CHAPTER XVIn which the Mad Brat takes the Bit betweenHer Teeth, but Miss Pamela Pounce Keeps Holdof the Reins
In which the Mad Brat takes the Bit betweenHer Teeth, but Miss Pamela Pounce Keeps Holdof the Reins
Thefirst stage between Weymouth and London brought Miss Pamela Pounce to Blandford where she intended to pass the night. She had spent an agreeable and lucrative week at Weymouth, whither the presence of Royalty had brought a host of fashionables, and where it had been easy for her to dispose of all the modish hats and heads, caps and toques which she had selected to tempt holiday appetites.
With a light conscience and heavy pockets, therefore, Pamela was setting off for London in finest spirits. She had brought more than her usual zest to this journey who always enjoyed travelling to the full; the movement, the change of scene, the bustle at arrival and departure, the choice of the night’s lodging, the chance adventure, the shifting company, all stimulated, interested, delighted her. She could take care of herself, and had no fear, either of the rare highwayman, or of the intrusive gallant.
The “Rover” deposited its burden with a fine flourish of horn and whip and clatter of hoofs, tick on time, in the cobbled courtyard of the Crown Inn at Blandford.
Six of the clock had just been huskily beaten out behind the great white dial that surmounted the celebrated stables. The jolly coachman turned half round in his seat, and winked at the gentleman in the many-caped roquelaure who had entertained him with suchracy gossip for five hours that day, and who had not failed moreover, to season their conversation with a brimmer at every halting place.
“What do you think o’ that for punctuality, my Lord?”
Now “my Lord” was a mere fluke—shot at quality, but for once it had hit the bull’s eye.
The traveller, descending with care from the coach (for the last tankard had been tightly laced and required some carrying) was nearly run into by a brisk young lady in a grey riding coat, and black satin hat, who exclaimed genteelly: “To be sure, sir, I crave your pardon!” And then cried: “My Lord Kilcroney, is it indeed you!”
“Why, ’tis never Miss Pounce!” exclaimed my Lord, surveying her, as if the last thing wanting to his joviality had now been granted him by Fate. And, indeed, not only was Pamela Pounce vastly pleasing to look upon—she had something of the firmness, the clear red-and-white and the general appetising appearance of a white-heart cherry—but she was vastly agreeable company too, as he had found out on more than one occasion. Added to which, she had recently done him a very good turn with his lady, as sometimes comes in the way of milliners and such like who collect back-door gossip, and exercise back-door influence. Withal, which certainly spoilt nothing, she was a young person of merit; virtuous, responsible, and discreet. My Lord knew that she would take at their proper value any little compliment or other expression of esteem, such as the squeeze of a trim waist, an absent-minded clasp of taper fingers, even a snatched kiss. He might get a box on the ear; he would never be treated either to outraged sensibility, or—still more inconvenient contingency—an undesired responsiveness.
He held Miss Pounce’s hand, and smiled down into her bright face with something approaching enthusiasm.
“Split me, my dear, but this is a piece of good luck. And I who thought I’d be all at my lonesome over——”he stopped, and sniffed. “What is it?—the beef-steak pudding, and the roast capons to-night. I invite you to supper with me, Pamela. I sent my rascal ahead to bespeak the little oak parlour on the garden, and——”
“Thanking you kindly, my Lord,” said Miss Pounce, disengaging her hand, and speaking with great firmness, “I dine with no gentleman in the back parlour.”
His merry face fell.
“How now, so prudish?”
“Nay, my Lord, merely prudent. ’Tis as much as my reputation is worth. The ladies wouldn’t like it. No, nor the landladies. The common room is best for a common working girl like me.”
“My dear,” said Lord Kilcroney, “’tis an uncommon girl you are. You’re in the right of it a thousand times. Faith, my Lady would be ready to tear the wig from my head if she heard of it!”
“And she’d tear my hats from hers, and that would be vastly the greater calamity of the two, forgive me for saying so, my Lord.”
“See here,” said he, “I’ll face the bagmen for the pleasure of your conversation, for, odd’s my life, you’ve a sparkle about you that’s as good as champagne after the dreary road! I’ll tell them to lay your place beside mine in the coffee-room, and you’ll season my supper to me with that spicy tongue of yours.”
Pamela said she was a poor girl, and she hoped she knew her place, that my Lord was vastly condescending, and that she’d have to take what seat was given her; which remarks, my Lord, rightly understanding to be an oblique acceptance, greeted with laughter and applause, and went gaily towards the inn after her, admiring her generous, well-knit shape, and taking off his hat with a mock flourish as she modestly stood back to let him enter first.
The summer evening was warm, and the odours of viands potent in the coffee-room. The tables were crowded; there was an immense buzz of voices, andclatter of knives and forks, and a running to and fro of aproned drawers, and sturdy bare-armed wenches.
Pamela stood at the door, and looked in discontentedly. She was as little squeamish as any healthy young woman of her class; she left “vapours” and “qualms” to her betters. But the long day had tired her, and there was my Lord, with his wig askew, and a couple of bottles before him, and an air of having already done some justice to them. It was all very well to have chosen the propriety of the public room, but it might have its drawbacks. A poor girl never knew what spiteful eyes might be watching. It would do her no good if some loose tongue were to start a bit of scandal about her: “Miss Pamela Pounce behaving shameful with my Lord Kilcroney, as brazen as you like, before everybody.” It would always be, of course, the poor girl who behaved shameful, never the half-tipsy nobleman. Such is the way of the world.
“And as like as not,” went on Pamela to herself—she had a vivid and swift imagination—“the next thing will be: ‘They left Weymouth together. ’Twas a regular elopement.’ No, thank you, Pamela, my girl. It ain’t good enough for us to sit next to my Lord in his cups, and eat beef-steak pudding—a dish I never was partial to—on a hot night—and lose my character to boot.”
