Week 7 (continued)
When I arrived home on Saturday, Mrs. Jewkes greeted me with a packet of Pamela’s letters. It seemed Pamela had been writing doggedly since she’d arrived at the Lincolnshire estate, and hiding her letters in linen-wrapped packets.
 |
| Just like the ancient Egyptians, and |
| other ancient peoples, Pamela wraps her |
| important possessions in linen to |
| keep them dry: no cellophane! |
Pamela didn’t want me to read the letters; she was worried I would be offended by their bluntness. I couldn’t imagine Pamela could be blunter to the page than she was to my face, but I told her to have more confidence in me. I wanted the honest Pamela, not the Pamela who spoke round and round and round a topic, hiding her thoughts and motives.
“I have read many of your barbed reflections,” I said. “And yet I’ve never upbraided you on that score.” Not very often, at least.
“As long as you remember I wrote the truth from my heart,” she said, “and that I have every right to defy this forced and illegal restraint.”
“You have a powerful advocate in me,” I said and went to my library to read.
The packet contained not only Pamela’s letters to her parents but letters from Williams and drafts of Pamela’s letters to him. I glowered over them. Pamela had certainly pled her case to Williams most affectingly, and he had definitely presented himself as more a romantic than disinterested savior.
“Do you find I encouraged his proposal?” Pamela said when I called her in and taxed her about her “love letters.”
I didn’t, but, “What about the letters before these?” I said. The ones I was reading started nearly two weeks after I sent Pamela to Lincolnshire. I knew from Mrs. Jewkes that Pamela and Williams began corresponding almost immediately upon her arrival.
“My father has them.”
I remembered then that Mrs. Jewkes believed Pamela had given Williams a packet to send to her parents. Mrs. Jewkes had tried to retrieve the packet by arranging an attack on the poor man. I would not have condoned such a crude scheme, especially since it failed in its object.
“I want to read everything you’ve written,” I said. “You create a pretty tale regarding your troubles.”
She raised her chin. “You jeer at my misfortunes.”
“Considering the liberties you take with my character,” I said, brandishing the letters, “I’d say we are equally outspoken.”
“I would not have taken liberties if you had not given me cause. The cause, sir, comes before the effect.” Pamela’s voice gets quite steely when she’s riled. I held back a smile.
“You chop logic very prettily. What the deuce do men go to school for?”
“You wouldn’t mock me if I were dull.”
“I wouldn’t love you half so well,” I pointed out.
She flushed. “I’d be better off married to a plough-boy,” she told the worn rug, which she knew and I knew wasn’t true.
“One of us fox-hunters would still have found you,” I said. I hoped I would have found her. I couldn’t imagine never having met Pamela. “What about the most recent letters, the ones after these? Are they on your person?” And when she remained silent, “You know criminals who don’t confess are tortured.”
“Torture is not used in England,” she retorted.
“Oh, my torture will fit the crime,” I said. “I’m going to strip you, Pamela.” I crossed to her and began to
slowly untie the lace handkerchief that masked her bosom. She gazed at me, open-mouth, and for a heart-stopping moment, I thought she wouldn’t stop me. But she slapped my hand and darted backwards.
“You’ll give me the letters?” I said.
“Yes,” she said and fled.
Cross-Examination
“You see,” Gary said. “She gave him the letters after being threatened.”
“I didn't get them until the next morning. Pamela could have destroyed them at night. She could have kept some back. She didn’t. In fact, she brought me the letters before I asked for them.”
“That’s like saying the prisoner gave up information before the guards followed through with a beating. In today’s world, the rights of supposed terrorists—”
Several people, including the judge, interrupted him. No one wanted to hear Gary’s views on terrorists.
Judge Hardcastle, naturally, got the floor. “Why the next morning? Why not earlier?”
“Pamela asked for a chance to read them over.” Mr. B shrugged, grinning faintly. “I think she wanted to be ready for my objections.”
“So the new letters were not entirely favorable.”
“No,” Mr. B said, his gaze turning inward. He looked up and met the judge’s eyes. “Pamela likes to dismantle events—her lawyer’s mind, you know. But these letters—” Mr. B crossed his arms across his chest and gave the judge an unhappy smile “—she was writing to exorcise her fears, not explain them.”
The judge said gently, “You’ll need to tell us what she wrote.”
Week 7 (continued)
Pamela’s most recent letters were written after Williams proved unreliable, and she learned I was coming to Lincolnshire. She panicked. While I was at the Hargraves getting nearly drowned by a horse, she tried to escape from the Lincolnshire estate. She wiggled out her bedroom window and threw her upper-petticoat, handkerchief, and cap into the garden pond to put off pursuers.
I knew about this part of the plan from Mrs. Jewkes. I didn’t know the rest: Pamela tried to escape over the garden wall, but the bricks gave way and struck her on the head.
Pamela’s scar.
I turned to study her. She’d brought her letters to me at the pond and stayed when I asked. Now she sat, hands around her knees, gazing across the calm water.
She quivered when I lifted her chin but didn’t pull back. The scar stretched under her hairline. I turned her head gently and lifted her linen cap to examine a second scar at the base of her skull. Her hair had been cut to help it heal.
I got up and went over to the brick wall that enclosed the pasture. Pamela’s narrative implied she’d been struck once or twice, but I counted at least five bricks lying on the grass.
