CHAPTER IIIIn which Miss Pamela Pounce, the Milliner’s Assistant,becomes Arbiter of Life and Death in HighSociety
In which Miss Pamela Pounce, the Milliner’s Assistant,becomes Arbiter of Life and Death in HighSociety
“Pray Mrs. Tabbishaw,” wrote my Lady Kilcroney’s woman to the Mantua maker in Cheapside, “send Pamela along with those white feathers of her ladyship’s, which you has, this ever so long, to be died blew, yours obleeged,“Lydia Pounce.”
“Pray Mrs. Tabbishaw,” wrote my Lady Kilcroney’s woman to the Mantua maker in Cheapside, “send Pamela along with those white feathers of her ladyship’s, which you has, this ever so long, to be died blew, yours obleeged,
“Lydia Pounce.”
Nowthe fact of Pamela being Lydia’s niece did not endear her to that maturing damsel, “which,” she was fond of remarking to any beholding them together, “do seem prodigious absurd, seeing as how there’s scarce a year or two betwixt us.”
But if Miss Lydia was not fond of displaying herself in public with a fine strapping young woman of twenty-three who had an inconsiderate way of dropping out “Aunt” at every second word (“which, reely, my dear, I vow she does a’ purpose”—and perhaps indeed she did), my Lady Kilcroney’s indispensable Abigail, as she never omitted informing all and sundry, had a remarkable sense of family feeling. She had placed the inconvenient niece with the matchless Eglantine. With such a start in life she considered the girl’s fortune made; and if Paris were to become the stable abode of so much bloom and bumptiousness, she, for one, would continue to bear the separation with fortitude.
When, after two or three years’ absence, however,Pamela reappeared on the scene, extraordinarily Frenchified, unconscionably beautified, and quite unpardonably wideawake, having quarrelled to the death with Madame Eglantine, and possessing, to boot, only the clothes on her back and the price of her ticket, Miss Lydia Pounce was very justly annoyed. It was quite impossible to send the girl home, since bankruptcy threatened the Kentish farm. Once again Lydia’s fine conception of family obligation came to the fore. There was Mrs. Tabbishaw, at whose second-rate establishment in Cheapside the elder Miss Pounce had been in the habit of having such odd jobs done for her ladyship as the dyeing and re-curling of feathers, the cleaning and mending of unimportant laces, the quilting of winter petticoats. Mrs. Tabbishaw owed her a good turn, and if she would now make room for Pamela, give her board and just enough wage for her clothes, Lydia would see to it that her mistress should go as far as to purchase an occasional hat.
Pamela had no choice but to fall in with her aunt’s arrangements, for had not Madame Eglantine sworn that she would give her no character? (As if, indeed, it had been her fault that that odious Monsieur Ildefonse should take to ogling her behind Madame’s back, and her staring into the mirror!) She knew very well, however, that she was sadly wasted at the poor, unmodish place; and, indeed, since Mrs. Tabbishaw was too stupid to realise the treasure that had come her way, the younger Miss Pounce was forthwith turned into a maid-of-all-work. Her long, clever fingers were set to scrub and to cook, to pink or to quilt, or to whatever odd job pressed the most. She was kept running to and fro with parcels, and up and downstairs on messages. She was sent galloping to shops and warehouses to match ribbons and velvets, and all the while the wives and daughters of the city went on purchasing the modes of the year before last, as interpreted by vulgar minds, while spirit, delicacy, art, dash, millinery genius in fine, was actually within their reach! Not that Pamela Pounce had any desireto adorn them. Her aspirations flew very high. Some day she meant to be as great in her line as Eglantine herself, to exercise her talents upon heads as worth while as my Lady Kilcroney’s own.
“You’re jealous of me, you cat!” It was thus she apostrophised the worthy Aunt Lydia in the solitude of her bare attic chamber. “You’re jealous of me. You know you’re an old maid and peevish, and I’m only twenty-three and better-looking than you ever were in your life, with twice your wits, though yours are as sharp as your elbows. You think I’d take the shine out of you, you lemon-faced thing! You know I’d toss up a bit of lace and feather for your ladyship’s boudoir cap, and that her ladyship would nigh faint with the ecstasy of it when she saw herself in the glass. And a sweet pretty creature she is—the one glimpse I ever had of her, and that through the door, you mean thing! Ah, give me a chance, and I swear the sedans and the carriages would be blocking the streets to get at me. But not if you can help it, old Miss Pounce! You’re to be the only important Miss Pounce in this world; that’s your little game! But ’tis not for nothing I’ve got it all in me!”
