CHAPTER IXIn which Miss Pamela Pounce has done withLove
In which Miss Pamela Pounce has done withLove
Pamela Pouncewas nothing if not a business woman, as her history will have shown. She had not only those valuable intuitions which divine the public taste, she had the still more priceless quality of inspiring it.
Before she had completed her first year with Madame Mirabel, the millinery department had become the mainstay of the house; and Pamela felt herself in a position to hint to her employer how very much more it would be to their mutual advantage that she should be given a proprietary share in the business, than that she should set up for herself.
Set up for herself! The mere thought of such a catastrophe put Madame Mirabel in such a flutter that she had to be revived with ratafia on the spot. There was no concession that she would not have been willing to make to prevent it.
Pamela had prepared a scheme, which was just, fair-minded and practical, like herself. She was willing to invest a thousand pounds for the development of the department, and continue to direct the thriving showroom, if Madame Mirabel would admit her as partner with a right to half profits.
A sketch of an agreement was drafted between them, drawn up by Pamela herself. Fortified by this document she sought her redoubtable aunt.
“Now, Aunt Lydia,” said she, “here’s the opportunity of your life. You lend me a thousand pounds, and I’llgive you ten per cent. for three years and pay you back at the end of it with a bit over. And if I drop down dead between, you can come on Madame Mirabel.”
Lydia was no fool. She was as fond of money as only such a nature can be, and had indeed gathered together quite a substantial hoard in her long years of lucrative employment. She made all the difficulties, of course, which the circumstances demanded, but Pamela, who saw the gleam of greed in her eye, knew that her cause was won from the outset.
She good-humouredly consented to sign the stringent document which Lydia thought necessary for her safety; and to obtain Madame Mirabel’s signature to it also. The transaction was concluded without much more delay, and Miss Pamela Pounce passed from the position of underling to that of partner.
The matter was, needless to say, kept private between Madame Mirabel and herself. It is never wholesome for the reputation of a business concern to have these conveniences of management discussed; and, for the mere sake of discipline where large numbers are employed and easy jealousies excited, no change affecting authority can be acknowledged.
Miss Smithson and Miss Popple, therefore, while unable to blind themselves to the fact that their aged employer’s infatuation for that scheming Miss Pounce was more lamentably evident than ever, still buoyed themselves up with the hope that her true character would be revealed before the eyes of the too-trusting dame.
Miss Sarah Vibart’s wedding order; bride and bridesmaids hats—Jane was chief bridesmaid, an advertisement which, as Pamela herself said, would have been worth paying for ten times over—brought a rush of newclientèleto the Bond Street house. Mr. Walsingham’s wedding was the event of June—luckily timed before the unexpected death of the Marquis of Harborough—and it is scarcely too much to say that the first thought of everylady of fashion who received a ticket of invitation was: “Pounce shall make me a new hat!”
Lydia, who kept a close tongue where her nest-egg was concerned, began to unbend considerably towards her niece. Nothing succeeds like success. You could scarce have dragged five shillings out of her, had the girl been lingering on at Tabbishaw’s, but, as matters stood, my Lady’s Abigail felt “warm in her inwards,” every time she thought of that thousand pounds which was so likely to bring a blessing upon her high sense of family feeling.
She took to inviting Pamela to a dish of chocolate in the sewing parlour at Hertford Street of a Saturday afternoon, promising her also a plate of those queen cakes “which my Lady’s still-room maid do turn out rather well, and which you’re so fond of, my dear.”
These invitations Pamela accepted with increasing frequency; and if Lydia happened to be washing her Ladyship’s best lace caps or ironing out her ribbons, it was only becoming, from a niece to an aunt, that she should lend a hand, particularly considering the money obligations between them.
But Pamela’s real reason for presenting herself at Hertford Street lay so deep down that it could scarcely be said that she acknowledged it even to herself.
She was hankering for news of Jocelyn Bellairs; and at last, by an artful twist of the conversation, Miss Lydia was induced to drop a stray word in connection with him: “that rubbish! Her Ladyship had got a place for him at Bristol, with an India merchant,” and she hoped to goodness he’d keep steady, and they’d hear no more of him.
That was the first item of information which Pamela gathered for her starving heart. She tried to tell herself what a relief it was not to have him hanging about, and how splendid that he should have work, and how sure she was that he, so clever, would now make a way for himself, even as she had done. But it was poor comfort!
After two Saturdays wasted, she once more heard the beloved name mentioned: this time again in no uncertain tones of condemnation.
My Lady was so put about. Lydia hadn’t known her so upset since the day my Lord was took up as a highwayman; and she the widow Bellairs and he Denis O’Hara.
