would have done so, but fear withheld him. As he ran, he

heard troubled night-coughs rap out sharp at him here and there, where

some aged sufferer drew breath badly, and wrestled for such stagnant air

as was contained in the sealed chamber. The buzzing of some big

eight-day clock, too, chiming a belated hour, he heard, and the fretful

crying of a baby, being lulled to sleep by its weary mother. Heaven

knows where his run would have ended in this direction, for it was

become so blended and amalgamated with his consciousness that he could

have as soon stopped running as the feverish urging of his thoughts.

But at the bottom of the street, where the road dips its lowest before

making the sharp ascent of Merensea Hill, he saw the dark figure of a

man, and death could not have stopped him sooner. It was only Bob

Newbit, smoking his black cutty, with his hands in his belt, and a coat

thrown over his shoulders, come out to watch over the fire of the

brick-kiln that glowed red in the field across the roadway, but all men

were one man in their power to read the schoolmaster's dark secret, and

do him harm. He saw the burning end of the cutty turn his way, and

without waiting to know whether he had been perceived, or give the

chance of a hail, he turned on his tracks again like a hare, and was

forging up the street through the square lighted windows towards the

Vicarage.

This time, without stopping in his breathless course, he went by. One

way was as good as another to him, who had no reason for going any. He

would keep on to Cliff Wrangham.

At first, panting doggedly onward, he ran this way as he had run that.

If his clothing had been on fire instead of his brain, like this he

would have wildly run, seeking flight from the agony that consumed him.

But conviction came upon him as he ran. It seemed incredible he could

be making all this desperate endeavor for nothing. It must surely end

by repaying him with positive result. Little by little the mad, fitful

uncertainty gave way to the madder flame of assurance. Of all madness,

this fixed madness is the most to be feared. Now he was merely pursuing

the girl, who was along here in front of him. At times, turning his ear

before him as he lunged onward, he seemed to hear elusive footsteps;

thought he saw her flitting aside into gateways and hedgerows to escape

him. Once he staggered halfway across a grass close because, he saw her

standing in the middle of it, trying to deceive him by her

motionlessness into thinking her some inanimate thing. When he came

near she was a pump-well. Then he saw that he had relinquished the

substance for the shadow. She was on the roadway there, in advance of

him; her skirts flying, her hands to her hat. And he lumbered back over

the soft grass, soddened by the recent rain, to the roadway, and resumed

his forward pursuit.

Full of fresh strenuous desire to press ahead, and worn out with this

unaccustomed exertion, he passed, half running, half walking, with his

hand bound over his heart, and his breath drawn up convulsively, like a

child with the croup--through the final gateways, one after another. Now

he was in the little end lane, making a poor pretence of caution. Now

he waw by the stable; now he was by the iron wicket. The hope that had

been his while he ran stopped dead as his flight stopped. By the little

iron wicket, and still under cover of the kitchen-garden wall, he

stayed, gasping, and dared not go further, or look at the front of the

house, for fear of what he should see--the sight of all its moonlit

windows looking out with the calm, self-communing gaze of the blind,

that know nothing of what they gaze upon. As the Vicarage had faced

him, so this house should face him. It was the end. He knew his doom.

And knowing it, he found strength to see, and saw.

*CHAPTER XXXVII*

Saw the magnified yellow window thrown over the pathway and out across

the tangled grass to the mouldy green railings, from the Spawer's room.

Here was life at last. Thank God! Here was life at last.

His heart gave a convulsive leap of exultation within him. Could it be

mere coincidence that of all Ullbrig and Cliff Wrangham this man should

be unnumbered among the sleepers? Could it be that the late light,

flowing from that little low window beyond the porch, had no concern

with his own misery and the girl's flight? He could not think it. Here

was his journey's end. Let him take the girl red-handed in shame, if

need be. Shame, even, counted for nothing in his love of her. Had she

been dyed to the neck in iniquity he would have wished her, and followed

to the world's end for her, without the lash of his own sin to whip up

the pursuit.

Slowly, with his eyes fixed on the sidelight from that fateful window,

he advanced; arms outspread for caution, doubling inwards from his

middle at each step, and making a semi-circle upon the grass to get

sooner and deeper sight into the room. All at once his eye cleared the

obstruction of trailing porch, and he stopped here, as though to take in

fresh supplies of cautious reserve and get leverage upon the position.

Then, more laboriously he worked forward again; his head far in advance;

his knees bent; his arms like a baboon's, extended to the ground--as

though at an alarm he would clutch at the long grass and draw himself

into its shelter. The piano-end came into view. Its keyboard of

chequered ivory lengthened as he approached upon it; next he gained

sight of the mantel-shelf; and last of all ... with his finger-nails

clenched into his palms for self-repression ... the man.

He was seated on an end of the table, with his back towards the window,

and appeared to be reading or scrutinising something beneath the

powerful light of the big hanging lamp. What it was he bent his head

over the schoolmaster could not see, but his acute, tormented vision saw

something else that discharged itself at once in lightning of revelation

through the whole length and breadth of his being, and blinded him for a

moment with fierce, flashing passion and exultant joy. The room was

heaped up under the confusion of a departure. There were books stacked

together carefully on the table; music in fat portfolios; there were

garments folded and unfolded; coats and trousers; boots on trees; and to

give crowning evidence to his deduction, a big leather traveling

portmanteau, open of lid, beyond the fireplace. Ah! was it any longer a

coincidence, these two departures? Thank God he was in time. The Lord

had not deserted him. It was the Lord that had brought him here this

night.

Meanwhile, the Spawer kept his attitude, with bowed head of absorption

beneath the lamp; and the man watched.

Yes; he was going. The schoolmaster had made no mistake. A child,

looking in at the open window, would have declared as much. Of a truth,

Maurice Ethelbert Wynne had had his last decisive bout with that big

bully Destiny. No mistake about it, he had been badly beaten. All

through the hours after supper he had been collecting his effects

together; packing the big trunk down here, that it might be more easily

conveyed to the spring cart on the morrow; packing the smaller

portmanteau upstairs. Upstairs to-night for the most part his work had

been, only quitting it at long intervals to bring down further

contributions for the yawning leather trunk. And now, on this last

occasion of his descent, he had been made aware, for the first time,

that a couple of letters lay on the keyboard of the pianoforte, by the

bass end, near the window.

At the beginning his eye had rested upon them, and accepted their

presence as a matter of course, without any further inquiry or

speculation, quite content with seeing them. It was a customary place

for him to leave things of the sort, only he did n't remember having

left anything there lately. By the way, what letters would they be?

More out of idleness than real curiosity, he put out his hand and took

them up.