And hugging her knees as she sat on her bed—the chair being too rickety to bear her fine proportions—Miss Pounce the younger would map out her future in glorious processions of feathers and head-dresses, hats and bonnets, wreaths andnégligés.
Through all the hardships, the dreary daily grind, the unkindness and the unremitting exertions, her star shone upon her with a light that never wavered. The first winter was a trying one, and Pamela found London, after Paris, a cruel, ugly place; a cruel cold one, and a cruel hard one. When the summer came, existence might be easier, but the hours were longer with the daylight, and there were nights when even Pamela’s high heart gave way, and she would drop on her pallet bed almost too exhausted to sleep. She had grown thin, and there was a certain fierceness in the fire of her bright greyeyes, as if they looked on all humanity as an enemy, by that July 16th, 1789, when my Lady Kilcroney’s woman wrote for the “blew feathers.”
“Oh, drat!” said Mrs. Tabbishaw.
She was just sitting down to her dinner at three o’clock in the afternoon of a torrid day. The reek of roast duck and sage and onions was succulently in the air, and there was a tankard of porter facing and winking amber bubbles beside her plate already.
“Drat!” Mrs. Tabbishaw took a gulp of the porter, and waddled to the door to scream: “Those blue feathers, where the deuce were they put? Pamela! Pamela! I say, where is that girl? My chest is wore out screeching for her. Where’s Pamela, Miss Trotter, dear?”
“Just a-setting down to bread-and-cheese in the scullery,” screamed a thin voice from the counting-house.
“Setting down! It’s like her impidence! Send for her this moment, Miss Trotter. Tell her she’s got to take my Lady Kilcroney’s blue feathers to Hertford Street this very minute. Tell her it’s pressing, Miss Trotter. And stay, look out my lady’s bill, which Miss Pounce promised me to have settled this while back, and it twelve pound odd. Tell the chit to ask her aunt for it. I’m none too fond of letting fine ladies’ bills run up, and it all for odds and ends that are scarce worth my doing. And, hark ye, tell her she’ll have to hurry back too, with that pinking to finish to-night for Mrs. Alderman Gruntle’s cradle, and her eleventh due any time.”
“For mercy’s sake, Aunt Lydia,” said Pamela Pounce, as much to that damsel’s surprise and annoyance she was ushered in upon her by Pompey, the black page. “Give me a bit of bread-and-butter, and a drink of Bohea, for I declare to Heaven I’m starving. And I’ve broughtyou the feathers. And they’re dyed a dreadful blue, I think; but once you give anything over to Mrs. Tabbishaw you get the mark of her paw upon it, and so I tell you.”
“’Twould be well if she put the mark of her paw upon you, miss, for your impidence. Bread-and-butter, quotha! And I’m sure ’tis a good thing if you are a trifle fined down from the gross size you was when you came back from Paris. ‘Dear me,’ says my lord’s new man to me, when he caught sight of you, ‘that’s a prize one! She’d make ten of you,’ he says; and him so genteel, I blushed to hear him.”
“Oh, that fellow!” Pounce the younger tossed her head; “waylaying me on the stairs to say I couldn’t be a Pounce, being so—well, so vastly different from you, Aunt Lydia. And begging to see me home; as if I’d let him—a valet, indeed!”
“Upon my word!” Lydia’s faded, sallow, pretty countenance went a trifle more sallow, and looked considerably less pretty. “Who’s to talk of impidence, I’d like to know, and what do you expect, miss?”
“Somebody considerably less like stripes and buttons. If I don’t get a gentleman one day, Aunt——”
“A gentleman? La, hear her!”
“I’ll go single, like yourself.”
Pamela’s full light grey eyes became abstracted. Anon, as she had turned in at the area railings, a young gentleman had dashed by her up the steps, and had set the knocker thundering against the panels of the hall door. As she had looked up he had looked down at her; and then he had smiled, and made a little gesture towards his hat, which if not the courtesy he would have paid to one of his own class, was nevertheless a genial, pleasant salute. She thought she had never seen so handsome a countenance; come under the gaze of such flashing dark eyes. There would be a lad for one who was lucky enough to be able to go in at the front door!