“That audacious young villain! He’s been making a regular popinjay of himself at Bath. There’s my Lady Nan Day, recovering from the measles, writes: ‘Your nephew, my dear, your nephew is the rage here; driving the most elegant curricle you ever saw with a pair of bloods, which, my Philip says, make his mouth water. Has he come into a fortune or not?’ writes my Lady Nan—and she was always a spiteful one—‘for he will need it,’ says she. ‘We was all mortal sorry that his horse, what he set such store by, failed at the Spring races.’ My Lady has wrote to him,” pursued Lydia, her green eyes maliciously fixed upon her niece, “to explain, for goodness gracious sake, ‘for unless he’s robbed the mail, Lydia,’ says she, ‘or been more successful on the highway than my poor Denis’—and that was what put it into my head, Pamela, my love—‘I’m very much afraid,’ she says, ‘’tis his master’s strong box he’s been at, and that will spell prison,’ she says, ‘and the name so well known.’ Oh, the shame of it!”
“Shame indeed!” cried Pamela, her glance flashing back at Lydia’s taunt; she knew very well what gave such extra zest to these tales; but she, Pamela, was not one to wear her heart on her sleeve for an old magpie to peck at.
On the following Saturday she saw from the first moment she crossed the threshold that Lydia was big with news, unpleasant enough to make her bursting to tell it.
Pamela was past mistress of exasperating tactics herself, and there was some very pretty fencing between the two, by which Lydia was forced to restrain herold-maidish desire to plant a dagger in the bosom of the younger maid. Pamela had so much to discourse about on the new Turban mode, and the last letter from Madame Eglantine to Madame Mirabel.
“Poor thing, she’s in all the states, what with these new dreadful doings and the insolence of the people, and Ildefonse letting his hair grow and going out to clubs o’ night to talk blasphemy. Ugh!” said Pamela, “I never could abide that man.” And my Lady Amelia Vibart, haggling over the wedding bills, ’twas a scandal! And had Aunt Lydia heard the last horrid tit-bit about my Lord Harborough and Miss Falcon? And wouldn’t it be a pity if Mr. Walsingham were to miss coming in for the title after all? ’Twas said my Lord Harborough was mad set on marrying her, when there wouldn’t be a mite of reason why she shouldn’t have a brat to put Mr. W.’s nose out of joint!
Lydia was still seeking for an interval in which to thrust, when My Lady’s bell rang with the double pull which indicated that Miss Pounce had better hurry herself, or my Lady would know the reason why.
Pamela smiled to herself as the door was banged behind her Aunt; then she sighed.
Aunt Lydia was a tabby if ever there was one, but oh, dear, what dreadful bit of tattle was she bound to hear before the evening was out? And oh, dear, what a pity it was that things went so contrary in this world, and that poor girls had hearts at all!
She had hardly had time pensively to nibble through a queen cake—for Pamela was much too sensible to let any sentimentality interfere with her appetite—when Lydia reappeared, and, with much flouncing and head tossing, informed her that, it being a dratted nuisance that people wouldn’t mind their own business, it had come to her Ladyship’s ears, through Pompey, that Pamela was present in the house. Nothing would serve her Ladyship but that she must come up at once about a “head” for to-night’s concert.
Pamela shook the crumbs from her apron and rose with the imperturbable alacrity which it was her pride to bring to all affairs of business.
The day was hot, and my Lady’s big bed-chamber a delicious cave of coolness after the highly-elevated atmosphere of Lydia’s own parlour. The amber curtains were drawn before the big windows; there was a shining sea of parquet floor on which delicate French furniture made here and there an attractive island. An immense bunch of roses on the spindle-legged dressing-table just caught the breeze from the wide-open window, and wafted fragrance. My Lady herself, extended in a vapour of white muslin on an amber satin couch, lazily fanning herself, was as agreeable a spectacle as any heated young woman with refined tastes could hope to gaze upon.
“Sit down, Miss Pounce,” said Kitty affably. “(Lydia, get out the bandbox with the saffron head.) Now, my dear, good, kind creature, look at it. Yes! I know. ’Tis the sweetest thing I’ve laid eyes on this season, but conceive my horror, Miss Pounce, when I heard anon that Her Majesty was to be present at the Duchess of Portland’s to-night. Conceive my horror! I saw myself with the Queen’s eyes! I tell you, Miss Pounce, my days at Court would have been counted.”
