Corinthian Page 23

  Mr Gudgeon, who was not accustomed to be met with any appearance of sang-froid, was not in the least softened by this speech. He said in a shocked voice: ‘There’s a sauce! Ay, you’re a rare gager, young as you be! Why, you young warmint, and you with your mother’s milk not dry on your lips! You come along, and no bamming, now!’

  A section of the crowd showed a disposition to accompany them, but Mr Gudgeon addressed these gentry in such fierce accents that they dispersed in a hurry, and left him to escort his captive out of the market-place in lonely state.

  ‘You are making a great mistake,’ Pen told the Runner. ‘You are searching for the Brandon diamonds, are you not? Well, I know all about them, and, as a matter of fact, Mr Brandon wishes you to stop searching for them.’

  ‘Ho!’ said Mr Gudgeon, with deep meaning. ‘He does, does he? Dang me, if ever I see the equal of you for sauce!’

  ‘I wish you will listen to me! I know who has the diamonds, and, what is more, he murdered the other Mr Brandon to get them!’

  Mr Gudgeon shook his head in speechless wonder.

  ‘He did, I tell you!’ Pen said desperately. ‘His name is Trimble, and he was in a plot with Jimmy Yarde to steal the necklace! Only it went awry, and the necklace was restored to Mr Beverley Brandon, and then Captain Trimble killed him, and made off with the diamonds. And Mr Cedric Brandon is searching for you high and low, and if you will only go to Queen Charlton you will find him there, and he will tell you that what I say is true!’

  ‘I never heard the like!’ gasped Mr Gudgeon, affronted. ‘A werry thorough-going young rascal you be, and no mistake about that! And how might you come to know such a powerful deal about these sparklers, might I take the liberty of asking?’

  ‘I know Mr Brandon well,’ answered Pen. ‘Both Mr Brandons! And I was in Queen Charlton when the murder was committed. Mr Philips, the magistrate, knows all about me, I assure you!’

  Mr Gudgeon was a little shaken by this announcement, and said more mildly: ‘I don’t say as I disbelieve you, nor I don’t say as I believe you neither; but it’s an unaccountable queer story you’re telling me, young sir, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Yes, I dare say it may seem so to you,’ Pen agreed. She felt his grip slacken on her arm, and decided to press home her advantage. ‘You had better come with me to Queen Charlton at once, because Mr Brandon wants to see you, and I expect Mr Philips will be very glad of your help in finding Captain Trimble.’

  Mr Gudgeon looked at her sideways. ‘Either I’ve been mistook,’ he said slowly, ‘or you’re the most precious young warmint I ever did see. Maybe I will go to this place you talks about, and maybe while I’m gone you’ll sit waiting for me where you won’t do no harm.’

  They had turned into a broad thoroughfare with streets leading off from it on either side. Pen, who had no intention of returning to Queen Charlton, or of being locked up in Bristol gaol, made up her mind, now that Mr Gudgeon’s grasp on her arm had become little more than perfunctory, to try the chances of escape. She said airily: ‘Just as you please, only I warn you, Mr Brandon will be excessively angry if he hears that you have molested me. Naturally, I do not wish to – Oh, look, look! Quick!’

  They were abreast of one of the side streets by this time, and Pen’s admirable start brought the Runner to a dead halt. She clasped his arm with her free hand, and exclaimed: ‘Over there, just turning into that road! It was he! Captain Trimble! He must have seen me, for he set off running at once! oh, do be quick!’

  ‘Where?’ demanded Mr Gudgeon, taken off his guard, and looking round wildly.

  ‘There! ’ panted Pen, and tore herself free from his hold, and ran like a deer down the side-street.

  She heard a shout behind her, but wasted no time in looking back. A woman engaged in scrubbing her front doorstep set up a cry of Stop, thief ! and an errand boy with a large basket on his arm, gave a shrill cat-call. Pen reached the end of the street with the sound of the hue and cry behind her, turned the corner, sawan alley leading to a huddle of mean dwellings, and sped down it.