“And, indeed, miss——”
Lydia wheeled round, and perceiving Pompey lingering, all one grin, tweaked his wool.
“How dare you, you little blackamore! What are you doing here?”
“He’s waiting for orders to get me a cup of chocolate and a bit of cake, aren’t you, Pompey?” cried the quite audacious Pamela. “I’m sure my Lady’ll never miss it. And as soon as I’ve got it to give, I’ll give you a crown-piece, Pompey.”
She laughed on the little boy, and when Pamela Pounce laughed, she was something to look on; for her wide, fresh mouth curled so deliciously, and the corners of it went up so gaily, and she had such fine, white, even teeth, and as the dimples came and went, she gained such adorable little lines of fun about half-shut eyes, and the most engaging little crinkle in her cocked nose!
“La!” Mrs. Tabbishaw’s slavey cast herself into her aunt’s arm-chair, untied the ribbons of her wide straw hat, and flung it on the table. She ran her long fingers, surprisingly white in spite of their toil, through the roughened curls of her chestnut hair, stretched her long legs luxuriously, and contemplating the dust on her shabby shoes: “Thought I should have dropped, I did,” she cried, “when I come into Shepherd’s Market—three big feathers and two little ones, Aunt Lydia! And, la! the blue! ’Tis the peacockest vile colour, I ever—— And oh, here’s my Lady’s bill! And old Tabby must have it paid. She’s all swears and spits and fur-flying about it, as it is. ‘Get your aunt to pay,’ she says, ‘for her beggarly odds and ends that don’t bring an honest body a bit of worth while,’ and oh!” she yawned outrageously, “I’m to hurry back, no less, for Mrs. Alderman Gruntle’s eleventh is waiting on my pinking.”
“My lady’s account!” Lydia snatched the written sheet from her niece’s hand: “Of all the—there, that’swhat comes o’ dealing with them second-class shops. Mrs. Tabbishaw thinks my Lady can be treated like one of her City bodies, I declare.”
“I’m not to go back without the money,” said Pamela.
“Dear, to be sure! And my Lady so put about as never! What with her new hat being such a failure, and her out of sorts too, over her gown for the Birthday, she about to take up her first turn as Lady-in-Waiting into the bargain—Court friends being that spiteful, and my Lord having the ill luck at Whites, and Bellairs’ young nephew, Mr. Jocelyn, an audacious, gaming, young rascal, if ever I see one, as set on the dice as my Lord, and him but a beggar, so to speak. And my Lady paying his passage back to India twice over, to my certain knowledge, and him losing it on the green cloth within the hour! Well, my Lady’s done with him, that’s one good thing. ’Tain’t the moment for Tabbishaw, and so I tell you!”
“Why, la!” Pamela had a graceful, lazy mockery in her eye and voice which, however ill-placed in one of her humble station, somehow became her. “My Lord must have been, indeed, uncommon out of luck, if my Lady Kilcroney, her as every one knows is a-rolling in old Bellairs’ money, can’t pay twelve sovereigns to a poor shop in the City. But give me back the bill, Aunt, and I’ll tell Mrs. Tabbishaw she’s got to wait till my Lord casts a better tot.”
Lady Kilcroney’s maid gazed at her audacious relative as if deprived of speech. Nevertheless, in all her wrath there was a certain grudging admiration.
“The girl’s as insolent as if she’d been born a lady!”
The thought flashed across her mind as she whisked through the door brandishing the account. On the threshold the power of language returned to her.
“As if twelve sovereigns wasn’t as many farthings to one of my Lady’s wealth!”
Here she nearly cannoned against Pompey with a tray, and bidding him wait to be dealt with till his hands were empty of chocolate, disappeared, objurgating, down the passage.
Pamela was half-way through her second cup of chocolate, vastly refreshed and comforted by it, and the agreeable little cakes which had accompanied it, when her relative returned, with a red spot on either cheek bone, her nostrils dilated over panting breaths. She had all the air of one who emerges from a wrestle. The light of battle, was still in her eye, but of battle victorious.