Here Lydia was heard to murmur, with the familiarity of long service, and a backward scratch at her niece that she was tired telling her Ladyship that the last year’s head from Madame Eglantine, which her Ladyship had never worn but the once, would be the very thing for her to wear to-night, “and a genteel, tasty, Frenchy confection it was,” which her Ladyship wouldn’t better not if she ransacked Bond Street.
“I tell you, you perverse piece,” cried her mistress, fanning herself with an energy calculated to make even the spectator feel hot, “that turn myself into a frump with a last year’s mode, I’ll not do, even to please the Queen. Pamela, child, I’ve set my heart on the saffron head. I vow and protest those gold ospreyswith the cluster of saffron roses and the little wreath of green leaves between, I vow and protest ’tis the very dream to go with my India gold-embroidered gown. ’Tis there on the bed, my dear, as fine as a cobweb! There’ll not be another like it in the room. And there’s never anything so elegant as white and gold of a hot night. With my dark eyes, Pamela, and the gold ospreys—oh, but the gold ospreys, so airy, so fly-away! And Her Majesty who will not even tolerate feathers! I’d have worn my high band of diamonds—pshaw! it grieves me to the very soul! What can you suggest?”
Pamela put her finger to her lip and corrugated her white brow in the profoundest thought. Kitty held her breath as she watched her. The fate of nations might have been hanging between them. Then said the milliner decisively, “I see nothing for it. We can’t do it, my Lady. The ospreys will have to go.” Then, as Kitty’s face fell, she added briskly, “But there! I often say to myself, what seems a trial is a blessing. Why should not your Ladyship set a fashion? It came to me just as I looked at your Ladyship’s gown and the fairy elegance of that India embroidery, and your Ladyship wears a wreath so becoming; wouldn’t gold grapes and green leaves look tasty, bunches each side with the di’mond bandeau to draw them together?”
“Pounce, you’re a genius!” Kitty dropped her fan to clap her hands.
At the same moment my Lord came into the room and smiled to see her look so pleased.
“Faith, and I’ve come at the right tick of the clock, I think—morning to you, Miss Pounce. You and my Lady and your fripperies, ’tis the business of the world, ain’t it?” He rubbed his hands and hemmed. “By your bright face, I’ve come at the right tick, Kitty, me darling, to ask you for a proof of your good nature.”
“A proof of my good nature, my Lord? So long as ’tis nothing to go against my good sense.”
Kitty was always ready to oblige, in reason, but she had her wits about her.
“Stay, child,” she cried, as Pamela prepared discreetly to withdraw. “It can but take a moment. We must send Pompey for the grapes, to Bond Street, and I vow that no hand but yours shall fasten them in my curls. Your niece will write a note, Lydia, at my escritoire, and see that the black brat runs. They might send a choice of sizes, what think you, Pamela?Oh, what is it, my Lord? You men are so impatient.”
“Why, Kitty,” said her husband, coming close to the sofa, on which his lively little spouse now sat very straight, gesticulating among the mother-of-pearl shimmer of her cushions. “The matter concerns you, really, more than meself. At least, it concerns your family. Poor young Bellairs has been arrested for debt. Nipped from me very side, my dear, as we came out of the Cocoa Tree together, a while ago, by a rascally pimp!”
“Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs? Do you refer to Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs?” asked my Lady Kilcroney, becoming rigid.
Pamela’s quill, scratching wildly across a great sheet of paper, was arrested in mid flourish.
There was a small unpleasant pause, broken by a loud sniff from Lydia.
Then my Lady said: “Indeed. I understood the young gentleman was at Bristol.”
My Lord was not misled by the quietness of her tone. “Ah, God help you, Kitty,” he exclaimed, flustered. “Sure you never believed you could keep a lad of that kidney with his nose in a desk? Didn’t he off with himself with his first three months’ salary, and hasn’t his luck been the talk of Bath, barring the let-down of a sorrel filly at the point-to-point? And sure, if it hadn’t been that the dice has been going against him the last three or four days——” he broke off.
Kitty sat like an image of scorn; and my Lord, seeing that his mission did not seem likely to be blessed with success, proceeded in nettled tones:
“The long and the short of it is, I’ve promised Jocelyn we’d see to it. ’Tis only a matter of ninety-seven pound ten, when all is said and done. And that to a livery stableman.”
He drew a crumpled sheet of blue paper from his pocket as he spoke. Kitty unexpectedly stretched out her hand; with a sigh of relief he put it into it.
“I knew you’d be the first to say it ought to be paid, my dearest life.”
“Certainly, it ought to be paid, Denis.”