The first, addressed to him in that firm, feminine handwriting--almost

masculine--beneath a wealth of green stamps and postmarks, he recognised

at a glauce. But it had not been opened. Strange that! Which of all

her letters had escaped him like this? When had it come? How long had

he overlooked it? Still asking himself the questions, he turned his eye

upon the second letter. That too, was addressed to him in a handwriting

he knew no less surely--though with less familiarity: the soft, neat,

girl-like script of Pam, and that, too, must be unopened, for it was the

first he had received from her. From Pam, of all people in the world.

What had she to say to him? Perhaps this letter would explain the other.

Very nervous of finger, he tore open the envelope.

A curious little letter it was, perplexingly short, that puckered up his

brows and left him more puzzled after its perusal than before. It

appeared to be, in some sort, a confession for an imaginary crime that

the girl had committed--though wherein lay the enormity of it, or the

necessity for this present epistle, not for the life of him could he

perceive. Pam, indeed, whose own guilt was so vivid that a word was

sufficient to depict it, had thought that the same word could reveal it

to all the world. Her letter was like the answer to a riddle, with the

question lacking. Apparently, the Spawer told himself, the girl had

failed to deliver a letter--the letter accompanying this, he

presumed--and it had preyed terribly upon her mind. He was to forgive

her, as she felt sure he would forgive her if he could only know what

suffering it had cost her. And then followed an outburst of

affectionate gratitude for all the kindness he had lavished on her; his

never-failing goodness and patience. These she should never forget.

With a concluding appeal to him that he should try and think as

leniently of her as he could.

Think as leniently of her as he could! Miserable topsy-turveydom of

life, where all one's acts turn upside-down in the acting, and one's

deeds misrepresent one with the deliberate purpose of political agents.

Here he had been holding himself a supplicant upon the girl's mercy, and

lo! all the while, it seemed their positions were exactly reversed, and

it was she who imagined herself an offender against him! This letter of

the girl's troubled him. Did it mean she had never been sure of his

friendship? Did it mean she had altogether overlooked the signs in his

conduct that should have told her he would have forgiven anything ... to

her? Had all their relationship been built up of vain imaginings and

misunderstandings? If ... for instance...

But he would have no more "ifs." Already he had had too many. What

might have been and what was were as asunder as the Poles. Let him not

revive the old unworthy desires under the cloak of If. What did the

second letter say?

He opened it more slowly than the first--as though he felt a little the

shame of going before its presence, and did not anticipate much

happiness from this interview of pen and ink. But as he read, it seemed

he could not tear his eyes away from their fascinating occupation. If

Pam's letter had added cloud to his confusion, this letter was explicit

indeed--and yet dazed him at the same time with an overwhelming sense of

unreality.

The freedom that he had felt himself unable to ask of the Other Girl, in

this letter she was asking of him. All the old stock-in-trade arguments

of love that he had thought once of bringing to bear upon her, she was

bringing to bear on him. Their attachment, she pointed out, was a mere

boy-and-girl attachment, that had never taken deep root in their later

lives. He had offered her her liberty once, but he would know that all

her sense of loyalty had refused the gift at the time. But now it was

different. Another stronger love had come into her life, and she would

not disguise the fact from him--it had more to offer. She was not cut

out for the wife of a composer. He would know that, really, without her

telling him. She could never be helpful to him; never even give him the

full measure of sympathy that the creative mind needed. In a word, love

and worldly position had been laid together at her feet and she dared

not proceed with this flat, stale attachment of theirs, that had neither

reason nor riches. It was always a woman's privilege to change her

mind, and she would avail herself of it to accept the liberty he had

offered her before. Friends they had been, all this while--never lovers

at all--and friends, she trusted, they would never cease to be. There

was a little blot of tears at the end, a slight incoherence of

phraseology in a sentimental reversion to their happy past ... but only

slight--only very slight. Love had been dead between them long ago.

She was reconciled to that. But this letter was its official

funeral--and it is a strong woman whose tears can resist the appeal of a

burying.

And this was the letter the Spawer read with face bent down, while the

man outside kept watch.

No wonder he sat motionless on the corner edge of the table, as he had

first seated himself, poring over that magnetising something that the

watcher, for all his watching, could not see. For what did this letter

mean to him? Nothing at all now, in hard fact, perhaps ... but yet ...

what tantalising riches in speculation. Here were his trunks, and here

was he, all ready for dutiful departure--and in his hands was the

instrument of reprieve. His duty had been remitted him. From that duty

he was free. Who should say what was his duty now? Had he a duty at

all--to himself, or anybody? Or was he, by virtue of this

relinquishment, become a mere jellyfish, without volition, to float this

way or that at the mercy of the tides? What was there to take him from

Ullbrig now? What was to keep him? If he stayed? If he went? If this

letter had come sooner! If this letter had only come sooner!

And the whole thing began over again.

All the old fever of reasoning set in anew with him, and rose up to its

height. All the old desires. All the old wild hopes. He had been

tired when he came downstairs, less with physical fatigue than with the

dull, sleepless lassitude of established despair--but now he was very

wide awake. His eyes revolted at the thoughts of being closed perforce

upon a pillow; they wanted license to keep open house for his brain all

night through. Suddenly, too, came upon him the nervous appetite for

activity; the desire to give a bodily articulation to the movement of

his mind. He felt as though he could have set off, and walked the globe

round, and been back again here by to-morrow's breakfast. And

submitting to the feeling, he rose all at once from his place on the

table, turned down the twin burners of the swing lamp, picked up his

cap, squeezed his way out through the two doors and the narrow porch,

and set off towards the sea.

He walked with a brisk, purposeful step, for the night was chill beneath

the white moon and the many cool stars. Part way across Luke Hemingway's

big ten-acre field, at a sudden turn of his head towards some recumbent,

cud-chewing cattle, his eye-corner caught the tail-end of an upright

figure, vanishing into the hedge at some distance behind him. There was

nothing, of course, when he looked, to confirm the impression, beyond

the clear-defined, moonlit path along which he had come. But his eye

retained such an obstinate remembrance of its own delusion, that at a

few yards further on, choosing his moment, he turned on his heel again.

And again, strangely enough, his eye seemed to be just eluded by the

vanishing figure of a man. Had he been nervously given, he might have

felt tempted to walk back and scrutinise the hedgerow that had thus

twice afforded refuge to his shadowy pursuant. But for one thing, his

mind was too busy for nerves to-night, and knowing, moreover, the

strange receptive sensitiveness of the human eye, and the assurance with

which it attests, as realities, mere miraculous figments of the brain,

he passed on--reserving the right to turn again when he had given his

visual informant an opportunity to forget its impression.

After a longer interval, therefore, he looked back again, on the pretext

of stooping to his shoe-lace, and three times after that. Twice his eye

attested to the presence of a furtive figure, that seemed to drop to

earth in the thick fog grass when he turned, only now he knew that his

eye did not deceive him. He was being followed.