“Here, miss,” she cried, “thirteen sovereigns to settle your Tabbishaw, and milady says you can keep the change. Gave me all sorts, she did, being, as who should know better than I, from early morning, my dear, in as peevish a temper as ever was. And—and what she can do in that way,” said Lydia, turning up her eyes, “you’d never believe if you hadn’t seen, the world being made up of Diddumses. There wasn’t an item along here she didn’t have her scratch at, and in the end, she says: ‘For Heaven’s sake stop talking!’ (That’s how poor servants is treated).
“‘You’ll have me reeling in the head,’ she says. ‘Take thirteen sovereigns from my purse, and get out of my room and don’t let me hear another word of that there maddening bill!’ And so you can keep the change, my love. And, if you’d believe it, just out of cussedness, the young gentleman what’s annoyed her so prodigious has the boldness to come knocking at our hall door and demanding urgent, through Mr. Blandfoot, the butler, a few moments’ conversation with her ladyship. My Lady having given orders that he was not to be admitted, the scamp sends for the butler—well, that’s about dished him, I can tell you!
“‘Tell him, Blandfoot,’ says my lady, ‘that I don’t give alms at the door. Tell him,’ she says, ‘to go and earn his living. I don’t hold,’ she says, ‘with able-bodied beggars!’”
“Oh,” said Pamela, her thoughts flying back with compassion to the dashing young gentleman on the doorstep, “what a cruel thing to say. ’Tis insulting misfortune.”
“Insulting fiddlesticks! Here, hasten, you baggage, or you’ll lose your good place, and I’ve had enough of you for one day, I can tell you that.”
“And what a darling, sweet auntie you are!” said the second Miss Pounce, as she tied on her shepherdess hat with knowing little peeps at the mirror. “’Tain’t any wonder I love you. Ta-ta.”
She dropped the sovereigns into her worn reticule, kissed her hand from the door in sarcastic farewell, and departed.
With fourteen shillings and twopence to the good in her pocket, Pamela felt a singular sense of independence. Instead of hurrying back into the heat, crowd, and toil of Cheapside, she turned her steps towards Hyde Park, the green boughs of which seemed to beckon to her from the top of the street.
“I’ll go and sit under the trees,” thought the girl. “An idea for a hat has come into my mind, and I’ll work it out and let Mrs. Alderman Gruntle and her cradle and the pinking go to the deuce.”
She found a retired spot in the shade, and, the turf being dry and inviting, stretched herself luxuriously at full length to stare upwards at the odd little triangles and stars of blue sky visible through the interlacing leaves above her.
Composing her hat with the zest of a poet his verses, she lay at ease, in great content, when she was startled by the sound of rapid footsteps on the sward.
She sat up and beheld a young man, a very fine and modish-looking young gentleman indeed, who advanced with great strides, brought himself to a sudden halt within the shady little dell, and casting swift looks from side to side, as if to make sure he was not observed, flung his hat on the ground and stood staring.
Pamela, shielded from observation by a clump of bushes, watched with a sudden and inexplicable feeling of apprehension, which grew as she caught sight of a drawn countenance, deathly pale.
“For sure,” thought she, “the poor gentleman’s desperate!”
The next instant she sprang to her feet with a scream; he had drawn a pistol from his breast pocket and, with an odd jerk, almost as if forced by some malevolent power which he could not withstand, raised it to his temple.
Pamela was one of those rare beings in whom swift wits unite with swift action. She hurled herself upon the would-be suicide and wrenched the weapon from his hand. For a strange moment they stood facing each other, eye into eye. It seemed to her as if the whole world held nothing but those mad eyes of his, dilated, starting, haunted; the pupils were contracting and expanding in the violet irises as with some dreadful pulse of his heart. Suddenly his whole being relaxed; he smiled.
“Good heavens,” she cried, “’tis the young gentleman on the doorstep!”
“And you,” said he, “are the young lady in the area. If the next world’s as odd as this, ’twill be a vastly comic place.”
“Oh!” cried Pamela, who did not at all like this reference to Eternity. Still less did she like the manner in which he put out his hand towards the pistol.
“By your leave, my dear. My property, I believe?”
She strove to avoid his grasp; she fought to keep the weapon in her hand. “Why, what farce is this?” he exclaimed, laughing. “What do you imagine, my good girl? May not an actor practise his greatest scene without——? Why, what prodigious nonsense have you got into your pretty head? The things’s not even loaded!”
