The Corinthian (11 page)

'Certainly,' said Sir Richard, his brows still expressive of languid surprise.

'At your convenience, sir: no hurry, sir!' said the Runner, retreating to a discreet distance.

The sigh which escaped Miss Creed was one of such profound relief that it was plain her alarms had not until that moment been allayed. Sir Richard finished paying his shot, and with a brief: 'Come, Pen!' tossed over his shoulder, left the taproom.

'He didn't come to find me!' breathed Pen.

'Of course he didn't.'

'I couldn't help being a little alarmed. What shall we do now, sir?'

'Shake off your very undesirable travelling-acquaintance,' he replied briefly.

She gave a gurgle. 'Yes, but how? I have
such
a fear that he means to go with us to Bristol.'

'But we are not going to Bristol. While he is being interrogated by that Runner, we, my child, are going to walk quietly out by the back door, and proceed by ways, which I trust will not prove as devious as the tapster's description of them, to Colerne. There we shall endeavour to hire a vehicle to carry us to Queen Charlton.'

'Oh, famous!' cried Pen. 'Let us go at once!'

Five minutes later they left the inn unobtrusively, by way of the yard, found themselves in a hayfield, and skirted it to a gate leading into a ragged spinney.

The village of Colerne was rather less than three miles distant, but long before they had reached it Sir Richard was tired of his portmanteau. 'Pen Creed, you are a pestilent child!' he told her.

'Why, what have I done?' she asked, with one of her wide, enquiring looks.

'You have hailed me from my comfortable house—'

'I didn't! It was you who
would
come!'

'I was drunk.'

'Well, that was not my fault,' she pointed out.

'Don't interrupt me! You have made me travel for miles in a conveyance smelling strongly of dirt and onions—'

'That was the fat woman's husband,' interpolated Pen. 'I noticed it myself.'

'No one could have failed to notice it. And I am not partial to onions. You drew a portrait of me which led everyone in the coach to regard me in the light of an oppressor of innocent youth—'

'Not the thin, disagreeable man.
He
wanted me to be oppressed.'

'He was a person of great discrimination. Not content with that, you pitchforked me into what threatens to be a life-friendship with a pickpocket, to escape from whose advances I am obliged to tramp five miles, carrying a portmanteau which is much heavier than I had supposed possible. It only remains for me to become embroiled in an action for kidnapping, which I feel reasonably assured your aunt will bring against me.'

'Yes, and now I come to think of it, I remember that you said you were going to be married,' said Pen, quite unimpressed by these strictures. 'Will she be very angry with you?'

'I hope she will be so very angry that she will wish never to see my face again,' said Sir Richard calmly. 'In fact, brat, that reflection so far outweighs all other considerations that I forgive you the rest.'

'I think you are a very odd sort of person,' said Pen. 'Why did you ask her to marry you, if you did not wish to?'

'I didn't. During the past two days that is the only folly I have not committed.'

'Well, why did you mean to ask her, then?'

'You
should know.'

'But you are a man! No one could make you do anything you did not choose to do!'

'They came mighty near it. If you had not dropped out of the window into my arms, I have little doubt that I should at this moment be receiving the congratulations of my acquaintance.'

'Well, I must say I do not think you are at all just to me, then, to call me a pestilent child! I saved you—though, indeed, I didn't know it—from a horrid fate.'

'True. But need I have been saved in a noisome stagecoach?'

'That was part of the adventure. Besides, I explained to you at the outset why I was travelling on the stage. You must own that we are having a very exciting time! And, what is more, you have had more adventure than I, for you actually shared a room with a real thief!'

'So I did,' said Sir Richard, apparently much struck by this circumstance.

'And I can plainly see a cottage ahead of us, so I expect we have reached Colerne,' she said triumphantly.

In a few moments, she was found to have been right. They walked into the village, and fetched up at the best-looking inn.

'Now, what particular lie shall we tell here?' asked Sir Richard.

'A wheel came off our post-chaise,' replied Pen promptly.

'Are you never at a loss?' he enquired, regarding her in some amusement.

'Well, to tell you the truth I haven't had very much experience,' she confided.

'Believe me, no one would suspect that.'

'No, I must say I think I was quite born to be a vagabond,' she said seriously.

The story of the faulty wheel was accepted by the landlord of the Green Man without question. If he thought it strange that the travellers should have left the main highway to brave the perils of rough country lanes, his mild surprise was soon dissipated by the announcement that they were on their way to Queen Charlton, and had attempted to find a shorter road. He said that they would have done better to have followed the Bristol road to Cold Ashton, but that perhaps they were strangers in these parts?

'Precisely,' said Sir Richard. 'But we are going to visit friends at Queen Charlton, and we wish to hire some sort of a vehicle to carry us there.'

The smile faded from the landlord's face when he heard this, and he shook his head. There were no vehicles for hire at Colerne. There was, in fact, only one suitable carriage, and that his own gig. 'Which I'd be pleased to let out to your honour if I had but a man to send with it. But the lads is all out haymaking, and I can't go myself. Maybe the blacksmith could see what's to be done to patch up your chaise, sir?'

'Quite useless!' said Sir Richard truthfully. "The wheel is past repairing. Moreover, I instructed my postilion to ride back to Wroxhall. What will you take for lending your gig to me without a man to go with it?'

'Well, sir, it ain't that so much, but how will I get it back?'

'Oh, one of Sir Jasper's grooms will drive it back!' said Pen. 'You need have no fear on that score!'

'Would that be Sir Jasper Luttrell, sir?'

'Yes, indeed, we are going on a visit to him.'

The landlord was plainly shaken. Sir Jasper was apparently well-known to him; on the other hand Sir Richard was not. He cast him a doubtful, sidelong look, and slowly shook his head.