That the discovery did not tend to add much zest to his midnight

ramble--even had there been any before--the Spawer would have been the

last to deny. It is an unpleasant thing, at any time, to have one's

back turned towards a stealthy follower of undeclared intentions, but

moonlight and a lonely coast add still further unpleasantness to the

situation. However, the fact remained, and it was no use getting into

an unnecessary fuss about it. To turn back openly would not remedy

matters much, or give the Spawer any particular advantage over his

unknown pursuer. He decided, therefore, keeping cautious vigil over

alternate shoulders as he walked, to push on to the cliff, without

betraying the least sign of suspicion, and see to what extent this

figure would press pursuit. So, quickening his step imperceptibly, and

setting up a blithe, not too noisy whistle of unconcern, he came to the

cliff, the shadow following.

The wind and storm of the past few days had troubled the sea, that

thundered up in ugly assailment of surf about the cliff's soft earthen

base, for the tide was rising. Awhile he stood, at the point where he

had come upon the path, watching the great waste of chill waters with

one eye, and the spot where the figure had vanished, with the other.

The keen gaze of Farnborough gleamed out at him in sudden recognition,

and here and there little intermittent pin-points of yellow pricked the

horizon where boats rose and fell upon the bosom of the sea. Then he

lifted his leg leisurely over the gate-stile, by which he had been

standing, and sat for a moment astride of it. From this perch he

commanded the hedgerow--that ran down to the cliff edge at right

angles--on both sides, and could not be approached without his

observance. But whatever object his follower had, it seemed certainly,

so far at least, that it was unconnected with any ideas of direct

encounter. There had been no attempt to gain on him; their relative

positions now were what they had been at the first moment of discovery;

and it seemed he might sit here till daybreak without his shadow's

making any advance in the open. Suddenly, an idea to test the situation

came into his mind, and on the instant he acted on it. The man, whoever

he might be, was about fifty yards or so inland, on the shady side of

the hedge, and watching the Spawer's conspicuous, upright figure keenly,

no doubt. All at once the Spawer brought his second leg over the rail,

descended, stepped quickly some paces inland, and drew into the hedge.

Though the moon fell on him, the hedge was straggling and untrimmed,

with somewhat of a dry ditch at its bottom, and long grass. Standing

here, unobtrusively, it would take an active search to come upon him,

and such a search would not only show him his pursuer, but give him some

shrewd idea of the man's intentions.

*CHAPTER XXXVIII*

It was not long that the Spawer had to wait. He had scarcely subsided

into his position, indeed, when he heard, on the other side of the

hedge, the rapid "rff, rff, rff," that told where long grass was being

torn aside to the passage of hurried feet. The fellow was running,

then. It flashed across the Spawer's mind grimly, as he listened to the

sound of him, that he did not think himself of such interest to any

mortal man. And almost before he had time to gratify his ironic humor

with a smile, the mortal man had scrambled desperately over the stile,

flinging himself to ground on this side of it with such a thud of

precipitation that he had to preserve his equilibrium with spread

fingers in the grass. Next moment he pushed himself upright again, ran

hesitatingly forward some paces, stopped dead, and commenced to beat

about in a wild, blind search on all sides of him, as though he were

dazed with the loss of his quarry. For a moment it came into the

Spawer's head as he watched him that perhaps the man was mad or drunk.

Certainly there seemed little of rationality about his actions. At

times he ran; at times he cast himself so close upon the edge of the

cliff that the Spawer's flesh crept cold, and he wondered whether he

ought to stand by and see a deluded fellow-being submit himself to such

dangers. If he went over there, with the boiling sea beneath, it was

little chance he would ever come up again--till the tide brought him.

But after a moment or two, the Spawer grew reassured that this

catastrophe was not likely to happen, and continued watching in silence.

He was a furtive, unprepossessing-looking fellow, it struck the Spawer.

His coat-collar was buttoned up to his neck, lending a particularly

sinister touch to his appearance, and the coat itself hung upon him

loosely, as though he had no shoulders, and bagged with an empty

flatness about the waist, as though, too, he had no stomach. It was a

tramp's coat, with tails--such as no honest rustic would wear--but had

found its way here, through a nameless course of degradation, from the

towns. And they were tramp's trousers too, that looked as though any

minute they might come down; loose, lifeless, shapeless trousers, whose

bottoms his boots trod on at every step. Otherwise, he wore a dark cloth

cap, pulled tightly over his scalp, with its neb scowling down to his

eyebrows, and his breath came and went vindictively--or so it seemed to

the Spawer--as though he had been baulked of something, and was panting

more through rage than exertion.

And all at once, puzzled to fit some kind of a key to the fellow's

strange conduct, what enmity or what design he could have against him,

the Spawer's mind harked back to the two letters he had received this

night, and to the enigmatical epistle of the girl, and in a flash he

knew his man.

But though he knew him, whatever the recognition might serve him in

despatching theories of robbery and violence, it served him little for

enlightenment. Added, indeed, to his perplexity, instead of subtracting

from it. For what object had caused this man to follow him--him, his

poor, crushed, and trampled antagonist--to the sea to-night? Had he not

injured him enough, but that he must needs track him in this despicable

fashion, and play spy upon his doings? All the hatred and unreasoning

disregard that the unsuccessful have for the successful rose up within

him at the discovery. Of the schoolmaster's virtues he knew nothing;

sought to know nothing. It was enough for him that to this man he was

indebted for his soul's humiliation; that this sinister-looking figure

had supplanted him for occupation of the dearest territory in the world;

and he rejoiced with a cruel and unhallowed joy that this, his

vanquisher, had been given over thus into his hand.

Ten to one, were he only to make no sound, he could succeed in eluding

discovery, for the fellow showed no aptitude in search, but success of

this sort was not what he desired. He had been contemptibly dogged for

some purpose or other, and he would have full revenge of the man's

shame. Very quietly he stepped out of his shelter and showed his tall

figure in the moonlight.

"You appear to be looking for something," he said.

At the sound of his voice, the man spun round eagerly on his heel, as

though his first emotion had been of pure incredulous joy that his

quarry was not lost to him. Shame succeeded upon that, to think of what

the Spawer had been a witness, and his forward impulse was checked

momentarily into a falling back on the heel that had urged him. Then,

just as quickly, anger succeeded upon shame. Those chance words,

uttered so carelessly, but with such a frigid tone of scorn--as though

the Spawer in mind towered above him like an Alpine summit, and his

lofty contempt was snow-capped--roused his wrath to desperation.

"You know what I am looking for," he said hoarsely, and advanced with

both hands up at his coat-collar.

Could the Spawer have had but one glimpse into the surging hot mind of

the man at this moment, and seen of what wild charges he stood accused,

he might have turned the sword of his words into a ploughshare, and

tilled honestly for enlightenment. But in his own mind it was he who

had been wronged. And besides that, the fierce, unexpressed hostility

of love was between them. Even had there not been this present cause of

quarrel to kindle anger, they would have been rampant for the fray like

two rein-bucks.

