IN WHICH THE MAD BRAT TAKES THE BIT BETWEEN HER TEETH, BUT MISS PAMELA
POUNCE KEEPS HOLD OF THE REINS
The first 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 such racy 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, and clatter 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
gazed dreamily 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 modish as 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 his whilom 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 tossed her 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 Colonel_ has 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 of the 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 one hand, 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, craving _your_ pardon,” 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 he seemed 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 the
landlord’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, showed his 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, “and can 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 inflammably jealous 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 got her 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 she would 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 her eyebrows. 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, “that _I_ have 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 that here 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, you _omadhaun_!”
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 to original 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.