  It led her into a labyrinth of narrow streets, with dirty gutters, and crazy cottages, and backyards noisome with the refuse left to rot in them. She had never penetrated into this part of the town before, and was soon quite lost. This circumstance did not trouble her much, however, for the noise of the chase had died away in the rear. She did not think that anyone had seen her dive into the alley so that she was able to entertain a reasonable hope of shaking off the pursuit. She stopped running, and began to walk, rather breathlessly, in what she trusted was an easterly direction. After traversing a number of unknown streets, she came at last to a more respectable part of the town, and ventured to enquire the way to the inn where she had left her cloak-bag. She discovered that she had overshot it, and, further, that the time was now a few minutes after nine. She looked so dismayed that her informant, a stout man in corduroys and a frieze coat, who was just preparing to climb into a gig, asked her whether she wanted the London stagecoach. Upon her admitting that she did, he said philosophically: ‘Well, you’ve missed it.’

  ‘Oh dear, what shall I do?’ said Pen, foreseeing a day spent in skulking about the town to escape discovery by Mr Gudgeon.

  The farmer, who had been looking her over in a ruminative fashion, said: ‘Be you in a hurry?’

  ‘Yes, yes! That is, I have paid for my seat, you see.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to Kingswood myself,’ said the farmer. ‘You can get up alongside me in the gig, if you like. You’ll likely catch up with the stage there.’

  She accepted this offer gratefully, for she thought that even if she did not succeed in overtaking the stage she would be safer from Mr Gudgeon at Kingswood than in Bristol. Happily, however, the farmer was driving a fast-trotting young horse, and they reached the main London road before the heavy stage had drawn out of the town. The farmer set Pen down in Kingswood, at the door of the inn, and having ascertained that the coach had not yet called there, bade her a cheerful farewell, and drove off.

  Feeling that she had escaped disaster by no more than a hair’s breadth, Pen sat down upon the bench outside the inn to await the arrival of the stage. It was late in coming, and the guard, when Pen handed him her ticket, seemed to take it as a personal affront that she had not boarded it in Bristol. He told her, with malign satisfaction, that her cloak-bag had been left behind at the ‘Talbot’ Inn, but after a good deal of grumbling he admitted that she had a right to a seat in the coach, and let down the steps for her to mount into it. She squeezed herself into a place between a fat man, and a woman nursing a peevish infant; the door was shut, the steps let up again, and the vehicle resumed its ponderous journey to London.

  Fourteen

  Sir Richard Wyndham was not an early riser, but he was roused from sleep at an unconscionably early hour upon the morning of Pen’s flight by the boots, who came into his room with a small pile of his linen, which had been laundered in the inn, and his top-boots, and told him diffidently that he was wanted belowstairs.

  Sir Richard groaned, and enquired what time it was. With even greater diffidence, the boots said that it was not quite eight o’clock.

  ‘What the devil?’ exclaimed Sir Richard, bending a pained glance upon him.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed the boots feelingly, ‘but it’s that Major Daubenay, sir, in such a pucker as you never did see!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Sir Richard. ‘It is, is it? The devil fly away with Major Daubenay!’

  The boots grinned, but awaited more precise instructions. Sir Richard groaned again, and sat up. ‘You think I ought to get up, do you? Bring me my shaving water, then.’

  ‘Yessir!’

  ‘Oh, ah! Present my compliments to the Major, and inform him that I shall be with him shortly!’

  The boots went off to execute these commands, and Sir Richard, surveying the beauty of the morn
ing with a jaundiced eye, got out of bed.

  When the boots came back with a jug of hot water, he found Sir Richard in his shirt and breeches, and reported that the Major was pacing up and down the parlour more like a wild beast in a circus than a Christian gentleman.

  ‘You appal me,’ said Sir Richard unemotionally. ‘Just hand me my boots, will you? Alas! Biddle, I never realized your worth until I was bereft of you!’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sir Richard, inserting his foot into one of the boots, and pulling hard.

  Half an hour later he entered the parlour to find his matutinal guest fuming up and down the floor with a large watch in his hand. The Major, whose cheeks were unbecomingly flushed, and whose eyes started quite alarmingly, stabbed at this timepiece with one quivering finger, and said in a suppressed roar: ‘Forty minutes, sir! Forty minutes since I entered this room!’