She whisked round and out through the luggage-piled hall into the yard, where, by the gate which gave upon the river meadow, she had marked a bench erected round an old tree stump.
“I’ll sit here,” resolved Miss Pounce, suiting the action to the thought. “And, by and by, when those creatures have done gorging within, I’ll have a little supper by my own. Lord, how vastly more pleasant it is out here!”
She drew a long breath, inhaling the air, sweet with the near fragrance of honeysuckle, and distant scents of ripe corn. She clasped her hands on her knees—those busy, clever hands which so seldom rested—and gazeddreamily out upon the scene. It made a pleasant picture; the red-tiled roof of the stables was beginning to glow in the warm evening light; the irregular outline of the old inn, already in shadow, was cut darkly against the limpid blue of the sky; white and grey pigeons flitted lazily hither and thither. From within the open stable doors came peaceful sounds of munching jaws, rattling chains, and now and again a stamping hoof. A fat tortoiseshell cat sat licking herself on a window sill. There was not a human creature in sight for the moment, and Miss Pounce felt quite poetic.
But she was not destined to be indulged long in her rare mood for solitude. There came a clatter of hoofs, a hum of wheels along the dusty road. A high curricle swung into the yard, at the raking trot of a tall chestnut driven by a reckless hand. It was drawn up with a splash of protesting hoofs; and Pamela, suddenly pricked to interest, beheld, springing unaided from the high perch, the young lady whose erratic conduct had earned for her the sobriquet of “the Mad Brat,” Lady Selina, who had scandalised society, outraged her Royal patrons, alienated her friends, and positively stupefied her family a bare three months ago by eloping, from the very back of the Princess’s chair at the Opera, with a penniless insignificant officer of Marines of the name of Simpson. Lady Selina Simpson’s further career, though necessarily passed in comparative obscurity, had done little to lessen the aptness of the sobriquet. Much the contrary, indeed, and—Lieutenant Simpson being stationed at Weymouth—Lady Selina had had an unexpected opportunity for a display of eccentricity, which made both her elder sisters agree for once that something must be done to put a stop to Selina’s goings on—“under the very nose of the Royals, my dear; she does it on purpose to discredit us,”—even if something entailed the purchase for Lieutenant Simpson of some post pleasantly remote in the Indies.
Here, then, was the Mad Brat, as naughty and modishas you please (Miss Pamela’s professional eye was quick to notice); wrapped to the ears in a military looking cloak of elegant blue, and hatted with as smart a little beaver, also of military cock, as she, Pamela, had ever seen—and that was saying a great deal.
My young Lady Selina’s curls were scarcely powdered, and shone very golden under the evening light, set in flying bunches each side of her narrow, pretty, pale, impertinent face. There was something in the expression of her countenance, attractive for all its wilfulness, that made Pamela’s quick wits jump to the horrid conclusion—before even she had clapped eyes on the driver of the curricle.
“Lord! if ever I see the look of one bent on a desperate course, I see it this minute!” thought the milliner, turning the glance on Lady Selina’s companion.
And there it was for you. That black-avised gentleman, with the bushy black eyebrows, and the small, restless black eyes beneath, with the blue chin and full, insolent mouth—that was never young Simpson! “Some elderly rip, out of the poor lad’s regiment!” diagnosed Pamela rapidly, seeing the gold-lace glint. “And that is why my young Madam is so monstrous military herself. If ever I see an elopement——!”
And indeed, the two had a flushed and conscious air; defiant, suspicious.
“However you may try to brazen it out, your heart’s as heavy as lead, you poor silly thing,” was the next conclusion of the watcher. “As for you, you wicked wretch, you are all ardours and whispers, all swollen with triumph, yet you aren’t a bit sure of her. There, now, I knew it—she won’t let you lead her in, with your arm about her waist; not even let you take her hand. She’s no notion to have you blazon her your conquest, for all the Inn company to see. Mercy on us, there’s a toss of the head! Aye, and here’s a look for you, my fine gentleman! No—I wouldn’t make too sure of her yet, if I were you!”
The sound of hoofs and wheels, and of the clanging bell had brought landlord and landlady to the doorway. Pamela emerged slowly from her leafy retreat. She had a mind to keep the Mad Brat under observation as long as she could.
’Twas a mere child! Pamela knew that she could scarce have reached her twentieth year; and Pamela had once herself been mighty near flinging away everything a woman should hold dear, for a man’s smile. She had been saved, on the very edge of the precipice, by a sort of miracle. And she often had shuddered, contemplating the horrible depth of the chasm into which she had all but fallen. Did she not now read on the young wife’s face something of the frantic recklessness that had once moved her?
Besides which she had a pride in her sex which made it personally grievous to her when a woman went wrong. And lastly, she flattered herself she was a judge of character, and yonder military buck was a bad, dissipated, selfish wretch, with no use for a woman but to break her heart.
As she entered the hall, discreetly, in the wake of the new-comers, she found Lady Selina in high wrangle with her swain.
“And I say, I will have a post-chaise, Colonel Endacott! And I protest you’re making a vast mistake! Pray, Mr. Landlord, a bowl of broth and a glass of wine in a private parlour—and a post-chaise, with a decent pair of horses, in an hour. The gentleman will go to the coffee-room. Yes, sir—you will go to the coffee-room. Do I hear you curse, sir? La! here is a charming thing, indeed!”
Suddenly her eye became fixed, she uttered an exclamation in a high tone of surprise and excitement.
“Sir Jasper Standish—as I am a living woman!”
