Cover art
"I BELIEVE WE ARE GOING STRAIGHT OUT TO SEA." Page [70]
PAM
AND THE COUNTESS
BY
E. E. COWPER
Illustrated by Gordon Browne, R.I.
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW
(1920)
By E. E. Cowper
Gill and the Beanstalk.
Camilla's Castle.
The Forbidden Island.
Nancy's Fox Farm.
White Wings to the Rescue.
The Haunted Trail.
The Girl from the North-west.
The Mystery Term.
Ann's Great Adventure.
The White Witch of Rosel.
The Brushwood Hut.
The Mystery of Saffron Manor.
The Island of Secrets.
Pam and the Countess.
Jane in Command.
Maids of the "Mermaid".
Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow
Contents
CHAP.
- [In which Pam does a Good Deed, and sees a Strange Thing]
- [Mollie Departs, but Comes Back at Breakfast Time]
- [In Which Hughie is Ill-used]
- [In which Pam Makes a Move]
- [The Adventures of the Yawl and her Crew]
- ["I wouldn't have believed it of Pam!"]
- [Confidences in "the Cave"]
- ["Little Friend of all the World"]
- [The Strange Adventure of the Curlew's Call]
- [Life or Death on the Beak Cliff]
- [In which Adrian holds a decided opinion about Pam]
- [In which Pam defies the Countess]
- [Double "A" and a Diamond Crown]
- ["If anybody dies, it'll be her," said Hughie]
- [In which Hughie takes action]
- [A Duel before Dawn]
- [In which Amazing Things Happen]
- [Mr. Badger Calls at Bell House; and Christobel at Fuchsia Cottage]
- [The Trick]
- [The "Messenger" to the Rescue]
- [Ladders of Light]
Illustrations
["I believe we are going straight out to sea"] . . . Frontispiece
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----"
There are certainly moments when fulfilment is not easy----
"When do you suppose they will be back?" asked Miss Chance.
Pamela explained that there was a strong tide, and a light wind, but they'd said they would be back by tea-time--meaning six o'clock and solid high tea, not the afternoon variety.
"How tiresome!" exclaimed the governess, "I do wish they would hurry."
"You can't hurry sailing-boats," suggested Pamela patiently, as she went up the steps.
"I should have thought you could put up more sails, dear," said Miss Chance, who had spent none of her valuable time in mastering the intricacies of yachts and their habits, "it really is most annoying!"
"They don't know anybody wants them back before ten. I believe they've gone up to Peterock; the tide served--Penberthy said so--besides Salterne is too far; they didn't start till after lunch, you see, there was a lot to do at Crown Hill, Mollie couldn't come before."
"Your mother wants a message taken to the station about the stores she expects to-morrow," said Miss Chance, as they walked along the terrace, "they may come to-night by the 9.20 from Salterne. She wants them sent out specially at once, because there is too much, she thinks, for Timothy Batt; besides, his cart won't go to the station again till Saturday."
"Did she want Addie to go?" asked Pamela, waking to the situation. Then she continued quickly: "He won't want to go after tea, Miss Chance, he's arranged with Penberthy to do some painting on the yawl."
"He must put that off," said Miss Chance firmly.
"I'll go to the station--now, before tea," was Pamela's answer, "I cleaned my bicycle this morning. It looks smart enough to go out calling even on the station-master at Five Trees."
She said this so gravely that Miss Chance was a little uncertain as to whether she herself was not being laughed at. You could not quite be sure about Pamela, she was rather an inscrutable young person--tall and slim like her lovely mother, with a small face, a square chin, and firmly closing mouth. She owned a distinguishing nose also, very delicately modelled and turning up the least bit in the world. The family alluded to it as a "snub" at times, but there was nothing at all snubby about it, and it was full of character. For the rest, she owned a plaited rope of hair that fell below her waist, brown with more than a hint of red in it. Hughie was like her, but the other three followed rather faithfully in Captain Romilly's pattern, except that Adrian was on the way to be tall--had outgrown his sixteen-year-old strength, in fact, which was no doubt why the influenza fiend had driven him home in term time.
"Well," Pamela concluded with a question, "will that do?"
Miss Chance thought it would. Mrs. Romilly, finishing letters in a hurry for the 5.30 post, thought it would too. The stores were very important, as Mrs. Jeep was "out" of nearly everything that made life pleasing, and there was no fruit yet in the garden to help out puddings.
"Don't tire yourself, darling," murmured Mrs. Romilly, writing an address.
"I shan't be back by six o'clock, Mummy--at least most likely not--coming back is easy but going will be uphill most of the way."
"So it will." Mrs. Romilly spoke as though this was a new idea. Then she turned her head and smiled at Pamela with serene large blue eyes, "I dare say the Messenger won't be punctual," she said, "so the others will be late, and anyway, dear child, tea can be kept for you, so don't hurry--and thank you so much for going."
Pamela wheeled the bicycle up the drive into the narrow road that ran up and up close under a towering hill-side. All along it, hanging over the road, were banks of fuchsia trees--in summer the whole track would be a sheet of fallen fuchsia blossom. She passed the Temperance Inn on her right, then the church upon the height among the fuchsias, and soon after that the little fairy house called "Fuchsia Cottage", where lived Miss Anne Lasarge, the small grey lady called "The Little Pilgrim" by the Romilly family, because she was like a character in a book they loved.
Miss Anne had done wonders during the War; she had been out in the devastated regions of France working among the homeless peasants. She had only been back since Christmas. Pamela looked at the cottage as she passed. It was like a lovely toy--an ideal cottage--the atmosphere of Miss Anne made a distinct sense of peace cling to it all the year round. No one was in the garden, no one working on the three little terraces bright with flowers, that rose one above another to the lattice-paned bow window of Miss Anne's sitting-room.
Pamela was the least bit disappointed. There was perfect understanding between her and Miss Anne--who possessed a genius for understanding everybody, and everybody's worries. She knew that it was rather lonely to be a middle person in a family--cut off above and below. Pamela vaguely wondered where she was gone to; a natural conclusion being that some one must be ill in one of the farms.
Wheeling the bicycle on up the clean even road she left all trace of houses behind and came to the woods at the back of the valley. The road ran between an over-shadowing height on one side, and thick woods on the other--they bridged the centre of the deep to where the southern heights towered up, covered with more woods.
Presently a white wall began, and the trees behind it thinned a good deal. The wall was high and had broken glass along the top of it. There was a distinct suggestion of rebuff to an inquiring public. Pamela, looking at it, remembered Kipling's story in which "the invasion of privacy" is spoken of as a danger. In this part of the far west land there did not seem much need for walling yourself in, she thought. Moreover, no one lived at Woodrising but Mrs. Trewby the pessimistic caretaker, and it belonged to Sir Marmaduke, who wanted to let it, and had wanted to let it ever since he bought it before the War. There was the big square board--"To be let un-furnished". There were several boards at different points, but no one took the house. It required much money spent on the inside, and the large pretty gardens were neglected. No one worked in them but Peter Cherry, son of Mrs. Rebecca Cherry, the widow who ran the Temperance house in conjunction with her sister Mrs. Paramore.
As Pamela passed the big double gates in the wall, she glanced up at the house behind them. Little could be seen of it but slate roof and chimneys. It was a square, white house of moderate size; not pretty, but comfortable. There was smoke going up from four chimneys. Pamela noticed this as she noticed most things, and deduced from it that Mrs. Trewby was airing the rooms. She also decided that Sir Marmaduke must find the house--still unlet--a great expense. People said he had bought it because he did not want anyone in the valley of an uncongenial kind. He and the Romilly family owned the whole place in present circumstances. A third family--the sort that could afford a house and grounds like Woodrising, might be in the way! That is what people said; no one knew anything actually, because the great K.C. was not a man to confide his affairs to the general public.
Pamela, having glanced at the chimneys went on her way still alongside the white wall with glass on its top. She was walking in the road and some impulse caused her to glance back at the gates when she had gone some little distance. She could just see that one of them had opened inwards, and within the opening stood two people in earnest conversation. One was short and slight, the other was tall and leaned on a stick. The short and slight person was Anne Lasarge, her grey cloak and grey bonnet with white strings proved her; the other was Major Hilton Fraser, the invalided army doctor, lodging at Mainsail Cottage, with the Penberthys. He was lame from shell splinters in the thigh; also four years spent in Mesopotamia and front-line dressing-stations in France had left their mark. Major Fraser was the hero of the Romilly family; Pamela could not mistake his figure. The question was: what could he and the Little Pilgrim be at, meeting at Woodrising?
She paused to gaze, making sure. Then she went on her way, wondering and interested. Pamela was always interested; some people called her "inquisitive", which is not so pleasant an accusation to have tacked on to one! But she could not help herself, for it was that which her nose stood for, with its delicate, keen lines and sharp outline. Just inquiry and the liveliest intuition.
"I daresay they are in love with each other," considered Pamela, reviewing the situation mentally, "they ought to be, they've gone through a lot together, but what has Woodrising to do with it, unless they know somebody who wants to live there!"
This seemed to her a reasonable explanation. She decided that he had friends who wished to take the house, and he had asked Miss Anne to come and look at the rooms for him. He might find difficulty in measuring rooms perhaps.
All the same he'd better not have depended on Miss Anne for that sort of thing. "I'd sooner be nursed by that angel than any living soul," thought Pamela, "but I don't believe she knows about houses, and paint, and carpets. She's perfectly vague and unpractical about prices. He'd better have asked Miss Chance--or Jim Crow--she'd be better than anybody. I wish he'd marry Jim Crow, then we could keep a hero in the family."
Pamela sighed as she decided that there was no hope of this glorious conclusion to friendship. "It's a pity she's too young--but he likes her better than Mollie Shard."
She reached the top of the long hill at the back of the valley, and, mounting, began the easier part of the journey--down and up, down and up, over the loveliest scented moorland road--till presently she came in sight of the miniature railway station, looking like a good-sized hen-coop on its platform, and the shining rails stretching away north and south as far as eye could see, until the hills swallowed them.
Nobody was in the hen-coop. The booking office was locked. The person who did most things had gone off for some meal. There would be a train from Salterne through to Peterock at 6.45, and then the last one at 9.20. No rush of trains let it be said, as of course the up trains from Peterock did not count in this connection.
Pamela sat down on a seat to wait for a human being to appear. She hoped they would not be long, because she was hungry, but she was not in the least dull. She was always looking and thinking--years ago by instinct, nowadays with intention; it was part of the Scout training. She looked once at the shed of the platform opposite, then she shut her eyes and counted mentally how many posts supported it, how many scallops edged the roofing, how advertisements were hung within against the wall behind, and what they were all about. It was good practice. Anything could be used. The great idea, of course, was accuracy, and the power of noticing every detail in the quickest time. Pamela loved doing it, and she did not know yet, of course, that she had a special gift that way.
Time passed. At 6.30 a man sauntered into view wiping his mouth. Pamela went to him, and gave her instructions about the cases from London in a concise and definite manner. Then she hurried off to her bicycle, and made speed on the way home. She calculated that she should be back before seven; the sooner the better, because sun had set, and a veil of dusk was falling over the uplands--faint, sweet twilight.
Just at that moment the front tyre burst. There was a bit of broken glass on the road. As Pamela picked it up and threw it aside into the heather, she thought of Woodrising and that strongly-guarded wall--quite irrelevant, but better than losing one's temper. It was maddening, but there was nothing to do but walk home--about two miles from where she stood.
First, however, she made a try at mending the rent, and it was while she was at work--on what resulted in nothing but a waste of time--that a motor-car passed. It was a large car and strange to Pamela, which was not a surprising thing perhaps, though many cars paid visits in summer to beautiful Bell Bay.
The car was showing lights, and hummed past the girl at a good pace, but Pamela took in all details with her usual swift inclusion.
Luggage--a good deal. Certainly three people inside, and the window on her side closed. It was a large car, but, she felt certain, a hired one. The driver was no smart chauffeur, and the girl felt certain that no gorgeous private touring-car would have been allowed to carry miscellaneous trunks.
It was not the Shards' car. She knew that; it was a huge thing and painted grey; besides, the Shards would have turned off seaward earlier, for Crown Hill was reached by a road that went to Ramsworthy, the other side of the southern heights. This road was the direct route to Bell Bay, and though Peterock could be reached by turning off to the right lower down, any car for that town would have followed a straight line past the station and away northward.
Who could be coming to Bell Bay, then, in a big, hired car, laden with luggage, at that hour?
Now here was a mystery, and if Pamela could have imagined all that was to come out of it, she would have felt even more thrilled than she did.
CHAPTER II
Mollie Departs, but Comes Back
at Breakfast Time
Pamela failed to make anything of her repairing job, so, after fifteen minutes loss of time, she started off to walk it, wheeling the bicycle, for there was no place on the lonely way where she could leave it.
Dusk was now falling in earnest. Pam lighted her little lamp for company and made all speed. She had lost time over the tyre, but felt she was not far from home when the turn to Peterock was reached. From the top of this height now she could see over the long stretch of the Bell Bay valley, and the shimmer of grey sea beyond the trees--just a peep between the great headlands, Bell Ridge on the north above her home, and The Beak on the opposite side of the cove.
The evening was so still that the far-off mutter of the everlasting tide on the rocks came up to her. She lifted her head and sniffed the faint salt breath of the wind, and in that instant caught the throb of a motor. She checked and listened. Then went on again quickly. There was no doubt about it, a motor was coming up the long hill, out of the valley shadows. Then it must have gone to Bell Bay, for she was convinced it was the same car.
In a minute or two it passed her, going back to Salterne. The same car--big and dark, with powerful lights. The luggage was gone from the top where it had been placed, protected by a low fenced enclosure. Pamela saw all that at a glance, but her attention was centred on the occupant of the car--there must be someone inside there still, because she could see an electric lamp alight within the carriage. She stopped at the roadside, waiting for it, and as it went by fixed all her attention on the person who was reading a newspaper by the light of the brilliant lamp on the wall.
She saw the face distinctly--clean shaven, the powerful heavy features so often associated with great lawyers. He was reading intently, and his soft hat was pushed backward from his eyes. Pamela opened her lips in a little gasp of astonishment. The last person in the world she had thought of!
SHE SAW THE FACE DISTINCTLY
It was Sir Marmaduke Shard. Alone. But he had not been alone when the car passed her the first time.
Pamela stared after the receding car till it was lost in the dusk; then she went on again at her best pace, very much surprised, for it would really seem that the great Sir Marmaduke had actually brought someone to Bell Bay, left them behind somewhere, and gone back to Salterne. It really was exciting, because there was nowhere to come to except his own house, and had he been going there he would surely have chosen the direct road.
Moreover, to leave again at once, like this! Pamela could find no answer to the riddle.
When she reached home, nobody questioned her lateness, because they were all, so to speak, rather busy being low-spirited--a condition that nearly always takes people's attention off others.
Poor Adrian was very sorry for himself; very sorry indeed; and there was much excuse for him. It seemed likely that there would be no more sailing in the beloved Messenger.
Christobel, on her part, was passionately sorry for Adrian. She understood fully what such a blow meant to him who found more delight in sailing than in anything else in life.
Mrs. Romilly was grieving for both of them, but as usual was most absorbed in trying to think of a way out of the wood, and how to substitute something that would do--nearly as well.
Finally, there was Miss Violet Chance--nicknamed the "Floweret" in happier moments, by the way--who paralysed Mrs. Romilly's efforts and made matters worse by bright endeavours at dispersing the cloud.
"After all," said the Floweret, "what is a yacht? Surely we can find something quite as jolly! What about rounders? Wouldn't it soon be good weather for croquet?" She suggested to Adrian a collection of moths, and asked him where he had put the stamps he had been so proud of the year before last?
Adrian said:
"I've got them all, thank you, Miss Chance," in a voice that went to Jim Crow's heart, because the suppressed torture in it was so acute.
Because, then, this gloomy company was assembled in the drawing-room, Pamela found no one about, and going straight to the dining-room proceeded to make a good tea; and Hughie, hearing her come in, entered on the tips of his toes, sat down at a distance on the big leather sofa, curled up his toes under him--till he looked like a small soapstone "god"--and waited patiently.
"Why aren't you in bed?" asked Pamela, as she helped herself to some fresh cocoa brought in for her.
"It isn't eight," said Hughie.
"My dear child, it's ten past!"
"Well," Hughie glanced at the clock unashamed, "they've forgotten me, you see. That's why I came out here, for fear they should remember."
"Miss Chance won't forget," warned Pamela with conviction.
Hughie set that aside.
"They are in a state of miserableness, so nobody is remembering things," he said, "it's rather beastly, Pam, they can't sail the Messenger any more----"
"Who can't?" interrupted Pamela sharply, pausing with a glass of potted meat in her hand.
"All of them--Mollie, and Jim Crow, and Addie, and the worst is that Addie will be cross most of the time now, which is a fearful pity; he won't help me do my rigging, because it will remind him of the yawl. It's most unlucky for everybody."
"Why can't they sail the Messenger any more?" asked Pamela, going on with her supper. The thought flashed through her mind that the sudden and brief appearance of Sir Marmaduke was going to be explained simply.
"Because the gardens at Crown Hill are in a mess," Hughie went on with slow emphasis, "they are in a fearful mess, and everything is growing too fast, and Mr. Jordan can't do it, and there aren't any men, because they're mostly dead in the War. Miss Ashington says Penberthy has got to go in the gardens the whole while. Not a minute on the sea--and you know they can't go without Penberthy, Sir Marmaduke won't let them."
"Beastly hard luck," said Pamela firmly.
"I expect it's Fate," Hughie suggested thoughtfully.
"Why can't they have Peter Cherry from Woodrising?" said Pamela, ignoring fate.
"It isn't any good asking me," answered Hughie, "because, how can I tell? But anyway Woodrising is simply bursting with weeds, and the more there are, the more they come. He must stay and pull them out, and plant greens for Mrs. Trewby. She eats greens, she told Mrs. Jeep she has to. He can't possibly go to Crown Hill, and Miss Ashington is worried about the garden, Mollie says she is."
The door opened and Miss Chance looked round the edge of it.
"Ah, there you are, little runaway!" she said with her usual sprightliness, "I've found you."
"I wasn't lost, Miss Chance. I was only talking to Pam," remarked the little runaway, letting himself drop over the back of the sofa in an ingenious and complicated manner.
Miss Chance turned her attention to Pamela.
"You've come back, dear," she suggested, "I hope it's all right about the Stores' cases; Mrs. Jeep will be so glad to have them."
Pamela explained her accident, mentioned that she had been obliged to walk back, and gave the message from Five Trees, namely, that the cases had not come, but should be sent on at once when they did. She added that she was just going in to tell her mother. She said everything she could think of to forestall the inevitable questions, and good Miss Chance swept Hughie away to bed, remarking that it was late, but that the days were getting longer, and the summer would soon be here.
"That's what will make it harder for poor old Addie, about the yawl," thought Pamela, as she got up from the table, and departed for the scene of woe. She was very glad that Hughie's information had "put her wise", as the folk of the far west say--it would have been so galling for Adrian if she had plunged in, and asked what the matter was to start off with. That was Pam's way of looking at it.
So she gave the story of her mishap; said she would have to send the bicycle to Salterne, it must go in on Saturday by Timothy Batt's cart; gave her message about the stores, and made talk of a mildly distracting nature.
Adrian was gloomily turning a magazine; he looked up.
"It's all knocked on the head about our sailing, Pam," he said, "pretty rotten! Fancy having to see the old Messenger moored out there the whole blessed summer, and have nothing but our dinghy to go out in! It's enough to make a person of sense commit suicide."
"Hughie told me something when I got in," said Pamela with sympathy, "I was awfully sorry; he said Penberthy is wanted at Crown Hill. Of course the gardens are too much for Jordan--there used to be three men."
Adrian muttered something biting about gardens generally.
Christobel broke in.
