And now her step was slowed almost to a standstill. George Middleway even could have run her down. All the activity was up above; there was none left for her legs. Already she was past the halfway house in the little elbow of road before you get first sight of Stamway's. It is a part enclosed; except from the immediate fields, which were untenanted, she could n't be seen here in the pursuit of wasting Government time. The next turn would bring her into sight again; she would be under the eyes of Stamway's; Dixon's would be able to follow her progress henceforward, all but a yard here or a yard there, to the paddock stile. Before she came into public view again ... she ought to think; she ought to make sure. And one cannot think, standing erect in the roadway like a scarecrow. It looks suspicious, even to the suspicious eye of self—that at these times suspects everything. Instinctively she drew into the shelter of a hospitable gateway. There, at least, she could profess for her own satisfaction that she had succumbed to the midday lassitude; was listening to the music of the reapers, with her arm over the rail and her foot on one of the lower bars.
Was the past a dream? ... or the present? Had the Spawer ever been? ... or was he ever going? Which was easier to realise? The joyousness of then or the misery of now? Should she wake up to discover that all her unhappiness was a nightmare, that there was no question of the Spawer's going, no dread of a letter? She dipped her hand, almost unconsciously, into the bag to see if, perchance, the whole affair was an unsubstantial fabric of fancy.
Ah, no! No fancy; no fancy. She had not wakened yet. There were the two letters at the bottom of the bag; the one for Stamway, the other ... it came out with her hand. She had not wilfully drawn it, but it seemed to cling to her fingers. Oh yes, how well she knew its motley of stamps and postmarks; how well the superscription in that familiar feminine hand. She held it before her eyes, and gazed at the writing as though she would have wrested the invisible scribe out of it; called up the astral body of the girl who, in these shapely lines, and all innocently and unknowingly, had dealt her happiness such an irreparable blow. Who was she? Where did she live? When, where, and how had he met her? Did she love music? Had he taught her? Had he taught her French? Was she beautiful? Ah, she was sure to be. And a lady. That would be a fashionable way of affixing the stamps. And young. Rich too, perhaps. She must be, for poor people could not afford to spend long holidays in foreign places like this. Assuredly the writer of these words did not tramp the country roads with a bag over her shoulder for six shillings a week.
Something white and moving grew into the corner of her unconscious eye as she gazed in absorption upon the fatal envelope—a cow or a horse or a sheep or a cloud, over the hedge line.
But no; it was not a cow. It was too erect for a cow; too tall for a sheep; too progressive for a cloud. There was a patch of color about it too, somewhere. Cows did not wear ribbons, or sheep or clouds.
It was a figure; the figure of a man; a man in white; a man in flannels—the Spawer.
All at once her dormant consciousness awoke with a start to his imminence, as though her eye had been giving no warning of his approach all this while. She turned round, and a great spreading sickness of guilt took hold of her. Her blood seemed rushing all ways, like an anthill in confusion. The hand with the letter dropped suddenly, as though it were a wounded wing. It was the right hand that held it now, and the bag was on her left side. Had he seen her? Could she pass it into the bag without notice. He was horribly near ... and looking at her. Her heart pitched downward like a foundering vessel into the trough of her fear.
Into the pocket at the back of her her guilty hand crept, trembling and craven, and lay there, in its thief's refuge, burning unbearably like the firebrand of her infamy.
CHAPTER XXIV
The hot sunlight about the Post Office was savory with the smell of Yorkshire pudding—you might have almost imagined that it was the house itself a-cooking—when Pam returned, beneath the sling of the empty letter-bag.