I went back to the pond and put an arm around Pamela’s shoulders. “It’s a good thing you didn’t get out,” I said. “You would have been alone in great danger. And I would have caught you anyway,” I added, trying to jolly her.
She produced a half-smile; I turned back to the letters.
After being struck by bricks, Pamela considered taking her life. It was no melodramatic proclamation. She acknowledged her tendency to romanticize, was ashamed of her momentary despair. She had honestly considered ending her life in the pond.
Drowned. Buried under water. Out of fear. Fear of me.
I got up, so Pamela couldn’t see my face. It was like dreaming awake, only worse, because any follies I cause myself, I can pay for. But if Pamela had taken her life, it would have been on my shoulders, and I wouldn’t have wanted to live.
I turned back. Pamela watched me curiously from the pond’s edge. “Don’t sit there,” I said, and she scrambled to her feet. I put her letters in my pocket and slid my arms around her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for pushing you into so much danger and distress.”
Her head came to rest against my shoulder.
“I will defy the world’s censures and make you amends,” I said.
Marriage, I meant. If Williams had been present, I would have commanded him to wed us.
I felt Pamela withdraw even before she stepped out of my arms. “Let me go home,” she said.
I’d just offered marriage, and she didn’t care. She stood there, not meeting my eyes, and I knew she was thinking about Williams. She preferred a canting clergyman to a man who knew her, who liked her, who wanted to be more to her than a knight.
“Very well,” I said and walked away.
I was almost to the house when: “One word,” she called, but I waved her off. It was time for Pamela to go home.
Cross-Examination
“We rest our case,” Mr. Shorter said to Judge Hardcastle’s surprise. “Mr. B allowed Pamela to leave. Anything that follows is not coercion.”
“So she returned to Bedfordshire?” Mr. Hatch said.
“No,” Dr. Matchel barked. “Mr. B forced Pamela to return to his Lincolnshire estate within twenty-four hours.”
“I asked her to return,” Mr. B said.
The judge said, “And we all know it is typical for the hero to chase after the heroine,” and preened when Deborah laughed.
“Well,” Mr. B said, “I sent my servants after her.”
“Mr. B,” Mr. Shorter said, “was ill at the time.”
Everyone shushed him.
The judge said, “I think we need to hear more.”
Deborah said in a loud stage whisper, “Oh, this is my favorite part.”
Week 7 (continued)
I instructed Colbrand and Robin, my coachman, to take Pamela home. Pamela had gone up to her room to fetch her few belongings. I heard her descend the stairs with Mrs. Jewkes. As they passed the parlor, Mrs. Jewkes called out peevishly, “Sir, you have nothing to tell this baggage before she goes?”
Why would Pamela want to stay when I let the woman speak to her so rudely?
“Who said you could speak to her like that? She’s offended only me. She deserves to go honest, and she shall go.”
Then Pamela was at the parlor’s open door, looking at me gratefully. “Thank you,” she said. “God bless you for your goodness to me!”
I almost asked her to stay, but I knew I shouldn’t, so I went into my library. Before I closed the door, I heard Pamela say pointedly, “And I will pray for you too, Mrs. Jewkes, wicked wretch that you are,” and I grinned to myself.
I leaned against the door, then sank to the floor. My headache was getting worse. Finally I lay down and closed my eyes against the pain.
I woke near twilight. The room was not quite dark. My headache had lessened, but the fever was back with a vengeance. I made my way to the desk and lit a candle. I considered calling the servants, but the idea tired me too much.
The armchair was uncomfortable: I was sitting half-on, half-off my coat. I jerked it loose and realized that Pamela’s letters were still in my pocket. I pulled them out and flattened them on the desk. There was no point reading more; they would only remind me that Pamela was gone, no longer upstairs writing feverishly in her closet, getting ready to lecture me.
I couldn’t help myself. I read.
She described my arrival in Lincolnshire, my proposal that she become my paramour, even my aborted ravishment. I winced.
She went on to detail how sorry she’d been when she heard about my accident, how hard it was for her to resist me—only she didn’t trust me.
What did I expect? I’d given her no reason to trust me, not from the moment my mother died. I should have courted her in earnest from the beginning. I should have known marriage to Pamela would satisfy all my needs and desires.
The candle guttered and went on. I sat in the dark, missing Pamela, thinking back over her letters.
An odd coincidence struck me. I’d almost drowned the same day Pamela tried to escape. As if we were bound to the same fate; if she had died, I would surely have perished in Hertfordshire, whatever the doctor told my sister.
Soul of my soul.
I’d been a fool to let her go.
I lit another candle and wrote a letter begging Pamela to return, “for I find I cannot live a day without you.” I asked her to “forgive the man who loves you more than himself” and promised to make her happy.
I went to the stables, hugging the wall because the fever was making me dizzy. I woke Thomas, only remembering after he was up that it was past midnight. But since he was up—
“I want you to ride after the carriage,” I told him. “I have a letter for Miss Andrews.”
As he got ready, I considered that Pamela would never believe I meant her well. I went into the back parlor and wrote a letter to Colbrand confirming that he and Robin were to bring Pamela back only at her request. He could show Pamela my letter to him.
I gave both letters to Thomas, and he rode off.