“Ah, but what did you say yourself just now?”
She was a vigorous creature, and terror lent her strength. She remained in possession of the dangerous implement.
“What did I say? I merely tried the effect of my most telling speech upon you—with fine result. If my public are as impressionable——”
Once more he stretched out his hand, but, leaping from him, the girl raised the pistol, aimed at the nearest bush, pulled the trigger, and fired.
As the reverberations died away she turned a face, drained of colour but triumphant, upon him.
“So much for your story, Mr. Actor!” cried she.
“Why, you’re too quick for me!” he answered, with a moody change, thrust his hands into his pockets, began to pace the dell backwards and forwards before her, kicking his hat each time he passed it.
She thought that he was no more than a boy, for all his manly growth, and her heart went out to him.
“Here, give me the pistol,” he said. “Tush, child, ’tis safe enough for the moment. We’ll be having the park-keeper upon us to see who’s been murdered. Let us look innocent.”
“Oh, oh,” she shuddered, “if I had not been there!”
“Nay, my dear, I’m in no mood to thank you, I protest. Yet ’tis something to have had a vision of a pretty face and a kind, womanly spirit at the last.”
“There you go again! Sir, sir!”
She surrendered the smoking pistol, and, as he slipped it into his pocket:
“Farewell, my dear,” said he.
“Ah, no!” She clutched his arm by both hands. “You shall not go till you have promised me—promised me on your honour as a gentleman to spare yourself.”
“I could do that, on my honour,” he answered her; “but that I will not quibble before such true eyes.Nevertheless it is to spare myself that I seek death. You bid me on my honour. ’Tis because I cannot live dishonoured that I hold this pistol to my temples. ’Tis not that I don’t love life as well as another man, or better. ’Fore Heaven, it is because I have loved life too well. Had I as much as a guinea in my pocket I would have defied Fate. When I stood on those steps and rapped that knocker a while ago, I swear I had as little thought of blowing my brains out as you had. When you and I smiled at each other I thought this world a very good place, I do assure you. That woman in her fine house yonder, rolling in luxury, with her lap dog and her chocolate and her black page, her jewels and her laces, her silks and her satins; all in her cushions; that woman, I say, who finds the Bellairs’ money of so vast a use to spend, might have given me a ten-pound note out of her store. When all’s said and done, I’m the only Bellairs left. And, if but a nephew by marriage, nevertheless the last kin of her old Nabob. Ten pounds I asked of her—that contemptible sum! And what did I receive? The vilest insult, through the most insulting medium. Odds my life, when I think of it——”
He clenched his hands.
Pamela stood, reflecting profoundly, one needle-marked finger to her lip, her white brow drawn together under the shade of her hat.
Ten pounds to save a man’s honour. It seemed indeed a strangely small sum! As if he read her thought, he broke forth:
“I dreamt last night, three times over, that I tossed a double six at tric-trac, and ’tis the sixteenth of July and I am twenty-six. My Lord Sanquhar promised to give me my revenge at the Six Bells at six of the clock. ’Twas such a conjunction of luck as could not fail. I would have won back my I.O.U.’s. I would have returned my Lady Kilcroney the passage money to India. She wants to ship me to India, my dear, the inconvenient poor relation. Ah, she need not fear. I shall beg from her no more.What a farce it has all been! ’Tis time to put an end to it. Bless you for your sweet looks, my pretty child. Think of me only as one who, after life’s fitful fever, sleeps well. Aha! I shall sleep better I dare say, than my Lady Kilcroney when she has read the letter I sent to her anon!”
“One moment, Mr. Bellairs, since that’s your name,” said Pamela Pounce, with her wide, lovely smile. She dived into her reticule, and began to gather the coins together with counting digits. “If you’ll condescend to borrow of a person who goes in by the area gates, here are thirteen sovereigns at your service. I’ve just had a long bill paid me. And, oh,” cried Pamela, suddenly and unexpectedly bursting into tears, “I wish they were three hundred!”
“Gracious heavens!” said the young gentleman.
“If you don’t take them I’ll never know another happy moment,” sobbed Pamela. “Oh, how could I? Oh, sir, don’t say ‘No,’ because I am just a poor girl.”