"Mollie told us--she is most horribly disappointed herself--it cuts off her fun too, but she says the gardens must come first, as Lady Shard hates seeing things go--as they are; and men are so scarce, they want every creature they can get on the farms, of course. Oh dear, I wish one could get at Sir Marmaduke, he's always nice about the yawl."
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" suggested Pamela.
Both the others began to answer together in their eagerness; then Christobel dropped out, and Adrian went on.
"How can we, my good child? We can't exactly write letters to him asking him to hand over his yawl to us! As for talking, we shan't meet till goodness knows when--August at earliest."
Pamela suggested cautiously that Sir Marmaduke usually came for week-ends in the summer.
"Well, he may have, once in a way," allowed Adrian gloomily, "but he won't do it this year. Not a dreg of hope. He hasn't been down, and he's not coming. Government has put him on one of these hundred and fifty thousand commissions about miners' bath-rooms, or railway men's sofa cushions! It makes one ill. I wish the whole lot were at the bottom of Vesuvius. We can burn wood, and drive coaches, and go back to decent life. Anyway there it is. We can't get at Sir Marmaduke. Penberthy has got to do gardening----" his voice ceased in a sigh that was a positive groan.
"One would almost think you three--I mean Mollie and Crow and you--would do as well without Penberthy," said Pamela, "Penberthy does nothing ever but talk, does he? Mollie is as good as any man, she's pretty well trained her muscles on the land--and all that----" this was an allusion to the heroic efforts of Miss Shard on the Ensors' farm at Hawksdown during the holidays of two war years at least.
"Of course she could, Pam," Christobel interrupted hastily, noting Adrian's rising irritation, "but you see Mollie won't be here either."
"Mollie not here!" Pamela's face of startled dismay was satisfactory to the distressed pair.
"You see," said Adrian, "things have pretty well tumbled about our ears this afternoon! Well, the bottom has been knocked out of the whole show."
Pamela looked from one to the other, she did not ask another question, but her expression did, so Christobel answered:
"Mollie is going up to town this week-end to see her mother about crowds of things. She believes they've taken a cottage on the river just for--well, airing themselves. Mollie says Crown Hill is too far to come for week-ends; it is a long way, we know. If they have a cottage they can live out of London, and he can go up--I mean Sir Marmaduke can; he can't get down here, Mollie says--not yet anyway. The only person who will be here much will be Miss Ashington, and she'll look after things for Lady Shard, who says she can't possibly live here and leave Sir Marmaduke in London; besides she wants to present Mollie."
"Present Mollie!" echoed Pamela with awe. The world was simply changing swiftly.
Mrs. Romilly folded the paper she was reading, and said in her even, restful voice.
"I should have liked to have presented Crow at the same garden-party as Mollie, but it isn't convenient this year, so we must wait till next summer."
"When Hughie and I are at school," suggested Pamela, a little smile quivering round her firm lips.
Her mother's eyes smiled back sympathy.
"It's unlucky for Mollie and Crow not to be together," she said, "but of course Lady Shard wants Mollie and of course she can't leave Sir Marmaduke alone, so we others must e'en put up with it all. Something will turn up presently. I feel it in my bones," said Mrs. Romilly, "and meanwhile don't let's cross bridges before we come to them. I know nothing will be as bad as one fears, it never is."
She looked at Adrian, who made no response.
"Let's hope," said Crow.
"Has Mollie gone?" asked Pamela, suddenly thinking of an explanation for the motor-car. She put her foot in it, of course.
"My good girl, do have a grain of sense," begged Adrian, "how could she be gone, when she was out on the Messenger with us till nearly seven o'clock?"
"She goes to-morrow," explained Christobel, "not finally of course. She comes back about Tuesday--she's got to pack and take up things Lady Shard wants, you see. Then she'll go for good--I mean for about six weeks--after that."
Pamela made no comment. She was trying to fit that car piled with luggage into this sudden development of Bell Bay doings. Hitherto, the great K.C. and his wife had been to and fro constantly winter as well as summer. Miss Ashington--commonly called "Auntie A.", as her name was Adelaide Ashington--had been in residence nearly always. She was Lady Shard's sister, and a person positively made up of schemes--which never seemed to come off, and were, as a rule, dropped in favour of something more arresting. At present, the farming problem was her hobby, and she was full of an idea for milking cows once a day at eleven o'clock in the morning, so that land-girls need not get up so early, and farmers could do with less labour. The trouble, though, seemed to be that the cows would not agree to this excellent plan. However, Auntie A. did not despair of bringing them also to a sense of duty, and meanwhile she stayed at Crown Hill doing no one any harm, which was something to be thankful for.
It appeared then a settled question that the Shards would not come to Bell Bay until summer was well nigh through. Penberthy would no longer be available, and the lovely yacht would be on her moorings--useless to the Romilly party. It certainly was a sorrowful outlook for Adrian. As Christobel said afterwards to Pamela: "If Addie had never been able to use the yawl almost like his own it wouldn't have mattered." But he had; and of course nothing could make up for it.
Pamela thought that week-end was one of the most dismal she had ever spent. Indeed it was so gloomy that she forgot about the motor-car mystery and surprising visit of Sir Marmaduke; all her mind and efforts--hers and Crow's--were spent in trying to devise a new and interesting way of passing time. Mrs. Romilly was willing to fall in with any plan, even to the extent of hiring a sailing-boat of a size suitable. She was ready to suppress her own feelings in the matter--they would have been distinctly anxious--and let Adrian go to Salterne and find something; an open boat with a sail.
However, on Monday, Adrian, as his manner was, shook himself free of this weight of care and announced that no one was to bother about him and his needs. The dinghy--which was bigger than the average dinghy carried by an eight-ton yacht, and which belonged to the Romillys--would do well enough for fishing, he said. And for the rest, he had made various appointments with John Badger of Champles--the farm on the Down above Bell House--connected with rats and young rabbits.
"Besides the lawn must be kept decent," he concluded; which was his way of saying that the ancient gardener, "Hennery" Doe, could not be left to bear what Mrs. Jeep called "the blunt" of the Bell House gardens.
So content was restored, and Mrs. Romilly wrote to her husband that "the children were perfectly sweet"; they were certainly of the kind that has a sense of responsibility very much awake.
On that day--Monday--Miss Lasarge came down to the Bell House, stayed to tea, and was a joy to everybody--especially Hughie, who adored her--but it struck Pamela that she was a little less talkative than usual; perhaps even a little absent-minded. She went away early and said she had gardening to do.
Nobody noticed this but Pam, and she, sitting at her window in the evening looking straight across the sea-wall, the rocks, and the tide rippling out over the golden sand, decided that the Little Pilgrim was in love with Major Fraser. "Why don't people settle things comfortably and be done with it," thought Pamela vexedly. "They are both nice, and they could live at Fuchsia Cottage."
On Tuesday morning, so early as the nine-o'clock breakfast hour, came a surprise.
It had been raining in the night, and was still drizzling, with an inclination to clear up, when Mollie Shard burst upon the scene in an atmosphere of wet wind and scent of salt.
She had not had breakfast. It appeared that Auntie A. was not down, and as Miss Shard had something to communicate that refused to be kept back till conventional hours she had left Crown Hill, in a "trench" coat and no hat, racing down to the Bell House to see her friends, and tell her tale.
Everybody was down and beginning, except Pamela, and the conversation was a perfect rattle of questions and answers.
"Suppose," said Mrs. Romilly, "you let Mollie tell us what she has been doing."
Mollie explained that what she had been doing was entirely uninteresting. It was only what she expected--a little house on the river near Weybridge. "Yes, the usual little cottagey thing--with a lawn." Mollie liked it, and anyway it had to be because Dad couldn't leave London for ages. "It'll have to be put up with," said Mollie, "one must look forward to better times," but it seemed that was not the matter that was causing all this bubble of excitement and beam of smiles.
"Addie, I've got a message for you and Crow from Dad. Very special. You can have the Messenger to play with, till he wants her."
"We can!" gasped Christobel.
Adrian murmured "My hat!" and flushed red all over his tanned face.
"Yes. That's why I came bursting down, because why shouldn't we go out to-day? Do let's. I've got to do reams of packing, and I'm vowed to go back with the goods, next Monday. Mother lets me off till Monday. Well, anyway Dad says he sees that Crow and Adrian can manage the yawl just as well as he can, and he trusts her to you--only he says if you wreck her you'll have to give him another--that's all. Of course he knows Penberthy isn't vital. Especially when he has lumbago. She's not a heavy boat, and yawls are awfully convenient, Mrs. Romilly--aren't they, Addie?"
"Rather," agreed Adrian ecstatically; his hands shook a little with the thrill of the moment. Crow's grey eyes, so like her father's, seemed to shine with an inner light.
"Well, then, that's all settled. No, don't thank. Dad hates Messenger being on the moorings, just wasting. Hullo, here's Pamela, just in time to join in this jubilee. I say, Pam, why didn't you stop when I called you?"
Pamela slipped into her chair, took an egg, realized the amazing news from a few words of Crow's, looked from her mother's happy face to Adrian's, then attended to Mollie's question.
"How do you mean--'stop'--stop when?"
"Why, just now--when I was coming down the bay drive from Crown Hill, I was nearly at the end lodge, and you came down the road from Hawksdown, went to the edge of the cliff above Penberthy's and stared down into the cove. I called out to you, but you wouldn't answer, you must have heard."
Everybody looked at Pamela, who went on eating her egg slowly.
"It was my wraith," she said, "it wasn't me."
"Jolly solid wraith," declared Mollie, laughing.
"Well, but where did I go?" demanded Pamela, half laughing. "I mean, where did you think I went?"
"Don't know, my dear; I lost sight of you. It's for you to say where you went."
Pamela shook her head, and helped herself to marmalade.
"Well, it wasn't me," she repeated.
"'I', Pamela dear, 'I', please," put in Miss Chance urgently. And everybody laughed.
CHAPTER III
In which Hughie is Ill-used
Some days after that joyous breakfast--Mollie being deeply engaged in the arduous duty of packing--the Romilly crew took out the white yawl in force.
Jim Crow was admittedly skipper. She was the eldest, and had a "sailing" bent undoubtedly. Captain Romilly, in training his family to understand the true inwardness of boats, had discovered the natural gift in his elder daughter. Adrian loved it--and loved the sea, but he was going to be a soldier in due course; Crow and Hughie were following faithfully in the Romilly record.
On this warm still evening--for the day was drawing to a close--Messenger floated lazily on a heaving oily sea. The sky was full of brassy clouds that seemed to have a copper lining; these, drifting, with scarcely perceptible movement, from the north and east, formed rather a serious barrier to getting home, because, given a good strong tide running out also, what is the cleverest yacht to do?
Earlier in the day, with mainsail set as well as mizzen, with big jib ballooning out in fine style, in fact, looking exactly what a well-kept yawl should look, Messenger had gone away down to the southwest straight before the wind and with the tide. The skipper had acted on a sound principle in this; but she was not very sure of her tides, and, having decided that the tide should be in their favour for the homeward run, was now disturbed and puzzled to find it had not turned yet--and the hour was six o'clock or after.
"Of course," said Pam, leaning with her head back against the deck-house, "of course that was where old Penberthy came in. He didn't do anything. He was fearfully lazy, but he was a perfect clock for tides."
"So shall we be, soon," murmured Adrian peacefully from under the brim of a battered hat, "but anyway what does it matter! We shall be home some day. Great Scot, isn't this A1!"
"It would be if I wasn't afraid Mother would worry. It's our first day without anybody, you see----" Christobel suggested this in an apologetic tone.
"My good Crow--what do you call anybody, might I ask? Old Pen was simply luggage. And Mollie is only one more hand, naturally. I mean she couldn't effect a rescue if we went to smash, could she?"
"Of course not, but Mother----"
"Mother is full of sense," said Adrian with decision, as he sat up and looked about appreciatively. "I never in all my life saw anything more perfect than the colours on the old Beak and Bell Ridge. I wouldn't have missed this evening for--well--really, Crow, what does time matter? It's as calm as a plate."
That was true, but the skipper's eye glanced uneasily towards the dipping sun.
Hughie, sitting as usual like a small image of contemplation in a comfortable corner of the well, had said nothing, but listened to the argument.
"If I was at home I could say to Mum there's no wind," he suggested.
"But you're not at home; the Floweret can say so," said Adrian.
"She won't. She'll say 'dear Mrs. Romilly, don't be anxious'," remarked Hughie with grave assurance.
It was so very true that the elders looked at each other and laughed.
Then Christobel said humbly:
"It's all my fault. I made sure the tide turned in our favour at five o'clock. That seemed to give us heaps of time to pick up moorings and make all snug by half-past seven."
"For any sake, Crow, don't be in a repentant mood," urged Adrian, "the tide is keeping a pleasant surprise up its sleeve. At present it's pretending it never comes in at all! Keep it in a good temper whatever happens. It will get tired of the merry jest in two jiffs and remember how jolly and warm the little bays are all along; then it'll go home in a hurry! Oh, I say--what a coast this is! I don't believe you can beat it round England anywhere."
Adrian thus refused to be roused into worry, but Pamela was sorry for Crow. Crow had such a terribly tender conscience! She pulled herself together and sat upright with a decisive little movement.
"Give me the dinghy," she said, "and I'll go ashore and carry a message. Then, when you get back, the boat will be in the cove all right to take you off. There's no difficulty about it--it's as simple as--as anything."
"Pam, it's three miles! You can't possibly----" Christobel objected.
"Oh, my dear--it isn't. Not nearly three miles even from Bell Bay. What are you thinking of? I don't believe we are a mile from the Beak. It's nothing of a row. Just look----"
Christobel looked. First at the big headland, then at Adrian, who had made no comment.
Pamela went on explaining her plan.
"Suppose you make a little tack in towards Ramsworthy and the lighthouse. That will bring us quite near the easiest side of the Beak. Then Hughie can come with me. I'll land him and he can go up the sloping part into Ramsworthy, over Hawksdown, and into Bell Bay as quick as he likes--how far is it? Only about a mile and a half. I'll row the dinghy along the shore. We'll just see which of us gets back first, won't we, Hughie?"
"I shall," answered the small person without hesitation.
"Depends on the tide," said Pamela, "if it turns pretty quick, I shall."
"My young friends, you are both in error," Adrian stretched amazingly as he spoke, "we shall--if the tide turns. You others won't have a look in."
"Well, if you do, you can pick up the moorings and wait for me to fetch you off. And anyway Mother will see you from the windows so she will be comfortable, and everybody will be comfortable," was Pamela's conclusion of the whole matter, as she got up.
Christobel was not satisfied, though she had acted on the suggestion of a tack in the direction of Ramsworthy Cove, to the right of the Beak head--looking at it from the sea.
"I don't like to think of you and Hughie going ashore--all that way--alone," she said.
"Crow, you are hatching difficulties," retorted Pamela, "what else can we do? If Addie puts us ashore he'll have to leave you. Ought you to be left all alone on the yawl? What do you think, Addie?"
Adrian cut the Gordian knot by a new division of labour and a very decided opinion.
"Mother wouldn't like you and Hughie to go home--I mean, go ashore, from here--by yourselves. We know she wouldn't, so it's no use arguing. I vote Pam stays aboard with Crow while I put Hughie ashore at Ramsworthy Cove. Hughie can cut away home over Hawksdown, and race us, because the tide's turning already. When I've put him out I'll come back here. That's all about it, come on, youngster."
Pamela was disappointed, but she said nothing. A sailing boat in a calm is deadly dull most certainly, and Pamela objected strongly to dullness and monotony. Her inquiring mind was always seeking new interests, and she loved surprises--she was always trying to surprise herself, in small ways. The idea of rowing Hughie ashore and then going along round the headland to Bell Bay had appealed to her desire for adventure. However--of course Adrian was right, Mrs. Romilly would not have been pleased at such an independent excursion on the part of her younger children.
The dinghy started, and the mile of sea between lazily floating Messenger and the shadowy bay beyond the lighthouse point was quickly crossed. Adrian came back as quickly, and, as he sprang aboard and bent to tie up the tow rope, announced that the tide was flowing strongly.
"Wind or no wind," he said, "we shall get back before old Hughie. What a rum thing it is how that always happens. As long as you wait--you don't get it. Start doing something else, and there you are! Moral is--never wait. Always do something else. May as well tack, Crow--here's the wind too; breeze getting up with the tide of course!"
So the white yawl, leaning over very gently, gathered speed, and skimming through the smooth placid sea, made two tacks and picked up her moorings easily in half an hour.
The interest of this event is--what happened to Hughie, the human messenger.
Hughie, silent at all times, and almost as keen an observer as his sister Pamela, said nothing when this arrangement was made. At the same time he was well pleased to be put ashore with the responsibility of this small excursion upon his own shoulders. It was an adventure, and to Hughie, whose imagination was riotous, it might lead into all kinds of strange happenings.
Adrian landed him in the tiny cove beyond the great headland, on the point of which was a kind of fortress, walled and powerful--the barricaded strength of the lighthouse, which faced Atlantic gales through weather indescribable.
Outward and inner walls were white; all the low strong buildings were white, and the tower itself stood at the outer guard, smooth, round, and amazingly strong. Looking up at this as they rowed in Hughie felt a thrill--next to being a sailor like his father, he would have wished to be a lighthouse man--but this was a secret.
In the steep little cove lay the scattered bones of an old ship; weed grew in the staring ribs, and the massive keel was sunk deep into the sand. This was nothing new. The wreck had been there many years; it was that kind of thing that made Government build such a lighthouse. The Beak in old days had been one of the most relentless murderers of all the western headlands.
"There you are, old chap. Cut along home now, and tell Mother we'll be there before you," instructed Adrian as he pushed off, looking behind him as he went.
Hughie nodded, picked his way over the strewn wreckage, and went up the broken sloping steep at the back of the cove till he reached the road on the top. This went from the small village, Ramsworthy, over Hawksdown--which was the bare lovely height on the moor above the lighthouse--and down into Bell Bay. Several roads branched off; one went along the point to the lighthouse settlement; one led away back across Ramsworthy moor to the station at Five Trees. Yet another went to Clawtol, the Ensors' farm, and on past that and the principal lodge of Crown Hill to join the main road from Salterne.
This was the way Pamela's mysterious motor-car should have come, had it been behaving in a reasonable manner.
Hughie ran and walked alternately till he reached the top of Hawksdown. Then he stopped to look round. The sun was dipping into the sea--far, far out. Here and there upon the sea was a sailing vessel, looking like a painted toy. Not distant a great way from the lighthouse was the Messenger, a glistening model of perfection, with her white sails drawing on this new breeze that rippled the water.
Hughie, gazing at the straining sail and the ripple, saw that they would get home first if he waited, so he started off at a trot, making quite straight across the moorland for the drop into Bell Bay between Penberthy's cottage and the Crown Hill gate. It was the shortest way home.
The sun had gone into the sea, and a purply shadow was creeping over the land--the whole world was a happy hunting ground for adventures, and Hughie would have asked nothing better than to follow one of the farm tracks and go on till he met something surprising. At the crossroad to Clawtol Farm he paused, and looked along it because it was pretty. It dipped away from the high pitch of the moor and went down and down between banks covered with gorse and heather. It was sheltered as well as pretty, and was one way to Bell Bay, of course, though roundabout.
Hughie, stopping to look along this road, saw something immensely surprising--about the last thing he dreamed of--indeed a dragon or a giant would have been less astonishing, because he was always expecting creatures of that kind. What he saw was his sister Pamela. She was walking rather slowly between the gorsy banks in the direction of Clawtol Farm. Even as he looked, she paused, went up the left-hand bank two steps, picked some flower, jumped back into the road, and walked slowly on.
Hughie stared at this vision. At first in unbelief; then with a rapid calculation of time; then in amaze. It certainly was Pam; but she must have been amazingly quick to get up there, though it was possible--well, of course it was possible, because there she was! His mind reviewed rapidly the idea that Addie must have gone back very quickly and taken Pam off at once, and put her ashore on the home side of the Beak--you could climb it, but it was an awful bit of cliff. Altogether that explanation did not appeal to a reasoning mind. Then he remembered the ripples on the sea, and the straining mainsail of the yawl as she gathered speed on the homeward track. Of course that must be it. The Messenger had picked up her moorings and they had put Pam ashore to come up and meet him, while they stowed the sails. That was what would have been done--supposing they reached home first. Hughie concluded that he must have taken too much time over his journey--it was a most annoying conclusion to arrive at. Hughie shouted with vigour:
"Pam--I say--Pam!" and then stayed to watch the effect.