Pamela then perceived, standing in the doorway of the coffee-room chewing a gold toothpick, no less a personage than that dashing widower. He was surveying hiswhilom betrothed and her illicit cavalier with a bantering, swaggering, insolent air in which there was more than a glint of jealous anger.
As Lady Selina hailed him, he tripped forward. “Good heavens,” reflected the milliner, “I’d slap any man’s face, gentleman or no, who dared to look at me like that!”
Colonel Endacott, biting his full under lip, and blackly scowling, seemed very much of this opinion; but the Mad Brat extended both hands:
“Sir Jasper!—well met! ’Tis a vast of pleasure for me to greet an old friend. Why, here am I, on my road to London—pray, Colonel Endacott, do you know Sir Jasper Standish? Gentlemen, let me introduce you: Colonel Endacott—Sir Jasper Standish. Hearing that I was about to post to London, Colonel Endacott kindly offered me a seat in his curricle. My husband’s Colonel, Sir Jasper. The wife of a poor Lieutenant, it was no offer to decline! Colonel Endacott, who is really all condescension and good nature, Sir Jasper, had further been so obliging as to offer me his escort for the whole way. But the mischief is in it, we must part at the first stage! Colonel Endacott will have it he must lie at Blandford, and I am equally determined to push on!”
Colonel Endacott ground his high-booted foot on the flags of the hall, as though he would pulverise the volatile lady who was so obviously making a mock of him.
“Why, my dear Lady Selina,” cried Sir Jasper, in a rich voice of victory, “let me then be your escort! Fie, fie, you cannot think of travelling alone with a mere post-boy for protection, and the roads so unsafe. I could not think of allowing it! So old a friend as I am may surely be permitted the privilege, the honour, the duty——”
“Pray, sir,” interrupted Colonel Endacott, his tones were husky with rage, “you misunderstand, I think. Lady Selina Simpson is under my protection. It was entirely for her sake——” Here he cast a glance of mingled ardour and fury upon the Mad Brat who tossedher head till her ringlets danced and hunched a shoulder on him in its military cloak, with a taunting glance. “’Twas but for her sake,” the harsh accents grew raucous, “that I suggested the night’s rest here. Lady Selina knows that she had but to speak the word, and I am ready——”
“Ah, not at all!—pas du tout!” cried Lady Selina, who had a French mother and certain inherited French ways that added not a little to her provoking charm. “M. le Colonelhas made such big eyes at me I am positively frightened of him! And my dear mamma—do you know Sir Jasper, my dear widowed mother is at Wimbledon, and I have half a mind to go see her there—Mamma would be desolated if I were to travel under the escort of a gentleman who is not my husband. Since my Frederick is so tied up in his military duty—yes, you cruel man, you saw to that! But with Sir Jasper, Mamma knows Sir Jasper so well! Pray Mistress Landlady, bring me to a chamber where I can wash the dust off my face. ’Tis vile travelling in an open curricle. And you, Mr. Landlord, what of that parlour and that broth? How would it be, Sir Jasper, if you were to join me over this slight refection? We could discuss the journey.”
Sir Jasper drew a long breath through dilated nostrils, and bowed, the corners of his lips tilting upwards in a smile of immense complacency. The landlady, who had been staring at the young Madam with amazement and disapproval, majestically led the way up the narrow stairs, expressing by a tremulous shake of her lace-capped head, and an occasional loud sniff, that such manners and customs were not to be encouraged on her premises.
Pamela Pounce saw the look which Colonel Endacott cast at the fatuously smirking Sir Jasper.
“There will be swords drawn over this, before my Lady Selina has had time to dry that dusty face of hers!” she thought. “And dear, to goodness, I have it in my heart to hope it may be Sir Jasper, for if not, it is out ofthe frying-pan into the fire with her, imp of mischief as she is!”
Out of the frying-pan into the fire it was. Colonel Endacott and Sir Jasper strolled, to all appearance, very amicably together through the meadow gate, in the direction of a certain hazel copse by the river-side. In a very short time, Sir Jasper reappeared, alone; and, strolling back into the stable-yard of the Crown, directed, with the most genteel coolness, that a couple of ostlers should take a wheelbarrow and a chair, or maybe a hurdle, and carry in his friend, who had had an accident to his leg, and would be found, incapacitated, just beside yonder little copse. It was not a matter of the least consequence, he assured them—a mere sprain, a scratch, or something of the sort.
The ostlers grinned. He cast a gold piece among them and passed on, treading jauntily, in quest of the parlour.
Miss Pounce, eating bread-and-butter and cold meats, to a modest bowl of milk in the window seat of the now nearly deserted coffee-room, saw the gallant gentleman’s return, and understood.
“’Tis the devil and all,” she thought, “that my Lord Kilcroney is so free with his bottle; he might be of use here. If my Lady Selina thinks she can fling off Sir Jasper as easy as she has her Colonel, she is mighty mistaken. Such a chance doesn’t come a woman’s way twice! Silly child, and him with an old score to pay off—and their starting off by night and all—why, what ails the creature, to be up to such cantrips?” thought Pamela.
She bit into her bread-and-butter, and then flung the slice away from her. “Well, drunk or sober, my Lord will be better than nobody.”
Upon this decision Pamela shook the crumbs from her skirt, set a hand on each hip, and holding her white chin very high in the air, made a bee line for the snuggery whence loud sounds of mirth proclaimed the presence of convivial company.
Here she found my Lord, with a long clay pipe in onehand, and cool tankard in the other, hilariously setting the tune to a roaring chorus consisting of a lumpish young squire, a land surveyor and the local doctor. My Lord was more than exhilarated, as Pamela saw at the first glance. He went on melodiously chanting and beating time, while the others, staring at the handsome girl, fell dumb, and young Squire Pitt, all one purple blush, began bashfully to draw himself out of his chair.