“Nay then. I won’t say ‘No.’ Upon my soul, I don’t care if you go in at the coal hole, you’ve the finest spirit and the prettiest face, ay, and the warmest heart I’ve ever met in woman.”
He held out his hand, and she put the money into it. He hesitated then, and looked at her; and perhaps because of some warning that flashed through her wet eyes, or perhaps because of some innate spring of good breeding in him, he only kissed the hand that had been strong to save him.
“Pray, what o’clock is it?” He struck his waistcoat, where a black ribbon made pretence for a missing watch. “My time piece has gone the way of most of my possessions.”
“’Tis past five,” she said, “by the shadows.”
The country girl had not forgotten her lore.
“Past five,” cried he, “and I due at the Six Bells! If you will move a step, my dear, I will pick up my hat.”
“Allow me, sir,” said she. “Hats are my business.”
She lifted the felt from the grass, dusted it with her arm, pushed out the dent where he had kicked it, and gave each corner a perfectly unnecessary twist.
“I’m in the millinery,” said she, as she handed it to him.
“I thought there was something remarkably elegant about your headgear,” he observed. “And pray oblige me with your address, that I may know where to return my loan, for the conviction grows in me that I am destined to win and to live.”
She knew that sense of victory; it was akin to the conviction of her own confident soul; but while she smiled she pondered. Then she said demurely:
“My name is Pamela Pounce, sir. If you will inquire for me, care of my aunt, Miss Lydia Pounce, own woman to my Lady Kilcroney, ’twill be the safest address.”
He gave her a quaint look, bowed profoundly, and hurried away.
“The safest address,” he murmured, as he went. “Ah, Pamela, you’re one of the wise virgins!”
Then he laughed.
“Farce did I call it? And I set for the blackest tragedy! Nay, ’tis a mighty delicate comedy, and we’re but at the first act of it.”
Pamela stood gazing after the retreating figure.
“Now,” said she to herself, “I have the choice of three roads. I must go—to Bridewell, to the river, or to Aunt Lydia. It had better be to Aunt Lydia.”
“Stripes and buttons,” who had not forgotten how the younger Miss Pounce had snubbed him on their first meeting, informed her that she might “hunt up the old girl for herself”; her ladyship having gone out her ladyship’s woman, if not in her own apartment, might be found in her ladyship’s chamber.
And here indeed, with a not altogether comfortably beating heart, Pamela confronted her aunt.
Lydia stared, as if beholding a ghost.
“La, whatever’s to do?”
“The money’s gone,” said Pamela with great firmness.
She had made up her mind from the first that nothing should induce her to betray either the unfortunate young gentleman or her own rash interference with his concerns.
“Gone? Gone, miss?”
Pamela opened her reticule and mutely took out from it a vinaigrette, three pennies, a sixpence, and a pocket handkerchief, and showed the remaining vacuum to Lydia’s horrified eyes.
“But how in the name of goodness could such a thing happen?”
“You lend me the money, aunt, and I’ll pay you back faithful, and I’ll trim you all your hats for three years for nothing into the bargain.”
But with an action of little bony hands which typified her patronymic, Miss Pounce seized the reticule from her niece. She shook it, and tested it; she held it up to the light, she pulled its lining out. Then she tried the clasp, which fastened with a snap as uncompromising as that which now closed her own tight jaws.
Still, without speaking, she looked volumes at the milliner’s assistant.
“I declare as I’m a living woman, aunt,” asseverated the sinner, “that I have no more notion what’s become of the gold than you have yourself. And all I can tell you is”—her courage rose with the sense of this perfect adherence to the truth—“that as I left this house it was jingling in that bag, and when last I looked there wasn’t one left. And if you don’t come to my aid—why, you know what Madame Tabbishaw is? She’ll always say I stole them. Come, you’ll lend me the money, I know you will, for father’s sake, and thename’s sake. We Pounces ain’t never been called thieves, aunt.”
Her voice shook, for suddenly the word stung her, unrepentant though she remained.
“Lend you!” Miss Lydia let herself fall into my lady’s own rosy-cushioned chair and broke into piercing remonstrance.
How in the name of goodness was she to find such a sum? Did Pamela think she was made of gold? Here was a return for all her kindness! A girl who was so wickedly careless—likely to keep her promises, indeed! She that ought to be racking her brains to pay back her dear auntie for all her sacrifices.
