“Poor child!” said Mr. Brownlow. It was all he said; and it gave the last touch to her suppressed rage and passion—how did he dare call her poor child? But Sara came out just then from old Betty’s, and stood stock-still, confounded by her friend’s looks. Sara could see that something had happened, but she could not tell what it was. She looked from Pamela to her father, and from her father to Pamela, and could make nothing of it. “What is the matter?” she asked, in surprise; and then it was Pamela’s turn to bethink herself, and defend her own cause.
“There is nothing the matter,” she said, “except that you have left me standing here, Miss Brownlow, and I must go home. I have my own business to think of, but I can’t expect you to think of that. There is nothing wrong.”
“You are angry because I left you,” said Sara in dismay. “Don’t be so foolish, Pamela. I had something to say to old Betty—and then papa was here.”
“And mamma is waiting for me,” said Pamela in her passion. “Good-bye. She wants me, and you don’t. And I dare say we shall not be very long here. Good-night, good-night.” Thus she left them, running, so that she could not hear any call, though indeed her heart was beating too loud to let any thing else be audible, jarring against her ears like an instrument out of tune. “She has got her father—she doesn’t want me. Nobody wants me but mamma. We will go away—we will go away!” Pamela said to herself: and she ran passionately across the road, and disappeared before any thing could be done to detain her. The father and daughter looked after her from the gate with different thoughts: Sara amazed and a little indignant—Mr. Brownlow very grave and compassionate, knowing how it was.
“What ails her?” said Sara—“papa, what is the matter? Is she frightened for you? or what have I done? I never saw her like this before.”
“You should not have left her so long by herself,” said Mr. Brownlow, seizing upon Pamela’s own pretext.
“You told me to go,” cried Sara, injured. “I never thought little Pamela was so quick-tempered. Let me go and tell her I did not mean it. I will not stay a moment—wait for me, papa.”
“Not now,” said Mr. Brownlow, and he took his daughter’s arm and drew it within his own with quiet decision. “Perhaps you have taken too much notice of little Pamela. It is not always kind, though you mean it to be kind. Leave her to herself now. I have something to say to you,” and he led her away up the avenue. It was nothing but the promise of this something to say which induced Sara, much against her will, to leave her little friend unconsoled; but she yielded, and she was not rewarded for yielding. Mr. Brownlow had nothing to say that either explained Pamela’s sudden passion or threw any light upon other matters which might have been still more interesting. However, she had been taken home, and dinner was impending before Sara was quite aware of this, and Pamela, poor child, remained unconsoled.
She was not just then thinking of consolation. On the contrary, she would have refused any consolation Sara could have offered her with a kind of youthful fury. She rushed home, poor child, thinking of nothing but of taking refuge in her mother’s bosom, and communicating her griefs and injuries. She was still but a child, and the child’s impulse was strong upon her; notwithstanding that all the former innocent mystery of Mr. John’s attentions had been locked in her own bosom, not so much for secrecy’s sake as by reason of that “sweet shamefacedness” which made her reluctant, even to herself, to say his name, or connect it anyhow with her own. Now, as was natural, the lesser pressure yielded to the greater. She had been insulted, as she thought, her feelings outraged in cold blood, reproach cast upon her which she did not deserve, and all by the secret inexorable spectator whose look had destroyed her young happiness, and dispelled all her pleasant dreams. She rushed in just in time to hide from the world—which was represented by old Betty at her lodge window, and Mrs. Swayne at her kitchen door—the great hot scalding tears, big and sudden, and violent as a thunder-storm, which were coming in a flood. She threw the door of the little parlor open, and rushed in and flung herself down at her mother’s feet. And then the passion of sobs that had been coming burst forth. Poor Mrs. Preston in great alarm gathered up the little figure that lay at her feet into her arms, and asked, “What was it?—what was the matter?” making a hundred confused inquiries; until at last, seeing all reply was impossible, the mother only soothed her child on her bosom, and held her close, and called her all the tender names that ever a mother’s fancy could invent. “My love, my darling, my own child,” the poor woman said, holding her closer and closer, trembling with Pamela’s sobs, beginning to feel her own heart beat loud in her bosom, and imagining a thousand calamities. Then by degrees the short broken story came. Mr. John had been very kind. He used to pass sometimes, and to say a word or two, and Mr. Brownlow had seen them together. No, Mr. John had never said any thing—never, oh, never any thing that he should not have said—always had been like—like—Rude! Mamma! No, never, never, never! And Mr. Brownlow had come and spoken to her. He had said—but Pamela did not know what he had said. He had been very cruel, and she knew that for her sake he had sent Mr. John away. The dog-cart had come up without him. The cruel, cruel father had come alone, and Mr. John was banished—“And it is all for my sake!” This was Pamela’s story. She thought in her heart that the last was the worst of all, but in fact it was the thing which gave zest and piquancy to all. If she had known that Mr. John was merely out to dinner, the chances are that she would never have found courage to tell her pitiful tale to her mother. But when the circumstances are so tragical the poor little heroine-victim becomes strong. Pamela’s disappointment, her anger, and the budding sentiment with which she regarded Mr. John, all found expression in this outburst. She was not to see him to-night, nor perhaps ever again. And she had been seeing him most days and most evenings, always by chance, with a sweet unexpectedness which made the expectation always the dearer. When that was taken out of her life, how grey it