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.