“My Lord—my Lord Kilcroney!” began Pamela with an unwonted sense of discomfiture, “I crave a word apart with your Lordship.”
But before she could make her voice heard, she was unceremoniously thrust aside by Mr. Landlord himself.
“And, cravingyourpardon,” he chided, “this is no place for young gals. Doctor Dawson, sir, you’re wanted.”
A dark man in a scratch wig, with a long bony face, and a restless protruding jaw, jumped up from his corner, and came forward.
“What’s happened?” quoth he, feeling about his pockets with big knuckly hands that made Pamela shudder.
“Why, will you step outside, sir. Gentleman hurt through the leg.”
“Odds my bones, I’ve left it at home. You’ll have to send little Jimmy for my instrument-case. What’s happened, I say?”
The landlord wagged his head slyly, pinching his lips together, and made a thrusting gesture with his right forefinger; then he tapped the same finger on the side of his rubicund nose.
The doctor gave a short laugh; and, with a not altogether steady step, suffered himself to be led down the passage.
Lord Kilcroney imitated the double gesture with his pipe-stem and sprang to his feet.
“Now, glory be to God,” said he, “if I had known there was such a diversion on hand——” Here heseemed suddenly to become aware that Miss Pounce’s presence in the snuggery portended something distinctly unusual. As he stared at her with a flicker of returning acuteness in his amiable eye, she seized the opportunity.
“For God’s sake, my Lord, give me a moment apart.”
He lurched towards her; and she seized him by the lapel of his coat; again he looked at her; caught perhaps something of the urgency of her spirit, and said, in altered tones:
“Wait a minute, me girl, I’ll just drain the tankard to steady my head; and I am with you.”
She got him as far as the window seat in the coffee-room; and then, casting a glance without, exclaimed:
“See for yourself. Turn your eye yonder, and see for yourself.”
Lord Kilcroney flung a bewildered gaze in the direction of her pointed finger; opened his mouth, closed it again and wiped his forehead.
“Jasper! Jasper Standish and a lady, as I live! What the dev——”
“Don’t you know the lady, my Lord? See now, see now, with the lamplight on her face. She is getting into the chaise. Don’t you recognise Lady Selina Simpson?”
“Se—Selina Simpson!” echoed he with a fine tipsy sibilance. He let himself fall on the window seat, and gripped his head in both hands. “S—Selina?”
“The Mad Brat, my Lord! Good God, we are too late, the chaise is driving away! This will be fine hearing for my Lady Verney, and for your lady’s own dear friend, Lady Nan!”
Lord Kilcroney dropped his hands and sat, with protruding eyeballs, staring at Pamela. Then his waistcoat was shaken with a rumbling laugh; and he made an uncertain poke with his forefinger.
“And, is it poor Simpson, then, that’s in the claws of that old red raven of a doctor this minute? And my Lady off with Jasper? D’ye know, it’s a monstrous joke! Oh, Gad—Jasper was her first love!”
Pamela flung a single searching look upon him. He was muttering to himself, and laughing, winking, and shaking his head, the picture of affable inebriety.
“My Lord, my Lord, you must pull yourself together! Lady Selina is not twenty yet. And him such a bold, bad man, as indeed you know, my Lord. ’Tis ruin, ’tis disgrace, for her, and that poor innocent lad, her husband!”
“By the powers!” Kilcroney staggered to his feet. “Jasper’s a scoundrel! I’ll not have it! What, Nan Day’s little sister, mere child—monstrous! Get me a wet napkin, girl.”
He plucked his wig from his head as he spoke, and looked, Pamela thought, singularly boyish with his close-cropped red poll exposed to view. Even as she hurried out to summon the drawer, a brilliant idea struck her.
Colonel Endacott’s curricle, and a fresh horse! With anything of a roadster, so light a vehicle should easily overtake the post-chaise. ’Twas a plan of retributive justice which pleased Miss Pounce hugely.
What woman wills, God wills, is an adage invented by some sycophantic admirer of the fair sex. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the world is apt to give way before anyone with determined purpose, and, if this anyone happens to be young, handsome, and a woman, the odds are overwhelmingly in her favour. Pamela ordered, cajoled, reasoned, implored, bustled, taunted and threatened. She made lavish, yet judicious, use of her Weymouth earnings; and before the half-hour was out, found herself, high-perched by the side of my Lord (a strange figure, with the wet napkin still tied round his head), driving—as the group of ostlers who watched him depart unanimously declared with much admiration—like hell.
It was one of those summer nights when scarce a leaf stirs; there was not a cloud upon the sky which stretched a wonderful amethyst blue, deepening to sapphire at the zenith, and paling into translucent primrose to the west, where the last traces of the afterglow still lingered. There would be a fine moon presently, had been thelandlord’s parting words, as he respectfully deposited his Lordship’s wig, hat and pistol case in the curricle. The streets of the sleepy little town were clatteringly left behind; the steep hill surmounted; and then the Salisbury road lay before them, straight and white across the grey mystery of the downs.
Pamela thought it was the strangest night vision she had ever beheld. The earth seemed as featureless as the sky; the winds, which had slept in the valley, were lively enough here, as if the earth were their playground. There was a wonderful harvest smell, warm and wholesome, of ripening apples and full corn-fields, in the air—a great, mellow, sweet aroma from the fertile fields and farms that lay below the down lands.
Pamela was not romantic, yet she could not but feel that it was “as good as play-acting” to be hurled through the summer night across this vast peaceful loneliness, by this same mad, kind, fantastic Irish lord whose odd adventures were always the talk of the town.
“A stern chase is a long chase,” observed the nobleman, dexterously tipping the flanks of the big bay.