The tall, slim figure in neat skirt and jumper--such as Hughie connected with both his sisters--went on at a steady pace. It seemed that the headgear was a cap of the tam-o'-shanter kind. Pamela had one undoubtedly, but her small brother could not quite remember whether she had been wearing it this afternoon. Most likely she had. Anyway, the long, thick plait of polished hair was very obvious, hanging to the waist-line and below.
"Pam!" he shouted again, with greater energy.
The girl checked. She looked up and round, but not back. She seemed by the movements of her head to be listening.
"Hullo-o-o!" hailed Hughie, with force.
Pamela stood still with a startled pull-up, and turned round and glanced behind her. Hughie was conscious of surprise at the way she did it. He could not have explained clearly perhaps what it was that shocked him just a little in his sister's manner. His feeling was instinctive only.
She acted in a guilty manner.
Now this sort of thing was not only foreign to Pamela, but to the entire Romilly family. They did unexpected and independent things at times, of course--and explained afterwards. They did not do things they were ashamed to own up to, which was what Pamela appeared to be guilty of at this moment. Hughie flushed at the thought of it. Why was she running away; why wouldn't she make a sign?
He raised an arm, waved it round his head and started to catch her. She seemed to hesitate. Then she also distinctly made a gesture of the hand, and ran too. Away from him--in the direction of Clawtol.
Hughie had not a chance when Pamela ran. He knew that by long experience. His sister was a real "sprinter"; her long legs, light body, and excellent "wind" left him nowhere every time. At the same time he had no intention of giving in, though he was angry. It was a mean thing to do; especially after she had seen him and answered his wave.
He ran on steadily, though he knew the distance between them must be increasing fast, till he came in sight of Clawtol ricks and roofs, and the hedge-row fencing that began at the turn of the road. The dog was barking monotonously in that maddening way tied-up dogs do bark when anything interests them, and Hughie reasoned that the dog had heard Pamela run by along the road.
He stopped at the gate to see if there was a person about, and became interested in the distant doings of Mrs. Ensor, who was trying to induce several families of chickens--thoroughly mixed up among themselves--to go to bed in correct parties. The open coops stood in a row; Hughie looked through the gate, as it was a high one, and observed the manoeuvres.
Mrs. Ensor was a short, dark woman, with pretty eyes and a distinct moustache. Besides the moustache she owned six little boys, in ages ranging from eight down to eighteen months. This last--an important member of the Ensor family--was staggering about among the rebellious chickens, like them, he had no particular bed-time, and fought against it whenever it was decreed. As Hughie watched, drawn away from his intention of questioning Mrs. Ensor about Pam, a small pig charged through the mêlée, upset the Ensor baby, scattered the chickens and caused an uproar that brought more little Ensors to the scene of action.
One of these saw Hughie, and pulled his mother's skirt to make her notice the visitor. Hughie therefore pushed open the gate, and advanced rather gingerly, because the noise was deafening and Mrs. Ensor was shaking the baby--as an example to its brothers of what happens when people are naughty enough to fall over a pig.
"Mother," urged Reube Ensor, who was six, and very small, "here be Master Hughie."
The tumult ceased as by magic, and Mrs. Ensor advanced to meet her visitor, with the baby surprised into silence.
Hughie shook hands politely. Then he asked if his sister had just been to the farm.
"I thought I saw her," he explained, "she was in the road, and I thought she might have come up for eggs."
This idea had occurred to him when he saw the hen-coops as a very possible explanation for Pamela's conduct. Her gesture to him might have meant that she was going on to Clawtol Farm in a hurry.
Mrs. Ensor had not seen anybody. Miss Pamela had not called for eggs. She turned to the row of listening little boys and demanded of them, "had anybody seen Miss Pamela?"
There was a certain amount of whispering and nudging, from which the farmer's wife seemed to gather that Pamela had been seen. It was "young Reube" who volunteered information, twisting his cap round and round in very small nervous hands.
Hughie looked at him with shy sympathy. He liked Reube, but could not explain why.
"Did you see my sister?" he asked gravely.
"Yes, I seen the young lady," admitted Reube.
"Where did she go?" asked Hughie again.
"She went down along Crown Hill. She was running."
That was all Reube said, or knew apparently. As he gave this answer he looked from Hughie to his mother with a puzzled expression which neither interpreted to mean anything but shyness.
"I think I'd better go home now, Mrs. Ensor," said the visitor rather ceremoniously. "I shall be rather late for our tea, shan't I? I expect my sister has gone to Crown Hill to see Miss Ashington, so I shan't go that way--it's much longer."
Mrs. Ensor and family--with an inquisitive escort of chickens and little pigs--came to the gate with Hughie and let him out.
"Good-night, Mrs. Ensor," said Hughie, and lifted his cap with precision.
Young Reube stood in the background with a troubled expression on his small dark face. After Hughie was gone he ran about and drove chickens into coops, but all the while there was a sense of confusion in his mind, because he had no power to explain--words do not come easily when you are six!
Hughie raced back along the road to the top of Hawksdown. From there it was not very far to the drop of the hill down into Bell Bay. At a turn he came in full view of the lovely cove, and paused to look for the white yawl. There she was on her moorings. Sails stowed too, and he could see someone getting out of the dinghy on to the big flat rock where they usually landed. There was not enough light for him to distinguish persons, but seeing the Messenger was safely back home nothing else mattered.
He took to his heels and ran headlong down the steep road, past the lodge gate of the cove road. To Crown Hill, round the corner, down, and down, till he came to the sea-wall and gardens of the Bell House; and as he ran he became increasingly angry, which was a rare state of mind with Hughie. He considered himself swindled. He had been put ashore on purpose to carry a message, and had felt the importance of the trust.
It was a small thing that the yawl should be home first, though, as he had seen the dinghy coming ashore that would not have happened had he not been tricked into turning aside by Pamela.
The thing was distinctly unfair. Pamela, his partner in many interesting episodes, had gone back on him in this, she had treated him meanly and put him in a silly position.
CHAPTER IV
In which Pam Makes a Move
The first thing people said to Hughie was, of course, "What a long time you were!" It was exactly what he expected, and he felt extremely bitter about it.
There was supper on this night, everybody was hungry, and they had so much to tell Mrs. Romilly about the events of the day that no more than that comment was made at the moment.
Mrs. Romilly had not been anxious. She had observed the calm, had guessed the tides, and simply given orders that "high tea" would be supper. She was rejoiced that this first attempt had been a success, but decided that her youngest son was tired out--he was so silent. She remembered the climb out of Ramsworthy Cove, the walk over Hawksdown--thought of the long day of hot calm--and put no questions at all about it. Indeed she diverted those that the rest of the crew would have asked.
Pamela, as usual, came in rather late. Hughie looked at her. She sat down, saw him, and said:
"I saw you running down the hill, aren't you hot, poor Midget? It is stuffy as thunder, Mummy, and the wind is coming in little puffs over Bell Ridge; presently there'll be a row--we shall hear the thunder tanks come wheeling along over our heads! I am hot!"
Hughie decided she had been running also. But he felt this was not the time or place to go into the question. He ate his supper in silence, and matured a telling and desperate plan for paying his sister back. He would ignore her presence. He would not say good-night to her.
Thus when bed-time came, Hughie, busy as usual with some infinitely small carpentering work connected with his latest boat, got up, put away his tiny blocks, pulleys, and fine cord, and went to kiss his mother. She was making sails for him--perfect sails with amazingly neat reefing knots and cord-stiffened edges. Nobody could make model boat-sails like Mrs. Romilly.
"Oh, Mum----" said Hughie very low, and smiled.
"Tired boy," answered 'Mum', also smiling, "go to bed and go to sleep, and don't wake till eight."
Hughie said good-night to Adrian, Christobel, and the Floweret; then he went off to bed, deliberately missing out Pam.
Nobody thought about it but Pam herself. The others were all busy, Addie and Crow playing chess and too much absorbed, the Floweret reading the newspaper to Mrs. Romilly. Pamela, very intently taking notes from her precious handbook, had turned her head ready for Hughie's kiss. He always kissed her as well as his mother. But Hughie walked down the room with short quick steps, opened the door, shut it very softly, and was gone.
This action was in no way lost on his sister. She not only saw it all, but she realized that it was a case of extreme measures on Hughie's part, and made up her mind to get to the bottom of the business.
Pamela's bedroom was a small one at the end of the house, and it looked out over the sea-wall and into the rocky cove. Hughie's room was a pair to it, farther along the little cross passage that barred the end of the long corridor down the centre of the house. Hughie's window looked the same way as Pamela's, and they were exactly alike--strong casements, deep window seats, with a view passing description for peace and beauty.
At nine o'clock Pam went up to bed; but she walked by her own door, to Hughie's, and without knocking, opened it softly and went in.
A young clear moon was rising up the purple sky, and there was light enough to show any movements, especially as the blind was up. The owner of the room was in bed, and no doubt ought to have been asleep, but the excitements already narrated had kept him awake--combined with the expectation of a visit from his sister.
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. Pamela closed the door gently, came to the foot of the bed, and leaning her crossed arms on the brass foot, said:
"What's the matter, Midget?"
Hughie was not the sort of person to pretend he did not know what she was thinking of. He retorted by another question.
"Why didn't you stop when I called you, Pam?"
"Called me! Where? When?"
"On the top of Hawksdown--where the road goes to Clawtol," said Hughie.
"But when?"
"Why, this evening, when I was coming home, of course."
There was a pause. Pamela seemed to be thinking deeply. Hughie made use of the interval to sit up in bed--indeed he sat on his pillow, holding the small pyjama-clad ankles of his crossed legs in either hand. He looked very much like an enlarged soapstone figure of an Indian god.
After a sufficiently long pause to make Hughie feel sure his sister was very guilty in the matter, Pamela said:
"What was I doing?"
"I should think you ought to know," answered Hughie coldly.
"No, but tell me. I want to know just what you saw."
Hughie complied.
"So I waved--when I'd called; and you looked back and put up your hand. And then you ran away. I ran too, but I couldn't catch you--I never can--you know that perfectly well," he concluded.
He could see his sister's face quite plainly in the moonlight. She was frowning with a sort of puzzled intentness, and her keen features looked very sharp. Hughie, quick as she to observe, began to explain further. He told how he went to Clawtol, and how he inquired from Mrs. Ensor and her family.
"And Reube said he'd seen you," he ended.
"Reube said he'd seen me," echoed Pamela, "are you sure, Midget?"
Hughie considered; then he repeated carefully:
"Mrs. Ensor said 'did you see the young lady?' and Reube said 'yes'."
"Ah!" breathed Pamela, low, to herself. Then she left her position at the bed foot, and moved about the room in a restless silent fashion, her eyes on the ground. At last she came to a stand by the window.
Hughie made no remark; his eyes followed her, and he was much interested; there was plainly something on foot not understandable at first.
"How was I--she--dressed?" asked Pamela suddenly.
"Oh, your usual things--what you had on the boat," said Hughie vaguely.
"Brown shoes and stockings?" Pam demanded.
Hughie thought about it. Then he said he couldn't see so far.
"But I saw your pigtail hanging down. There was a bit of light on it, and it shone."
Pamela went back to the foot of the bed, and leaned there.
"Look here, Hughie," she said seriously, "if I say a thing you'd believe me, wouldn't you?"
Hughie gripped his ankles with either small brown hand and gazed back at her thoughtfully.
"I should believe you--if you said a true thing," he said.
"Well, I'm going to say a true thing. The girl you saw wasn't me--I mean, I."
"Oh!" said Hughie, "who was she, then?"
"I don't know any more than you do, but I'd venture to bet a shilling that she's the same girl Mollie Shard saw. Don't you remember when Mollie said she saw me, out by Mainsail Cottage on Tuesday morning. Well, I wasn't."
"Oh," murmured Hughie again--then, "I remember what Mollie said, but why didn't you say it wasn't you, Pam?"
"I was thinking about something rather queer that I saw myself; kind of adding them together."
"What did you see yourself?"
Pamela did not answer this question at once, her mind was searching round for points, at last:
"One thing is plain;" she said, "there's a girl about who looks like me; but goodness knows who she is, or where she comes from. Look here, Hughie, will you keep your eyes open--now you know. I'll try and follow it up too, and I promise I'll tell you what I find out even if I don't tell other people."
"I see. Yes, all right, Pam," agreed the Midget with dignity. As a matter of fact he was really not quite sure whether he did see. It was all rather startling; why should there be a girl exactly like Pam--and with the same pigtail even? However, there it was. He had said he would believe what his sister told him.
"Well, good-night, Hughie; we shall see what happens next," said Pamela. She was not laughing at all, her face wore the same keen look. "And remember you promised not to say one word to a living soul, whatever happens."
"All right. I promise. Good-night, Pam," and Hugh raised his face to be kissed rather meekly. He felt as though all this was rather serious.
Pamela went away to her own room and sat down in the low window-seat to puzzle out the position.
There was a girl in Bell Bay so like herself that two people who knew her well had been completely deceived, yet nobody had arrived in the cove--publicly. Indeed, there was no place for them to arrive at, without the inhabitants being aware.
"The queer part is," thought Pamela, "that nobody is worrying with curiosity, because whenever anyone sees her they think it's I, and naturally they don't notice any more. Whatever that girl does will be put on my shoulders, and I can't go and say she's there because I don't know."
She looked at the silver, clear, clean moon, riding so gaily up and up, and at the inky shadows of rocks away down on the white shining sand of the cove. Everything was painted black and white, and the ripple of the sea was a laughing whisper.
Pamela was used to this fairy scene in all sorts of phases, but to-night--probably because of the Mystery Girl--she felt as though something uncanny were abroad, and to shake herself free from the feeling she opened her precious handbook, and proceeded to search through it from end to end. "What should a person do--what would a Patrol Captain, or any experienced Guide do, if she found she had a 'double'? Practical information about making jam tins into candlesticks, or how to meet a mad dog! Splendid directions for camping and tracking--tracking!"
Pamela paused and thought about that. She studied the means for finding out a bicycle-track, what sort of bicycle--which way going. That might be useful if the girl rode a bicycle. Footprints might be followed up if she could be sure what sort of shoe the girl wore.
She shut up the book, and began to undress, gazing dreamily out at the moonshine all the time, utterly unconscious what that moonshine was to show her one night--in the near future.
Just before she went to sleep her mind fixed itself again on a previous idea. This business had surely got to do with Woodrising--with the strange motor-car--and with the secret visit of Sir Marmaduke Shard. She had no proof that he went that night to Woodrising, but she was perfectly certain he had done so. The first thing, of course, was to find out if anybody had come to Woodrising.
The next morning, warm, lovely--and far removed from any sort of mystery--arrived, in about five minutes. Mornings do arrive swiftly when you are thirteen and have been out sailing nearly all day before. Everything looked the same downstairs, and Pamela felt it difficult to believe she had a "double" and Bell Bay was the innocent scene of a surprising secret. She found that Christobel and Adrian were already planning a sail of some importance, and was met by a pressing invitation to go too.
"Where?" asked Pam lazily.
"Peterock. Addie wants his hair cut, and it can be cut at Peterock just as easily as Salterne. Besides, it's much nearer."
Christobel said this with intent, for though nearness was nothing to her and Adrian, she knew instinctively that her mother rather cherished the thought of their "keeping near home". So many people who have no experience of sailing believe that the safety is increased by keeping near land, whereas it is just as possible to drown in one fathom of water, as forty fathoms.
However, Christobel threw out the bait with purpose, and Mrs. Romilly, smiling happily, said:
"That would be nice, darlings. Won't you want lunch and tea on board? Ask Jeep for all you need."
Both Pam and Hughie excused themselves from this expedition. The day promised to be unusually hot and breathless, and Pamela, knowing exactly what it would be like, preferred a bathe and a book. Hughie wanted to test the new sails to his model boat.
This division of forces was so often practised that Mrs. Romilly took no notice. She was sure that the two elders could manage the yawl--and for the rest, a day in which there seemed to be neither wind nor waves, was very satisfying to her mind. Pamela liked being alone--she and Hughie spent hours in the cove contented and harmless. All would be well.
The morning wore on in peace, and about midday the voyagers went down, basket-laden, and very happy.
"It will be thunder," prophesied Pam, who was sitting on a low rock, with her back against another, learning certain enthralling rules by heart from a certain book, "it will be quite calm and oily, and presently you'll have a cracking storm. I feel it in my head. Glad I'm not going. Crow, do you remember the day when we couldn't get anywhere, and we threw the slices of beef overboard and they went with us for miles--sort of cheek by jowl, sitting on the sea."
"That was before the War," said Crow, evading the thought, "one doesn't have slices of meat now, of anything, thank goodness. Beef and ham pies would sink."
"Not before we've eaten them," put in Adrian calmly, "come along, Crow. I say, Pam--supposing we don't get to Peterock, but go to somewhere down coast beyond Ramsworthy, do you mind suggesting to Mother that we are playing on the sands at Netheroot or Tamerton? Either would do, 'fraid there'll be no wind for Salterne."
"Can you get your hair cut at Netheroot?" asked Pamela.
"No, don't suppose so; why?"
"Only because Mother likes to picture you on shore most of the time, when you go sailing, I mean--it's so nice and dry; and the sea is wet as wet can be! If there is a thunderstorm you'll go ashore, shan't you?"
"Like a shot," declared Adrian, as he pushed against the rocky landing platform, and drove the dinghy dancing over the breaking ripples.
Pamela watched, sleepily, as the boat made for the white yawl. She rejoiced that she had remained on land, when the sails went up under Addie's strenuous hauling, yet admired wholeheartedly as the flop of the moorings' buoy set free the yacht, and, leaning over very gently, she drifted broadside on towards Bell Ridge--the northern headland.
Even as she drifted, silent as a shadow, the far faint rumble of summer thunder murmured from inland, and Pam said "thought so" contentedly. After that she shut her eyes and reviewed a succession of plans; something ought to be done now she had a day to herself, or an afternoon at any rate, no one to ask inconvenient questions either, for Hughie being in the secret required but a hint. He was the most circumspect person living.
Sitting there with her eyes closed Pamela arranged a practical plan. She would go for a walk after lunch, on the pretext of taking her bicycle to Timothy Batt's house at Folly Ho. Timothy was the carrier, and lived with his old horse, at the very small hamlet on the Peterock road beyond the turn to the station--and also, of course, beyond Woodrising. She would leave the bicycle, and coming back she would take stock of that empty house, going round the big grounds encircled by the white wall. Surely something could be discovered that might help to elucidate this mystery.
The plan was excellent; when Pam and Hughie went in to dinner, she asked leave, and got it easily. Then came the thunderstorm--about which all details will be given presently--not only the details, but the results and consequences.
It was an exceedingly unusual and violent thunderstorm, frightening the household not a little; all except Pamela and Hughie, who for their own reasons did not mind in the least. Hughie wanted to test small boats in the water that rushed, seething, into the big horse-trough in the yard, and Pamela pictured footprints of a revealing nature, marking the wet soil all round Woodrising.
Good may come out of anything. And surely advantages might be expected from such rain as fell into Bell Bay on that afternoon.
Mrs. Romilly was certainly worried on account of the yawl, but Pamela told her what Addie had said about Netheroot or Tamerton. Also when the storm had passed she could see for herself that the water was hardly more rough. There was nothing to suggest danger. Later on the telegram came; but not till after Pamela had started off on her delayed walk.
She went after five-o'clock tea, into a wonderful washed world, where every plant, bush and hedge seemed to have been touched with a magic brush, and set in jewels. The sandy soil oozed beneath her feet, and rills of water streamed down the hill in winding gullies.
