The post-girl

by Edward Charles Booth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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