The horse bounded, and the curricle rocked; and Pamela choked a scream. Over the crest of the down a huge red moon began to show her face, swimming in a curious misty incandescence. She sucked in her breath, and her heart stirred sentimentally. If only the man of her choice had been sitting beside her, how vastly she would have enjoyed herself!
They swung through the shadows of a copse and out into the open again. My Lord cast his napkin into the road; he begged Pamela to lend him a hand with his wig. The black horse had fallen to a foot pace up the steep incline, and my Lord, with returning sobriety, began apparently to consider the kind of undertaking into which he had plunged, and how to carry it through.
“We’ll not,” said he, gliding into speed again with the care of the practised whip, “overhaul them much before Salisbury.” Then the moonlight caught his face, showedhis quizzical smile, and the rueful questioning of his eyes, as he went on: “And what the dickens am I to say, when we do? Split me, Miss Pounce, you’ve rushed me into a pretty kettle of fish! Bejabers, what in the world is it to me all said and done, that Jasper should be off with that little lady?”
“Oh fie, my Lord——” began Pamela warmly. But he interrupted her:
“Well, well, never fear, ’tis as good an excuse as another for a bit of fun. Faith, didn’t my Lady tell me the other day, it was the regular old gentleman I was growing into!”
He caught her absently by the waist, as he spoke, laughing as the vehicle swerved; and Pamela found herself again wishing for the company of the dark-browed slim young gentleman to whom she had given her heart, and who—Mr. Jocelyn had such sensibility—would have understood the really grave nature of this seemingly mad quest.
It was after two hours’ steady chase, even as the road dipped from the downs into the valley, back again into the corn-fields—these had a marvellous silver and amber glow in the moonlight—that they saw, half a furlong away, the black bulk of a moving vehicle, and heard the double clatter of leisurely trotting horses.
“’Tis but another farm waggon,” quoth my Lord.
“Nay,” cried Pamela, “for I see the bobbing of the post-boy, plain as plain.”
“Do you, indeed, my dear?” cried my Lord in exhilarated accents, handling the reins with a zest that sent the horse forward with a great impetus. “You haven’t dathered your sight with the Crown’s noted treble ale. Well, if this isn’t the fun of the world! I’ve stopped a coach before, my dear—that in your ear—but split me, never from a curricle, with a monstrous fine girl beside me!”
“I’m a farmer’s daughter,” she said resolutely, “andcan manage a horse with anyone. So I can take the reins, my Lord, when you want your hands free.”
“’Pon me sowl!” ejaculated Kilcroney admiringly. But he proceeded no further, for the black horse, gathering speed, and excited by the clatter of rival hoofs, made a dash forward, and my Lord, with voice and cracking lash, encouraged the canter to a gallop.
The post-boy started from his jogging trance, looked over his shoulder and hastily pulled to one side. The curricle went by at a flash; my Lord never slackened speed till they had reached the bottom of the hill and a bit beyond.
“Now,” said Kilcroney, as he manœuvred the curricle right across the road, “now for the fun of the fair! Just put your lovely hand under the seat and see if you can lay a hould of me pistols.”
(My Lord’s brogue became agreeably marked in moments of emotion.)
The black horse was dancing from hoof to hoof; the curricle swayed rhythmically to his capers, and Pamela felt, when her companion plucked the pistols from the case she held open, as if every fibre of her being were dancing in unison; exhilaration, a sense of splendid adventure, a spice of fear, and a delightful recklessness had hold of her. She almost understood now how the “Mad Brat” could fling everything to the winds for the mere taste of such a moment. Lord Kilcroney thrust the reins into her hands, leaped lightly from his perch; and he, too, seemed to dance in the moonlight as he advanced towards the chaise.
The post-boy had prudently pulled up at sight of the obstacle in the road; now, as the pistol barrels glinted in the moonlight, he raised a dismal shout, and dived sideways off the fat grey haunches of his mount. The landlord of the Crown had provided a stalwart plodding pair for Lady Selina’s post-chaise; and these were content enough to draw breath, craning their necks, snorting comfortably down their nostrils, and shuddering in turn till the harness rattled.
“How now!” cried an angry voice from the chaise, and Sir Jasper’s head emerged into the moonlight. “What’s the matter? rascal, scamp! Hallo, stap me!” This in quite another tone. “Why, the devil—’tis a highwayman, a footpad!”
Kilcroney, who had planted himself sideways, with face concealed by his extended arm, chaunted in the most musical tones he could muster:
“Stand and deliver!” Then, breaking into laughter, he disclosed his countenance, with a fine flourish of his mantons; “Stand and deliver,” he repeated. “Jasper, stand and deliver your stolen goods!”
There was a faint cry within the chaise, altogether lost in the round volley of oaths from Sir Jasper. He consigned Kilcroney’s soul to perdition, and his body to corruption, with explicitness and repetition, and commanded the post-boy to remount and carry on, if he did not wish to be flayed alive. But the sagacious youth was apparently swallowed in the darkness.
Presently Kilcroney’s shouts of laughter were echoed in silver titters both from the chaise and the curricle. These sounds goaded the baronet to madness. “Poor Jasper!” (Kilcroney afterwards related) “He was foaming like a tankard of porter, and was almost as black in the face, by Jingo, when he lepped from the chaise and at me. Troth, he had his sword out, and sure the next moment he would have let the moonlight through me, hadn’t my little lady in the chaise caught him by the skirts of his coat! It was the grand slap he came on the flint of the road—aye, and the grand escape I had of it intirely! ‘Up with you, me boy, and we’ll have it out like gentlemen,’ cries I, and by the time he got up again I was ready for him, as pretty as Angelo, with the barkers back in my pocket and my little bodkin taking the air in my hand.”