Pamela whistled softly to herself as she went; it was good to be alive on such an evening, and she felt very hopeful about her chances of making discoveries, chiefly because she felt so buoyantly cheerful.
Folly Ho was perhaps a mile from Bell Bay. Timothy Batt promised--or rather his wife promised for him--that the bicycle should go to Peterock next day but one. Next day was station day. Alternate journeys--Five Trees and Peterock.
"Pity we didn't have it this morning, missie, Batt's gone to Peterock to-day."
Pamela said "never mind", and meant it. Her object was Woodrising.
She sped back along the wet road with eager haste, and checked not till she came to the long hill, and the white wall enclosing those thickly wooded grounds and white buildings. Then she did what she had planned to do--got through the hedge on to the wooded hill above Woodrising, made her way down slowly through the trees till she reached the barrier wall, and then began to follow the course of the wall round the whole of the little estate. She believed there would be some chance, which she could make use of, either to get in, or see in, for surely there must be outlets! Gates, or gaps, or ladders, or something that could be made use of.
However, she went round two sides of it--the wall at the top, and the long side wall down the hill--and found no opportunity. She knew too that she must not count on the wall edging the road, because no burglar even could attempt its slippery height. That was three sides! She was thinking of this, and that she might never see more than the top windows, slate roof, and chimneys of the tantalizing house, when she came on a ladder--a short ladder set conveniently up against the wall--positively inviting her to mount it.
She went up cautiously and looked over. It was at the corner, in the angles of the side and lower walls, and she saw that within was a high rubbish heap that obviously formed a bed for vegetable marrows. Heaped-up straw mould, and softness--the easiest thing in the world to jump down on to. But that was rather an extreme measure, so Pamela went back down three steps and considered the question.
Then she observed that the glass at this point was crushed and scraped till the wall top was smooth enough to pass with comfort. One might have supposed that someone made a practice of getting over just here; Pamela's mind leaped to the thought of Peter Cherry, the boy--it would of course be his quickest way home to the Temperance Tea House. No doubt a secret way.
She went up again and viewed the grounds. Immediately below were the kitchen-gardens--beyond that vistas of long shrubbery walks--lawns, fruit trees--every sort of tree, and everything overgrown and run riot. There was a wild luxuriance about the whole place which was natural to Bell Bay and its sheltered warmth. No one seemed to be about.
After a few minutes' hesitation, Pamela went "over the top" with a swift movement, and jumped down on to the vegetable-marrow bed. It was damp and soft. Pausing to reconnoitre she noticed two bricks missing in the wall on the inner side. The holes had all the appearance of steps made on purpose, and confirmed her opinion about Peter Cherry's short cut.
Then she went into the garden, making for the shelter of the nearest shrubbery. Keeping out of sight of window view she followed the paths in and out towards the house. Everywhere she looked for "tracks", for footmarks in the wet soil, and was pleased when she found the trace of a shortish square-toed boot with nail-studded sole. Certainly Peter Cherry! She felt she was getting on in experience. So absorbed was she that she confused the bush fringed paths, and got mixed up as to which she had inspected. Then, she came on the neat, narrow print of a woman's shoe, and stooped to examine it with intense interest. Here was a plain track, and she followed it some yards between overhanging, very wet apple-trees, till it turned the corner into a cross path. Pamela stopped and looked up and down. Surely she had been this way before. She looked back between the green walls and felt certain the look of it was familiar. A thought struck her and she slipped off one of her own shoes, and compared the sole to the shoe print. Either it was her own track--which she was crossing unawares--or somebody else wore exactly the same sized shoe. It was a maddening dilemma.
She was puzzling over this when she became aware of voices, not far distant, and coming nearer--from the house. Somebody was talking in what Pamela would have described as a "fussy voice". She stood listening, and might have been caught on that instant if the talkers had glanced down between the apple-trees, for two figures passed across the end of the alley she was in, and went on towards the kitchen-garden.
Pamela made up her mind to see who they were, and looked about eagerly for a safe shelter. She reasoned that they would go round the bottom of the garden and back up the south side, so she hastened in the direction of the house, where very thick-growing shrubberies offered screens, and hid herself in the wettest possible bushes by the side of a direct path homeward.
Certainly ten minutes passed before anyone drew near. Then she was rewarded for her damp condition. Two women came along, talking. That is to say, one talked--never ceased to talk. The other, the silent one, was Mrs. Trewby, and she, looking as bilious and despondent as usual, listened with respectful misery stamped on her sallow face.
The person who did the talking puzzled Pamela's sharp examination. She was familiar, yet difficult to place. After they had passed, and the fussy voice chattered on, growing less audible, Pamela suddenly remembered who she was--Mrs. Chipman, Lady Shard's one-time lady's maid, and a well-known person at Crown Hill for some years. Her name had been Emily Baker in those days, when she was just as fussy and talkative. She married the butler at the Albert Gate house in London, and kept a lodging-house on the east coast. The War had done for the lodging-house, and the butler was slain by sickness in India. She had a pension and no doubt Lady Shard was kind to "my good Chipman", as she called her.
Pamela could just remember her at Crown Hill; now, she looked fatter, more dumpy, and more pompous, otherwise just the same. This discovery was a blow, because it was a simple explanation of the visitor to Woodrising--Chipman, sent down to stay with Mrs. Trewby, at the Shards' expense. Of course, but how dull! The girl could have nothing on earth to do with them.
As Pamela shook the wet off her skirt, she realized that she had been so intent on trying to remember Chipman that she never listened to a word she was saying. Rather depressed, she went back along the path to the corner, and as she went she heard Mrs. Chipman calling--"Countess--Countess."
"If they are going to let a dog out I'd better run," thought Pamela; and she went over the wall briskly, into the wooded meadow.
CHAPTER V
The Adventures of the Yawl
and her Crew
To go back to the start of the white yawl. After the mooring-buoy had "plopped" into the smooth sea, the sails half-filled, and then, as the pretty craft righted herself, they slackened again in a succession of sleepy rattles. Then followed a period of drifting to leeward, the dinghy drifting also, and bumping softly against the yacht's counter in a stupid manner.
Adrian flung himself on the deck and mopped his forehead; he said:
"I wonder why Mother always rejoices when there is no wind. It doesn't appeal to me as a desirable state of things. Pam looks jolly comfortable over there--wish I was in her place! I say, Crow, don't say we're going to play the fool like this all day."
"Why say anything in such a very short space of time, dear boy," retorted the skipper lazily; "we've hardly started--isn't that thunder, hark?"
"It is thunder, my good woman," allowed Adrian, "which means growlings, heat and stickiness immeasurable. Don't give way to optimistic hopes and picture--first a gentle cooling shower, and then a sweet little breeze that will waft us to Peterock without a tack."
Christobel, obstinately happy, lay back in a comfortable position with one arm thrown over the tiller. Suddenly she sat up. A queer little breeze had dropped upon them from the heights. The slack sails filled, the yawl leaned gently to leeward and, with ever-increasing speed, began to cut steadily through the glassy heaving sea. Straight out they went--out and out into the world of blue--the cordage strained and creaked, the hard sails pulled, and Messenger sped through the water with a delicious bubbling hiss.
"How's that, umpire?" demanded Crow, turning a smiling glance on Adrian, "kindly remember next time occasion rises, that it's never worth while looking on the dark side."
"The hot side, you mean," said Adrian unabashed, "where are we going now?"
"Out," answered his sister briefly.
"Good. Let's get away from our native land for a bit--it's stuffy. Besides I want to look at it from a distance, it enlarges one's mind."
So Christobel, like the master mariner in "The Wreck of the Hesperus", "steered for the open sea", and Adrian, whose appetite was enlarging as well as his mind, decided that dinner was of more importance than anything else, and diving into the saloon began fetching up plates, food, cups and lemonade; as Messenger was on an even keel, and the breeze held, the conditions were ideal and there was nothing to worry about. As they ate, they planned the excursion with precision. They were going out, but the ebbing tide was carrying them northward--Peterock way, that is to say; presently they would tack, and from a distance of some seven miles set a straight course on a "soldier's wind" for the pretty town. They fixed the hour at which they would arrive, how long they would stop, and how short a time it would take them to get back--under the very satisfactory conditions of fair tide and fair wind.
As a rule, this is the way of all ways to upset everything; and to-day the rule held good.
First the wind dropped--dropped--and ceased. One moment the sails were drawing with firm pressure; actually the next moment they hung limp--not a cord stirring. At the same time, as Crow said, "someone blew the candle out".
As it happened she gave an exclamation and looked up. A bank of dense black cloud had covered the high sun that had shone upon them till then. The sky was divided in two by a distinct line. To seaward, blue, clear, exquisite. To landward and above the vivid broken coast hung massed clouds of most fearsome appearance. Clouds above clouds--the lowest, greyish battalions tearing along at headlong speed; above them others of purple black, moving statelily at a different angle; above them again piled heaps of strange shapes, shot and lined with coppery tints. These were moving at a different pace, and in a different direction.
As far as eye could see over the hilly land was black. And the black was devouring the sunny blue.
Christobel looked up, round, and landward. Then she said in rather a small voice:
"How horrid!" and turned her eyes seaward.
Adrian contemplated the heavens with a frown, then he got up, saying one might as well put away the things. He put them away, and incidentally made everything snug inside; nothing was left loose to shift or roll.
Christobel heard him doing it and guessed that he expected it would be necessary.
Presently he came up the short companion-way, put his head out and stared at the sky again. The line of black was advancing swiftly over the blue.
"We shall have big rain, old lady," he said. "I don't know how much wind! Of course, it's only thunder, but----"
Low down over the hills shot out a succession of wicked fiery darts. They stabbed downwards into the quiet land as though they would destroy it. Deep ominous rumblings followed.
"I think I rather hate it," said Crow uneasily.
"I'll get the mackintoshes out of the fore lockers, expect we shall find a use for them before we are through with this beano! You'll have to put yours on," Adrian said, then he laughed. "When it comes, it'll come."
Then they both laughed, and Christobel as usual found support and comfort in her brother's matter-of-fact way of looking at things. She was no coward. Her courage was of a high order, though she was not aware of it, but certain conditions affected her imagination and made icy thrills run all over her.
Adrian would have said "It's only a few clouds--what does that matter?" Equally he would have said of a dark night and its mysteries, "If it were daylight you wouldn't mind! What's the difference? There's nothing there."
While she gazed at the towering masses that hung over sea and land with dread in her eyes, Adrian thought about mackintoshes.
"When the rain comes I shan't mind," said Crow, "rain is only--well, rain."
"How true," murmured Adrian, "and being rain it wets."
They both laughed again, and the skipper felt better.
But even Addie was quite silent before the wetting part came.
The land was invisible now, except when those stabs of flame tore splits in the barrier; then the two watchers could see the dark breathless combes and the big headlands showing black and rugged. But it seemed as though there was no end to the piling weight of cloud that now almost covered the sea, the vivid contrast of the blue space over the shining horizon making it the darker. The growlings and rumblings had now turned to crashes, the noise adding to the dread.
At this phase Adrian questioned whether it would not be well to get the mainsail in--it would be so wet, he suggested, and they could do with the mizzen well enough; but Christobel did not agree.
"If the wind is bad we can drop the peak," she said, "after all it's not like a cutter mainsail--they are so huge. We've only just enough to send us along nicely. Besides, once we stow it it will take ages to set again. Let's risk it."
So they decided to "risk it", which was an instance of Crow's way of looking at things. She was not afraid to face a possible gale--but she was horribly afraid of the look--the influence--of that overwhelming pile of gloomy cloud.
"I wonder how many 'volts' are playing skittles up there," remarked Adrian thoughtfully, "great Scotland! If one knew how to box it all up and use it for transport power--engines of every sort and kind! Why can't I invent something! It ought to be a British monopoly--we could switch it on to any nations that played the fool--and there we should be---- Hullo--see that tender drop, Crow? A wash-hand basin would hardly have held it--put this thing on."
"This thing" was, of course, the mackintosh.
The brother and sister were busy for a few seconds, then they sat down again armoured--in sticky, shiny oilskins, and sou'westers well drawn over their ears.
"Go inside, Addie, why should two swim?" said Crow, speaking loud through the deafening riot of crashes.
"Oh no," shouted Adrian with weighty sarcasm, "I'll go to bed, and light the stove, and tuck myself up with a hot-water bottle; better still, you could leave the tiller and tuck me up! By the way, that reminds me--aren't you about fed up with steering?"
Crow shook her head, and spread both hands out with a meaning gesture--only her elbow stayed the tiller in place.
Adrian understood; it was just a question of waiting, so he varied the monotony by going forward to batten down the forehatch, coil in loose sheets, make fast the anchor, and see that the peak halyard was nowhere hitched or encumbered. Then he returned aft and shut the door of the main cabin, commenting still on the size of one or two splashes, which he declared would have filled the kettle; the door slid along in grooves and was proof against heavy seas or torrents of rain. Then he turned an inventive eye on the dinghy, which was rocking sleepily under their quarter, and suggested that she might be used as a "wind anchor" if she filled up.
"Supposing we get a real howler," said Adrian, "we could make her fast to the bowsprit, you see, and just ride."
It was while they were laughing over this brilliant idea that Crow saw the grey wall coming, and sprang to attention as it were, standing up--an alert grip on the tiller.
It seemed to reach from the bank of blackness to the sea, and shut off the land like a blind. It was coming towards them--coming out to sea ushered by a noise like the rush of rapids--an immense volume of rain water, descending in lines straight as harp strings, and striking the level sea. It was very amazing, and Christobel gazed with awe; she had never seen anything quite like it, because a stretch of land has so many interruptions that you cannot see the line as you can on miles of water. Besides, water striking water like that is a very wonderful thing, foam fringes the edge of it all along, hissing like a boiler.
"This looks as though it meant to hurt our feelings--especially the dinghy's," said Adrian cheerfully, "she isn't used to bad manners."
Crow shrank instinctively as the rush of the advancing thing enveloped the yawl. They were battered by such rain as she had never experienced before, yet once into it, all her dread was dispelled like a nightmare.
Rain fell on the deck like the rattle of bullets, and in a minute the whole place was a wild wash of water pouring through scuppers, water streaming into the well, water heaving and lifting everything that could be pushed out of place. Crow held on to the tiller, but there was nothing doing in the sailing way--yet--nothing but water which seemed to nail them motionless by sheer weight. She glanced aside at the little boat, and saw her filling up swiftly--"Oh, poor dinghy," she gasped aloud--but there was no time to do anything, or even consider doing it, for something was coming at the back of the rain that asked for all her attention.
A puff of strong, chill wind----
Messenger leaned heavily to starboard, the flattened sea seemed to rise up in a line of foam under her quarter, water poured in at the streaming scuppers--and away she went--blinded--battered--drenched--away and away like a hunted creature flying for its life.
Certainly five minutes passed before these two adventurers began to take stock of their situation. So far, they had just let drive, steering the only possible course, straight ahead. At the end of five minutes the force of the downpour began to abate, but the wind was increasing.
As soon as speech was possible Adrian asked where she thought they were going?
The skipper laughed rather tremulously--it had been a strenuous five minutes.
"What about America? We might call on President Wilson. Please remember we can go where we please on the High Seas now! No more permits--no more 'out of bounds'. The question is, where can you get your hair cut?"
"Anywhere will do between here and Land's End," answered Adrian generously.
The rain was pouring off his sou'wester, over his nose. He looked very large and cheerful.
Now this was approximately the moment when Pamela assured her mother--on Adrian's authority--that the voyagers would be on shore at Tamerton or Netheroot! It was no doubt fortunate for Mrs. Romilly that she could not see the facts of the situation.
The straining yawl was driving her way through apparently limitless grey sea, of which the churning foam was taken by a wild wind and flung ahead in stinging mist. The sky, so far as it could be seen, was a froth of whirling cloud; everything was grey and confused--no land--no order--no outline.
"I believe we are going straight out to sea," said Crow.
"Do you?" Adrian was not impressed, "we may be going anywhere--all ways look alike. Jolly untidy view I call it! And look here, what about that wretched dinghy? She's about full up, and to judge by the way she's towing weighs about two ton! In one of these jerks we shall snap the painter; and then--she'll sink like a ton of sand."
Of all things in the world Christobel dreaded what she called "playing with boats" in the open sea, under conditions like the present. She pictured a sickening lurch, Addie overboard--driving to leeward--swallowed up in hideous grey confusion, herself helpless! Her lips grew white, but all she said was:
"Plenty of time yet."
Adrian laughed, flecks of many colours dancing in his hazel eyes.
"How true! And the world before us! I say, Crow, isn't this absolutely top-hole?"
"Hum--hum--please remember, my dear child, that we've got to come back."
"Plenty of time," said Adrian, echoing her words.
"I'll agree with you, when the rain stops, and I can see where we are;" Christobel shook herself as she spoke, and then looked in an interested manner at the wet drippings.
Adrian reverted suddenly to his unpleasant idea about the dinghy. There was no doubt that she was a serious pull back--a heavy and dangerous drag on the yacht. Crow saw it was inevitable, so she made her conditions. Adrian should bail out if she might bring Messenger up into the wind and lie-to, while he chose to poise himself in critical attitudes.
"Otherwise, I simply won't," declared the skipper with decision.
Adrian saw no necessity, of course. There was more zest in a really dangerous operation! However, he made no objection and Crow put the helm hard down. The yawl answered like a horse with a tender mouth. Round she came on a sweeping curve, the wet sails first shivering, and then giving out a succession of loud reports. A moment after and they were on a level keel in comparative quiet, leaping at the waves with some sort of regularity.
"Phew! What a comfort!" exclaimed Christobel, stretching both arms. Then she lashed the jerking tiller, while her brother hauled over the foresail sheets, and braced in the mainsail close.
The wind rushed by them with the same force, but they did not feel it, of course, and there was time to take stock, and put their "house in order", so to speak. Moreover, the skipper had pleasure in the conscious knowledge that if Addie did fall overboard it would be easy enough for him to regain the yawl.
She laughed with sudden joyousness.
"What's the joke?" asked her brother.
"I feel like the frog-footman in Alice Through the Looking-glass, 'I shall stay here--on and off--for days, and days'. It's very appropriate to one's wishes."
"Well, we needn't go home," Adrian remarked as he hauled in the small boat cautiously, "I mean we can go back by train, and leave the yawl----"
"Where?"
"Oh, anywhere."
This was not at all explicit, but Crow understood his meaning, which was that they were not bound to sail back to Bell Bay. They could make some port, and, putting the Messenger in safety, return by rail.
"We'll see where we are when the clouds roll by," she answered; "it's not going on, Addie. I believe firmly that we shall have a perfect evening."
Adrian, divesting himself of his oilskins, and his boots--"in case the bally thing sank with him," as he explained, made no answer to his sister's expectations. But about ten minutes after, when he climbed over the counter, his work well done, he repeated that there was any amount of time, and it would be much better fun to go home some other way.
The storm had either dispersed or "gone to America", they thought. It had changed the whole aspect of the scene into a desolate waste of tossing grey sea and driving grey cloud, but there was no more lightning, very little rain, and a mere mutter of far-away thunder.
The voyagers found it was just on three o'clock, and Adrian suggested they should steer by compass. He wanted to know where it was.
"Mollie put it somewhere," answered Crow, with cheerful vagueness most unbecoming in a skipper.
So Adrian unlocked the door of the main cabin, and slid it open.
"Wonderful how whiffy any boat gets when you shut her down, even for half an hour, with everything close," he remarked, putting his head within and sniffing critically, "commend me to an oil-stove on a small yacht for an A1 stench."
Christobel sat still outside, waiting. Her mind was much easier. She realized that all conditions were quieter. She could certainly see farther. Adrian called out from below that he couldn't find the compass, so she also dived into the saloon, and hunted exhaustively. No compass. They decided that Mollie or Penberthy had taken it ashore.
To let in more light upon the search Adrian unfastened the forehatch, and then lighted the stove, because there was a "wonderful unanimity"--as somebody said, on the question of early tea, Adrian declaring he was full of salt, and Christobel that such a lot had happened since lunch.
