"Get out, madam"
"I wish I were dead"
*PAM AND THE
COUNTESS*
*CHAPTER I*
*In which Pam does a Good Deed,
and sees a Strange Thing*
Pamela sat among the rocks with her elbows on her knees and her chin on
her hands. In spite of the entrancing loveliness of her surroundings
she had been reading with such interest that she had scarcely looked up
in an hour. The book now lay face down on another round-topped rock,
while Pamela stared at the sea, and thought about the contents of the
book.
It was spring-time, and in spring Bell Bay was perhaps a thought more
perfect than at any other time in the year. The wonderful little
horse-shoe of its quiet haven was a jewel of colour in the dark setting
of its cliff entrance. The semicircle of the high, rough stone sea-wall
above the rock-strewn sands seemed to take on light from the flowering
of the tiny rock plants, while the gardens at the Bell House behind that
wall were just a mass of greenness and bloom.
Outside and above those gardens rose the sides of the valley, towering
up into the blue of the clean, clear sky, and melting away into the
woods inland. The bay was so small that the Bell House and its grounds
filled the centre of it, as it were. There was no room for a
"sea-front". No room for another house even--Bell Bay belonged to the
Bell House.
Farther up the valley was Paramore's--the Temperance Tea Inn--to which
parties came in the season by the one narrow road that ran along below
the Bell Ridge--on the north side, that was. Farther still up the
valley--also on the roadside--stood the tiny church, no bigger than a
room, Fuchsia Cottage, where lived Anne Lasarge, and a few more
cottages--not enough to make a village--that tailed away to Folly-Ho, a
hamlet on the Peterock road.
On the south side of the valley--facing the long, grey front of the old
Bell House--the woods fringed the heights like a green rampart. Just in
one place glimmered the white walls of Crown Hill, the beautiful country
place of Sir Marmaduke Shard, K.C.
That was all there was of Bell Bay--unless you count Mainsail Cottage,
sitting like a gull's nest over the sea on the south headland, and
Woodrising, the empty house so long "To Let", buried in dense woods
right up at the back of the valley.
In the former lived Penberthy--pensioner--who looked after Sir
Marmaduke's little yawl--the _Messenger_.
In the latter lived nobody but Mrs. Trewby, a caretaker; a mournful
widow afflicted by bilious attacks, and living therefore in a cloud of
her own creation.
Finally, as a last word in this explanation, the Bell House was the
ancestral home of the Romilly family, and Mrs. Romilly was living there
with all "the family" except its head, away in command of that
first-class battleship _Medusa_; and her eldest son, Malcolm, who was
busy as lieutenant on the destroyer _Spite_.
Now Pamela, already introduced reading a book among the rocks of this
miniature haven, was absorbed in a new idea, of which the book was an
outward and visible sign. Pamela was by no means a self-constituted
martyr, but at the same time she believed herself to be a sort of "odd
man out" in the family circle. She was thirteen--not even a long way on
the road to fourteen. It must be allowed then that thirteen bore no
comparison to Adrian and Christobel, who had reached sixteen and
seventeen, or to Hughie, who was but seven. Malcolm, of course, was out
of it altogether, being nearly twenty, and at sea.
Christobel was the one other girl in a party of five. She was
undoubtedly Adrian's chum, and when he was at Harrow her particular
friend and companion lived close at hand as a rule--Mollie Shard, that
is to say, the only child of Sir Marmaduke and Lady Shard. Mollie was
eighteen, Christobel seventeen and a half; Mollie exceptionally clever,
Christobel exceptionally in earnest, and tenacious as her father, whom
she resembled so closely that in babyhood she had been nicknamed "Jim
Crow", being a darker edition of the elder "Jim".
Pamela's admiring affection for her one sister never failed, but it must
be admitted that the gap between "nearly eighteen" and thirteen is
considerable. Moreover, Christobel had been to school, the same school
as Mollie Shard. They had left for good together this Easter, and Pamela
hugged the thought that she was to share the same rule, going to school
next Easter, when she would be fourteen, for four years. At the same
term, Hughie would go to a preparatory school, and the reign of Miss
Violet Chance, their governess, would be over.
That was how the matter stood; also, it was the reason why Pamela
studied a Girls' Guide Handbook, with zeal that was seldom present in
the case of Arithmetic or French Grammar. Her high aim--her secret
ambition--was to become a Girl Guide, a "Silver Fish" with power to wear
at least twenty badges on her sleeve, and, by the time she was sixteen,
a Patrol Leader.
Pamela was bitten deeply by the thought of this wonderful army of girls,
who could do practically everything possible for girls to do. But there
was no chance of joining in Bell Bay. The nearest corps would be at
Peterock, four miles to the north; or Salterne, the big town on the
estuary harbour, eight or ten miles to the south. Mrs. Romilly did not
know anything about companies and patrols, and did not like the idea of
Pam getting mixed up with all sorts of girls. She knew about the
ambition, but had asked for it to wait till her anxious daughter should
join the school company at Somerton.
So there it was. Pamela meanwhile fought with difficulties. She wanted
to learn to cook; Mrs. Jeep, who had ruled long years in the kitchen,
would not let her. She wished to wash and iron; but Miss Chance thought
it was not quite nice for her to associate with Patty Ingles--between
maid--who did these things three days a week. It was tiresome, but had
to be put up with. Pamela perforce spent her zeal on the book, and on
making secret signs whenever opportunity occurred. She tried to fulfil
Scout Law, including one good deed every day, and she tried to hide what
she was doing from Hughie--which was impossible, as he possessed an
uncanny power of seeing everything, no matter how carefully hidden.
With intent grey-blue eyes fixed on the distance, Pamela considered life
as matters stood.
At that moment Miss Chance came up to the sea-wall from the garden, and
called her. When she looked round Miss Chance asked questions. It was
a way she had, and quite exasperating at times, because she seemed to
have a perfect genius for asking questions to which answers were
obvious.
"Isn't the sand rather damp, Pam dear?" she inquired in an even voice.
"I think you ought to be careful about chills now we have so much
influenza about. Are you reading? Wouldn't it be better to come up to
the garden?"
Pamela answered neither of these questions, but she got up, stretched,
and shook her skirt.
"The others are not back yet, are they?" went on Miss Chance, shading
her eyes with a knuckly hand and gazing towards the shining horizon.
"Why didn't you go with them, dear?"
Pamela said she wanted to read; then she came across the rock-strewn
sand towards the rugged steps that led up to a gap in the wall, and as
she came certain sentences in "The Knight's Code" repeated themselves:--
"Defend the poor, help them that cannot defend themselves."
"Do nothing to hurt or offend anyone."
"Perform humble offices with cheerfulness and----"