"I know what you are looking for?" he asked, and his voice moved

contemptuously away from the suggestion as he might himself have moved

(so the schoolmaster thought) from the contaminating touch of an unclean

beggar. A clear, well-pitched, musical voice it was--so different from

the schoolmaster's hoarse, toneless utterance--and its very superiority,

seeming now to take conscious pride in itself, stirred up the listening

man's worst hatred. In birth, in station, in presence, in voice, in

possessions, and in love, this tall, insufferable figure prevailed.

"You make a mistake..." he heard it say to him. "I know nothing at all

about you, except that you have been dogging my footsteps for this last

quarter of an hour. I know that. If you have anything to add to it, I

am ready to hear you."

The lean, shabby figure of the schoolmaster flinched visibly in the

moonlight at each fresh phrase, as if it had been a whip-lash that his

antagonist was curling about him. With both hands clenched at his

coat-collar, he seemed almost to be hanging on to resolution against a

groan.

"Yes," he blurted out fiercely at last, releasing his hands at the same

moment from this occupation, and crying out his confession like a wild

triumph of delinquency; "I have been following you. You may know it."

"I do know it," said the Spawer.

"I say you may know it," the schoolmaster repeated, raising his hoarse

voice another tuneless semitone up its chromatic of passion. "I don't

care."

"Don't care," the Spawer told him coolly, "as you may be aware, got

hanged. I would advise you to take profit by his example."

The schoolmaster's hands flew back to his collar again with one accord.

"You thought you were safe from me," he forced through his unsteady

lips. "You thought you were free to do as you liked."

"I certainly thought I was free to walk along the cliff without being

persecuted with these attentions," the Spawer cut into him.

"Yes; you thought ... you could trample on me!" the schoolmaster hissed

at him venomously.

"I have not the least desire to trample on you," the Spawer assured him

frigidly. "I would not tread on a worm if I knew it. There is room in

the world for us both--if you 'll be so good as to make use of it."

"You think..." the schoolmaster cried passionately, "that because you

come from big towns, and live in fine houses, and wear fine clothes ...

that you can do what you like in the country."

"It seems I am mistaken," the Spawer apostrophised sarcastically. "In

the towns, at least, we have the police to defend us from molestation by

night."

"You think," the schoolmaster shouted at him, as though to beat down his

words and tread them and his opposition underfoot, "... you think we

country people are fit subjects for your scorn. You think you can walk

over our feelings, and trifle with all our happiness as though we were

mere paving-stones for your own evil enjoyments. You think we are the

dirt beneath your feet."

"Indeed?" the Spawer remarked. "I never thought half so much about you

as you suppose."

"You have thought it," the schoolmaster cried at him; "and you are

thinking it. Every word you say to me is an insult. You want to tell

me that I am beneath your notice, and that your contempt is too good for

me. You think you can mock me indiscriminately, and make a fool of me."

"Not at all," the Spawer responded carelessly. "I have my own business.

You can do that quite well enough for yourself."

"But you are wrong!" the schoolmaster shouted, in a voice almost

inarticulate with passion, and the terrible cooped-up storm of hopes and

fears. "You are wrong. You thought you could kick me aside like a dog,

and leave me to the derision and contempt of Ullbrig. You thought you

could break up an honest man's happiness for your own wicked diversion,

and steal off like a thief with it. But you are wrong. You are wrong."

He was almost weeping--though the Spawer did not know it--with the

insufferable fever of desperation. Had the Spawer known it, he would

have had mercy, and surrendered this wordy victory rather than fight to

the finish with the poor God-forsaken, love-forsaken, self-forsaken

devil that cut and lunged so furiously at him. But the only conclusion

respecting this encounter, glimmering at the far back of his brain, was

that the man was consumed with the fire of an unworthy jealousy, and he

took joy in piling up its fuel--even at the risk of burning his own

fingers. "But you are wrong! You are wrong!" the schoolmaster

reiterated at him.

"It seems I am wrong in many things," the Spawer assented. "But that 's

scarcely surprising; since I don't know who in the world you are, or

where you come from, or what the devil you want with me."

"You know who I am," the schoolmaster shouted at him. "And you know

what I want with you."

"Not in the least," the Spawer told him, "unless it is relief, but if

so, you have a strange way of asking for it."

"You know it is not relief!" the tortured figure exclaimed. "If I were

starving, I would go to my grave sooner than ask a penny of such as

you--that have n't the heart of a dog. You want to put me off with

words and sneers and scorns, but I won't be put off. You shan't put me

off. I have stood everything that I will stand."

"You have certainly stood long enough," the Spawer remarked. "Don't

stand any longer on my account. If you have said all you wish to say,

perhaps you will kindly tell me which way is your way, and leave me free

to choose the other."

"I have not said all I wish to say," the man cried, opening and

clenching his fingers. "You shall not shake me off, for all your

pretending. I have found you in time, and I will stick to you for the

rights you want to rob me of. You shall not slip me. Where you go I

will go. You shall not get away."

The Spawer pulled his moustache, and looked the man up and down.

"Really..." he said, after a while. "You are a smaller man than I ...

but you tempt me very much to kick you."

In a second, at that threat of action, the pent-up torrents of the

schoolmaster's rage and anguish burst forth from him. Anything was

better than words. He rushed up wildly to his adversary.

"Kick me!" he cried fiercely, shouting up with hoarse voice of challenge

into the Spawer's face. "Kick me! Touch me. Lay a hand upon me. You

say you 'll kick me. Kick me."

He pressed so hard upon the Spawer, with arms thrown out and flourishing

wildly, that even had he wished it, the Spawer would not have had

purchase to kick him. Instead, he receded somewhat from their

undesirable chest-to-chest contact, striving by gentle withdrawal to

mollify the man's mad anger. For he had seen into his eyes, and their

look startled him. Not for himself--he was in every sense the man's

better, and could have wrought with him as though he were a schoolboy's

cane--but for the man. It was borne in upon him suddenly anew, with

terrible conviction, that the fellow was mad; the victim of some fierce

hallucination--whose fixed point of hatred was in himself--and he

repented now that he had goaded him to such a cruel pitch. And still

the man pressed upon him. "Kick me!" he kept saying, utterly deaf to

the Spawer's temporising and persuasive utterances. "Kick me. Touch

me. Lay a hand upon me."

To lay a hand upon him now, even in mere pacification, meant an

inevitable struggle, and such a termination was too unseemly to be

thought of. As it was, matters had gone altogether beyond their bounds.

To have chastised the fellow with scorn had been one thing, but to be

involved in a retreat before the hoarse breath of a passionate madman

was another, utterly outside all dignity. Sooner or later, too, he

would have to stand or be forced over the cliff. The thought of the

boiling sea below, to which, in the concentration of his faculties upon

this ignominious encounter, he had been paying no heed, recalled him

hotly, and he stole an anxious glance over his shoulder to learn where

he stood.