All things then being in train for refreshment and start, the skipper hastened upstairs again, and the first thing she saw was that the dinghy had slipped her tow and gone off.
She called to Adrian, who appearing with swiftness took a comprehensive look at the shifting grey waste around.
"She can't be far off," declared Crow hopefully.
Her brother pointed to a dark blot that was heaved up by a wave, only to disappear behind another foam-tipped hill.
"Little beast," he said shortly.
"Never mind," Christobel urged cheerfully--she detected a fallen expression on his face, "never mind, Addie, it's nobody's fault. We'll soon pick her up."
As they hauled the jib over and let out the mainsheet, she added:
"What a blessing it didn't happen when the rain was pouring, and she was full of water! She'd have sunk to a certainty."
Adrian allowed these cheering remarks to pass unnoticed.
"I thought I made her fast," he said. Such mishaps rankle.
In spite of all their efforts that dinghy evaded capture for twenty minutes at least, if not more. If anybody thinks this improbable let them try to capture a small light boat in such conditions. Many tacks seemed to succeed only in passing just out of reach; running down on the wind ended in a miss, because the pace was too swift for the careful use of the necessary boat-hook.
Adrian stood ready in the bows of the yawl, holding to the forestay, only to fail half a dozen times, once narrowly escaping a dive. After that he pursued operations from the counter, making Crow very nervous.
"Hold on, child, for mercy's sake," she urged, "do consider wretched me if you go overboard!"
Adrian was just in the heat of proving that it would be actually to her advantage if he fell overboard--couldn't he reach the dinghy more easily--when Christobel, partly by sheer luck, brought the yawl up into the wind on the very spot, so cleverly that she seemed to stop side by side with the runaway. A swoop of the boat-hook, a moment's tension, and Adrian had grasped the trailing tow-rope.
Christobel blew a very loud sigh of relief, she had been very intent on the capture. Immediately on that came an exclamation of surprise, and Adrian rose from his knees to see what new excitement was coming their way.
CHAPTER VI
"I wouldn't have believed it of Pam!"
The heavy atmosphere of spray, rain, and driven cloud that had enveloped the yacht up till now was passing bodily over to seaward. From beneath the curtain of it towards the north appeared--in brilliant sunshine--a wonderful line of coast showing up in rain-swept clearness. Above it the sky was blue; the purple and emerald hills glowed in the setting.
"Oh, Addie, what a dream of beauty! We shall be in it directly--just look how all the murky stuff is drifting away over the sea! I say, though, aren't we a long way out--miles and miles!"
Adrian dived below to search for the glass, which fortunately had not gone ashore with the compass. Christobel with narrowed eyes, tried to distinguish landmarks. The sunlight over the coast was growing stronger every moment.
After bringing the glass to bear on the scene Adrian gave a joyful chuckle.
"Who'd have thought it, Crow," he cried, pointing rapidly from place to place as he named them. "See--there you are! The Beak miles behind us. There's the Bell Ridge, ever such a way back. There's the lighthouse--white as a big tooth. There's the high Down up above Ramsworthy--with the glass you can see the rows of new houses above Netheroot sands! Do you see where we are, old girl? Almost level with Salterne Harbour! Here's the Heggadon bluff exactly opposite, and, of course, just round the corner of that you get the entrance to the estuary. It is simply the neatest thing in life. Why, I pictured that we were somewhere between Peterock and Bell Bay, with all the hard work to do coming back against this northerly breeze--and here we are only a mile or two from the harbour with a fair wind, and please note tide in our favour still. Now look here--we chuck Peterock, of course, and make for Salterne while we have tea--go right up to the bridge and pick up some spare moorings. Put a decent chap in charge of the yawl. Get my hair cut, and go back by train. How's that?"
"And wire to Mum as soon as we get into the town," added Christobel behind the glasses.
"Oh, that's of course," said Adrian, who was restless with excitement, "come on then, let's have tea--any amount of tea, I'm as hollow as a drum. Give me the tiller, you've been at it for an age. The stove's all ready--by the way, I told Mother Jeep to give us about a dozen hard-boiled eggs, I knew I could eat six! I say, Crow, isn't it the very limit to come out down here? Who'd have imagined such dazzling luck. When you come to think of it, losing the dinghy was about the best thing that ever happened to us----"
And so on ... Adrian glowing with optimism which was his normal condition--when not in the depths of despondency.
Christobel was supremely happy too. The sun shone. Addie was very content, and Mrs. Romilly would receive a wire. She made tea, and sang under her breath.
It was nearly five o'clock when they crossed the humming bar, between the lovely slopes of Peverell and Tamerton. The wind dropped suddenly, because the huge bluff called the Heggadon formed a complete screen, but the tide still acted a friendly part, for, though it was turning outside, the change was not completed inside, as harbours and all inlets of the sea are half an hour to an hour later than the main tide outside.
The Messenger swept in smoothly on the top of the flood, under the most perfect conditions possible. The beautiful estuary looked like an inland sea, with here and there the long back of a sandbank showing above the ripple.
"We'll do it again, Crow, won't we?" said Adrian, beaming satisfaction, "why, it's nothing."
"No," allowed the skipper, eyeing the wet sails thoughtfully.
"Look at the time, my good girl--look! Five o'clock. And when did we leave Bell Bay?"
Christobel thought it was about 11.30.
"So it was--well, what's that? Five hours and a half--and not plain sailing, mind you, either--but a rattling thunderstorm, and a lost dinghy! I call it great!"
Crow admitted that it was great.
"But I'm afraid we shan't get home till rather late," she added.
Adrian briefly reviewed the train time-table, which was decidedly limited in that part of the world.
"We shall want something extra to eat in the town," he said, "but mind you, one can do an awful lot in the eating line in ten minutes. I know, because I've tested. Let's say 6.20, Crow, and get to Five Trees at about 6.45----"
"Addie, we can't," broke in Christobel, dismayed, "we are simply bound to miss that train. We are going awfully well, but it ought to take nearly an hour to reach the bridge, and then there's all the work of stowing, and finding a man--and your hair--and the wire--Oh, we can't do it!"
"Well, there's only one other train, the last one, what's that--leaves Salterne about five minutes to nine. Beastly few trains! Well, what do you say?"
Christobel considered with a disturbed expression of face.
"Well," went on Adrian, who quite refused to see any drawback to the joy of the situation, "well, look here, Crow. We'll try for the 6.20, and if we miss it we'll go by the nine o'clock."
There was no doubt at all about the missing. The wind lessened to a mere breath, and the tide was beginning to turn against them during their sail up the last long reach. They got to the bridge in a state of "sleepiness", as the skipper called it--so much so that they had to submit to receive assistance from a person of the "long-shore" kind, who had fastened a speculative eye upon them the moment they appeared at the turn by the big shipyard. He came to meet them, in a clinker-built boat, rowing weightily--he was very like the men in W. W. Jacobs' stories. Adrian accepted a tow and the offer of "a little pair o-moorings where the old Fair Hope lays when she's in harbour".
Adrian accepted, assuring Christobel over his shoulder that it was the only thing to do, and far the quickest.
The mariner went slow, slower; "slow as the wheels of evolution", as a certain story says. He hailed kindred spirits on the quay, and the small matter of picking up a moorings buoy was turned into a positive function--and would have to be paid for as such, of course!
Christobel groaned aloud, then laughed. It was no use worrying.
Adrian, whistling between disparaging remarks on the manners and customs of long-shore persons, took it easily.
"Lots of time before nine o'clock, Crow," he said.
They went into the town about the time the 6.20 p.m. arrived at Salterne, and sent off their wire. After that the skipper resigned herself to calm enjoyment. The afternoon, since the storm dispersed, had been so beautiful that Mrs. Romilly could hardly have worried so far, and the telegram would secure the rest.
Adrian had his hair cut. The necessary feeding was not a matter of ten minutes, but a most delightful meal; finally Crow rejected a suggestion of "The Pictures for about half an hour or so"--nothing would induce her to risk missing that train--and they sat in the station in the warm darkness. It was very quiet, and sparely lighted. She was happy enough, but Adrian was rather regretful about going at all.
"I see what we ought to have done," he said, "wired to Mum that we were sleeping on board in the harbour. What an awful pity. I suppose we couldn't do it now, Crow?"
"Can't send a wire now," answered Christobel.
"Pity. That walk from Five Trees to Bell Bay is rather a grind. If we stayed on the yawl we could sail home to-morrow morning."
"We can't stay on the yawl--Mother would be in fits, when we've wired we are coming by this train. Addie, don't have a fleeting mind. Let's talk about something else."
But the train came in from Riversgate--they could see it winding along out of the far hills to the south of the harbour and crossing the bridge like a mechanical toy--they got in, and went over to the end of the carriage from which the wide estuary was visible under the young moon. Such a wonderful sight, with sandhills exposed and a hundred different channels sending tides out to sea.
"I wouldn't live inland if you paid me to," said Adrian firmly.
"'And so say all of us'," quoted Crow in an ardent whisper.
Then they were silent--looking out.
Twenty to twenty-five minutes after that, they drew into the little moorland station, high, fresh, and lonely, under the moon. There were still clouds about, which made the shadows more eerie. It was all beautiful and mysterious as only the far west country can be. The brother and sister heartily agreed that the whole day had been well worth living.
"I'm not sure this isn't best of all," said Crow.
Adrian was planning arrangements for fetching the yawl, and they covered the long stretch of white road in quick time; no walking is so delightful as that in moonlight, with all the world to oneself. Owls hooted from the trees, and in a distant copse a nightingale suddenly began his song--more perfect for the space and loneliness.
The Romilly pair became silent. Conversation seemed almost irreverent.
They were approaching the Folly Ho turn. Suddenly into the quiet broke a monotonous light sound--the tapping of feet on hard ground; someone was running at an even pace.
"We're not the only people alive to-night," said Christobel in a low voice, "I thought we were."
"Coming from Peterock way," Adrian said, "we shall see who it is in a jiff; they are bound to come in front of us, unless they jump the hedge into the field. Sounds like a girl running."
"Why?" asked Christobel, "much more likely to be Peter Cherry, or someone like that. There are not many girls to run when one comes to calculate."
They were approaching the turn. The road before them was white and clear, the trees at the corner looking curiously distinct. With one accord both ceased to speak, and gave all attention to the light regular sound that drew nearer.
Pat, pat, pat--fell the running feet, and from the side-road appeared a figure. In a moment it was speeding down hill in front of the interested pair.
"Addie!" gasped Christobel, with startled emphasis.
"My only aunt!" ejaculated Adrian, "who'd have thought it."
"You see who it is?"
"Rather!"
"But, Addie, what's she doing coming from Folly Ho, this time of night?"
"Why ask me?" said her brother with reason.
"Mother thinks she's in bed, of course," went on Christobel in a troubled voice; "I'm sure it can be explained, but it is horrid. It's utter bad form. I wouldn't have believed it of Pam."
Adrian maintained a gloomy silence. Brothers never approve of unconventional explosions on the part of sisters; especially very pretty sisters of Pamela's age. It is taken as a matter of course that they are not old enough for independent action.
With one accord the two elders increased their pace to a fast walk, then to a trot.
"We shall see her directly," said Crow, "she wasn't going so very fast, and the road past Woodrising is perfectly straight for some way."
They reached the corner. Ahead of them, some way down the hill, was a running figure.
Adrian put his fingers to his mouth and made a long, harsh whistle like a steam escape.
For a moment they saw a face, as the girl checked and glanced round. But she did not stop, she ran on again, evidently faster.
"Jolly well ashamed of herself," said Adrian, rigidly disapproving. "She can't escape, Crow. She'll be ahead of us--in sight--all the way home."
It is a proverb never "to boast", that is to say, never to reckon on a hope as a fact--lest something unexpected spoils the hope. In this case the moon failed the pursuers. They had been so intent on Pamela that neither of them noticed a big patch of cloud sailing swiftly up from the north. In a moment the moon was shut off, and in a minute the darkness was pretty complete, for the cloud was a heavy one.
"Oh--dash it!" exclaimed Adrian irritably, "just when we were sure."
"Never mind, we can run just the same. We shall get used to the dark, and anyway, Addie, she can't run fast any more than we can. One can't help taking care, when one can't see."
"Hedges are getting clearer," suggested Adrian, "funny how quickly one gets used to things. This Woodrising wall is plain as the lighthouse."
They ran on--down hill always, passed the long line of wall, and just as the overhanging shrubs and sheltering height of Fuchsia Cottage hill-side showed a big black patch on the right hand, the moon suddenly appeared again, and everything around--road, hedges, bushes, and towering steep above cottage and church--came out again as clear as a painted scene.
Adrian and Christobel both looked ahead down the road. It was empty. Not a soul in sight.
"Where's she gone to?" said Christobel, stopping.
"Don't ask me, my good girl," Adrian was cross, unquestionably, "I suppose she's up to some trick."
Such a suggestion did not please Crow.
"You shouldn't talk like that, Addie," she expostulated. "Pam doesn't play 'tricks'. She isn't that sort of girl. None of us are. There may be something up we don't know about that sent her up to Folly Ho. Perhaps Mother wanted a message taken to Timothy Batt--one never knows! The thing I don't understand is, how she's managed to disappear, considering the road is about as straight as a ruler, and the moonlight is bang on it, and there's only one way home."
Adrian said nothing; in silence, and at a quick walk they arrived opposite the shaded gate of Fuchsia Cottage. Here Christobel stopped again. "She can't have sunk through the earth, Addie, and she wouldn't have jumped the hedge! I believe she went in here. Mother may have given her a message to the Little Pilgrim--why not?"
"Why not, of course!" echoed Adrian dryly. "The sort of thing Mother would do--considering it's just on ten o'clock."
There was so much truth in this, that Christobel did not make any reply to it--she said:
"I'm just going to ask," and opened the gate.
They went up the path, mounted three short flights of brick steps that cut the three little terraces, and found themselves at a deep porch half buried in roses. Apparently Miss Lasarge heard them coming, for she appeared on the threshold of the pretty sitting-room-hall.
"This is nice, dear children," she said in the eager sweet voice that was one of her attractions, "come into the dining-room--the cocoa is just ready."
That was the cottage. A good-sized sitting-room hall with windows looking two ways, and a cosy little dining-room. Three bedrooms above. There was also the kitchen, where reigned Lizzie Sprot, a sturdy west-country young woman, who had lived eleven years with Miss Anne--from the age of seventeen. Lizzie Sprot had gone to bed, she always went when she had taken in the cocoa, and left Miss Anne to sit up and write letters as a rule.
"Is Pam here?" asked Christobel, as they followed the slim, grey figure into the dining-room, yet even as she asked the question she felt instinctively it was a foolish one.
"Is who here, dear? Sit down now, both of you--that's right. Two cups from the corner cupboard, please, Crow--that is delightful. Now, what is it you were asking--something about Pam?"
Christobel asked again. Adrian said nothing, except to corroborate his sister's story.
"So you think you saw Pamela come down the Folly Ho turn, and go--towards home?"
Now Miss Lasarge said this, a mere repetition of what she had just been told, in rather an uncertain tone.
Adrian said afterwards, that anyone could see she thought it was objectionable, but did not like to say so.
Christobel looked a bit anxious, but went straight to the point with the sincerity that was part of her sterling character.
"We don't think, Little Pilgrim, we know. The moon was bright, and the road clear as day. Addie whistled to her, and she looked round. We saw her look over her shoulder at us, but instead of stopping she only ran faster."
"Oh, that doesn't sound like Pam," murmured Miss Anne.
"But it was Pam," asserted Crow.
"Don't you think you might easily have mistaken some other girl for Pamela, dear? Moonlight is very deceptive--and you said that a cloud came directly after and obscured your vision. Really, I can't help feeling----"
"It was Pamela right enough, Miss Anne," said Adrian firmly; "she was as plain as a hayrick, pig-tail and all. No other girl in Bell Bay has hair like Pamela. Besides, when it comes to that, what other girls are there about? Mollie Shard is not here now, and if she were, she isn't the least like Pam."
There was a pause. Christobel set her cup on the table and half rose.
"You needn't go for a few minutes," suggested Miss Anne, "Mother won't be anxious. She got your wire, I know, because I was there when it came."
Christobel asked if Mrs. Romilly was anxious during the thunderstorm; and recounted their adventure in a few words--as matter of fact, the yawl affair had been driven out of her mind by this business about Pamela.
"It was a horrid storm here," said Miss Lasarge, apparently pleased to talk about something else, "terribly noisy, and very heavy rain. But I understood that your mother wasn't really anxious. She hoped you were on shore--then it came fine--so lovely, too--I never saw anything like the colours--land and sea."
Christobel stood up to go. She apologized again for calling in at such an hour.
"We only just thought there was a chance of Pam--having come in with a message----"
"I'm sure you'll find it was all right, dear Crow," said Miss Lasarge, kissing her; "I--I expect it was somebody else. You'll find Pam is in bed and asleep, unless she is sitting with your mother."
"No doubt we shall find Pam is in bed, and she'll tell us she's asleep," said Adrian, as they went out through the gate.
"Oh, don't, Addie," begged Christobel, "I'm sure there's an explanation."
Silence ensued, then she continued:
"Didn't you think Miss Anne was a tiny bit--well--confused? I thought so."
"I thought she believed it was Pamela, but tried not to believe it, and was hunting round for excuses anyway. She certainly seemed a bit uncomfortable--besides, it's sheer rubbish to tell us it might be somebody else. She knows and we know that there isn't anybody else. But she's an awfully kind person--in fact, she's a regular little saint, she can't bear to think anybody is wrong."
As they were opening the big gates at the end of the drive, Christobel asked:
"Shall we tell Mother? What ought we to do about it?"
"You mean about seeing Pam?"
"Yes. Suppose we find Mother knows nothing and is secure and comfortable as usual, and that Pam is up in her room. Well, what ought we to do?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Adrian irritably, "it's sickening. One can't go clacking to Mother about Pam--it simply isn't done," he shut the gates with a vicious snap.
"That's what I thought," Crow was relieved, "let's wait and see what Pam says--I'll go and ask her to-night."
"Just as you like," agreed Adrian indifferently, and they went in.
Mrs. Romilly was reading the paper; she was delighted to see them, and eager to hear all details. She said she had not been anxious, because Pam told her they proposed landing if the weather was bad. At this point Adrian turned his head discreetly to conceal a smile. When the storm passed she had been quite happy; and, when the telegram came, had considered it all a most wise arrangement.
"Your hair looks so nice, darling," she said, looking approvingly at Adrian's sleek head.
Pleading sleepiness the two went off to bed, and on the landing upstairs Christobel said: "Wait a minute," and slipped down to Pamela's room at the end.
She knocked. There was no answer, so she opened the door gingerly, and put her head into the opening. A long heap in the bed stirred, and turned over with a jerk.
"Hullo, who is it; what do you want, Hughie?" demanded Pamela in the slurring tones of one but half awake.
"It's not Hughie--it's Crow. I just peeped in to see if you were awake," said Christobel, not at all pleased with herself, because she felt a wee bit mean.
"Oh, you're back. That's all right. I'm so glad. Did you have a jolly time?"
"Awfully jolly--after the thunder cleared," said Crow.
"Tell me about it to-morrow. Good-night, Crow," murmured Pamela sleepily, and relapsed into slumber.
In the passage Christobel whispered to Adrian:
"She was sound asleep--sound. I woke her, but she was only half awake."
Adrian whistled softly, and departed to his room without comment.
CHAPTER VII
Confidences in "the Cave"
A journey to Salterne next day was out of the question, because the weather had taken the bit between its teeth and was behaving badly. This happens so often after a thunderstorm that nobody was surprised; everyone simply looked out for something to do. Adrian plunged with vigour into a brief spell of mowing. It seemed wise to grapple with the rapidly growing grass while there was nothing better on hand. Christobel, feeling uneasy, sought an opportunity for private conversation with her sister. She was uneasy, because she believed it was somehow all right--though it looked all wrong--and she didn't know how to begin.
