The Corinthian Read online

  ‘I dare say, but hearsay, my boy, is not evidence,’ said Mr Philips, nodding dismissal.

  Pen made for the door, feeling that she had extricated herself from a difficult situation with aplomb. The landlord ran after her with a sealed letter. ‘If I was not forgetting! I beg pardon, sir, but a young person brought this for you not an hour ago. Leastways, it was for a young gentleman of the name of Wyndham. Would that be in mistake for yourself, sir?’

  Pen took the letter, and looked at it with misgiving. ‘A young person?’ she repeated.

  ‘Well, sir, it was one of the servant-girls from Major Daubenay’s.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Pen. ‘Oh, very well! Thank you!’

  She passed out into the village street, and after dubiously regarding the direction on the note, which was to – ‘Wyndham Esq.,’ and written in a round schoolgirl’s hand, she broke the seal, and spread open the single sheet.

  ‘Dear Sir,’ the letter began, primly enough, ‘The Unfortunate Being whom you befriended last night, is in Desperate Case, and begs that you will come to the little orchard next to the road at eight o’clock punctually, because it is vital that I should have Private Speech with you. Do not fail. Your obliged servant,

  Lydia Daubenay.’

  It was plain that Miss Daubenay had written this missive in considerable agitation. Greatly intrigued, Pen enquired the way to Major Daubenay’s house of a baker’s boy, and set off down the dusty road.

  By the time she had reached the appointed rendezvous it was half-past eight, and Miss Daubenay was pacing up and down impatiently. A thick, high hedge shut the orchard off from sight of the house, and a low wall enclosed it from the road. Pen climbed on to this without much difficulty, and was greeted by an instant accusation: ‘Oh, you are so late! I have been waiting ages!’

  ‘Well, I am sorry, but I came as soon as I had read your letter,’ said Pen, jumping down into the orchard. ‘Why do you wish to see me?’

  Miss Daubenay wrung her hands, and uttered in tense accents: ‘Everything has gone awry. I am quite distracted! I don’t know what to do!’

  Pen betrayed no particular solicitude at this moving speech, but critically looked Miss Daubenay over.

  She was a pretty child, about the same age as Pen herself, but shorter, and much plumper. She had a profusion of nut-brown ringlets, a pair of fawn-like brown eyes, and a soft rosebud of a mouth. She was dressed in a white muslin dress, high-waisted, and frilled about the ankles, and with a great many pale-blue bows of ribbon with long fluttering ends. She raised her melting eyes to Pen’s face, and breathed: ‘Can I trust you?’

  Miss Creed was a literal-minded female, and instead of responding with promptness and true chivalry, she replied cautiously: ‘Well, probably you can, but I am not sure till I know what it is that you want.’

  Miss Daubenay seemed a little daunted for a moment, and said in a soft moan: ‘I am in such a taking! I have been very, very silly!’

  Pen found no difficulty in believing this. She said: ‘Well, don’t stand there wringing your hands! Let us sit down under that tree.’

  Lydia looked doubtful. ‘Will it not be damp?’

  ‘No, of course not! Besides, what if it were?’

  ‘Oh, the grass might stain my dress!’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Pen severely, ‘that if you are bothering about your dress you cannot be in such great trouble.’

  ‘Oh, but I am!’ said Lydia, sinking down on to the turf, and clasping her hands at her bosom. ‘I do not know what you willsay, or what you will think of me! I must have been mad! Only, you were kind to me last night, and I thought I could trust you!’

  ‘I dare say you can,’ said Pen. ‘But I wish you will tell me what is the matter, because I have not yet had any breakfast, and –’

  ‘If I had thought that you would be so unsympathetic I would never, never have sent for you!’ declared Lydia in tremulous accents.

  ‘Well, it is very difficult to be sympathetic when a person will do nothing but wring her hands, and say the sort of things there really is no answer to,’ said Pen reasonably. ‘Do start at the beginning!’

  Miss Daubenay bowed her head. ‘I am the most unhappy creature alive!’ she announced. ‘I have the misfortune to be secretly betrothed to one whom my father will not tolerate.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you were. I suppose you went to meet him in the wood last night?’

  ‘Alas, it is true! But do not judge me hastily! He is the most unexceptionable – the most –’

  ‘If he is unexceptionable,’ interrupted Pen, ‘why won’t your father tolerate him?’

  ‘It is all wicked prejudice!’ sighed Lydia. ‘My father quarrelled with his father, and they don’t speak.’

  ‘Oh! What did they quarrel about?’

  ‘About a piece of land,’ said Lydia mournfully.

  ‘It sounds very silly.’

  ‘It is silly. Only they are perfectly serious about it, and they do not care a fig for our sufferings! We have been forced to this hateful expedient of meeting in secret. I should tell you that my betrothed is the soul of honour! Subterfuge is repugnant to him, but what can we do? We love each other!’

  ‘Why don’t you run away?’ suggested Pen practically.

  Startled eyes leapt to hers. ‘Run where?’

  ‘To Gretna Green, of course.’

  ‘Oh, I could not! Only think of the scandal!’

  ‘I do think you should try not to be so poor-spirited. However, I dare say you can’t help it.’

  ‘You are the rudest boy I ever met!’ exclaimed Lydia, ‘I declare I wish I had not sent for you!’

  ‘So do I, because this seems to me a silly story, and not in the least my concern,’ said Pen frankly. ‘Oh, pray don’t start to cry! There, I am sorry! I didn’t mean to be unkind! But why did you send for me?’

  ‘Because, though you are rude and horrid, you did not seem to me like other young men, and I thought you would understand, and not take advantage of me.’

  Pen gave a sudden mischievous chuckle. ‘I shan’t do that, at all events! Oh dear, I am getting so hungry! Do tell me why you sent for me!’

  Miss Daubenay dabbed her eyes with a wisp of a handkerchief. ‘I was so distracted last night I scarce knew what I was doing! And when I reached home, the most dreadful thing happened! Papa saw me! Oh, sir, he accused me of having gone out to meet P – to meet my betrothed, and said I should be packed off again to Bath this very day, to stay with my Great-Aunt Augusta. The horridest, most disagreeable old woman! Nothing but backgammon, and spying, and everything of the most hateful! Sir, I felt myself to be in desperate case! Indeed, I said it before I had time to recollect the consequences!’

  ‘Said what?’ asked Pen, patient but bored.

  Miss Daubenay bowed her head again. ‘That it was not – not that man I had gone to meet, but another, whom I had met in Bath, when I was sent to Great-Aunt Augusta to – to cure me of what Papa called my infatuation! I said I had been in the habit of meeting this other man c-clandestinely, because I thought that would make Papa afraid to send me back to Bath, and might perhaps even reconcile him to the Real Man.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Pen doubtfully. ‘And did it?’

  ‘No! He said he did not believe me.’

  ‘Well, I must say I’m not surprised at that.’

  ‘Yes, but in the end he did, and now I wish I had never said it. He said if there was Another Man, who was it?’

  ‘You ought to have thought of that. He was bound to ask that question, and you must have looked very silly when you could not answer.’

  ‘But I did answer!’ whispered Miss Daubenay, apparently overcome.

  ‘But how could you, if there wasn’t another man?’

  ‘I said it was you!’ said Miss Daubenay despairingly.