The Corinthian (7 page)

'How terrible! Your poor Mama! I am so sorry! It is an appalling loss!'

'Yes, but how the devil did they find the thing?' said Cedric. 'That's what I want to know.'

'But surely if they took Lady Saar's jewel-case—'

"The necklace wasn't in it. I'll lay my last shilling on that. My mother had a hiding-place for it—devilish cunning notion—always put it there when she travelled. Secret pocket behind one of the squabs.'

'Good Gad, do you mean to say someone divulged the hiding-place to the rascals?' said George.

'Looks mighty like it, don't it?'

'Who knew of it? If you can discover the traitor, you may yet get the necklace back. Are you sure of all your servants?'

'I'm sure none of them—Lord, I don't know!' Cedric said, rather hastily. 'My mother wants the Bow Street Runners set on to it, but m'father don't think it's the least use. And now here's Ricky bolted, on top of everything! The old man will go off in an apoplexy!'

'Really, Cedric, you must not talk so of your Papa!' Louisa expostulated. 'And we don't know that Richard has—has
bolted!
Indeed, I am sure it's no such thing!'

'He'll be a fool if he hasn't," said Cedric. 'What do you think, George?'

'I don't know,' George answered. 'It is very perplexing. I own, when I first heard of his disappearance—for you must know that he did not sleep in his bed last night, and when
I
saw him he was foxed—I felt the gravest alarm. But—'

'Suicide, by God!' Cedric gave a shout of laughter. 'I must tell Melissa that! Driven to death! Ricky! Oh, by all that's famous!'

'Cedric, you are quite abominable!' said Louisa roundly. 'Of course Richard has not committed suicide! He has merely gone away. I'm sure I don't know where, and if you say anything of the sort to Melissa I shall never forgive you! In fact, I beg you will tell Melissa nothing more than that Richard has been called away on an urgent matter of business.'

'What, can't I tell her about the lock of yaller hair? Now, don't be a spoil-sport, Louisa!'

'Odious creature!'

'We believe the lock of hair to be a relic of some long-forgotten affair,' said George. 'Possibly a boy-and-girl attachment. It would be gross impropriety to mention it beyond these walls.'

'If it comes to that, old fellow, what about the gross impropriety of poking and prying into Ricky's drawers?' asked Cedric cheerfully.

'We did no such thing!' Louisa cried. 'It was found upon the floor in the library!'

'Dropped? Discarded? Seems to me Ricky's been leading a double life. I'd have said myself he never troubled much about females. Won't I roast him when I see him!'

'You will do nothing of the sort. Oh dear, I wish to heaven I knew where he has gone, and what it all means!'

'I'll tell you where he's gone!' offered Cedric. 'He's gone to find the yaller-haired charmer of his youth. Not a doubt of it! Lord, I'd give a monkey to see him, though. Ricky on a romantic adventure!'

'Now you are being absurd!' said Louisa. 'If one thing is certain, it is that Richard has not one grain of romance in his disposition, while as for adventure—! I dare say he would shudder at the mere thought of it. Richard, my dear Cedric, is first, last, and always a man of fashion, and he will never do anything unbefitting a Corinthian. You may take my word for
that!'

Chapter 4

T
he man of fashion, at that precise moment, was sleeping heavily in one corner of a huge green-and-gold Accommodation coach, swaying and rocking on its ponderous way to Bristol. The hour was two in the afternoon, the locality Calcot Green, west of Reading and the dreams troubling the repose of the man of fashion were extremely uneasy. He had endured some waking moments, when the coach had stopped with a lurch and a heave to take up or to set down passengers, to change horses, or to wait while a laggardly pike-keeper opened a gate upon the road. These moments had seemed to him more fraught with nightmare even than his dreams. His head was aching, his eyeballs seemed to be on fire, and a phantasmagoria of strange, unwelcome faces swam before his outraged vision. He had shut his eyes again with a groan, preferring his dreams to reality, but when the coach stopped at Calcot Green to put down a stout woman with a tendency to asthma, sleep finally deserted him, and he opened his eyes, blinked at the face of a precise-looking man in a suit of neat black, seated opposite him, ejaculated: 'Oh, my God!' and sat up.