Pamela was alone in the library, sitting in the biggest leather chair after a style of her own, that is, inside the chair with her long slim legs hanging over the arm, and her knees forming a satisfactory rest for the inevitable book.
Christobel entered on this scene of peaceful comfort with a direct question, after her way:
"Oh, Pam, there you are. I rather wanted to ask you something."
She shut the door, and came forward to take a seat on the edge of the writing-table, near the big chair.
Pamela glanced at her and detected mystery. She did not say so, though, but let her gaze rest again on the interesting page and murmured:
"All right. Fire away."
"You don't mind my asking, Pam, but did Mother send you out--send you anywhere--last night?"
The inquiry was made awkwardly. Crow flushed rather pink.
"How do you mean?"
Pamela's intent blue gaze was raised, and she looked curiously at her sister's face.
"How do you mean 'send me out', Crow?"
"Well, is there any mystery about it?"
"About what?"
"About you being out last evening?"
Pamela remained silent for quite a minute; she was reviewing swiftly in her mind what the time was when she had returned from Woodrising--after her ineffective search-visit. Eight o'clock! She was back before eight, of course, because supper was timed for eight and she was in--with a brief period for dressing.
After that pause she answered:
"I don't know what you are driving at, my dear Crow."
But of course Christobel had noticed the hesitation. It made her feel rather stronger.
"Do you mind telling me when you did come in, Pam? I ask for a reason."
"Well, if you seriously want to know," answered the younger girl rather stiffly, "I was in just in time to change for supper--and supper was at eight o'clock--later than usual. That was because Mum had put the food back thinking you and Addie would be home."
"Ten to eight?"
"Well, why not? It was nearly dark, but the moon had begun--besides, we'd been mewed up indoors an awful lot with the rain."
Pamela was throwing out little feelers of excuse--as it were--for her wanderings round Woodrising, in case she had been seen. Somebody had told Christobel something, she believed firmly, and her defensive instinct made her rather stiff.
"Well, I was meaning about ten minutes to ten--not eight," said the elder girl.
They looked at each other searchingly.
"I was in bed before that," said Pamela. "I don't know the least what you are talking about, Crow, but you seem to have a lively maggot in your brain about me."
"It isn't anything in my brain--it's a question of the eyesight of two people."
"Who's the other person?"
"Addie. We both saw you----"
"Oh dear," ejaculated Pamela in an exasperated voice, "do you mean to say you think you saw me out of doors just before ten o'clock, because you may as well disabuse your mind of the idea at once. Addie doesn't count, he leaps to conclusions. He'd say the Little Pilgrim was me for two pins, and believe it if he was in an imaginative mood. Well, you did not see me, Crow."
"My dear girl, I'm awfully sorry you feel vexed about it."
"Wouldn't you be vexed, if people practically told you you were telling lies," said Pamela, fingering the pages of her book with unsettled fingers.
"I don't. I assure you I don't," said Christobel urgently "but please do look at our side of the question. Now listen, Pam. We got in to Five Trees about 9.25, we came straight along with a moon as bright as day, and just before we came to Folly Ho corner we heard some one running. I thought it sounded like a girl--unless it was a boy in running shoes--the feet were so light. Of course we were interested--down past the little grass patch at the crossroad came you----"
Pamela made a gesture of speaking.
"All right, then," went on Crow, "not you--a girl so exactly like you that there was no difference. She had a dark skirt and jumper--like yours--it was most certainly blue--lighter stockings and shoes--I mean not black. She had no hat on, and a heavy tail of plaited hair hanging down. As she ran I saw it swing--like yours does. Now, are you surprised we thought it was you?"
"What did you do?" asked Pamela.
"Simply stared. Then Addie gave a whistle shriek, fearfully loud. She stopped and looked over her shoulder, then she ran on. Honestly I admit we were savage. Just consider, Pam; it appeared to be you beyond question, and we naturally concluded you were just out for the fun of it, and didn't want us to see you. Of course it looked as though you didn't mean to stop on purpose."
"Funny," allowed Pamela in a milder tone, "well, what did you do next? I suppose you saw where this very surprising girl went to?"
Christobel felt this was the weak part of her story, but she told it conscientiously.
"I see. So the girl was swallowed up by the cloud! Are you sure you ever saw her at all, Crow?"
"Never was so sure of a thing in my life," declared Christobel, slipping off the table edge, and going to the window-seat, where she took a more comfortable seat, "we saw the girl. Who she is, I don't pretend to say, as you say she is not you. It was just in that bit of road outside Woodrising that we lost sight of her. Thinking she was surely you I made Addie go into Fuchsia Cottage and ask Miss Lasarge."
"Why--on earth?" demanded Pamela, with a little frown of annoyance, as she shut her book smartly.
"Why? Because I thought you'd gone in there. It was the only way to account for your disappearance."
"For hers, you mean."
"Yes; of course. Only, remember we were certain it was you then."
"What did the Little Pilgrim say?" asked Pamela, with an accession of interest, as she pulled herself up in the chair, swinging her slim feet rather restlessly.
"Oh, nothing much. She just listened, and said you weren't there, and you hadn't been, and she was sure it couldn't be you--that was all. We thought she seemed rather nervous--rather sort of hesitating--but it might have been our fancy. You see, Pam, I was so sure it couldn't be anyone but you, that I had a feeling the Little Pilgrim thought it was, but meant to hold her tongue. She's such a little angel of kindness she'd always shield anybody she thought might be risking a fuss."
"I daresay," allowed Pamela in a non-committal way; then she added, "well, are you satisfied now, Crow? I can only tell you again that I was in bed--at that time."
"My dear old girl, if you say you were not the person we saw, there's an end," answered Christobel warmly, yet even as she spoke she was faintly uneasy--Pamela was keeping something back. She was sure. However, there was no more to be said. She changed the subject.
"Addie's bathing," she said, "he loves bathing in the rain, and at the present moment it is pouring anchors and marlinespikes--where's Hughie?"
Pamela was just going to say where she thought Hughie was, but changed the information to a vague:
"Oh--somewhere. You're not going to fetch the yawl back to-day then, Crow?"
Christobel said the tide would serve much better in the afternoon a bit later. It could be done now, but they would have to be home by five o'clock, or they'd have the whole weight of the ebb against them.
"Better to have an hour or so to spare," she added cheerfully and went out.
Pamela remained sitting in her nest, swinging her feet and thinking--thinking. "Then there was something in Mollie's and Hughie's accusation." She had come away yesterday from her venture at Woodrising persuaded that the whole thing was "tosh"--that Sir Marmaduke had kindly given a lift to Mrs. Chipman for old time's sake--being in the neighbourhood himself, perhaps for business reasons. It was so natural that Mrs. Chipman should pay a visit to Mrs. Trewby, for they were acquaintances of old days.
Last night, before she fell asleep, she felt assured that both Mollie and Hughie had made a mistake somehow--unlikely as it seemed. Now, the whole thing was awake again, and positively demanding attention. Poor Pamela felt the least bit gloomy about it; first, because she had read somewhere that if a person has a "double" in the world they are sure to die promptly; secondly, because she was becoming a butt for false accusations on all sides. She felt instinctively that Crow, her best friend, was a little suspicious, and Addie, of course, would be frankly sceptical. Only Hughie believed her. Hughie was a very wise person, not to be despised as a partner in difficulty.
She slipped to her feet, and left the room, ran upstairs, and stood quietly listening at the top of the back stairs. No one was about. The voice of Mrs. Jeep conversing profoundly with Keziah, the house parlour-maid, was the only sound audible. The wide front stairs mounted from the hall into the long corridor, and were not used by servants. The backstairs came up from the kitchen passage to a lobby shut off by a green baize door, and went on upwards to the attics, which were large and charming rooms, with many cupboards, and the most perfect views in the house, out of quaint dormer windows.
There were four at least and wide passage space also.
Mrs. Jeep owned one; Keziah and Patty Ingles the between-maid shared another. One was a spare room for chance servant visitors, and the end one over Pamela's and Hughie's rooms was what is called a "box" room. Here was "luggage"--big, old-fashioned trunks, leather portmanteaux, large hat boxes. Neat piles of cardboard boxes--the sort that drapers and dressmakers send out--all sizes, and tidy stacks of brown paper--sacking--cords--all the odds and ends necessary for packing of any kind. There were chairs with burst cane seats, and baths needing paint, cans that leaked, and baskets damaged in various ways--these had waited through the war to be mended, and waited still for workers; Mrs. Romilly was a most methodical, tidy person and detested waste.
Besides all this was the old nursery property of "dressing-up" chests--clothes for charades in winter--a rocking-horse, and the dolls' houses; the thousand-and-one things that belong to a family of children.
Hughie loved it all with a deep and faithful love. Secretly he played with the dolls' houses, and set the small china-headed dolls round the loaded tables for their silent meals with affectionate care. Pamela knew all about these matters, but she was far too loyal to betray the secret.
When she came into this big chamber of treasure trove she stood still and looked round. The fact that nobody was visible did not convince her that nobody was there.
"Hullo!" she said in a low voice.
"Hullo!" returned a small voice in an absorbed tone.
Pamela crossed the room and looked over a barricade of lumber. At first sight it seemed that a heavy oak dower chest, topped by a pile of boxes, was set against the wall. It was not. Between its bulk and the wall of the attic there existed a narrow space--so narrow that it would not appear possible as a retiring place even for the smallest boy.
Pamela looked over--as has been stated--and dropped a small paper bag.
"I brought you some chocolates," she said.
"Thanks," murmured Hughie in a slow drawl. Squeezed between the chest and the wall he was absorbed in most intricate stitchery. On his knee was set a cardboard box full of bits and scraps--both white and coloured--wee spars, small lengths of catgut, bits of fine wire. Also, sitting very upright, two neatly smiling dolls, with bran-stuffed bodies and china heads, dolls about three inches long--the large kind held no attractions for Hughie.
"How are you getting on, Midget?" asked Pamela with sympathy.
"It's rather trying," said the dressmaker, "their arm-sleeves fray out of the holes, and the button-holes are simply fearful. But they must have the things."
"They'll look jolly nice when they are finished," said Pamela, "can't I help you?"
Hughie rejected help.
"I've made a white ensign for the new boat," he said, nodding towards the tiny flag that lay finished on the box-top.
"Ripping!" exclaimed Pamela, picking up the bit of work. It was most beautifully made. Seeing her undoubted admiration Hughie fished out of his coloured heap a fine cord to which were attached a succession of wonderful little flags and burgees in many colours and designs.
"Signal halyards," he said, "it took me weeks--and months. It's the whole code."
"Hughie, you are rather surprising," said Pamela, as she examined the extraordinary result of skill and patience. Then she pushed the boxes a little to one side and seated herself on the corner of the oak chest.
"I rather wanted to tell you something," she began.
"I know," said Hughie, adding as she paused in surprise, "is it about the pig-tail girl?"
Pamela told him what had happened, and what Christobel had asked her.
Hughie made no comment.
"I wish they hadn't gone to Fuchsia Cottage and asked Miss Anne about it," went on Pamela thoughtfully, "the more people who are dragged into it, the more bother it will be to----"
"To what?" inquired Hughie, without looking up.
"Well, I was going to say--to find out. Then I remembered that probably there isn't anything to find out. I mean, if there is a girl she is probably a relation of Mrs. Trewby's."
"I suppose you think she lives at Woodrising?" suggested Hughie cautiously.
"Crow said she disappeared just outside that wall--when a cloud made it dark. They thought she'd run on into Fuchsia Cottage gate--you see."
"I know. It was the other gate more likely," said Hughie in a deliberate manner.
"Well, I daresay. I don't see where else she can be living. But what I mean is, Hughie, that it's not exciting. I thought I'd just try and find tracks--or something definite--so I went all round Woodrising yesterday evening. One can't get in; besides, I hadn't the cheek to go and ring at the gate-bell and say 'Have you a girl like me anywhere about?' I couldn't do it, so I just----"
"Scouted," suggested Hughie, as he threaded a fine needle with silk with a view to button-holes, "you got it out of your Scout book."
Pamela coloured faintly.
"I rather tried to do as they say in the Rules, but there weren't any tracks outside. Then I got over the end wall; there was a ladder against it outside, and I'm perfectly certain Peter Cherry uses it for a short cut. Inside there was a manure heap--not a smelly one--straw chiefly for marrows--so there was a good place to jump into. The garden was appallingly wet; and you never saw anything like the bushes, Midget--one mass. I saw Peter's bootmarks as plain as a house--and then I found nice narrow shoes like mine, and made sure I'd got a clue, but it occurred to me that they might easily be my own feet! I'd been going up and down, and in and out--such a lot of paths and all so much alike----"
"Next time I'd put a trail of pebbles if I were you," suggested Hughie.
"You mean like Hop-of-my-thumb did, when he found the birds ate his bread-crumbs?"
"Or," said Hughie, pausing in his work, "you could blaze a trail on the bushes. That's easy enough--tiny little breaks in the twigs--and leaves stuck on the ends of them. I would."
"Yes," agreed Pamela thoughtfully, "if I go again I will. Well, anyway I had to hide, because two women came from the house and went to the end of the garden. One was Mrs. Trewby--looking as yellow as marmalade--and the other was that maid Baker. Lady Shard had her for years, and she married the London butler. Her name is Mrs. Chipman now. Do you remember her, Midget?"
"She came to tea with Mrs. Jeep when she was dressed in black. I hated her," said Hughie, "she says silly things to people about being mischievous. She calls it 'mischeevious'. She doesn't understand anything."
"She'd talk the hind leg off a donkey," said Pamela with contempt. "I should think the butler was very thankful when he died and could get away from her voice--it clacks. I couldn't remember her at first, and I was so busy remembering that I forgot to notice what she said--it was all about people, though--you know how that kind of person talks. They went back past me to the house, and then the Chipman female began shouting for her dog, and I was so fearfully afraid of being caught that I fled along the path over the wall and came home."
"How did you know she was calling the dog?" asked Hughie, opening the paper bag and looking into it with interest. "How do you know she wasn't calling the other girl?"
"Couldn't have been; she called 'Countess, Countess, Countess', just how people call dogs, and that sort of person usually call dogs by that kind of name; and the dogs are usually big, fluffy ones which never do what they're told. Oh, it was a dog right enough, I'm sure. Well, that's all. It isn't a very bright prospect is it, Midget?"
"Not very," allowed Hughie; "what time is it, Pam?"
Pamela, consulting a wristlet watch, said it was about twelve. It must be, she concluded, because her watch was a quarter to one. "I calculate it to be over half an hour fast towards the end of the week," she told him, "then I begin fresh on Sundays. It's a bother, because you forget and are sure to be late for breakfast. However, it can't be helped."
"Don't tell anybody I'm here," Hughie requested, finishing the chocolate and smoothing out the bag. Paper bags came in usefully at times.
"Not Mother, do you mean? She may ask."
"I don't mind her, but not the others, Pam. It's impossible to sew properly when people come bothering about and asking questions."
Pamela promised, and departed light-footed.
In the corridor she met her mother, who promptly asked where was her youngest son.
"He's all right, Mummy--sewing, in the cave," said Pamela, "and he doesn't want anyone to know."
"All right. I shan't tell," said Mrs. Romilly, smiling. Then she asked about the yawl, and the plans of the older pair about fetching her from Salterne.
Pamela related what she knew, so far as it went. In a day or two the tide would serve better, as there would be a later ebb in the afternoon.
"The fact is, Miss Chance would rather like to make a shopping expedition to Salterne the same day--and couldn't she come back in the boat?" asked Mrs. Romilly, innocent of all this involved--as mothers so often are.
The silence that ensued was so full of meaning, that Mrs. Romilly answered it as though her daughter had spoken.
"I think, darling child, that you ought--all of you--to make things as nice for Miss Chance as you can. There are no regular lessons just now, because of Addie being sent home, and Crow finishing up at Easter; besides, it will soon be Whitsuntide now; but I think we ought to try and make it as pleasant for her as possible, don't you? She is always most kind."
"Oh, yes, awfully kind," agreed Pamela hastily, "but Mother, are you sure she likes going on the yawl? You know she'd be rather a responsibility for Addie and Crow; she doesn't understand a boat, she stands on the gunwale and expects the boat to wait as if it were a stone step! She truly might get drowned rather easily, you know, and what could they do, if she fell overboard?"
"I see," murmured Mrs. Romilly thoughtfully, "yes, I see. Well, she might come back by train. I'll talk to her about it. At the same time, if she really wishes to go by sea, I'm sure it will be all right."
To this Pamela said nothing, but she formed an inward resolve that she would have nothing to do with this expedition.
CHAPTER VIII
"Little Friend of all the World"
On a certain evening, a couple of days or so after this, the sky cleared beautifully, and the sun went down with grand promise of fine weather again.
Miss Chance was correcting French exercises in the library when Adrian and Christobel entered, very hot and triumphant--the Bell House lawns were mown to perfection, and to-morrow would suit in all ways for the fetching back of the yawl.
"It must be done to-morrow," Adrian threw himself with a crash on the springy sofa, "must be--we can't leave the Messenger at Salterne any longer. She must be on her moorings by this time to-morrow."
"I hope you will have a fine day, then," said Miss Chance, placing papers aside in a neat heap, "you had a terrible storm the day of your last expedition--terrible. I always think though that thunder and lightning and such terrors must be sent for some good purpose--to teach us something."
"They teach you not to leave your oilskins behind," suggested Adrian from the floor.
"Oh, hush, dear boy--is that quite nice?" said the excellent woman in a shocked voice--and then changing the subject with rather laboured vivacity she went on:
"Really I wish dear Pam would concentrate more. She is having so few lessons now that she ought to be giving of her very best. One would think her mind was entirely distracted. I told her so, and her reply was most unconvincing--she said if she had twelve times as much to do she would do it twelve times as well! Most unreasoning."
"I don't agree with you, my dear Floweret," said Adrian, "I agree with Pam. If you are in for a fearful grind--well, there you are--you grind; you get acclimatized, so to speak, like people living on the west coast of Africa. After a bit you thrive on the beastly thing--in fact revel in it. Whereas if you make a snatch at it--well, there's a hopeless failure."
Good Miss Chance gave a crackling laugh; she was devoted to Adrian, especially when he slapped her on the back and called her the Floweret, or "my good Blossom"--in cheerful allusion to her pretty name. She plunged into argument with zest therefore.
"The west coast of Africa," she said, "is not nearly so subject to pestilence and dangerous malaria as it used to be. Advancing science has taught us how to deal with these things--and what has it to do with French exercises! I am sure you cannot be thinking reasonably. What else can be expected from your position, which is exactly the opposite to what was intended for the use of a sofa."
"I know," said Adrian, "I am aware of that, Miss Chance. But I never was a Conservative. My opinions might be classified as Republican-Imperialist. Let me reason with you. If the legs are on the sofa, and the head is on the floor, blood flows freely to the brain, and it swells with astonishing rapidity. Result, a vigorous crop of ideas. I'm full of them at this moment--my brain is, that's to say. They are sprouting so rapidly that I shall be able to impart to you information on many subjects in a brace of jiffs."
Miss Chance was about to plunge into further depths, when Christobel intervened politely.
"Don't listen to him, Miss Chance, he is talking the worst kind of piffle--suppose we go to bed. Addie, get up, your head was never intended for a carpet-cleaner. Come along and say good-night to Mum, she's gone up because she had a headache."
Crow stood up and stretched. Adrian, after a violent effort to get on to the sofa by muscular effort alone, came on to his feet in the ordinary way, and proceeded to shake himself into his garments with some regard to appearance.
"Now I wonder," said Miss Chance, gathering all her properties into order, and replacing some in drawers, "I wonder whether you two would give me a lift to-morrow. I want a day's shopping in Salterne, or some hours anyway--why shouldn't I go in with you--and sail out?"
There was one short pause strenuous with meaning! Then Crow, as usual, met the difficulty.