  ‘Yes, I have even surprised myself,’ said Sir Richard, with maddening nonchalance. ‘Time was when I could not have achieved this result under an hour, but practice, my dear sir, practice, you know, is everything!’

  ‘An hour!’ gobbled the Major. ‘Practice! Bah, I say! Do you hear me, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sir Richard, flicking a speck of dust from his sleeve. ‘And I imagine I am not the only one privileged to hear you.’

  ‘You are a dandy!’ uttered the Major, with loathing. ‘A dandy, sir! That’s what you are!’

  ‘Well, I am glad that the haste with which I dressed has not obscured that fact,’ replied Sir Richard amiably. ‘But the correct term is Corinthian.’

  ‘I don’t care a fig what the correct term may be!’ roared the Major, striking the table with his fist. ‘It’s all the same to me: dandy, Corinthian, or pure popinjay!’

  ‘If I lose my temper with you, which, however, I should be loth to do – at all events, at this hour of the morning – you will discover that you are mistaken,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Meanwhile, I presume that you did not bring me out of my bed to exchange compliments with me. What, sir, do you want?’

  ‘Don’t take that high and mighty tone with me, sir!’ said the Major. ‘That whelp of yours has made off with my daughter!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Sir Richard calmly.

  ‘Nonsense, is it? Then let me tell you that she has gone, sir! Gone, do you hear me? And her maid with her!’

  ‘Accept my condolences,’ said Sir Richard.

  ‘Your condolences! I don’t want your damned condolences, sir! I want to know what you mean to do!’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ replied Sir Richard.

  The Major’s eyes positively bulged, and a vein stood out on his heated brow. ‘You stand there, and say that you mean to do nothing, when your scoundrel of a cousin has eloped with my daughter?’

  ‘Not at all. I mean to do nothing because my cousin has not eloped with your daughter. You must forgive me if I point out to you that I am getting a little weary of your parental difficulties.’

  ‘How dare you, sir? how dare you?’ gasped the Major. ‘Your cousin meets my daughter by stealth in Bath, lures her out at dead of night here, deceives her with false promises, and now – now, to crown all, makes off with her, and you say – you say that you are weary of my difficulties!’

  ‘Very weary of them. If your daughter has left your roof – and who shall blame her? – I advise you not to waste your time and my patience here, but to enquire at Crome Hall whether Mr Piers Luttrell is at home, or whether he also is missing.’

  ‘Young Luttrell! By God, if it were so I should be glad of it! Ay, glad of it, and glad that any man rather than that vicious, scoundrelly whelp of yours, had eloped with Lydia!’

  ‘Well, that is a fortunate circumstance,’ said Sir Richard.

  ‘It is nothing of the kind! You know very well it is not young Luttrell! She herself confessed that she had been in the habit of meeting your cousin, and the young dog said in this very room – in this very room, mark you, with you standing by –’

  ‘My good sir, your daughter and my cousin talked a great deal of nonsense, but I assure you they have not eloped together.’

  ‘Very well, sir, very well! Where then is your cousin at this moment?’

  ‘In his bed, I imagine.’

  ‘Then send for him!’ barked the Major.

  ‘As you please,’ Sir Richard said, and strolled over to the bell, and pulled it.

  He had scarcely released it when the door opened, and the Honourable Cedric walked in, magnificently arrayed in a brocade dressing-gown of vivid and startling design. ‘What the deuce is the matter?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Never heard such an ungodly racket in my life! Ricky, dear old boy, you ain’t dressed ?’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Sir Richard. ‘It is a great bore, however.’

  ‘But, my dear fellow, it ain’t nine o’clock!’ said Cedric in horrified tones. ‘Damme if I know what has come over you! You can’t start the day at this hour: it ain’t decent!’

  ‘I know, Ceddie, but when in Rome, one – er – is obliged to cultivate the habits of the Romans. Ah, allow me to present Major Daubenay – Mr Brandon!’

  ‘Servant, sir!’ snapped the Major, with the stiffest of bows.

  ‘Oh, how d’ye do?’ said Cedric vaguely. ‘Deuced queer hours you keep in the country!’

