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.