"If you want to shop, Miss Chance, it wouldn't fit in, you see we should have to go to the harbour and get the yawl out--and home. I am sorry, but really it would be difficult to get time for shopping, wouldn't it, Addie?"
"Well, well, we will discuss the matter in the morning," said Miss Chance, not in the least offended. She certainly was a "goodhearted soul," as Crow impressed on Adrian going upstairs.
"She may be," he declared desperately, "but her good heart won't be much use in the boat. She'll most likely be drowned, and we shall be responsible."
The depths of gloom are speedily reached.
Mrs. Romilly was sitting in an arm-chair before a little fire. She said she was cold after all that rain. She was dressed in a loose gown of the colour matching her eyes, and her lovely hair--just like Pamela's--was hanging round her like a shawl.
"I'll brush that," said Christobel firmly.
Adrian sat down on the fender-stool with his back to the fire and looked dejected.
"Is your head bad--or better, Mummy, dear?" asked Christobel, proceeding to the business of brushing. "Addie and I have been talking to Miss Chance, or we should have come sooner."
Mrs. Romilly said her head was better, also that she was very pleased they'd been talking to Miss Chance; finally she wanted to know if anything had been said about the sail from Salterne.
"If you go, and when you go," she concluded, "she wants to go in with you--walk to Five Trees, I mean, and sail home."
"I don't think she'll enjoy it much, Mother," ventured Christobel.
"Why not, dear--you do?"
"Yes, but you see we don't mind knocking about, and wet, and spells of discomfort--she might be sick, most people are."
Mrs. Romilly was not blind to the trend of feeling.
"I don't see why she shouldn't have a try," she suggested mildly, "if she is ill, or hates it, she needn't go again. After all, poor thing, she never has been."
"Well, Mother, you see it was Sir Marmaduke's affair before this, wasn't it? And such a crowd with Penberthy and Mollie--as he didn't ask Miss Chance, we couldn't force her in, could we?"
"Well, there won't be a crowd now," persisted Mrs. Romilly, "even if you all go--only five."
"Only five!" Christobel looked at Adrian over her mother's head, she said the two words with her lips--soundlessly--and smiled.
But Adrian would not smile.
"If she'd been with us the other day, in the thunderstorm, she wouldn't have wanted to go again," said the boy darkly, "she'd have been in fits."
"But, darling, I thought you said it was lovely?" this, from his mother in an expostulating voice.
Christobel warned, with raised eyebrows, and headshakes.
"So it was when the storm was over," said Adrian, refusing to see the signals, "but she wouldn't have enjoyed the process of working through it. Of course we did," he added quickly, "we enjoy anything, no matter how beastly--but when it comes to being drenched, and battered, and shaken up, Miss Chance mightn't. And you see, Mum, we can't put her ashore--that's flat. If she comes, she must come. I can't undertake to land people."
"You landed Hughie one day."
"That was a dead calm."
"Well, but supposing there is a calm to-morrow?"
"If there is we shall go straight back to Salterne, that's all--and sleep on the boat," announced Adrian desperately; "surely Miss Chance would find it pretty uncomfortable to have to sleep on the yawl with four other people, and not even a toothbrush among the lot."
The unfortunate part of this episode was that it did not achieve its object, but only succeeded in making Mrs. Romilly firmer on the contested point. She did not believe in the discomforts Adrian had mentioned--which were perfectly true, of course--because they had been kept from her before.
She thought the young ones did not want Miss Chance to go--they certainly did not, but the reasons put forward were strictly facts.
She was sweet and sympathetic, but her mind was made up.
"Please make it as nice and easy for her as possible, dear children," she said; "I depend on you, Crow; after all she has never yet been on the yacht."
There was no more to be said of course. Christobel gave way without another word. Adrian was silent, but when they were saying "good-night" he suggested quite amiably:
"We'll give the Floweret as good a time as we know how, Mum, and by the way, it's only fair to remember it isn't our fault she's never been out in the Messenger--she's always been away in the holidays when we did all the sailing--and Sir Marmaduke was here."
Mrs. Romilly protested that she knew all this. The yawl had never been at their service in term-time before--Adrian being absent.
"Perhaps this is the beginning of good times," she said; "perhaps she will make a first-rate sailor."
Brother and sister looked at each other speechless, when they got outside. Then Crow whispered:
"Are we downhearted?" and sped away to her room, head turned over her shoulder with her lips forming a very decided "No--o--o."
Adrian stood at his window presently looking out at the sweet breathless night. There was no air, the stars were clear. "If it's a calm she'll be sick," he thought, "poor old Blossom"--and peace descended on his soul.
So the matter was settled, and, in order to give Miss Chance time for her shopping, the young Romillys went by an earlier train from Five Trees. They did not mind that at all. Adrian wanted to get to his beloved Messenger--the sooner the better.
The party consisted of four--because Hughie was included. Pamela simply declined. She wouldn't say why or wherefore. She looked at the others during breakfast remarking that four was an even number.
"All agog to dash through thick and thin," she murmured, "Crow can shop with Miss Chance and Hughie can go with Addie to the yawl. Three people jostling each other in front of shop windows is never comfortable, and I hate sitting on a hot deck at anchor. Home is nicer."
They all went off gaily, Miss Chance carrying a string bag besides her bag-purse, to Crow's annoyance. She could not bear "walking with a string bag," she said. However Miss Chance could not be parted from it. The necessary food was to be bought in Salterne, and they were to start back after lunch, and come home with the tide.
It sounded perfectly charming, not a hitch. Mrs. Romilly was well pleased. She and Pamela had lunch together, and the peace of the house was balm. The day held fine--very fine. About two o'clock there was about as much air as you would expect under a vacuum bell.
Pamela called her mother's attention to it.
"Oh, I expect they've got some wind even if we haven't," said Mrs. Romilly; "I shan't worry, and, Pam dear, tea at half-past four, for you and me--and after that will you go up to Clawtol and get some eggs from Mrs. Ensor? A dozen or two dozen even--we eat such a lot now Addie has taken to demanding hard-boiled ones for the yacht. If I can't get enough from Clawtol, we must try the Badgers at Champles to-morrow or next day."
Pamela did not mind in the least. She had a plan in fact. Why not come back by Woodrising? A basket of eggs would prove her business. She need not do anything--at the same time she felt she could not rest till she obtained some knowledge of her "double". Having settled that the girl did not exist, she had been shaken out of that security by Christobel's surprising questions and confusion of her identity. It was not possible to pass it over. Fate had sent her another free day, clear of "family"; she must have one more attempt at Woodrising.
She and her mother followed the thought of Messenger's return with interest.
"If there had been a good wind they might have reached the lighthouse by now," said Pamela, spreading her bread and butter with a thankful heart, "as it is----"
"What? 'As it is'" asked Mrs. Romilly.
"Well, Mummy dear, no wind. What can they do? They'll be coming down the estuary about now--perhaps crossing the bar. Miss Chance won't feel the swell till they get really out--a good way."
"Are they bound to feel the swell?"
"Mummy, they are. I can assure you it's the sort of heaving that makes one try hard not to think of bacon grease. If you do, you're sorry."
"Poor Miss Chance," said Mrs. Romilly, and laughed.
Pamela looked at her with eyes that were grey-green--sometimes they were blue, sometimes grey--it depended on the sky and the atmosphere.
"I'm rather afraid," she remarked, "that a bit of bad luck is coming to those poor ones. There is a mist. You know how it begins. Bits of ragged chiffon seem to float past one, going nowhere in particular. There isn't a breath of air, and yet a cold kind of draught has arrived."
"I am sorry," said Mrs. Romilly, with feeling, "but a fog won't prevent their getting home. If they keep close in, the cliffs are so very obvious."
Pamela made no comment on this; she simply said it certainly would not prevent her walk to Clawtol for the eggs, while through her mind ran the idea that nothing could be better than a good thick white mist--such as they got in perfection at Bell Bay--for her mystery hunting expedition.
She kissed her mother and went, feeling joyous and independent. Her plan was cut and dried, so to speak, all settled--and when plans are like that they are very apt to turn topsy-turvy, and land people where they least expected to be.
Pamela went the usual way, across the lawns, out by the wicket that led to the beach, and very slowly up the steep cliff road past Crown Hill lodge gates and on up to Hawksdown. A sea fog has the effect of producing a feeling of loneliness. It cuts you off, and it makes voices and distant noises sound different. She went on till she reached the summit, and arriving there, went along cautiously towards the cliff edge, to see if the Messenger might be within sight.
The land on top of the Beak was very wild, desolate even; as it sloped very slightly downward to the cliff edge it behoved a wanderer to go cautiously. The Beak was not perpendicular. It could be climbed by an expert, or even an agile, clear-headed person like Pamela, but as she said to herself, "It was not the sort of thing you'd pick out to do, unless you had a very strong mood on."
She thought that as she looked over, and out to sea. No sail was within her vision. The water was visible, but through a fluff of thick white haze, that moved with the ceaseless shift of a kaleidoscope. Very dazzling. It made her giddy to watch the curious floating rags of it--coming, coming, ever thicker. If the yawl were close she could not be seen.
Of course it will be understood that the bluff of a headland is not a narrow point. It is a long stretch of wild high land that juts out to sea. There are such things as actual peaks sticking out to seaward, but these are rock, sheer, bare rock, to be found--some at any rate--in the Channel Islands, where you see most kinds of rocky headland in every weird shape.
But the Beak on which Pamela stood was a very blunt beak. The lighthouse lay perhaps half a mile to the south--invisible from the top--and Bell Bay was certainly half a mile to the north; all between was wild cliff trending outward like a huge bent elbow.
Pamela sat down on a gorsy hump, and looked towards Ramsworthy and Netheroot sands. She could not see them because of the fog. Nor could she see any sail. It was profoundly lonely, except for the sea-birds which kept up a constant wailing cry. They had noticed a human being appear on the scene, and instantly rose in whity-grey clouds, crying and screaming, circling round and round uneasily. When nothing happened they settled down, and presently there was silence again--complete silence except for one bird, that wailed distressfully at short intervals. From the sound, Pamela thought it was young--or very old--or wounded. It was not quite like the others. However, it was impossible to distinguish, as when it cried all the others rose up and began again.
She sat there perhaps ten minutes, then she went off back to the road, and presently, at the turning, away down to the farm.
Mrs. Ensor was leaning over the gate with the baby in her arms. She greeted Pamela with some satisfaction and said she had plenty of eggs. They went in together to the dairy, and Mrs. Ensor, putting the baby down, proceeded to pick out eggs by dates pencilled on them. Meanwhile she talked.
"Suppose you don't happen to have met with our Reube--which way did you come, Missie?"
Pamela explained.
"I'm afraid he's more like to be Ramsworthy way or, for all that comes to, Folly Ho. Mischeevious young monkey he is to be sure," she sighed, but smiled also with conscious pride in the "mischeevious" one. "For ever up to something--and for looks, why there--you'd think he only wanted a pair o' wings to fly to Heaven."
"He's a dear little boy," said Pamela, "I like Reuben; he's only six, though, isn't he?"
Mrs. Ensor said he was six, but had "double the years of naughtiness in him". It appeared that he had detached himself from the party of children coming from Ramsworthy school, said he'd got enough dinner left to do for his tea, and departed all alone.
"There wasn't one of them with 'thority to make him do as he was told you see, Missie," said the anxious mother, "he knows I want him for all sorts. He's ever such a help. But there, once in a while off he'll go; he never come for his tea, because he know'd I should catch him."
Pamela sympathized secretly with "young Reube". When she said good-bye, she promised to look out for him, and urge upon him to return home speedily. Mrs. Ensor was very grateful.
"That's a weight off me, Missie," she declared. "Six ain't no age when it comes to that, and these sea mists do seem to worrit anybody, sort of squeezing you in."
Pamela departed, carrying her eggs carefully, and pursued her way towards Crown Hill, planning to cut through the park by a foot-track they were allowed to use, and go down into Bell Bay at the back of the valley, thus returning via Woodrising "according to plan". The last thing she saw of the farmer's family was a general action, so to speak, amongst the children and animals in the "muck yard". Into this Mrs. Ensor dived, dispersing the contending arms, and restoring order.
"I'm glad I shan't have to be a farmer's wife," thought Pamela, "it's funny how happy they are." She remembered Reube; then she sat down on a felled log by the edge of the road to think, for a curious conviction had awakened in her mind and, as she stopped, seemed to fill every bit of her brain. Most people understand that feeling of certainty about a thing they know nothing about. It comes of itself and stays. Nothing will argue it away, yet there is no reason why it should be there.
Now the conviction that had taken possession of Pamela's mind was this:
"Young Reube" was in serious trouble on the rugged point of the Beak. And the queer intermittent cry, that she had noted as distinguished from the other bird cries, was the despairing voice of the child calling faintly.
There was no reason at all for this conviction except that Reube had not come back to tea, yet Pamela was convinced it was exactly as she pictured. She sat on for a few minutes thinking. She did not want to give up her plan at all. It was, in fact, a blow--then the danger of going down the Beak was considerable. Pam reviewed the idea of going to Bell Bay and trying to find a man. There was Major Fraser--he would have gone, but he was still lame. Adrian would have gone, but he was on the sea.
Suddenly she remembered that the first duty of a Girl Guide was to help anyone in distress, danger unconsidered. "Little Friend of all the World" was the very pith of the whole matter, "Be prepared" the motto, and secret sign.
Most surely there was only one thing to be done and that was to go and see, and take immediate action if necessary.
As she came to this conclusion, she straightened her shoulders and sat upright. She had been leaning forward with elbows on knees, chin in hands. And, as she moved, she heard a noise close by, and looked round.
By the roadside, a little farther down, was an open-front cart-shed, the sort that has a rickety roof on plank walls and shelters not only carts, but farm machines of various kinds. Pamela got up and walked a yard or two down to look. It might of course be "young Reube" hiding, which would clear her difficulties at once. There was no one in the shed. She went round the side to the back, called softly, "Reuben--Reuben--come out, I want to tell you something." She knew he would come if he were there. No answer, but a hen walked slowly out from the bushes clucking.
"Oh, you idiot!" said Pamela, annoyed. It must have been the hen. She walked slowly back to her basket, picked it up, and went off the way she had come.
CHAPTER IX
The Strange Adventure of the
Curlew's Call
Pamela went back steadily the way she had come, and reached the branching of the road with a full appreciation of the work she had set herself to do--supposing that "curlew" cry should be the desperate appeal of poor little Reuben.
The fog was thicker, she could but just see the water at the cliff foot; sometimes not that, because the mist shifted in patches--unequal patches. She sat down to listen, feeling as though she could hear better so. Her only guide would be the cry. Of course her return had caused a perfect bedlam of dismay among the birds, so she had to wait till they were reassured; then, when all was still except the everlasting wash of the water on the rocks, she heard the one wail again.
Listening for it with a new idea in her mind, she wondered that she had ever been deceived into thinking it was a curlew. She tried to place it, and the stillness of the atmosphere helped her. A little to the south of the central point, and down--certainly down.
If Mrs. Romilly could have seen her daughter at that moment she might have been excused for a nervous collapse. Pamela looked about for a safe place in which to dispose of the egg basket, finally planting it between two sturdy tussocks of coarse grass and heather. Then she pulled her little close hat tighter down, shifting the holding pin; looked to her shoe ties; and started onward slowly down the preliminary incline. There was no edge to drop over, instead, a very deceptive slope, that grew steeper and steeper until it became dangerous.
She fully realized what the child had done, and how he had been led astray by the apparent easiness of the first part. Probably some idea of birds' eggs had drawn him on--though it was too late in the season--or it might have been simply adventure. Pamela thought about it as she went on, and wondered why he stayed where he was instead of coming back. It was likely that he had hurt himself.
One of the dangers of this business was starting too fast. In some ways a cliff edge to get over would be less of a snare, because you went over with the full knowledge of your risks.
When she looked back, after perhaps five minutes of cautious descent, it was astonishing to note how a "cliff" had risen up behind her. She seemed to be a long way down, and the height at her back looked amazingly steep too. The time was near when she would have to take to her hands and knees, and crawl--then after a while she would be letting herself down by rock points, strong grass, and the rugged, uneven surface of the real cliff--but there were cracks, and little gullies made by rain and softer soil; these would help.
Every now and then she waited, listening intently, but there was a longish pause in the crying. It occurred to her that she might get an answer by calling--and moreover set at rest any lingering doubt. She called:
"Reuben, Reube, Reube--where are you?" Her voice was clear and pretty, a sweet voice, the sound of it comforting in a way.
Quickly came an answer on a different note to the despairing wail of the earlier call.
"Here--Miss----"
The question was very surely decided. Reuben knew who it was by the politeness of the "miss"--even in extremity. He recognized Pamela's voice. But the "here", was rather baffling! Where was "here"? She would have to find out, and anyway she knew it was Reuben, that was all that mattered much. Pamela started on down once more. Down, and along at the same time, partly because the call suggested it as the right direction, partly because it was easier.
She had to cross a most horrible slope of burned grass--very steep, yet smooth. It gave her some uncommonly ugly moments, but she forced herself not to look down, and on no account to increase her speed. She went by inches, digging her toes and fingers in and resolutely thinking of Reuben and the business in hand--not of possibilities.
"After this comes a nice broken-up bit," she said aloud, to keep herself sensible, "when I go up again, I'll try farther along. These slippery bits are no use."
Having reached the nice broken-up bit aforesaid, she cautiously turned over, and sitting on a big tufty ledge, looked about her.
A little smile flickered round her mouth.
"One in the eye for Addie," she said, "he declared I couldn't get up or down the Beak; and it's worse in a mist."
The mist was distinctly thick now. So much so that the top of the headland was out of sight, and the sea was invisible. She was like a very lonely bird in the middle of an ocean of drifting film. Probably this was what the eagles felt like--high, high up on a rocky peak in the clouds. She was not nervous--it was all so very exciting--but it was important to locate the lost one as soon as possible, because time was going rather fast.
"Hullo, Reube, call again!" cried Pamela.
There was no answer--there had been no cry, she thought, since the "miss" in the beginning. She waited a moment and then tried again. "Reube--I'm close by--I'm come to help you--where are you?"
All the birds started to shriek and scream with delirious riot. They rose in a cloud, and circled round and round. It was maddening.
"Oh you silly idiots," said Pamela.
As the clatter died down into isolated screams, she heard a voice say:
"I bean't afeard o' birds, Miss."
"That's right, Reube," she spoke in a hearty manner, because the words came in a detached weak tone, as though the speaker made an effort to say them.
He must be quite close, she thought.
Down she went again, with infinite care, because the surface of everything was greasy with mist that thickened continually. Down and down, and ever the mutter and wash of waves on rock grew more distinct.
Then the voice called, with more life in it.
"Here, Miss! You do be going too far."
Pamela checked and looked round eagerly. Above her, but more to the Ramsworthy side, in the loneliest and most inaccessible bit of the Beak, was a dark heap, a very little heap; and, small as it was, the great part of it consisted of a hump of coarse grass. On the ledge where this grew clung the human part of the heap.
"I see you," said Pamela, in a cheerful tone.
It was an heroic effort on her part, for, looking at the whole situation, up, down, and round, it was distinctly terrifying. After nearly ten minutes cautious climbing, she came within arm's length of the child.
He was lying on his face, arms grasping a snag of rock at the back of the grass bunch. He had never looked so small to Pamela, and, in an instant, she saw by his face what he had suffered; it was pinched and drawn--stained with tears and dirt.
She laughed. Not because she felt like laughter, but because she had neither water nor food, and something must be done to rouse the failing courage--if they were to get up the fog-shielded height that towered above them.
"I was mortal glad--when I heard you," volunteered Reube, gazing at her with sunken eyes: "I was pretty near asleep."
"Not at all a nice place for a doze;" said Pam, "now what on earth made you come here, young man?"