“You wouldn’t wish the poor dear lad—and him as pleasant over the green cloth as ever I met—to be penned up in the sponging house. Besides which,” added Kilcroney, in imprudent reminiscence, “don’t I know, isn’t it the mischief once you get into one of those holes! ’Tis like a sheep in a ditch: the sky is black with crows after you in a twinkling.”
“Very sad,” said my Lady.
She tendered the blue paper back with an indifferent gesture.
“Have you despatched Pompey, Lydia?”
Lord Kilcroney put his hands behind him.
“Nay! nay!” cried he, with the uneasy boisterousness of one who would force the issue as a joke. “’Tis your business, me darling.”
“I thought you wanted it paid, my Lord?”
“And maybe,” cried he, laughing yet more violently, “you think I can pay it?”
He began pulling his pockets out.
“Sure that would be the joke entirely! I’m cleaned through. There ain’t a single chinker left in my purse, Kitty, and it’s the lovely red silk one you made me yourself last Christmas. Troth! I am this moment what they say Nature abhors——”
“And what’s that, Sir?”
“A vacuum, my love,” quoth my Lord, with a great guffaw.
Kitty contemplated him a moment, icily. Then she said: “All my sympathies are with Nature.”
Kilcroney reddened, shrugged his shoulders, and replacing the linings of his pockets in their normal position, thrust his hands into them, and sauntered out of the room.
There was nothing further to be done; the moment was unpropitious.
Kitty balled the blue sheet with an angry hand, and flung it after him, and Pamela, who had never finished that phrase of directions, rose from theescritoireand picked it up.
The action was performed with so much composure that it seemed but the natural outcome of her good manners.
“Don’t give it back to me, child!” exclaimed Kitty with tartness. “Throw it into the waste paper basket. Have you wrote your message?”
Pamela walked back to the writing-table.
“I was un-bethinking myself, your Ladyship, that it would be better for me to run back myself, and choose the sprays. Miss Smithson, the person in charge of the office of a Saturday, is that disagreeable, she’d send the wrong sets on purpose. It won’t take me half an hour, my Lady.”
She tore the sheet she had begun writing upon in two, and dropped it into the elegant little gilt be-ribboned basket, which was the repository of my Lady Kilcroney’s scraps. She made a brisk curtsy and stepped out of the room.
Even Lydia’s sharp eyes failed to perceive that she had not thrown away the livery-man’s crumpled account; that she had thrust into her kerchief.
Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs was not destined to spend the Sabbath in a sponging house, for he was released on Saturday night, someone having settled Mr. Thomas Jobbin’s livery-stable account, before any other of his creditors had had wind of his arrest.
Now the young gentleman had stepped into liberty in a very bad humour. He had no doubt but that he was once again indebted to my Lady Kilcroney in the matter, but, like many another spendthrift, not having the smallest claim upon her generosity he considered that it ought to be unlimited in his regard, and felt himself injured that it should go no further. He had come to view himself as having a right to a share of old Bellairs’s money. Wasn’t he, split him, the last of the name? Now, was this a way to treat the only living representative of a Nabob who had left his widow the command of millions? Just the debt writ off, and not a farthing over to jingle in your pocket, or a question what was to become of a fellow! “Never you turn a hair,” had said my Lord. “I’ll be back again in a jiffy to set you free, and we’ll have a jolly night of it while my Lady’s at her caterwaul.”
He had expected no less of one who, like Denis Kilcroney, was profiting not only of his own uncle’s hoard, but of that old gentleman’s tactful demise.
But instead of the promised re-appearance a message had been flung in at him, left by a lackey towards seven of the clock; my Lord was mortal sorry, and he sent a bottle of gin and some lemons.
And at ten the prisoner had been told he was free.
Mr. Bellairs had hot blood, and it was all afire. And the mischief was in it that he might not even have the satisfaction of calling out the dashed Irishman for his insolence, since he couldn’t help being under an obligation.
He avoided the Cocoa Tree that evening and plunged into lower haunts, where, not in the very best company, play ran very nearly as high as at the Mayfair clubs.
He was an audacious, reckless player, but in the main a successful one. To-night there was something almost fantastic in his luck. He went home in the blue of the morning with his pockets full of gold; his resentful mood was rather augmented by his good fortune than otherwise.
Nor was he in a whit better temper when some five hours later he swaggered out into the Green Park, shaven to velvet, his sparrow-tail coat, his high close-fitting boots, his tight buckskin breeches and their bunches of ribbon, his short waistcoat, and his big buckled hat, the very last thing in manly modes. It was his intention to call upon my Lady Kilcroney in Hertford Street and repay her the paltry ninety-seven pounds ten which stood between him and a meeting with my Lord.