And at that very moment he stood on the cliff edge, and it slipped and

gave way with him. Wynne flung up his arms, beating the air with them

like wings, to regain his balance, but he could not. An arm clutched

out after him, whether to push or clasp him he did not know. Half

spinning as he went, he doubled out of sight backward; and if anything

were needed, apart from the anguish of his own mind, at that awful,

inevitable moment, to add to the horror of his going, it was the

schoolmaster's long, horrid scream.

*CHAPTER XXXIX*

That scream--having no part with the man's self, but tearing forth from

him as though it were a liberated fiend--curdled the schoolmaster's own

blood. This culminating horror of a night of horrors took hold upon the

pillars of his reason, like a blind, despairing Samson, and overturned

the temple quite. Before, he had had just the madness requisite to

carry out what unaided reason could never have accomplished; but now,

madness filled him like thick, suffocating smoke, and extinguished his

last guiding spark of lucidity. From head to foot he was mad; mad with

a terrorised madness that is one long mental scream, like the

unrestrained scream of his lips. First, as the man went over, and his

own cry rang like a terrible knell in his head, he dropped to his knees,

and bound wild hands upon his eyes, to blot out the horror from them.

Again and again and again, with insufferable rapidity, he saw--for all

his binding--the horrid vision of the Spawer's beating arms; the

sickening collapse; the sudden emptiness of sky. Again and again and

again his own cry tore out in his ears. If his brain had been one great

slate, and this cry the screech of a perpendicular pencil torn across

it, it could not have scored it more terribly. All his hallucinations

were reversed and turned against himself. His mind had no mercy upon

him; he was a murderer. This was the death that came to him upon his

bed. The horror of now fitted the horror of then like a bolt. He was a

murderer, fore-ordained. The hot brand of Cain was on his brow. Twice

the fatal cliff called upon him to come and look over at the scene of

his crime, but twice he heard the surging of the sea below, and twice he

dared not. Then the irresistible magnetism of his own murder drew him,

and he crept forth the third time on all fours, and peered awfully over

upon a small projecting shelf of the cliff. Close down by the roaring

surf the Spawer lay stretched on his back, and looked with his dead face

up at him. As he had fallen, so he lay. His head was to the sea; his

feet toward the cliff at which they had struggled so desperately for

hold; his right hand, by the force of rebound, had jumped across his

breast, and seemed placed in mocking attestation upon his heart; his

left lay limply from him without a bend, its palm turned upward, its

fingers partly closed; his chin was thrown up, white and ghastly; his

face a little sideways upon his cheek, as though in renunciation of this

dark, wicked world, and seeking slumber. A very different figure of a

fellow, indeed, from that proud six-footer of scathing independence that

had mocked this miserable onlooker from above. And yet, how terribly

triumphant. Even on his back, without a word between his lips, or a

look in his eyes, he had more of majesty at this dread moment than life

could ever have given him.

And so thought the man who, blindly seeking but to prevail, had put

death's conquering sceptre in his hands. For the one moment of his

guilty gaze he saw with clear eyes, freed from madness--as people are

free from worldly thoughts that take their look upon the dead. But the

moment passed, and his madness descended upon him once more, like the

cloud of a whirlwind. It swept him to his feet, and drove him

blightingly before it--anywhere away from the scene of that awful fall

and cry. Before, he might have killed himself, but now, with the horror

of death before his eyes, and ringing in his ears, he dared not die.

Over gate and by hedgerow, through field and fence; beating and battling

a mad passage for his flight against the armed hosts of standing corn;

pitching blindly over stooks in the stubble; turning and doubling;

falling headlong and regaining his feet with terrified fighting-fists,

as though in conflict with unseen adversaries, so his madness drove him,

like a leaf before the breeze.

*CHAPTER XL*

Out of the dark womb of Eternity--and with all the penalties and

discomforts incidental to birth--Maurice Ethelbert Wynne was born again.

With pangs, with anguishes, with flashes of light, and alternating

darkness; with terrible struggles to lay hold of this elusive state

called life, that seemed floating somewhere about and above him, if he

only could secure it, he drew shuddering breath of consciousness at last

upon his little six-foot couch, and saw, through tremulous eyelids that

were yet powerless to open themselves, a multitude of round things

shining.

They were so many, and their light so marvelously great, that he went

off through pain into darkness forthwith, and abode there for a space.

Thence, after awhile, he commenced to struggle inwardly again for the

life he had once laid hold of, and groping, found it; and looked through

his impotent lashes once more, and at once the multitude of round things

shining fell in, and hurt him, and a second time he let life go quite

quietly, and relapsed into his darkness. But the taste for life, once

awakened, cannot be so inanimately surrendered. Cost what cost in pain,

lips will keep returning periodically to the cup--each time with further

strength of fortitude for pain--till in the end hands are strong to

grasp and retain, and life, sipped at first, is gulped with eager

mouthfuls. And so, slowly but surely, the Spawer returned again and

again to his multitude of hurting things, and looked upon them

diligently, and patiently learned their shape, and studied them, and

knew them in the end for moons. Vague, shadowy remembrances of a former

life, or premonitory forecasts of the life he was now about to live,

floated--not in his mind, for he had as yet no concentrated point of

consciousness that could be called a mind--but, dispersed and

uncollected, all about the dark void of his being. Names that he did

not know for names flitted hauntingly about him, like bats--names that,

as though he were a mere baby, he had not the strength or the capacity

to utter, but that he somehow recognised and knew. One name, in

particular, came to him in his dusky sojourn, and abode with him; a

blessed, dove-like messenger of a name, whose presence was peace. When

it departed from him he was troubled, and sought for it, as a blind

kitten seeks after the breast. When he found it again he was content

with his darkness; quite content to lie and be conscious that he was

alive.

Then, to names succeeded shapeless dreams; after-shadowings or

forecastings, as the case might be, snatched by violence from Eternity,

and bringing him pain. Shadowy figures in conflict he seemed to see;

men running; men pursuing; men wrestling; men falling--not men, as men

are, but men as his infant mind conceived them, dark and formless and

blurred; men like trees walking, whose movements disturbed him

painfully; men crying; men screaming. When they screamed, instinctively

he sought the shelter of darkness once more, for he could not bear the

sound of that scream. It frightened him from life. Yet after awhile,

he would be back at the moons again, nibbling at them industriously with

his intelligence, like a mouse at cheese. They were moons now, he knew

quite well. He did not know them as such by name, but he understood the

substance of the things seen, and thus feeding on them and deriving

nourishment, his consciousness thrived. One by one it diffused itself

through the darkened channels and subways of his being. It reached his

ears, and he heard a great buzzing, and a roaring and a beating--as

though all his brain were being churned within him. It reached his

limbs, and his being strove to stir them, and after many trials

succeeded insignificantly, whereupon, with his lips he groaned.