'Well, if you won't let out your gig on hire, I suppose I shall have to buy it,' said Sir Richard.

'Buy my gig, sir?' gasped the landlord, staggered.

'And the horse too, of course,' added Sir Richard, pulling out his purse.

The landlord blinked at him. 'Well, I'm sure, sir! If that's the way it is, I don't know but what I could let you drive the gig over yourself—seeing as how you're a friend of Sir Jasper. Come to think of it, I won't be needing it for a couple of days. Only you'll have to rest the old horse afore you send him back, mind!'

Sir Richard raised no objection to this, and after coming to terms with an ease which led to the landlord's expressing the wish that there were more gentlemen like Sir Richard to be met with, the travellers had only to wait until the cob had been harnessed to the gig, and led round to the front of the inn.

The gig was neither smart nor well-sprung, and the cob's gait was more sure than swift, but Pen was delighted with the whole equipage. She sat perched up beside Sir Richard, enjoying the hot sunshine, and pointing out to him the manifold superiorities of the Somerset countryside over any other county.

They did not reach Queen Charlton until dusk, since the way to it was circuitous, and often very rough. When they came within sight of the village, Sir Richard said: 'Well, brat, what now? Am I to drive you to Sir Jasper Luttrell's house?'

Pen, who had become rather silent during the last five miles of their drive, said with a little gasp: 'I have been thinking that perhaps it would be better if I sent a message in the morning! It is not Piers, you know, but, though I did not think of her at the time, it—it has occurred to me that perhaps Lady Luttrell may not perfectly understand . . .'

Her voice died away unhappily. She was revived by Sir Richard's saying in matter-of-fact tones: 'A very good notion. We will drive to an inn.'

'The George was always accounted the best,' offered Pen. 'I have never actually been inside it, but my father was used to say its cellars were excellent.'

The George was discovered to be an ancient half-timbered hostelry with beamed ceilings, and wainscoted parlours. It was a rambling house, with a large yard, and many chintz-hung bedrooms. There was no difficulty in procuring a private parlour, and by the time Pen had washed the dust of the roads from her face, and unpacked the cloak-bag, her spirits, which had sunk unaccountably, had begun to lift again. Dinner was served in the parlour, and neither the landlord nor his wife seemed to recognize in the golden-haired stripling the late Mr Creed's tomboyish little girl.

'If only my aunt does not discover me before I have found Piers!' Pen said, helping herself to some more raspberries.

'We will circumvent her. But touching this question of Piers, do you—er—suppose that he will be able to extricate you from your present difficulties?'

'Well, he will have to, if I marry him, won't he?'

'Undoubtedly. But—you must not think me an incorrigible wet blanket—it is not precisely easy to be married at a moment's notice.'

'Isn't it? I didn't know,' said Pen innocently. 'Oh well, I dare say we shall fly to Gretna Green then! We used to think that would be a splendid adventure.'

'Gretna Green in those clothes?' enquired Sir Richard, levelling his quizzing-glass at her.

'Well, no, I suppose not. But when Piers has explained it all to Lady Luttrell, I expect she will be able to get some proper clothes for me.'

'You do not entertain any doubts of Lady Luttrell's—er—receiving you as her prospective daughter-in-law?'

'Oh no! She was always most kind to me! Only I did think that perhaps it would be better if I saw Piers first.'

Sir Richard, who had so far allowed himself to be borne along resistless on the tide of this adventure, began to perceive that it would shortly be his duty to wait upon Lady Luttrell, and to give her an account of his dealings with Miss Creed. He glanced at that young lady, serenely finishing the last of the raspberries, and reflected, with a wry smile, that the task was not going to be an easy one.

A servant came in to clear away the dishes presently. Pen at once engaged him in conversation and elicited the news that Sir Jasper Luttrell was away from home.

'Oh! But not Mr Piers Luttrell?'

'No, sir, I saw Mr Piers yesterday. Going to Keynsham, he was. I do hear as he has a young gentleman staying with him—a Lunnon gentleman, by all accounts.'

'Oh!' Pen's voice sounded rather blank. As soon as the man had gone away, she said: 'Did you hear that, sir? It makes it just a little awkward, doesn't it?'

'Very awkward,' agreed Sir Richard. 'It seems as though we have now to eliminate the gentleman from London.'

'I wish we could. For I am sure my aunt will guess that I have come home, and if she finds me before I have found Piers, I am utterly undone.'

'But she will not find you. She will only find me.'

'Do you think you will be able to fob her off?'

'Oh, I think so!' Sir Richard said negligently. 'After all, she would scarcely expect you to be travelling in my company, would she? I hardly think she will demand to see my nephew.'

'No, but what if she does?' asked Pen, having no such dependence on her aunt's forbearing.

Sir Richard smiled rather sardonically. 'I am not, perhaps, the best person in the world of whom to make— ah—impertinent demands.'

Pen's eyes lit with sudden laughter. 'Oh, I do hope you will talk to her like that, and look at her just
so!
And if she brings Fred with her, he will be quite overcome, I dare say, to meet you face to face. For you must know that he admires you excessively. He tries to tie his cravat in a Wyndham Fall, even!'

'That, in itself, I find an impertinence,' said Sir Richard.

She nodded, and lifted a hand to her own cravat. 'What do you think of mine, sir?'

'I have carefully refrained from thinking about it at all. Do you really wish to know?'

'But I have arranged it just as you did!'

'Good God!' said Sir Richard faintly. 'My poor deluded child!'

'You are teasing me! At least it was not ill enough tied to make you rip it off my neck as you did when you first met me!'

'You will recall that we left the inn in haste this morning,' he explained.

'I am persuaded
that
would not have weighed with you. But you put me in mind of a very important matter. You paid my reckoning there.'