If she remained at home the shadow of her deep disgrace would be reflected on her family. If she went away people would forget it in time.
“I should like for them to think that I am dead. Then mamma would not feel any further anxiety over my fate. Her mind would be easy. She would feel that I was at rest,” she thought, and it was this that led her to take away with her a small bundle of clothing marked with her name, and throw it into the river. “It will be found by some one, and then they will say that I drowned myself. It will be a great relief to Willie,” she said to herself, with sorrowful satisfaction, and with a bravery born of despair, she escaped from her room by means of a rope plaited of torn sheets.
Her hands were torn and bleeding when she reached the bottom, but, without a murmur, she took up the bundle she had thrown down, and made her way to Libby Hill, that beautiful eminence overlooking the historic James River. She sat down there a while to rest in the soft gleam of the summer moonlight, and to think of the times when she had met Norman Wylde there and wandered with him through the beautiful park, while her young heart thrilled with love, and hope.
“Alas, alas! he was but amusing himself with the humble working girl; he but plucked the flower of my love to trample it under his feet,” she murmured, in bitterest despair; and presently she went through the park and past the line of stately houses that guarded it on the left side, and dragged herself down the steep declivity to the river.
How beautiful, how silvery white it gleamed in the clear moonlight as it pursued its winding course toward Chesapeake Bay. The factory girl, whose soul was deeply imbued with a love of the beautiful, gazed with a sort of solemn rapture on the magnificent scene outspread before her, and as she flung her little bundle into the glittering waves, lifted her sad eyes to heaven, murmuring, in a tone of awe:
“I am tempted to spring into those bright waves and end all my sorrow.”
Then she saw a dark form moving toward her at some little distance, and fled away, fearing lest she should be arrested by a policeman, for it was nearing midnight, and she knew that it would seem strange to see a woman alone in the streets, deserted as they were by almost every one.
She went along slyly and quietly, like a fugitive fleeing from justice, over the long distance—two miles and more—that intervened between her and the railway station, at which she meant to take a train for the West.
How strange it seemed to be stealing along Main Street like a shadow, frightened at the glare of the street lamps, lest they should reveal her hurrying form to some alert policeman. She was glad when she reached Seventeenth Street Market, and darted inside of it, gliding nervously along between the brick stalls as far as they went, and coming out at last almost at the end of her journey, for soon Broad Street was gained, and then, a little later, the depot.
There was a midnight train making up for the West. She hurried to the ticket office and bought a ticket for Cincinnati.