But she could not see. These two souls, surcharged with their vapors of unshed trouble, that only needed to come together to combine and pour forth all their misery in one great shower of gladness and rejoicing—these two souls lay asunder.
While the girl stared dumbly into the blackness of her pillow, the man gazed with the vacant stare of a harmless idiot over Dixon's first gate. If his state had been hopeless before, he told himself, it seemed doubly hopeless now.
To be sentimental by moonlight was one thing, but for a man ostensibly in the marriage-bespoke department to manoeuvre a wide-awake girl into the laneways of emotion was a very different thing indeed. All their yesterday's sentimentalism was so much trade discount knocked off their relations; he was at cost price now, and something under. The whole time of their interview this morning she was unmistakably trying to shake him off; had been inventing urgent reasons why she must be getting back; had n't a word to say for herself beyond transparent excuses to get away; could n't say what she was going to be doing this afternoon; could n't say what she was going to be doing to-night; could n't say whether she should see him to-morrow; could n't say, apparently, whether she 'd ever see him again; had almost torn herself away from him in the end. What was he to think? What was he to say? What was he to do?
He was a sick man now, and no mistake. His very internals tormented him, as though he were a storm-tossed, drifting ship, and he saw land and the girl receding from him hopelessly on the horizon. How to reach her? How to get back to her? How still to save himself?
Alas, during these moments of wounded love and pride, for the Other One!
CHAPTER XXV
In one swift headlong descent of crime Pam had suddenly arrived at the awful pitch of robbing Her Majesty's mail.
She had vague terrorised notions of the penal code and the shameful penalty of her crime, but her horror for what the world would inflict upon her, to ease its conscience of the various offences it commits itself, was exceeded by the horror with which self regarded self. And she had horror, too, of the unutterable horror that would prevail in this house, so still and peaceful at present, supposing her crime were brought home to her and exposed. She saw the awe-struck face of the postmaster, sitting with his mouth open and empty of words under the incredible calamity of her shame; she saw Emma Morland looking at her, part in anger, part in unbelief, part in compassion; she saw James Maskill obstinately refusing to meet her eye, and pretending to whistle in shocked abstraction; she saw her one act extended and dramatised to its very close at Sproutgreen Court-house, as clearly as though her soul were a theater, luridly lighted, and she were sitting in the pit ... a horrified, helpless, untearful spectator of her own downfall.
All suddenly the course of the drama was disturbed. There was a sound of doors downstairs; voices mixed in question and answer. She held her breath and listened. Her heart gave a great bump and seemed to stop altogether. So vivid was her conception of her crime that her mind accepted these noises as indisputable notification of its detection. All the world was astir about the stolen letter. The policeman was there; the machinery of the law was in motion. They were come to take her. They would all be waiting for her below. She saw them in a blinding group, with the stragglers beyond, about the Post Office door; children flattening their noses and sticking their tongues grotesquely against the panes for a sight inside; licking their fingers and drawing slimy tracks over the glass. And then she heard her name uttered—that hateful name that was become now as a second word for sin. The sound of it sent a shudder through her to the soles of her lemon-colored shoes.
"Pam...." It was Emma Morland's voice that called her. "Pam! Are ye there?"