“Thirty pounds, miss, it cost me to send you to Paris, and you to be so unprincipled as to let Madame Eglantine’s husband take to ogling you. And it’s paying me back you ought to be, instead of having the brazenness to ask me for thirteen pounds. And indeed, miss, it’s not thirteen pounds I’ll give you; no, not a farthing more than the sum of the bill. You that might have had fourteen and tuppence!”
She suddenly broke off, sat up straight, and pointed a finger at her niece with a sharp throw.
“Where did you go to, miss, when you left this house? Straight, now! What? You went and sat under the trees in the park? Upon my word, I never! And how long might you have been a-sitting there? You don’t know. Better and better. You went to sleep, miss, with that there bag full of gold. Oh, you——”
Pamela drooped her head, receiving the indictment as with the humility of a guilty conscience, though she was considerably relieved by the solution which the older Miss Pounce had found for herself.
Suddenly Lydia bounced out of her seat.
“Mercy on us, here’s my Lady!” cried she. And then, with a scream: “Mercy on us!” she cried again. “What in the world has happened?”
Pamela stared. My Lady Kilcroney it was indeed, to judge by a fine feathered hat and a delicate flutter of muslins, but a vastly different Lady Kilcroney from the charming, happy little lady of Pamela’s remembrance. A small figure with a stricken face crawled into the room, and, as Lydia rushed forward, nearly swooned against her.
“My Lady, my Lady, what is it?” cried the maid in genuine concern, guiding her mistress’s form to the chair she had herself but just vacated.
“Oh, oh, oh!” moaned my Lady. “Oh, in the name of Heaven, send for my Lord? Oh, Lydia, the letter, the letter!”
Both women then saw that in a little gloved hand my Lady Kilcroney was clutching an open sheet. Lydia took it into her own grasp and glanced at it.
“Mercy on us!” then cried she for the third time. “That dratted young man you’ve been so good to! Well, if ever was anything so ungrateful! To go and put an end to himself, just to spite you! Never you take on, my Lady, he’s no great loss, I protest. A good riddance, say I.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” Kitty Kilcroney sat up and wrung her hands. “Was ever any woman so punished for a fit of temper? Oh, Lydia! Oh! I shall never smile again! ’Twas my Lord being so late in yestereven from White’s, mad-stupid with his losses. And, oh, the night I had, trying to show him the error of his ways and the vast folly of not letting bad be when the luck’s against him. And him going off in a huff, God knows where, before I’d as much as swallowed my chocolate! And Mrs. Mirabel’s hat coming on the top of it, and it is a sight to frighten the crows after all my trouble. And my gown for Her Majesty’s birthday the wrong yellow, and no time to get another! And for the wretched boy to come to me then, with his horrid tale of the dice and the cards, as bad as my Lord’s own, him without a farthing but my bounty!Oh, oh, ’twas true I insulted him! What’s that you say?Who are you, pray?”
She had dropped her cries of anguish to speak with the irritability of the afflicted.
“I am your woman Lydia’s niece.”
Pamela went down on her knees before the little distracted lady, and spoke very gently and deliberately as to a child; and the while she spoke Kitty’s eyes widened on her smiling countenance as if they beheld an angel’s.
“Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs has not committed suicide, my Lady Kilcroney, nor will he do so, because I took the pistol out of his grasp. Yes, my Lady, I, with these hands. And I gave him the thirteen pounds you sent me to pay Mrs. Tabbishaw’s bill. Thirteen pounds! And he went away to gamble with them at the ‘Six Bells,’ and he was quite sure that he was going to win all his money back from Lord Sanquhar with the help of them, and I am quite sure, too, for him. Says he ‘My luck is turned.’ And——”
She was interrupted.
“And that’s what happened to my Lady’s money. Oh, you deceitful wretch! Oh, you vile young thief!”
Lydia forgot everything but her indignation. Her gimlet tones might have disturbed the dead, but neither my Lady nor Pamela paid the smallest heed to her, for Kitty Kilcroney had flung herself upon the young milliner’s neck, and, shedding tears of joy, called her the most incomparable girl, the noblest creature, the nearest thing to a seraph that had ever walked a world of woe.
They were both as keen of wit one as the other, and it was wonderful how, with scarce a question and answer, the whole story came out.
