She had not very long to wait before the beat of horses’ hoofs resounded on the frozen ground. Hell for leather, indeed! ’Twas the most egregious jog-trot that ever took lazy groom and unwilling horse from warm quarters on a Christmas night!
Job Stallion let fly a terrified oath as Pamela rose out of the ditch and laid a hand upon his bridle. He was scarcely less alarmed when he discovered that he had to do with neither wraith nor highwaywoman, but with his master’s prize. She cut short his “darsents” and his whimpering expostulations very sternly.
“I am going to ride pillion behind you, Job Stallion, and you must whip up that fat brute of a post-horse to something of a canter, for you’ve got to carry me back home before Sir Jasper can overtake us. Thank your stars, my lad,” she went on, “that the Lord has given you a chance of redeeming the night’s work, for I tell you it would have gone hard with any who had a hand in it. Men have been hanged for less!”
She kept him busy with whip and spur till the old grey mare wheezed and bucketed along the road at a pace astonishing for her years and size.
It was somewhere midway between Ashford and Pitfold that they crossed Mr. Bellairs riding towards them on his own rakish chestnut as if for a race. If Pamela’s heart beat high at sight of him she did not avow her pride and pleasure even to herself; if her bright, clear heat of anger and triumphant determination gave place to tender, womanly emotions, she betrayed no sign of them. She postponed explanations, and issued instructions to Mr. Bellairs as to Job Stallion in the accents of one who means they shall be carried out.
“You will kindly ride a hundred paces behind me, Mr. Bellairs. I have no notion of having my name mixed up with yours or Sir Jasper’s this night. As for you, Job, hand me over that tablet. You can keep the guinea for yourself. And you will drop me, if you please, in the courtyard at Standish Hall, for ’tis not too late to join the dancers in the barn. And I mean there shall be no talk on this night’s work, if I can help it.
“If you breathe a word, Job Stallion, you’ll wish you never were born, or my father’s name not Jeremy Pounce! And as for you, Mr. Bellairs, sir, you’ve won your wager—yes, I know all about it—so you owe me a good turn, I think, and all I ask for is silence, silence! My father’s a violent man, and it does no woman’s name any good—no, not even a poor milliner’s—to be made such sport of as mine betwixt you two gentlemen to-night. As for Sir Jasper, I warrant he’ll hold his tongue. He don’t cut so fine a figure!”
And so it ended. Pamela went to the barn dance, after all, and danced in vast condescension with several agreeable young farmers. Jocelyn Bellairs got the rector to introduce him to Mrs. Pounce, and sitting beside that lady, made himself so agreeable that she was, as she expressed it, quite in a twitter. Mindful of his word passed to Sir Jasper, he did not again approach Pamela, but the gaze with which he followed her about the long room was eloquent enough.
When the little Pounces had nearly yawned themselves off the benches, and Pamela’s poppet, Peg, had gone to sleep outright, her curly head on her mother’s ample lap, it was the elegant young gentleman who conducted Mrs. Pounce to the waiting farm cart, with as much courtesy as if he were leading a duchess to her barouche. The moon was set. The courtyard was fitfully illumined by torches thrust into clamps in the wall, and by the shifting rays of the lanterns carried by the revellers.
As Pamela, standing by the cart, lifted Peg up to her mother’s extended arms, while Mr. Bellairs obligingly held the lantern, Sir Jasper’s curricle wheeled slowly into the yard drawn by a pair of fairly exhausted thoroughbreds. Without stirring from his high seat, the reins slipping from his hands, Sir Jasper stared at the picture painted on the night as at some spectral vision.