It was not the first time that my Lord Kilcroney and Sir Jasper had crossed blades. Indeed, Kilcroney’s mercurial temperament, and Sir Jasper’s inflammablyjealous one, had come into collision more than once. In the last encounter the Irishman had had the worst of it; but to-night, whatever disability the day’s potations might have caused him was more than counter-balanced by the blind rage which possessed the baronet as he fell to his guard.
Perhaps Sir Jasper had been already in none too good a temper when the novel highwayman had arrested him in the full course of elopement, certainly the countenance with which his Helen watched the encounter from the chaise window displayed more entertainment than anxiety. In fact, when Sir Jasper, receiving a neat thrust through his sword arm, fell back with a curse and a groan, it was Pamela who cried out in alarm, while Lady Selina shrilly laughed and clapped her hands.
An odd little procession towards midnight roused the slumbers of the Mitre Inn at Salisbury, with peremptory summons. Two ladies in a post-chaise, escorted by two gentlemen in a curricle. The ladies seemed to be in high dudgeon with each other. The gentlemen very friendly. Indeed, the younger and better-looking of the two (though both were personable men) was distinctly assiduous in his attention to the other, who had (as the landlord was duly informed) met with a nasty accident through the overturning of the curricle at a sharp corner, which robbed him of the use of his right arm.
The post-boy had a curious tale to tell over a restoring mug of ale. But so scared and bewildered did he appear; so monstrous a jumble did he make of highwaymen and duels, that the landlord, who was a sensible man, diagnosed pure coward’s flim-flams, and promptly dismissed him to his straw.
Pamela slept late. She had been allotted the dressing-room of the superior bed-chamber which she had herself claimed for Lady Selina. Her last thought, as she snuggled down in the feather bed, had been: “I’ve gother safe, the little fool!” and the first that bore into her consciousness in the morning was the same comforting reflection: “I’ve got her safe.”
Angry words had passed between the two women in the chaise last night. Though Pamela had been unable to make head or tail of the arguments produced by the “Mad Brat” to justify her conduct, every word had revealed a childish inconsequence.
“One would say,” thought the milliner, as she lay, reflecting on her impressions, “that the silly chit had laid some wager, or was pretending to be wicked for the mere show off of the thing. For, if ever I saw a gentleman set down, it was Sir Jasper last night! In my opinion he was mortal glad to be out of it at the price. Never saw him so loving with my Lord! And, as for her, she looked at him like a wild cat, as she passed him by, on the way to her room.”
Pamela sat on the edge of her bed, yawned, and gazed at the door which separated her from Lady Selina’s apartment, congratulating herself that, so old-fashioned was the hostelry, there was no other issue. But, as she looked, the smile faded from her face. The door was not quite closed! She remembered very well how my Lady Selina had banged and bolted it last night, intimating thereby, better than by any speech, what she thought of the intrusive proximity of the milliner.
“It’s not possible——!” On the spur of suspicion, Pamela was out of bed and into the next room at a spring. Sunshine was pouring in between the open shutters; the great four-post bed was empty. There was no trace of the fair delinquent, save a long gauntletted glove on the floor.
“Well, of all—of all the minxes!” Miss Pounce pivoted on herself. “Pamela, my girl, you’re fooled! And you such a light sleeper, to think you should have slept so deep and let the bird fly!”
She ran back to her own room and, after ringing the bell violently, proceeded like a hurricane to her toilet.Cold water and yellow soap were good enough for her any day. The service at the Mitre seemed scarce like to add to its reputation. Miss Pounce was well advanced, indeed she had reached the stage of buttoning her trim figure into the grey riding coat, before the repeated attacks on the bell-pull produced a panting housemaid.
“Oh, please, Miss,” began this damsel volubly, “was you ringing? I was kept by the gentlemen in Blue Parrot, helping the gentleman to bind the other gentleman’s arm, what hurt himself. And that there post-boy was not so far out, for if ever I see a sword cut——”
Pamela interrupted with an ejaculation of relief.
“Sir Jasper is still in the inn, then? And my Lord, too?”
“Aye, Miss——”
“And the lady?”
“The lady’s been gone this hour, Miss. Oh, aye, she went off with the other gentleman——”
“What——?” shrieked Pamela.
“Oh, aye, Miss! The handsome, dark gentleman what travelled all the way from London to meet her. Last night, when he came riding in, missis and all of us agreed, we never saw a handsomer gentleman. ‘I expect,’ says he, ‘a lady by coach from Weymouth.’” She stopped to stare: “Be’n’t you well, Miss?”
Pamela had fallen into a chair. A cold and pricking fear had laid hold of her. There are premonitions of the heart which out-leap any perception of the wits.
“His name, his name!” she gasped.
“Lud, now!” The girl clacked her tongue. “I did hear her call him——”
“Stay!” cried Pamela. “Was it Bellairs?”
“Lud, Miss,” cried the girl, “however did you know?”
“Because,” said Miss Pounce sternly, “I am the lady he came to meet.”
With the same deadly composure she ordered a post-chaise, and started once again in pursuit. This time shewould have no man’s help. She would go alone. “What business is it of yours?” had cried Lady Selina insolently, last night. And she had answered: “It’s every true woman’s business to keep another straight if she can.” But now, here was no altruistic interference; here love and life were at stake for her. Here was her own business and nobody else’s, with a vengeance!
Gone this hour! Well, she would overtake them at Basingstoke, where they must halt of a certainty.
Pamela had had, in a little purse apart, twenty golden guineas, her own profit in the successful week’s transactions in modes at Weymouth. She had meant to add them to the comfortable nest of savings which were to facilitate her marriage with her charming spendthrift. Now the shining company in the green silk meshes had already notably dwindled; and at every five miles or so, Pamela would draw forth a coin and, thrusting her pretty head out of the window, would hail the post-boy and hold it up to his sight.