'Is your head
very
bad?' asked a solicitous and vaguely familiar voice in his ear.

He turned his head, and encountered the enquiring gaze of Miss Penelope Creed. He looked at her in silence for a few moments; then he said: 'I remember. Stage-coach—Bristol. Why, oh why, did I touch the brandy?'

An admonitory pinch made him recollect his surroundings. He found that there were three other persons in the coach, seated opposite to him, and that all were regarding him with interest. The precise-looking man, whom he judged to be an attorney's clerk, was frankly disapproving; a woman in a poke-bonnet and a paduasoy shawl nodded to him in a motherly style, and said that he was like her second boy, who could not abide the rocking of the coach either; and a large man beside her, whom he took to be her husband, corroborated this statement by enunciating in a deep voice: 'That's right!'

Instinct took Sir Richard's hand to his cravat; his fingers told him that it was considerably crumpled, like the tails of his blue coat. His curly-brimmed beaver seemed to add to the discomfort of his aching head; he took it off, and clasped his head in his hands, trying to throw off the lingering wisps of sleep. 'Good God!' he said thickly. 'Where are we?'

'Well, I am not quite sure, but we have passed Reading,' replied Pen, rather anxiously surveying him.

'Calcot Green, that's where we are,' volunteered the large man. 'Stopped to set down someone. They ain't a-worriting theirselves over the time-bill, that's plain. I dare say the coachman's stepped down for a drink.'

'Ah, well!' said his wife tolerantly. 'It'll be thirsty work, setting up on the box in the sun like he has to.'

"That's right,' agreed the large man.

'If the Company was to hear of it he would be turned off, and very rightly!' said the clerk, sniffing. 'The behaviour of these stage-coachmen is becoming a scandal.'

'I'm sure there's no call for people to get nasty if a man falls behind his time-bill a little,' said the woman. 'Live and let live, that's what I say.'

Her husband assented to this in his usual fashion. The coach lurched forward again, and Pen said, under cover of the noise of the wheels and the horses' hooves: 'You kept on telling me that you were drunk, and now I see that you were. I was afraid you would regret coming with me.'

Sir Richard raised his head from his hands. 'Drunk I most undoubtedly must have been, but I regret nothing except the brandy. When does this appalling vehicle reach Bristol?'

'It isn't one of the fast coaches, you know. They don't engage to cover much above eight miles an hour. I think we ought to be in Bristol by eleven o'clock. We seem to stop such a number of times, though. Do you mind very much?'

He looked down at her. 'Do you?'

'To tell you the truth,' she confided, 'not a bit! I am enjoying myself hugely. Only I don't want you to be made uncomfortable all for my sake. I quite see that you are sadly out-of-place in a stage-coach.'

'My dear child, you had nothing whatever to do with my present discomfort, believe me. As for
my
being out-of-place, what, pray, are you?'

The dimples peeped. 'Oh,
I
am only a scrubby school-boy, after all!'

'Did I say that?' She nodded. 'Well, so you are,' said Sir Richard, looking her over critically. 'Except for—Did I tie that cravat? Yes, I thought I must have. What in the world have you got there?'

'An apple,' replied Pen, showing it to him. "The fat woman who got out just now gave it to me.'

'You are not going to sit there munching it, are you?' demanded Sir Richard.

'Yes, I am. Why shouldn't I? Would you like a bit of it?'

'I should not!' said Sir Richard.

'Well, I am excessively hungry. That was the one thing we forgot.'

'What was?'

'Food,' said Pen, digging her teeth into the apple. 'We ought to have provided ourselves with a basket of things to eat on the journey. I forgot that the stage doesn't stop at posting-houses, like the mail-coaches. At least, I didn't forget exactly, because I never knew it.'

'This must be looked to,' said Sir Richard. 'If you are hungry, you must undoubtedly be fed. What are you proposing to do with the core of that apple?'