Reube said: "I dunno, Miss." He did not, of course. He had just started climbing down in a spirit of adventure, and found himself forced to go on in order to find a way up again. Here was the difficulty. Pamela saw that it would not be possible to go straight up from here. A cold thrill of dismay ran through her veins. They must move--they must start moving at once, there was no time to be lost. And she must find out the way of least resistance, so to speak; that way only could she get on with the exhausted child. And she could not see!
The mist dazzled her, wetting every grass blade with a glitter of tiny shining powder. She would have to move upward, even though difficulties forced her to go along the cliff face also. That was all that seemed perfectly clear. Also, and first of all, there was the condition of Reube.
He remained passive, his white face resting on his arm, his hands gripping the grass tussock. There seemed no sort of spring in him, and Pamela looked uneasily at his closed eyes. She realized that he was injured as well as exhausted, and said:
"What's the matter, Reube--where are you hurt?" in very gentle tones.
Reube opened his eyes and tried to pull his scattered wits together.
"It's me leg, Miss--and I'm that dry----" he ceased.
Pamela felt acutely that water was impossible. Then an idea occurred to her--very inadequate, but still something. She spread her handkerchief on the grass--saw that it began to get damp at once--and so left it for a minute, weighted with a little lump of soil, while she looked at the leg.
The obvious injury was a swollen and bruised knee, very blue, and growing bluer. But what she feared more was the appearance of the ankle. The child was wearing rather clumsy laced boots, too large for him, probably his brother's boots. It was probable that the boot had twisted, wrenching the ankle. Pamela hoped that it was only a bad sprain--not a break or a dislocation, but she did not know. The foot certainly looked queer. She wondered if she ought to take the boot off. But the laces were knotted in more than one place, and a terror of interfering seized her.
"If only I knew first aid," she thought miserably.
The moment she got a chance she would learn the whole thing. Therein lay another immense advantage of being a real Guide. She would have known exactly what to do. But ignorant handling might make things very much worse. She moved the foot cautiously, Reube shrank and winced.
She was sure it looked all wrong. Suppose it was broken--what awful pain!
Pamela returned to examination of her handkerchief. It was quite wet--really wet. She pressed it between the child's lips, feeling hopeful.
"Suck it, Reube," she said, "it isn't much, but it might make you feel a wee bit better."
Then she remembered that soldiers sucked pebbles when they were very hard put to it from thirst in front-line trenches. She considered the advisability of giving Reube a wet pebble to suck--if she could find one--there seemed to be none in the least suitable. After all, suppose Reube swallowed the pebble in a moment of half consciousness! That would be worse than anything. She returned to a very settled conviction that the important thing in life was to know first aid, and belong to the Girl Guides, when you would be armed with practical knowledge of what to do in all circumstances.
Reuben seemed the least bit revived. Whether it was the result of her company or of the handkerchief one could not tell, but the time seemed to have come to make a real start, if they were ever to get up the mist-veiled height above them.
From then on--for possibly twenty minutes, when she was completely played out--poor Pam remembered afterwards as a nightmare of the worst kind.
She started by climbing up two feet, and then grasping Reube by the arm, pulled him up to her. She urged him to use his sound foot, and just drag the other. The slowness of the process was exasperating; the difficulty grew and grew, because the climb was steeper and more slippery. She persevered, Reube made heroic efforts--but at the end of fifteen to twenty minutes, he lay a dead weight.
He had fainted.
Pamela felt pretty desperate. They had come up some distance, but much of the time had been spent in going a long round, that was bound to be, because she was forced to pick the best foothold. Not much useful progress had been made, and what now? She could not revive the child. He might even be dead!
Pamela spoke aloud to herself.
"Well, dead or alive, I've got to get him up;" her teeth were set in this determination.
After resting for a few minutes she took sure footing, tested her position, and then, putting an arm around Reube's waist, heaved up the small body to a place perhaps a foot higher. This process she repeated six times. She had gained perhaps eight feet, but she was very tired. The child remained inert, with closed eyes.
Pamela rested again. This time her lips trembled just a little, and she blinked her eyes as she stared fixedly along that awful slope. It was so fearfully steep, and the foothold more and more slippery. If only someone would come! She had not called, because she knew there was no one about on the top of the cliff, and it seemed waste of breath and strength. She understood the curious stolidity of villagers. Supposing anyone passed along the road at the top he would take no notice of cries--probably would not hear.
Had there been no fog, Addie might have seen her and climbed up. Surely the yawl must be somewhere below, cut off from vision by that mass of elusive shifting whiteness. Then she remembered that there was also a calm, a dead breathless calm. Perhaps the yacht had not passed Heggadon, and might have to go back to Salterne when the tide turned.
Everything was against her, and against being found, because all the attention would be for the yawl and not for herself; it would be taken for granted she was safe on land. She remembered that the Floweret would certainly have said: "Where can dear Pamela have gone to! Surely she is very late." That might have drawn people's attention, but even the Floweret was lost to her now. There was positively no hope of help. Reuben's life, and her own too, for that matter, depended on her own unaided efforts.
She took a long breath, thought of all sorts of things in a queer rush of resolution to do what hundreds--thousands--of brave men and women had done in the fighting years. After all this adventure was not unlike getting a wounded comrade into safety from the lonely perils of No Man's Land. If a wounded man could do it for another one worse wounded--surely she, who was sound, could do it for this little creature.
That was about the reasoning of her mind if it were analysed--but, of course, it all passed like a flash of realization, she did not reason. Then she began again, and had gone up in the same way another five feet, hardly more, when a sick feeling of fright seemed to choke her--she could not get higher. She had come to a place that was so steep as to be practically a wall. It was like that for some ten feet, after which it looked easier--but just here it was sheer. She must try and get round it, as it were--shift herself and the boy along. To that end it would be better to explore alone first--find out where her best road lay and come back for Reube? The question was dare she leave him, would he move if he returned to consciousness, and roll down into the sea.
She was considering her position, when she heard a call--actually a human call.
A wave of passionate thankfulness swept over her--nearly as possible she burst out crying from sheer relief. Who--who could it be?
Then she saw.
Rather above, and a good deal to her left, was a figure making towards them in a swift and capable manner.
Pamela was just going to answer with a cry of welcome, when a sense of dazed confusion checked her, and for several moments she remained just staring with an uneasy suspicion that she might have "gone off her head" from the strain.
For the person coming down towards her was the double of herself. No less, apparently.
Pamela looked away--shut her eyes, opened them and stared down at the sea, moving everlastingly through the shifting haze of the white fog. Everything was the same. Reube was still unconscious. She glanced at the poor foot, it still seemed the wrong way round. Then she looked back at the girl, and saw--certainly herself--to all appearance.
A tall slim creature in a blue serge skirt, tan stockings, tan shoes, a Japanese silk blouse, and chamois leather gauntlet gloves. It was almost a relief to realize that she wore a dark knitted tam-o'-shanter--which Pam was not wearing that day, though she often wore one. Over the shoulder of this double hung a thick plait of lovely bright hair. Pamela glanced down at her own plait to compare them, and her sudden thought was--
"Hers is lighter."
Pausing at a distance of some yards, the stranger stared hard at Pamela, and Pamela was so absorbed in staring at her in return that she nearly slid down the Beak into the sea.
"What is the matter?"
That was the first thing the double asked, and her voice was a little unexpected. It was rather deep, and she spoke slowly--carefully--with the least touch of something different in the accent.
Pamela cleared her throat; she felt nervous, she felt the least bit as though nothing were real.
"It's little Reube Ensor," she said, "he's hurt."
"Reube Ensor!" repeated the other girl with care, "how did he come upon this cliff?"
"He's only six. He got away from the other children coming from school. I suppose he wanted to climb. Anyway, he's hurt his foot awfully. I've been trying to get him up for ages, but it's appallingly difficult, because he's fainted and he can't do a thing for himself, you see."
She rushed the words with a sort of friendliness, yet all the while she was quite absorbed in the girl and hardly knew what it was she said.
"I shall help you," said the stranger; and came along in an active, sure-footed way, glancing about as she came.
Pamela crossed over Reube's small body to the right side, to make room for the other girl who, kneeling, looked at him, at his leg and foot--Pamela meanwhile looking at her.
"This is the boy of the farm on this hill," said the girl, and raised her eyes, meeting Pamela's. They stared straight at each other, and the original Pam--so to speak--was conscious rather thankfully that this interloping "Pam" was not like her in the face.
She was handsomer. She was very handsome, but she had not Pamela's elusive charm and daintiness of outline.
Her skin was fair and untanned; but her eyes were dark, long shaped, and of a red-brown colour, with dark lashes; her eyebrows were long and cleanly pencilled, set rather high above her eyes. Her nose was the least bit aquiline, and she had those cut-upward nostrils that give a curiously disdainful air; it was a beautiful nose. Her mouth was beautiful too, very well shaped, but with rather thin lips, and her chin was round and full.
She was certainly a very handsome girl, especially if you added her hair to the catalogue. It was golden--shades lighter than Pam's--a real bright gold colour, thick and long.
She sat down sideways--all her attitudes were graceful, like Pamela's.
"Why did you come for him?" she asked, making a sign towards Reube.
"Why did you come after me?" retorted Pamela; she felt instinctively something the least bit supercilious in the look and manner of the other.
"I was near the shed where carts are put, and I saw you. I have seen you before, and I wished to know----" she paused, then went on, skipping what she "wished to know", "I saw you put your basket on the cliff and go down. So I waited to know why you climbed in such bad weather. After a while I came after you to see what happened. If you had called I should have come more quickly."
Pamela in return told why she had come back. She related what Mrs. Ensor had said. "When I got to that cart-shed, it rushed over me all in one instant that the crying sea-gull was Reube. I had to come back. Don't you have those sort of convictions sometimes--you know--when there's no earthly sense in a thing yet you're perfectly sure it must be."
The other girl shook her head.
"Oh no. I don't feel like that," she said, "I do what I choose, when I wish to do it, that's all."
Then she glanced up at the cliff just above them and went on with decision.
"We cannot take him by that way. It is less steep the path I came down. We must go along--then up. See, now, he is very small and light, we can carry him between us, it will be easy for two."
CHAPTER X
Life or Death on the Beak Cliff
Afterwards, Pamela found she had rather an indistinct recollection of that journey to the cliff top. One thing was certain, she could not have done it without the help of her double. They carried Reube in a sort of sling made by their own cotton petticoats. It was the strange girl's notion, and proved quite practical. Each girl wore a petticoat. One supported the boy's head and shoulders, and one his legs--any other method would have been impossible, because of the injured foot, that is to say, without causing terrible pain to Reuben.
He came to himself while he was being trussed into this amateur sling, and stared at the new girl with such interest that Pamela felt it was as good as "burnt feathers" for curing faintness.
"Hullo, Reube," she said, laughing, "now we shan't be long--shall we?"
"No, Miss," agreed Reube in a weak voice.
"Hold on this," ordered the stranger.
"Yes, Miss, I'll 'old to it," he gazed from one girl to the other with interest.
That was the beginning. The end was on the top resting near the egg basket--with Reube like a mummy flat on the grass, and the pair of girls taking breath.
"I'm awfully obliged to you," said Pamela, "really grateful beyond words. I should have had to stay there all night."
"All night, why?" asked the other, turning her head to look curiously at the speaker. In that moment Pam found herself wondering if the girl was really as supercilious as she looked--or whether the expression was caused by her disdainful eyebrows.
"Why! But you wouldn't leave a person like that, would you?" Pamela opened her big, grey-blue eyes as she answered with this question.
"Oh, yes. If it seemed to be the most sensible thing to do. I should put him in the safest place possible--then I would go and find help."
"He would have fallen down," said Pamela decidedly, "he wasn't conscious, and he couldn't hold on. One daren't be responsible for leaving him."
The other girl shrugged her shoulders slightly.
"Oh, well--where is the sense to kill two people instead of one? You are the most important."
"I! Not so sure," Pam laughed. "I'm only a woman, and this child will be a man some day. We've got too many women in England as it is--heaps too many, and we want all the boys we can get, they are fearfully important."
"Oh, for that perhaps! I was thinking of birth. You are Pamela Romilly, and your family is distinguished; he is but a common child."
Pamela was veritably startled by such an odd remark. The "common child" appeared to have much the same feeling, to judge by his round eyes. He looked at Pam--to whom he was devoted--anything she said was right, but he did not understand much about it anyway.
"That sounds rather like the Middle Ages--or the people of the French Court before the big Revolution, doesn't it?" she said cautiously, not wishing to offend this young person of strange views who had helped her so grandly out of a tight corner; "you see we don't have that sort of opinions nowadays. At least one never hears them--especially since the war. It brought us all close together. Our brother fought--and Mrs. Ensor's brother fought, and there you are. We've all got on the same ground and we want to stay like that--you can't put people back when they've done ripping things, can you?"
Reube closed his eyes. These were the sentiments he was used to from Romillys, Shards, Ensors, and Badgers, and all the rest of the valley folk; he could understand that.
"Did your brother fight?" asked the strange girl quickly.
"Oh, yes--Royal Navy--he's Lieutenant on the destroyer Spite. Dad's a sailor, you know, he commands the battleship Medusa, one of the new ones."
There was a pause, then the other girl rose to her feet.
"My father was killed," she said in a sort of fierce, stifled voice.
Pamela jumped up also. She was shocked through all her sensitive being.
"Oh," she exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so horribly sorry. I oughtn't to have talked about the war, one never knows. How splendid--how utterly splendid!"
The other girl said nothing at all, but made a move to pick up Reuben. Pamela took her share--and the egg basket, and the two of them started off with the chrysalis slung between them. It was easy enough going through the longish coarse grass which was now so wet, and the drifting mist that still held. Pamela was thinking hard, but she did not speak, that last sentence spoken by the strange girl had been such a shock that she wanted her to do the talking. Perhaps matters would be explained later.
The hour was nearer seven than six o'clock, for all these doings had taken up time.
One after another questions rose in Pamela's mind. She was tired and strained without knowing it, so the questions seemed to be dropped without answers. They went on down the long lane between the gorsy banks. As the strange girl was leading she had command of the procession; she made for the cart-shed, went in, and stopped.
"Take your petticoat," she ordered, "then I will put this child on your back, and open the gate. You may take him to the farm."
"Oh--but----" began Pamela, disturbed and puzzled.
"I shall not come into the farm, if that is what you wish. It is not possible," the other cut her short in a peremptory manner; "quick now--we cannot stand here; someone may come and that would be annoying."
Pamela found herself swept along in spite of herself. She mechanically did as she was told. The other girl was so strong and decided.
Just before she lifted little Reuben she said to him:
"Please say nothing to your family about me. Do you understand? It is better for everyone that people do not talk. If you talk Sir Marmaduke Shard will be angry with you."
"Yes, Miss," murmured Reube, awestricken and confused. A moment after he knew nothing, because when he was lifted he fainted.
Pamela wanted to get the business over as quickly as possible. The boy was a great anxiety. Also she felt as though her brain were entirely confused, and she wanted to set it in order again. She passed through the farm-gate--the dog began to bark furiously--then she called. On the other side of the stack-yard she saw a man hurrying, it was Ensor, the farmer; then Mrs. Ensor appeared, and immediately she found herself the centre of a small crowd, and heard herself saying that they ought to send for a doctor at once because the foot was very bad.
"It mayn't be broken, but it's all wrong," she said.
Ensor did not talk, he was a silent man; everybody else did, and Pamela had to urge quiet and warm milk at once.
"I had nothing to give him and he was so thirsty, poor mite."
"You look bad enough yourself, Missie. Down the Beak! Whoever heard tell the like. Naughty boy----"
"Don't scold him, Mrs. Ensor, he really has been through an awful lot," protested Pamela. "No, I won't stay a moment. I must get back as soon as possible, or my mother will be anxious. If you like I'll tell Major Fraser at Mainsail Cottage, probably he's in now."
But Mrs. Ensor would not have that--she had, as she told her husband, "a better notion of what was becoming", so the eldest boy was despatched--running--with a good deal of elbow action--and Pamela took her leave then, and went soberly surrounded by an atmosphere of intense loving gratitude. It was hardly spoken--it was in the air.
She felt as though she had small right to it, because, had it not been for the stranger, she must have been still on the face of that awful cliff--with dusk coming on, and the fog so chill. She shivered an instant, but at the same time almost her heart gave a little bound of excitement.
She had met the other girl; her own double! And who was she? What was her story? Where had she come from?
"I'll ask her," thought Pam, "she will be waiting in the cart-shed."
But no one was in the cart-shed. The place was bleak and shadowy, full of mist. The girl was gone.
It was a blow. Freed from the burden and care of the rescued Reube, Pamela had pictured that she and the girl would walk "home"--she did not know where that was, but believed it to be Woodrising--they would talk. She would learn the girl's name, and hear where she came from and why she was at Woodrising.
This break off was very irritating, because there was such a great deal of mystery, and it has been said that Pamela was inquisitive, or at anyrate always eager to know the "why" of puzzling things. Then, suddenly, a few words spoken rushed to her mind. The girl had told Reube that if he talked Sir Marmaduke Shard would be angry. Well, that settled it from one point of view. Sir Marmaduke had brought someone secretly to Bell Bay; this was the person he had brought--he was behind the mystery!
"Woodrising is his house--they must have gone there, I thought that in the beginning. Now I wonder if that silly little Chipman creature is taking care of this girl."
Pamela frowned as she reasoned it out. There is a game in which people hunt for hidden things and are told whether they are getting "warmer", as they come near it, or "colder", as they get farther away.
Pamela was getting very warm indeed!
Just at that moment she saw someone in front of her. It was past the turn into the cliff road, and she was making straight for the steep drop into Bell Bay. Clouds and the persistent fog together were making an evening much too dull for the date, now days were lengthening out so much. For a moment or two Pamela was uncertain, then she realized who they were. Two figures--one tall, with the unmistakable walk of a flat-footed person who turns her toes in; the other small, very dapper and neatly made, walking with short steps.
The Floweret, and Hughie.
She was startled almost into calling; then it occurred to her to shirk persistent questions by keeping behind till they got home. However, that did not present itself as the right course to a member of the Romilly family, so Pamela decided that first thoughts were best and she shouted cheerfully.
Hughie stopped short, and checked his companion, who looked in every direction but the right one before she became aware of Pamela's slim figure speeding down towards them. Then she waved both her basket and her waterproof cloak, and in so doing knocked Hughie's hat off, while some of the contents of the basket fell on the road.
Hughie salved them, miraculously unbroken, and replaced them in the basket with precision.
"How delightful, dear Pamela!" cried Miss Chance beaming. "Now where do you spring from? Do you know the most odd thing happened a short time ago! As Hughie and I were coming slowly up from the cove at Ramsworthy--very slowly--I was quite convinced that I saw you and another girl exactly your height, you seemed to be carrying something. Just for one moment I saw you in the mist, against the sky line, as it were. But fog is so terribly deceptive that I mistrusted my own eyes. It was only for an instant--you seemed to be just on the top of the cliff--then you disappeared."
"Well," said Pam, not at all afraid of the Floweret's acuteness--because it did not exist, "I was on the cliff top, and I was carrying something. The fact is, Miss Chance, I've had a pretty lively adventure, and it's a bit of a mercy--it's a real big mercy, when one comes to think of it, that I'm here to tell my tale."
She walked on with them, carrying her eggs, and recounted her story, very briskly--simply leaving out her double.
She told how she went over the cliff, because of the oddness of the sea-bird scream, found little Reuben, and hauled him out of danger. She said very little, laying no stress on the terrible difficulty and danger of the feat.
Hughie made no remark. Miss Chance asked many questions.
"Dear Pamela," she cried, "I can't bear to think of it! How did you manage to lift him if his foot was injured?"
Pamela said she used her petticoat as a sort of sling.
"Petticoat--Oh!" gasped the Floweret horror-stricken, and pursued the matter no further in that direction. "We cannot be thankful enough that you are spared," she concluded.
"I gave him to the Ensors," went on Pamela, skating lightly over the interval. "Ensor was in the stack-yard--just going off to hunt--he'd never have found Reube, I'm certain. They sent off Joey to get Doctor Fraser--look there they come--I'm so glad."