Centuries thus, it seemed, he floated, a mere helpless log upon the tide

of existence, clutching at things he could not hold, bumping against

consciousness for moments at a time, and being drifted off again into

the dark; in reality it was scarcely minutes. Then, of a sudden,

something icy cold and wet fell with a rude slap over his face.

The shock roused him, and the coldness contracted spasmodically the

relaxed tissues of his thinking. All his brain, diffused hitherto

vastly throughout space, seemed to shrink up at that Arctic contact,

like metal in a mould, and occupy the narrow limits of his head,

throbbing painfully at the restriction imposed upon it. Thought, in this

cramped environment, became agonisingly congested. His head was a sort

of Black Hole of Calcutta, in which thought seethed for outlet. Where

one idea before had attenuated itself throughout the centuries, now

centuries of thinking were compressed insufferably within the space of

one moment. Life, that had been unoccupied, teemed all at once with the

fever of activity. A hundred incidents seemed in progress within him at

one and the same instant. His lips were useless to him for speaking,

but from somewhere in his throat came a voice that poured out from him

unceasingly, as though it were a tap, accompanying with narrative the

course of events. Still, though all the forces of life and thought were

humming at high pressure inside him, was he powerless to burst the

fetters of his body. Like an iron man he lay, with his one arm

extended, and his one arm bent, and his chin thrown upward, and his legs

stretching from him to their limp extremities--miles and miles and miles

away. Over and over again in mind he got the victory over this

unresponsive flesh, and rose with it, and looked about him at the

encompassing multitude of moons; and over and over again his mind

returned dejectedly to its recumbent habitation, and knew itself

deluded. The desire for movement was become a nightmare. All his being

wrought in motionless agony to wake up his dead limbs to life, as his

soul had been wakened. The horror of this inactivity grew upon him and

focussed itself to a great, loud, liberative cry that should cut his

bonds like a knife and loose him from this awful lethargy. But though

the cry was within him, all prepared, his lips could not utter it. He

was lead-weighted; feet, hands, legs, eyelids--not a member to help him.

And then the cold wetness fell upon his face and forehead a second time,

and with a terrible spasm of anguish he pushed his cry. All heaven

seemed to ring with it in his tortured imagination; he could not have

conceived that the bulk of his effort had been wasted mentally before it

reached his lips, and that the residue of physical impulse would

scarcely have sufficed to deflate a kitten's lungs. Just another cry or

two like this, thought he, as he rested from the exertion of it, and he

would burst forth from his bondage and be free.

And again, with titanic intention, and the merest inappreciable

flattening of his diaphragm, he launched his pitiable mew.

And this time it suddenly seemed to him that he had awakened some

external sympathy on his behalf; that other forces were being brought to

bear upon him from without--how, or whence, or why, he knew not.

Voices--or his mental equivalent for voices--seemed disturbing the

atmosphere of his being; besieging him, trying to lay hold upon his

voice and give him a ladder to outer life. The moons too, as he stared

at them through his eyelashes, appeared moving about in agitated

disorder this way and that above the high wall of blackness that fronted

him. Then, something detached itself from the wall-top, and slid

downward with a rattle. He was here! He was here! Did n't they see

him? In went his stomach feebly again, and he ejected his agonised

sigh. And while desperately he sought to aid the outer assistance, and

proclaim his dire need--of a sudden his attitude changed. The moons

swam backward overhead, the black wall rose above his sight. What his

paralysed limbs had failed to accomplish of themselves, was being

accomplished for them. Arms were under his neck, hands were beating his

cheeks, voices were calling upon him.

And all at once, with a great spasm, his eyes rolled round into their

right position--it seemed he had been gazing out of the backs of them

this while--and the blindness fell away from him like the stone of a

sepulchre; and his ears burst open; and the calling voice came clearly

through into his understanding.

Oh, surely that was Pam's dear voice! None other in the world would

have had sweet power to penetrate such a darkness as his. And his lips

dissolved, that had seemed glued inseparably together, and let him move

them over the girl's name.

"... Pam ..." he said.

*CHAPTER XLI*

Yes, it was Pam's own self that knelt beside him and sustained him, her

arms wound supportingly about his helpless body, his head on her knee,

and shed tears of warm thankfulness over his lifted face, and caressed

him eagerly with her voice.

"I thought you were dead..." she said tremulously.

His response flickered elusively to and fro at the bottom of the

Spawer's being, like sunlight deep down a well; but he merely watched it

with curious philosophic content, as though quite sufficiently satisfied

to know that it was there.

"Where am I?" he inquired listlessly, after a moment, and then, out of

sheer gratitude to the girl, without waiting to be told, subsided into

peaceful slumber upon her knee.

So long as she was there to hold him and nurse his head, what more could

a man want? To sleep with Pam for pillow ... ye gods! But his period

of blissful oblivion was short. The beating and the calling

recommenced, and he was forced into opening his reluctant eyes.

"You must not..." he heard the girl beseech him. "Oh, indeed, you must

not! Try to come to yourself. Are you hurt? Do you think you can

stand?"

He heard the questions plainly enough--in his grave he would have heard

questions that that voice put to him--but their import excited him

little. What did anything matter, so long as Pam was with him? She

would look to everything. Trust Pam. All he did was to dwell

pleasantly upon the sound of her voice inside, and seek to slumber to

it, as a child is soothed by singing. But though his soul longed for

this peace, she would not grant it, but plied her questions anew with

strange, inexplicable unrest. He had never known Pam so unrestful.

"Are you hurt? Do you think ... you can get up ... if I lift you?

Shall I lift you? Will you let me lift you?"

He fished about listlessly for a moment or two in the depths of his

well, and brought up the word "Eh," as being both easy to catch and to

utter.

"Eh?" he said, without the slightest desire to be told for information's

sake, and made as though once more to settle his head.

But she rubbed his cheeks vigorously with her hand, and roused him with

her voice anew.

"Oh, please, please..." he heard her beg him, with tears. "Try to wake

up now and answer me. Don't go back again. You must n't go back again.

Do you think you can stand if I lift you? Do you?"

"Where am I?" he asked again, in the same apathetic voice.

He did n't care where he was. Wherever he was, Pam was with him. That

was good enough for his taste. He merely wanted her to nurse him, and

soothe him, and lull him. All speculation, all curiosity, had been

knocked out of him by his fall. The heavens might have opened now, and

the sight of angels descending would have caused him no wonder.

"You are down the cliff!" Pam told him, shouting the words in his ear,

with the twofold object of reaching his remote understanding and rousing

him by sheer strenuousness of voice. "You must have fallen. Don't you

know what's happened? Can't you remember?"

He was down the cliff. He must have fallen. Did n't he know what had

happened? Could n't he remember? Of a sudden--yes, of course he could

remember. He was down the cliff. He must have fallen. The

schoolmaster had pushed him. He 'd been fighting with the schoolmaster

in a dream, and got pushed over. What did it matter--a dream? He 'd

often got pushed over in dreams.