'Eat it,' said Pen.

'Repellent brat!' said Sir Richard, with a strong shudder.

He leaned back in his corner, but a tug at his sleeve made him incline his head towards his companion.

'I told these people that you were my tutor,' whispered Pen.

'Of course, a young gentleman in his tutor's charge
would
be travelling in the common stage,' said Sir Richard, resigning himself to the role of usher.

At the next stage, which was Woolhampton, he roused himself from the languor which threatened to possess him, alighted from the coach, and showed unexpected competence in procuring from the modest inn a very tolerable cold meal for his charge. The coach awaited his pleasure, and the attorney's clerk, whose sharp eyes had seen Sir Richard's hand go from his pocket to the coachman's ready palm, muttered darkly of bribery and corruption on the King's Highway.

'Have some chicken,' said Sir Richard amiably.

The clerk refused this invitation with every evidence of contempt, but there were several other passengers, notably a small boy with adenoids, who were perfectly ready to share the contents of the basket on Pen's knees.

Sir Richard had good reason to know that Miss Creed's disposition was extremely confiding; during the long day's journey he discovered that she was friendly to a fault. She observed all the passengers with a bright and wholly unselfconscious gaze; conversed even with the clerk; and showed an alarming tendency to become the life and soul of the party. Questioned about herself, and her destination, she wove, zestfully, an entirely mendacious story, which she embroidered from time to time with outrageous details. Sir Richard was ruthlessly applied to for corroboration, and, entering into the spirit of the adventure, added a few extempore details himself. Pen seemed pleased with these, but was plainly disappointed at his refusal to join her in keeping the small boy with adenoids amused.

He leaned back in his corner, lazily enjoying Miss Creed's flights into the realms of fancy, and wondering what his mother and sister would think if they knew that he was travelling to an unknown destination, by stagecoach, accompanied by a young lady as unembarrassed by this circumstance as by her male attire. A laugh shook him, as he pictured Louisa's face. His head had ceased aching, but although the detachment fostered by brandy had left him, he still retained a feeling of delightful irresponsibility. Sober, he would certainly not have set forth on this absurd journey, but having done so, drunk, he was perfectly willing to continue it. He was, moreover, curious to learn more of Pen's history. Some farrago she had told him last night: his recollection of it was a trifle hazy, but there had surely been something about an aunt, and a cousin with a face like a fish.

He turned his head slightly on the dingy squabs of the coach, and watched, from under drooping eyelids, the animated little face beside him. Miss Creed was listening, apparently keenly interested, to a long and involved recital of the illness which had lately prostrated the motherly woman's youngest-born. She shook her head over the folly of the apothecary, nodded wisely at the efficiency of an age-old nostrum compounded of strange herbs, and was on the point of capping this recipe with one in use in her own family when Sir Richard's foot found hers, and trod on it.

It was certainly time to check Miss Creed. The motherly woman stared at her, and said that it was queer-and-all to meet a young gentleman so knowledgeable.

'My mother,' said Pen, blushing, 'has been an invalid for many years.'

Everyone looked solicitous, and a desiccated female in the far corner of the coach said that no one could tell
her
anything about illness.

This remark had the effect of diverting attention from Pen, and as the triumphant lady plunged into the history of her sufferings, she sat back beside Sir Richard, directing up at him a look quite as mischievous as it was apologetic.

The lawyer's clerk, who had not yet forgiven Sir Richard for bribing the coachman, said something about the license allowed to young persons in these days. He contrasted it unfavourably with his own upbringing, and said that if he had a son he would not pamper him by giving him a tutor, but would send him to school. Pen said meekly that Mr Brown was very strict, and Sir Richard, correctly identifying Mr Brown with himself, lent colour to her assertion by telling her sternly not to chatter.

The motherly woman said that she was sure the young gentleman brightened them all up, and for her part she did not hold with people being harsh with children.

"That's right," agreed her spouse. 'I never wanted to break any of
my
young 'uns' spirits: I like to see 'em up-and-coming.'