“Another goldfinch for you, my lad, if you mend your speed!”
By the time they reached Basingstoke there were four sovereigns for the youth; and if he was sweating, it was nothing to which the horses were doing. They dripped and trembled and steamed, foam-flecked from mane to tail. Pamela’s green purse was considerably lighter; but it had been worth it. The fat dappled greys which had trotted off with my Lady Selina and Mr. Bellairs that morning were even now being led out of the shafts. A comfortable trot they had come at, to judge by their untroubled appearance.
“Yes, Miss,” said the formidable-looking landlady who ruled at the Angel, Basingstoke, and who, no doubt, found a distinct growth of beard and a bass voice as useful to her if not more than the support of any man. “A lady and a gentleman are partaking of refreshment in the parlour. And what might you be wanting with them?”
Her eye, small and fierce as a wild boar’s, appraised the new guest up and down.
Pamela saw that travelling alone she was suspect; she had an inspiration.
“I am Lady Selina’s own woman,” she said pertly. “Her Ladyship expects me. Kindly direct me.”
She had seen too many lady’s maids not to be able to play the part: she was now the fashionable Abigail to the life—plausible, supple, sure of herself; her gaze was challenging; her air deferential, yet on the verge of insolence.
The bearded landlady shrugged her shoulders, and told the drawer to bring Miss into Britannia.
“You needn’t knock, young man, I will announce myself,” said Pamela. She tapped discreetly with her nails on the panel just beneath the figure with the trident; then, without waiting for a reply, opened the door.
In one swift glance she took in the scene: the Mad Brat did not seem to be getting on any better with Mr. Bellairs than she had with either her Colonel or her Baronet. She was seated, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hand. With frowning brows, a fixed and angry stare, flushed cheeks and pouting lips, she was the image of “Beauty in a rage.” Mr. Bellairs was pacing the room with his hands behind his back; and he, too, the very incarnation of bad temper.
The milliner did not give herself time to reflect whether the obvious tension betokened good or evil for her. She had to act.
“If you please, my Lady,” she said, advancing as if she had been indeed what she represented herself, “you have forgotten your glove.”
“Good heavens!” cried Mr. Bellairs. “Pamela!”
He wheeled in his walk to turn upon the newcomer a countenance marked with the oddest mixture of discomfiture, amusement and wrath.
Lady Selina merely cast a glance from the glove which Pamela laid before her to the girl’s face, and lifted hereyebrows. She had passed from anger to insolence. Pamela itched to box her ears.
“I assure you, my dear,” protested Mr. Bellairs in an ill-assured voice, “thatIhave forgotten nothing.”
Pamela understood well enough the intention of the speech; she smiled scornfully. And when Lady Selina, just rolling her eyes in his direction, dropped the words: “Except your manners, sir,” she felt certain the rebuke had been well deserved.
Indeed, now that she came to look at him more closely, she saw a red patch on the olive of his cheek, and guessed the offence which had called for such a buffet. Oh! she knew the ways of men; and, to her philosophy, the gentleman who, thrust into such a position as Mr. Bellairs, should have failed to take advantage of it, would have been little less than a milksop. Nevertheless, there had been defection. It was her, Pamela, whom he had come to meet—Pamela his affianced, to whom, because of the very difference in their stations, he owed more delicacy of attention than if she had been his equal. And he had let himself be whisked away by the first wanton who lifted a beckoning finger! Serve her right if he had kissed, and serve him right if she had slapped! Oh, she knew the ways of men! But—the ways of the Mad Brat was still enigma to her. What was this piece of mischief about? As if to answer the perplexed thought, Lady Selina suddenly spoke:
“’Tis positive sickening to think that there is not a gentleman of the lot who would give a lady his protection as far as Town, without thrusting his odious attentions on her!”
“But my dear, good creature——”
“I’m not your dear, good creature, sir!” Lady Selina sprang to her feet and burst into a sudden passion of tears. “Was ever anyone,” she cried, “so plagued, so persecuted, so distracted, so unhappy, so—so abandoned?”
Pamela again felt an overwhelming conviction thathere was one merely as naughty and as innocent as a child.
“Oh, my dear!” she exclaimed, and caught her forcibly into her own strong warm arms. There was more than a touch of the mother in Pamela; she never could bear to leave suffering uncomforted. “Why, in the name of God, did you leave your own husband?”
The Mad Brat screamed as if the last word had been a blow.
“Oh, oh, my Fred!”
Pamela cast a look over the bride’s heaving shoulder at Mr. Bellairs.
“There, sir!” she said severely, “there’s for you and your vanity! For you, and the others, who are so ready to think that any lady who so much as smiles on you is mad in love with you—and all the while you’re but the catspaw of her jealousy!”
“Pamela!” cried Jocelyn Bellairs. He had been standing, very ill at ease, struggling with the variety of his emotions. He now broke into laughter which had yet something of wrath in it. “I’ve been a confounded fool! And I swear you are an angel! Oh, confusion! I can’t bear to hear a woman cry. But I must say Joseph himself would have been tempted by that little—devil, this morning!”
“Hush!” cried the milliner, rocking the weeping Selina as if it had been a baby, but shooting another glance at Mr. Bellairs which, after all, held more indulgence than resentment. “Hush, sir! Leave me with her Ladyship. Go, refresh yourself with a tankard of cool ale, after your dusty drive—and send the landlady hither with the hartshorn.”
If Mr. Bellairs had thought highly of Pamela before, he now told himself she was the pattern of true women. He paused but to kiss the firm, capable, white hand she extended to him, and then hastily closed the door between himself and those distressing vapours.