"Can't you remember?" came back to him, in echo of the girl's voice, and

he told her: "Yes, he could remember." Furthermore, to prove his good

intentions, he asked her with his eyes shut: "Where are the moons?"

"There 's only one," the girl shouted into his ear.

"That all?" he said, fishing hazily for the words as before.

"It 's up there--there in the sky." She let down his head a little, so

that the moon might come into his line of vision. "There ... do you see

it?"

He saw it and shut hie eyes, turning his head away from the light.

"All right," he said, and added a dreamy "Thank you."

Something boomed out behind him, and he saw the girl's hand go up

defensively above his head. Next moment cold trickles were wriggling

down his face. Some rested on his eyelashes and blurred the moonlight.

"What 's that?" he asked complacently.

"It's the sea..." the girl cried into his ear, and wiped the wet

tenderly from his face and lashes with an end of sleeve drawn into her

palm by her fingers. "The tide is coming up. We must not stay here any

longer. We shall be drowned if we do."

"Oh!" he said. Drowned, would they? What was drowning to a man who had

been dead? And then, quite irrelevantly--its irrelevancy even puzzled

himself, in a placid kind of way--"are there any mushrooms?"

"Oh, yes, yes," the girl told him eagerly. "Lots and lots of them. But

not down here; up at the top. We must get up to the top first."

"I 'm the boy for mushrooms," he said, and thought he smiled knowingly,

but it was only his inside that smiled. The face of him never moved a

muscle.

"See ... I am going to lift you!" the girl shouted. "Let me put my arm

about you ... like that. Yes. And now like this. Now ... so. Do I

hurt you?"

My Heaven! Did she hurt him? The groan that followed needed no

conscious bidding to find the outlet of his lips. His immobile face was

broken suddenly into seams of pain, like the cracking of a cast.

"Oh ... my poor darling! My poor darling!" the girl cried, lowering him

a little, in an agony scarcely less than his own, and the tears started

from her fast. "Have I hurt you? I did n't want to hurt you. But we

can't stay here. However much it hurts we can't stay here. We must get

you moved. I can't let you drown for the sake of a little pain. Come!

try again. You 'll help me, won't you? Now. Is that better? Is that

better? Am I hurting you now?"

And again she raised him. In a measure the first pain had paved the way

for a second, and being prepared for it this time, by twisting his face

he was enabled to bear the lifting; but it was agony. Such complete

change of posture seemed to shake up all the dormant dregs of his

discomfort, like the lees of a bottle. His body was become no more than

a mere flagon, for the contents of mortal anguish. His heart beat as

though it had been knocked loose by the fall. All the inside of his

head had been dislodged, and bumped sickeningly against the walls of his

skull. His ribs were hot gridirons. His back was on fire. But at

least he stood unsteadily upright. Within the compass of the girl's

arms--as once, on that first night of their meeting, she had been within

his--he stood rocking helplessly to and fro; his knees trembling

treacherously beneath him, only saved from sinking by the uplifting

power of the girl's embrace. Suddenly it seemed to him, with a warning

buzz in his ears, that the darkness was coming on again. A great

weakness crept over him and enfolded him.

"Let me ... sit down..." he said faintly. He thought that by sitting he

might elude the enveloping embrace of the darkness.

"No, no; not here. Not just here..." the girl implored him. "Not so

near the edge. Try and walk. Please! ..."

And then the darkness closed upon him swiftly, as he stood in her arms,

like a great engulfing fish.

But it disgorged him, almost at once. It seemed his own pain deterred

it. And slowly, what time he suffered untold agonies of body, the girl

half pushed, half carried him from the perilous edge of their narrow

shelf, toward the cliff side; weeping to herself for the pain she knew

she was inflicting; talking all the while to interpose her soft, tender

voice between himself and the keen edge of his suffering. Did she hurt

him now? That was better, was n't it? Oh, that was beautiful! Just

another step like that. And now just one more. And now just one to

finish. And now just a little one to bring him round here. And got him

propped up in the end--though Heaven knows how--with his back against

the ugly black slope of cliff, and his face towards the sea, that bit

with raging white teeth against the miserable crust of their refuge, and

roared and snarled mercilessly for their devourance.

And there, resting awhile, with the assistance of his own pain that had

roused him, and the stern sight he saw, the girl assiduously coaxed and

fretted, and rubbed his apathetic consciousness, like a cold hand, till

it returned at last some vital warmth of understanding. As far as his

loosened brain would allow, all the doings of this night came back to

him, remotely remembered. Through clouds of intervening suffering he

called back his quarrel with the schoolmaster; the words, even, that had

been uttered; his horrid plunge over the cliff, and that sickening

arrest at the bottom. And before these things had happened, came back

to him his love for the girl, and his loss of her; his resolution and

his irresolution; his night's packing, and the letters he had received.

Even it occurred to him that the big lamp would be still burning--unless

its oil were exhausted by now. It was all unreal and incomprehensible,

but he remembered it and never doubted. This was no new life, but the

old--to whose jagged splinters of breakage he was being so painfully

spliced. What a wonder his breakage had n't been beyond all repair! How

on earth had he come, neck downwards from that great height--a height it

would have sickened him to contemplate jumping--and yet been spared?

The mill of his mind ground slowly, by fits and starts, and not

over-fine. All its mechanism seemed dislocated and rusty and out of

order; in mid-thought it would be brought up suddenly with a horrid jolt

that seemed like taking his head off. The noise of its working, too, was

almost deafening.

"What are you doing here?" he asked vaguely, all at once, of the girl,

who, with one arm about him, was seeing how far he might be trusted to

keep his own balance against the cliff. It was a question that had been

glimmering at the bottom of his well for some time past--only, so far,

he had never been able to perceive clearly why she should not be here as

well as anywhere else. But now the strangeness of her presence forced

itself upon him.

"I was on the cliff..." she said, speaking in quick gasps, as the result

of her exertion, "and heard you fall. At least ... I heard you cry out.

You cried out ... did n't you? as you fell."

"Yes..." he admitted slowly, for the mills of thought were grinding

again, and he knew whose cry had brought him succor. Murderous,

cowardly cur! Friction of anger set up in his mind and heated him--who

knows? ... perhaps for his own good. Anything, only to rouse him.

The girl shuddered at that cry's remembrance.

"... I heard you. I was by the boat ... and I knew something dreadful

had happened ... and ran back, and looked over the cliff ... and saw

you, and scrambled down to you. But we must n't waste time. Not a

moment. If once the tide gets over here.... Do you think you can let

me leave you ... for a minute? I must find a way up the cliff. So."

She withdrew her hand from him, holding it outstretched, however, for a

moment, with fingers close upon him, in case he might show any dangerous

subsidence. But he did not. "Are you all right now? Do you think you

can keep just like that?"