became all in a moment. And then Mr. Brownlow had presumed to scold her, to blame her for what she had been doing, she whom nobody ever blamed, and to talk as if she sought amusement at the cost of better things. And Pamela was virtuously confident of never seeking amusement. “He spoke as if I were one to go to balls and things,” she said through her tears, not remembering at the moment that she did sometimes think longingly of the youthful indulgences common enough to other young people from which she was shut out. All this confused and incoherent story Mrs. Preston picked up in snatches, and had to piece them together as best she could. And as she was not a wise woman, likely to take the highest ground, she took up what was perhaps the best in the point of view of consolation at least. She took her child’s part with all the unhesitating devotion of a partisan. True, she might be uneasy about it in the bottom of her heart, and startled to see how much farther than she thought things had gone; but still in the first place and above all, she was Pamela’s partisan, which was of all devices that could have been contrived the one most comforting. As soon as she had got over her first surprise, it came to her naturally to pity her child, and pet and caress her, and agree with her that the father was very cruel and unsympathetic, and that poor Mr. John had been carried off to some unspeakable banishment. Had she heard the story in a different way, no doubt she would have taken up Mr. Brownlow’s rôle, and prescribed prudence to the unwary little girl; but as soon as she understood that Pamela had been blamed, Mrs. Preston naturally took up arms in her child’s defense. She laid her daughter down to rest upon the horse-hair sofa, and got her a cup of tea, and tended her as if she had been ill; and as she did so all her faculties woke up, and she called all her reason together to find some way of mending matters. Mr. John! might he perhaps be the protector—the best of all protectors—with whom she could leave her child in full security? Why should it not be so? When this wonderful new idea occurred to her, it made a great commotion in her mind, and called to life a project which she had put aside some time before. It moved her so much, and took such decided and immediate form, that Mrs. Preston even let fall hints incomprehensible to Pamela, and to which, indeed, absorbed as she was, she gave but little attention. “Wait a little,” Mrs. Preston said, “wait a little; we may do better than you think for. Your poor mother can do but little for you, my pet, but yet we may find friends—” “I don’t know who can do any thing for us,” Pamela answered, disconsolately. And then her mother nodded her head as if to herself, and went with the gleam of a superior constantly in her eye. The plan was one that could not be revealed to the child, and about which, indeed, the child, wrapped up in her own thoughts, was not curious. It was not a new intention. It was a plan she had been hoarding up to be made use of should she be ill—should there be any danger of leaving her young daughter alone in the world. Now, thank heaven, the catastrophe was not so appalling as that, and yet it was appalling, for Pamela’s happiness was concerned. She watched over her child through all that evening, soothed, took her part, adopted her point of view with a readiness that even startled Pamela; and all the time she was nursing her project in her own heart. Under other circumstances, no doubt, Mrs. Preston would have been grieved, if not angry, to hear of the sudden rapid development of interest in Mr. John and all their talks and accidental meetings of which she now heard for the first time. But Pamela’s outburst of grief and rage had taken her mother by storm; and then, if some one else had assailed the child, whom had she but her mother to take her part? This was Mrs. Preston’s reasoning. And it was quite as satisfactory to her as if it had been a great deal more convincing. She laid all her plans as she soothed her little daughter, shaking as it were little gleams of comfort from the lappets of her cap, as she nodded reasoningly at her child. “We may find friends yet, Pamela,” she would say; “we are not so badly off as to be without friends.” Thus she concealed her weakness with a mild hopefulness, knowing no more what results they were to bring about, what unknown wonders would come out of them, than did the little creature by her side, whose narrow thoughts were bounded by the narrow circle which centred in Mr. John. Pamela was thinking, where was he now? was he thinking of her? was he angry because it was through her he was suffering? and then with bitter youthful disdain of the cruel father who had banished him and reproved her, and who had no right—no right! Then the little girl, when her passion was spent, took up another kind of thought—the light of anger and resistance began to fade out of her eyes. After all, she was a poor girl—they were all poor, every body belonging to her. And Mr. John was a rich man’s son. Would it, perhaps, be right for the two poor women to steal away, softly, sadly, as they came; and go out into the world again, and leave the man who was rich and strong and had a right to be happy to come back and enjoy his good things? Pamela’s tears and her looks both changed with her thoughts—her wavering pretty color, the flush of agitation and emotion went off her cheeks, and left her pale as the sky is when the last sunset tinge has disappeared out of it. Her tears became cold tears, wrung out as from a rock, instead of the hot, passionate, abundant rain. She did not say any thing, but shivered and cried piteously on her mother’s shoulders, and complained of cold. Mrs. Preston took her to bed, as if she had been still a child, and covered her up, and dried her eyes, and sat by the pale little creature till sleep stepped in to her help. But the mother had not changed this time in sympathy with her child. She was supported by something Pamela heard not of. “We may find friends—we are not so helpless as that,” she said to herself; and even Pamela’s sad looks did not change her. She knew what she was going to do. And it seemed to her, as to most inexperienced plotters, that her plan was elaborate and wise in the extreme, and that it must be crowned with success.