“You turned into the park, you did not know why? Ah, but I know why! ’Twas Providence, child. A most merciful act of Providence! And you saw his desperate face? Oh, I can scarce bear it! You wrenched the pistol from his very hand? Oh, if I live to be ahundred, how can I be grateful enough to Heaven and to you? Rash and unfortunate young man! You gave him thirteen pounds? He only asked me for ten. Oh, where did you say he had gone to? I must send after him. Lydia, bid the carriage round again. I must go myself. And you shall go with me, child. Oh, you shall indeed!”
“Since her Ladyship’s in such a fine mood of generosity,” cried Lydia, who occasionally presumed on fourteen years’ service, “perhaps she’ll pay Mrs. Tabbishaw’s bill over again? Or else my niece will be getting into trouble, and she needn’t look to me to get her out of it, lying to my very face!”
Kitty was standing before her mirror, happily setting her flounces into trim, like a ruffled bird its feathers.
“And why did you never tell me you had such a niece, Lydia, I should like to know? And what do you mean by burying a fine young woman like that with a creature like Tabbishaw?Ugh!”
My Lady’s nerves were pardonably on edge. The shriek that escaped her as my Lord Kilcroney marched into the room was as piercing as Lydia’s own.
“Good heavens, my Lord, you’ll be the death of me! You should have married Susan Verney, you should indeed, or someone with a cast-iron constitution. Stay——”
Kitty’s frowns were never of long duration, and she was in no mood for frowning! “You’ve come in the very nick of time, my dearest love. Do I not hear your coach without? Hasten, hasten to the tavern of the ‘Six Bells.’ Pray, where is it, my dear? Oh, doubtless you know, dearest Denis. And you will ask for Jocelyn Bellairs. You know, Denis, poor young Bellairs?”
“Faith, then, I’ve been beforehand with you, me darling!” said my Lord.
He was running Pamela’s straight young figure up and down with the eye of the connoisseur as he stood there, a handsome, devil-may-care gentleman; one who patronisedso superlative a tailor, wore such fine lawns and laces, and had withal so monstrous elegant a frame whereon to hang them that a trifle of a loop hanging here or a button loose there merely pointed to a genteel carelessness.
“Faith, I’ve been beforehand with you! Meeting my Lord Sanquhar anon, he took me to the ‘Six Bells,’ where he had a rendezvous with yourpooryoung relative, Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs. And bejabers,” cried my Lord, with his favourite Irish oath, “if that young rascal hasn’t cleaned both me and my Lord Sanquhar as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.”
He paused; the investigating eye fixed itself with a guilty twinkle upon his Kitty’s countenance, where a mixture of strange emotions were struggling for expression. And suddenly Lydia clapped her hands and broke into eldritch laughter. Whereat my Lady also made her choice of emotions, and laughed too.
“And troth, mavourneen,” said my Lord, delighted to find the situation so unexpectedly agreeable, “I’m here to say ’twas you were in the right of it the live-long night. There’s not a ha’porth of good in trying to force fortune when the jade has made up her mind to flout ye. And I’ll take your advice, me darling, and go with you into the country the moment we get those devils of I O U’s settled, till it’s time for you to abandon me for that dashed damnation Court of yours!”
“Oh, I can’t scold you!” cried his wife. “But, oh, whydidyou abandon me all day? ’Twas cruel unkind of you, and I dare swear if you’d been here ’twould never have happened; for you’d not see a fellow dicer go wanting for a ten-pound note, my Lord, if I know you! Oh, read that letter, Denis, and you’ll understand. And if it had not been for Lydia’s niece here, admirable girl! who took the pistol out of his very hand in the park, and gave him her employer’s money—oh, if it were not for this noble, clever young woman, where should I be now?”
“You needn’t worry about the bill, aunt,” said Pamela,with the perfect composure that compelled that person’s disapproving admiration. “I gave your address to Mr. Bellairs, and, as he will certainly be punctual with repayment, her Ladyship will perhaps kindly allow me to remain until he calls with the money?”
There was nothing my Lady Kilcroney would have refused Miss Pounce the younger at that moment, and the milliner’s assistant proceeded to add to her obligations.
“If your Ladyship would trust me with the retrimming of Miss Mirabel’s hat meanwhile, I make bold to say I could alter it to your satisfaction——”