He assured her he was all right, and could keep just like that. He was

by no means convinced in his own mind that such was the case, but he

felt his acquiescence due to the girl, and gave it.

And she, with a final adjusting touch of finger, that was a caress all

told, consigned him timidly to his own insecure care, and turned her

energy upon the cliff.

Even as she looked up its black, forbidding side, smooth and sheer, and

clayey with the recent rains--and remembered the desperate abandon of

her descent--her heart forsook her. Calmly, first of all--trying to

stimulate her bosom to courage by deliberateness of action--she sought

of the cliff for some mode of ascent; desperately, after awhile, when

none forthcame, flinging herself at the slimy earth, kicking with feet

for a foothold--that slid down with her when she used it, as though she

had been trying to scale butter; tearing with her hands at straggling

tufts of grass, that pulled out by the wet roots, soft and

sodden--struggling, scrambling, fighting.

And at last the fearful truth was borne in upon her--or perhaps, more

accurately, the seal was put upon the truth that her bosom had secreted

when she sacrificed herself over the cliff-edge for this man's

saving--and with tears, not of terror, but of bitter defeat, she came

back to him. Oh, the agony of that confession! Yet with death so close

upon them, it was no moment to offer the cup of false hopes. However

she tried to screen the knowledge from him, death would shortly tell him

everything.

"It is no use..." she said, her tears streaming, her hands all muddied,

that she wiped hopelessly on her skirts. "... I can find no way."

"Oh," he said, so apathetically, that for a moment she thought he had

not understood. But it was only the mills that were grinding.

"It is all my fault," the girl burst out bitterly. "If I had run to the

Dixons' at once ... they would have been here now ... and saved you.

But I never thought. I was in such a hurry.... Oh, forgive me ...

forgive me, please!"

And into her hands, for the man's sake, she sobbed as though her heart

would have burst. It was so dreadful for him to be lost like this, when

she had been so near to saving him. For herself it mattered nothing,

who had so little to lose. And though she strove to extinguish the

thought, there was a kind of proud, defiant exultation at being drowned

in such company. Oh, God forgive her such wicked thinking! Her heart,

so anguished during these latter days, could not, in its wildest

moments, have wished a more companionable death than this.

After awhile, the mills of the man's mind, slowly moving, ground a

little grist for his lips to get rid of.

"... Can you get up the cliff by yourself, if you leave me?"

He seemed to be talking to her out of the closed chamber of dreams.

What he uttered reached her, indeed, but there was something between

them yet, like a wall, that both were sensible of.

"But I would not ... I would not!" she cried impetuously.

"But could you?"

"No, no, no ... I could not!"

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite. I could not. Indeed, I could not."

"Shall we both be drowned?" he inquired.

To the girl the question came with a callousness almost brutal.

Moreover, it cut her to the quick to hear how this fall had blunted the

keen edge of the man's susceptibilities. It was as though another being

of an altogether inferior calibre were usurping his body. Oh, that for

their last agonised moments together this terrible dull veil might be

rent, and for dying happiness she might know him as she had known him in

the past! And for this she maintained her weeping. But inside, the man

was stoking up the furnace of his mills with desperate activity, to get

work out of hand before this last. He, too, was filled with ripe grain

of thought to be ground, and knew how bruised and blunted he was--and

how little near he could place his thoughts to the thoughts of the girl.

"What were you doing ... on the cliff?" he asked laboriously.

All his within was striving to find a short cut to somewhere, but his

mouth would not let him.

"... I was going away."

"Oh! Where to?"

"... Anywhere. To Hunmouth ... round by Garthston."

"Why were you going anywhere?"

"Because ... because ... did n't you get the letters? I left them on the

piano."

"Oh, yes; the letters. I read them. But I did n't ... know them."

"Know them" was n't what he wanted to say, and he struggled for a moment

to find the requisite expression, but his mills were not equal to it.

"I did n't ... know them," he repeated vaguely.

"Oh ... because ... because..."

And thereupon the girl plunged into the shameful deeps of her

wickedness, and made confession. A hurried confession it was, for time

pressed, but she cried it in its entirety into his ear--shielding

nothing but the absent man ... and her love.

And the mills of the Spawer's mind thumped faster.

"I want ... to ask you something," he said slowly, "... before I die."

"Yes ... yes." The girl was at his lips in a moment, to catch their

precious outpouring before death should stop her hearing for ever. "Ask

me. I am here."

"I want to ask you..." he said. "You know why I was going back. The

other letter was ... from Her. She asks me to set her free. If there

had n't been ... been any other one in the case, and I 'd asked you ...

to marry me ... would you have married me?"

And in an instant the girl's arms were about the man's neck, and her

lips upon his lips, as though they would have sucked the poor remaining

life out of his body into her own, and given it an abiding habitation.

"Oh ... my love, my love!" the girl wept, through the wet lips that

clung to him. "What do I care about dying now? I would rather a

thousand times die to learn that you had loved me ... than live and

never know it."

And she poured her streams of warm tears over his face, and wrapped him

about with her arms, and bound her body upon him. And in the fusion of

that mighty love, the laboring mills of the man's mind burst free.

"Why did you come down to me?" he cried. "For God's sake get away while

you have the chance. I 'm not worth saving now ... I'm only the

fragments of a man.... But you!"

For all answer she bound him in tighter bondage of protection, as though

she were trying to steep their souls so deep in the transport of love

that they should not know death or its agony.

"If you leave me..." he urged upon her, "and get up the cliff ... there

may still be time."

But she clung to him.

"For my sake, then!" he implored her. "You are my last hope of safety.

For the love of me, try and do it. We must not die like this."

And for his sake, with her old desperate hopes falsely revived, she

redoubled kisses of farewell upon his mouth and lips, and threw herself

passionately against the relentless wet wall of their prison. Now this

side, and now that. Now trying to kick out steps with her feet; now

trying to tear them with her hands, she wrought at this frantic

enterprise, and the man watched her, and knew it to be of no avail. And

then, at his urging, she cried out--lifted her own white face to the

sullen black face of the cliff, and cried--cried with words, and rent

the air with inarticulate screams. But all was one. Like a thick

blanket the cliff, so close upon her, muffled her mouth and I smothered

the voice that issued from her.

"It 's no use ... no use," she said, and came back to the man.

And at the same moment the cruel, horrible sea, that had been boiling

turbulently about the far brink of their ledge, with occasional casts of

foam, thundered against the cliff, as though to the collected impulse of

intent, and rushed up, roaring, and gained the summit of their slender

refuge at last, and curled a scornful, devastating lip of water over it.

They stood for a moment like marble, the two of them, at this clear

message from the mouth of death; watching the water slide back after the

retreating wave, and pour away at either side of their earthen shelf

amid an appalling effervescence, and then the girl woke up again.

"It will not be long ... now," she said, very quietly.