Miss Pamela Pounce, coming from church and stepping in the same direction—she had grown singularly attentive to Aunt Lydia—came plump upon the Beau as their paths converged at the Piccadilly gate. His dark face kindled while her blooming cheek grew pale.
“La, to be sure, sir, who’d ha’ thought of meeting you?”
“Why, and is it you, Pamela?”
His eye ran her up and down. She was clad in shimmering blue-lilac taffety, and her wide-brimmed hat, of the kind which Sir Joshua had set the rage, was trimmed with broad silk ribbons of the same shade. She wore a plain muslin kerchief; a black ribbon tied back her unpowdered chestnut curls. She made a very pleasant picture; all, with perfect taste, within a certain modest compass becoming her station.
There was no mistaking the emotion evoked in her by the sight of him. Her breath came quickly; her clear gaze fluttered and fell, and her pallor was succeeded by a flame of carnation.
Now out of the black mood in Mr. Bellairs’s soul there flashed an evil fire.
“Of all the meetings in the whole world,” cried he, ardently, “there’s none could give me half so much joy, my dearest creature. Turn with me. I must speak with you. Nay, Pamela, I vow, I vow, you’ve not been out of my thoughts this month. Turn and come with me, I say. Let us away under the trees, where we can talk by ourselves. Pamela, dearest Pamela, take my arm. Youare more lovely than ever, and I am—I am more headlong in love than ever I was before!”
There was too great a flutter in the girl’s soul for her to have her usual cool grip of the situation. An overwhelming tide of happiness lifted her from her mental balance. She could not doubt that, after all these months, it must be a genuine love that lit up his glance, that trembled in his voice and in his touch She had proved to him, surely, what kind of girl she was. He must mean the right thing at last, or he would not so whole-heartedly declare himself.
And she had just rendered him a signal service, which (though he could not yet know it), gave her a delightful sense of meeting him on his own level. She was, moreover, in a vastly different position now from that of the mere working milliner. She had resources at her command; a future before her.
And there he was, the dear fellow, and he loved her still! Could a Sunday morning in June hold a more golden bliss?
So she hung on his arm, and listened with parted lips to his raptures, to the fantastic string of plans, the sweet, repeated endearments which poured from his lips. Now that they had met there were to be no more partings. Things were changed. He had plenty of money. Here she looked at him in astonishment, and he drew a handful of gold from his pocket. He was in the Devil’s own vein of luck, he told her. He wouldn’t listen to her objurgation; he laughed at the admonishing finger. Her assurance that she possessed a safer and more worthy source of wealth he tossed aside as a jest. There was a horse of his booked for Ascot. If she did not romp in with a sweet little cottage at Fulham for them both at her heels!...
“Oh, Mr. Bellairs!” Pamela clasped her other hand over his arm. “I could come up and down to business as easy as easy. A cottage with a bit of garden! ’Tis the very thing I’ve always dreamed of!”
“And I hope you put me in the dream, my lovely girl.” He kissed her behind the trunk of a big beech-tree. “Why,” cried he, “who’d have thought to find you so sensible all at once?”
It was not, perhaps, so much the words, as the way in which he looked at her after he had kissed her, that opened the sudden gulf before her! She drew back, and stood staring; her face haggard; all the lovely bloom and youthful ecstasy blasted out of it.
Then she said, in a low, strained voice—Pamela went straight to her point, she was not one to cover ugly situations with a mince of words—“You don’t mean marriage, then, Mr. Bellairs?”
The ugliness of his mood sprang into naked prominence. He broke into a loud laugh.
“Come, don’t play the prude, now! Don’t pretend you didn’t understand.” Then he added, a sort of shame creeping into his accents in spite of himself, “Be sensible, my dear girl. Don’t play the fool with our lives again.”
He put out his arm again to embrace her, but she struck him a vigorous buffet that sent him staggering from her.
“You’ve laid a vile trap for me, Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs, but thank God I didn’t fall into it! I see you now as you are, a low, selfish scamp that doesn’t think it shame to take his pleasure on other people. You’d drag my good name into the dust with as little concern as you live on my Lady’s money. So long as you get your fling you don’t care who you rob or what you destroy! Oh, I’m glad to have seen you as you are! And good morning to you, Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs, for a very paltry dog!”
She swept him a curtsy which was magnificent in its repudiation. He had a swift vision of her scorching eyes, her scarlet cheeks; she turned and left him, dumbfounded.
“I’m done with love,” said Pamela Pounce, toherself. “May I never hear of it, or see it, or touch it again!”
Little did she guess with what overwhelming passion she was very shortly destined to behold the cruel god at work upon another life!