“Now, my dear,” coaxed Pamela, “I see how it is.You’ve had a quarrel with that elegant young officer of yours. You’ve had a quarrel, and you went off in a huff with that dark, bad old Colonel——”
Lady Selina shuddered, and stamped her foot; and inarticulately declared that if she’d had a dagger to her hand, she’d have stabbed him.
“Well, Sir Jasper’s done it for you, very neat, in the leg.”
Selina interrupted with another scream.
“Sir Jasper? Why, he was worse! Oh, how glad I was to see My Lord Kilcroney run him through!”
“I’m sure,” said Pamela, a little dryly, “it is a mercy, my Lady, I came alone after you and Mr. Bellairs! Mr. Bellairs is engaged to me, my Lady, and I don’t seem to fancy a hole in him.”
Lady Selina was much too absorbed in her own grief to have a thought to spare for any such trifles. She fell again into her chair, cast her arms upon the table and buried her face on them, wailing, in an extravagance of despair, that her Fred would never forgive her, and that there was nothing left for her but death.
“Why, there’s no harm done,” Pamela briskly consoled. “I’m ready to vouch for you that you’ve travelled with me, and slept with me——” she broke off. Her quick ear had caught the sound of certain well-known accents in the courtyard without.
“Glory be to God,” my Lord was saying, in his richest brogue. “Will anyone catch me that young gentleman by the leg? He’s not safe to be loose. Trip him up, I tell you, or there’ll be murder done! Come back, Simpson, youomadhaun!”
Pamela made a spring for the door; she had said that she would not have a hole made in her Jocelyn: heaven knew what catastrophe might not ensue were she not on the spot to prevent mischief with Bellairs, apt as tinder, and this young Simpson in his fury! She went like the wind down the passage, and across the bar, towards that spot in the courtyard whence arose sounds of struggle and fierce objurgation.
She found a slim young gentleman in uniform locked in the embrace of Lord Kilcroney. My Lord was laughing so considerably that it threatened to invalidate his grip. The young officer’s countenance shocked Pamela, so disfigured was it by rage and jealousy.
Even as she approached he wrenched himself free, and, leaping forward, all but knocked her down in his blind rush. Pamela’s body, however, was as well-balanced as her mind; she propped herself against the Inn porch and caught the outraged young husband vigorously by the arm. It was her words which really arrested him.
“You are looking for Lady Selina, Mr. Simpson, sir; for your wife? She is waiting for you in the parlour.”
He stared at her, his lips moving, his eyes starting, his whole begrimed, unshorn, exhausted countenance stamped with a wildness of despair.
“Yes, sir.” Pamela slipped her firm clasp down to his shaky, ice-cold hand; her voice was as soothing as her touch: “Yes, sir, her Ladyship and I we came here together. Her Ladyship was good enough to accept my services on the road. I’m travelling back to business from Weymouth, it fitted in nicely. And Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs, coming to meet me at Salisbury—he and I being an engaged couple, if you will forgive my being so personal—that fitted in very nicely too, for he escorted us. Your lady’s very young to be travelling alone, sir——”
Pamela knew that there is no better defence for the guilty than to reproach the innocent.
“There now, me boy,” cried Kilcroney, taking up the cue, “didn’t I tell you it was the wrong scent you were after, altogether? Hadn’t ye me word for it that Colonel Endacott and Jasper had fixed up that little meeting at Blandford ever since the night of my Lady Kilcroney’s rout at Weymouth? And sure, when my Lady Selina walked into the Crown Inn, wasn’t Miss Pounce behind her? Miss Pounce will swear to that. And I’ll lay you me oath that she’s speaking truth, since it’s the one coach-load of it we all were.”
But whether or no these assurances and plausibilities might have proved convincing to the inflamed brain of the injured husband, they were doomed to failure by the action of the Mad Brat herself.
This impetuous young woman suddenly hurled herself into their midst and upon her husband’s breast, tears, kisses, passionate confession pouring from her.
“Oh, Fred, Fred, darling! Oh, my own and only love—I tried to run away from you, and I couldn’t! Fred, my angel, it was all that cruel thing—that cruel thing you said. Oh, Fred, you do remember?” She shook him. “You know you said that you did not think any other man would be such a f-f-fool—Yes, you did—you said no other man would be such a f-fool as to run away with me!”
My Lord Kilcroney, with his Lady and the other friends interested in the erratic young couple, were all agreed that the Mad Brat was well matched in her spouse. For of all the hot-headed, light-witted, frantic fellows—these were my Lord’s own words—he had ever had to deal with, Lieutenant Fred Simpson, of the Marines, was the “jewel of the lot!” The united efforts of himself, Squire Day, and Lord Verney, were ultimately successful, however, in preventing the series of duels which Master Fred at first seemed bent on bringing about. Even Lord Kilcroney did not escape a challenge; but on his representing his services on the Salisbury Road, the affair had to end in a laugh. Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs, on Pamela’s prompting, made a very frank and full apology, couched in language so admirably chosen, that even the young Othello had to be satisfied with it.
“I confess,” he said, “that I was led away, Mr. Simpson. I confess that I lost my head (and very nearly my heart). But ask yourself whether, in such company, an angel from heaven might not have succumbed!”
Providence itself intervened in the matter of Colonel Endacott, for this gentleman’s wound, whether owing tooriginal distemper in the blood, or to the ministrations of Doctor Dawson, became so inflamed that it was held as more than doubtful whether that gallant officer would ever walk again. He was invalided out of the regiment, thereby providing at least one step for Mr. Simpson.
There only remained Sir Jasper—no easy personage to deal with, as my Lord knew from long experience. But by the time the baronet’s sword arm had healed an excellent post abroad had been obtained for Mr. Simpson; and to the infinite relief of all her relations, the Mad Brat and her spouse carried their bickerings and reconciliations to another clime.