  ‘I am not here upon a visit of courtesy!’ said the Major.

  ‘Now, don’t tell me you’ve been quarrelling, Ricky!’ begged Cedric. ‘It sounded devilish like it to me. Really, dear boy, you might have remembered I was sleeping above you. Never at my best before noon, y’know. Besides, it ain’t like you!’

  He lounged, yawning, across the room to an armchair by the fireplace, and dropped into it, stretching his long legs out before him. The Major glared at him, and said pointedly that he had come to see Sir Richard upon a private matter.

  This hint passed over Cedric’s head. ‘What we want is some coffee – strong coffee!’ he said.

  A maid-servant in a mobbed cap came in just then, and seemed astonished to find the room occupied. ‘Oh, I beg pardon, sir! I thought the bell rang!’

  ‘It did,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Have the goodness to tap on Mr Brown’s door, and to request him to step downstairs as soon as he shall have dressed. Major Daubenay wishes to speak to him.’

  ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ commanded Cedric. ‘Bring some coffee first, there’s a good girl!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the maid, looking flustered.

  ‘Coffee!’ exploded Major Daubenay.

  Cedric cocked an intelligent eyebrow. ‘Don’t like the notion? What shall it be? Myself, I think it’s too early for brandy, but if you fancy a can of ale, say the word!’

  ‘I want nothing, sir! Sir Richard, while we waste time in such idle fripperies as these, that young dog is abducting my daughter!’

  ‘Fetch Mr Brown,’ Sir Richard told the servant.

  ‘Abduction, by Jupiter!’ said Cedric. ‘What young dog?’

  ‘Major Daubenay,’ said Sir Richard, ‘is labouring under the delusion that my cousin eloped last night with his daughter.’

  ‘Eh?’ Cedric blinked. An unholy gleam stole into his eyes as he glanced from Sir Richard to the Major; he said unsteadily: ‘No, by Jove, you don’t mean it? You ought to keep him in better order, Ricky!’

  ‘Yes!’ said the Major. ‘He ought indeed! But instead of that he has – I will not say abetted the young scoundrel – but adopted an attitude which I can only describe as callous, sir, and supine!’

  Cedric shook his head. ‘That’s Ricky all over.’ His gravity broke down. ‘Oh lord, what the deuce put it into your head your daughter had gone off with his cousin? I’ll tell you what, it’s the richest jest I’ve heard in months! Ricky, if I don’t roast you for this for years to come!’

 
‘You are going to the Peninsula, Ceddie,’ Sir Richard said, with a lurking smile.

  ‘You are amused, sir!’ the Major said, bristling.

  ‘Lord, yes, and so would you be if you knew as much about Wyndham’s cousin as I do!’

  The maid-servant came back into the room. ‘Oh, if you please, sir! Mr Brown’s not in his room,’ she said, dropping a curtsey.

  The effect of this pronouncement was startling. The Major gave a roar like that of a baffled bull; Cedric’s laughter was cut short; and Sir Richard let his eyeglass fall.

  ‘I knew it! Oh, I knew it!’ raged the Major. ‘Now, sir!’

  Sir Richard recovered himself swiftly. ‘Pray do not be absurd, sir!’ he said, with more asperity than Cedric ever remembered to have heard in his voice before. ‘My cousin has in all probability stepped out to enjoy the air. He is an early riser.’

  ‘If you please, sir, the young gentleman has taken his cloak-bag with him.’

  The Major seemed to be having considerable difficulty in holding his fury within bounds. Cedric, observing his gobblings with a sapient eye, begged him to be careful. ‘I knew a man once who got into just such a taking. He burst a blood-vessel. True as I sit here!’

  The maid-servant, upon whom the Honourable Cedric’s charm of manner had not fallen unappreciated, smothered a giggle, and twisted one corner of her apron into a screw. ‘There was a letter for your honour upon the mantelshelf when I did the room out,’ she volunteered.

  Sir Richard swung round on his heel, and went to the fireplace. Pen’s note, which she had propped up against the clock, had fallen down, and so missed his eye. He picked it up, a little pale of countenance, and retired with it to the window.