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!”