The Corinthian Read online

  ‘In love!’ interpolated Sir Richard, apparently thunderstruck.

  ‘Well, well, I daresay you are surprised! One is apt to fancy the birds always too young to leave the nest, eh? But –’

  ‘Pen!’ said Sir Richard, turning awfully upon his supposed cousin. ‘Is it possible that you can have made serious advances towards Miss Daubenay?’

  ‘I never offered marriage,’ said Pen, hanging her head.

  The Major seemed to be in danger of suffering an apoplexy. Before he could recover the power of speech, Sir Richard had intervened. Upon the Major’s bemused ears fell a description of Pen’sshameless precocity that caused the object of it to turn away hastily to hide her laughter. According to Sir Richard’s malicious tongue, Bath was strewn with her innocent victims. When Sir Richard let fall the information that this youthful moral leper was without means or expectations, the Major found enough breath to declare that the whelp ought to be horsewhipped.

  ‘Precisely my own view,’ bowed Sir Richard.

  ‘Upon my word, I had not dreamed of such a thing! Penniless, you say?’

  ‘Little better than a pauper,’ said Sir Richard.

  ‘Good Gad, what an escape!’ gasped the Major. ‘I do not know what to say! I am aghast!’

  ‘Alas!’ said Sir Richard, ‘his father was just such another! The same disarming air of innocence hid a wolfish heart.’

  ‘You appal me!’ declared the Major. ‘Yet he looks a mere boy!’

  Pen, feeling that it was time she bore a part in the scene, said with an air of innocence which horrified the Major: ‘But if Lydia says I offered marriage, it is not true. It was all mere trifling. I do not wish to be married.’

  This pronouncement once more bereft the Major of speech. Sir Richard’s forefinger banished Pen to her corner, and by the time the outraged parent ceased gobbling, he had once more taken charge of the situation. He agreed that the whole affair must at all costs be hushed up, promised to deal faithfully with Pen, and finally escorted the Major out of the parlour, with assurances that such depravity should not go unpunished.

  Pen, who had been struggling with an overwhelming desire to laugh, went off into a peal of mirth as soon as the Major was out of earshot, and had, in fact, to grasp a chair-back to support herself. In this posture she was discovered by Mr Luttrell, who, as soon as Sir Richard and the Major had passed through the entrance-parlour, oblivious of his presence there, bounced in upon Pen, and said through shut teeth: ‘So! You think it damned amusing, do you, you little cur? Well, I do not !’

  Pen raised her head, and through brimming eyes saw the face of her old playmate swim before her.

  Mr Luttrell, stuttering with rage, said menacingly: ‘I heard you! I could not help but hear you! So you didn’t intend marriage, eh? You – you boast of having t-trifled with an innocent female! And you think you c-can get off scot-free, do you? I’ll teach you a lesson!’

  Pen discovered to her horror that Mr Luttrell was advancing upon her with his fists clenched. She dodged behind the table, and shrieked: ‘Piers! Don’t you know me? Piers, look at me! I’m Pen!’

  Mr Luttrell dropped his fists, and stood gaping. ‘Pen?’ he managed to utter. ‘Pen? ’

  Eleven

  They stood staring at one another. The gentleman found his voice first, but only to repeat in accents of still deeper amazement: ‘Pen? Pen Creed?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I am!’ Pen assured him, keeping the table between them.

  His fists unclenched. ‘But – but what are you doing here? And in those clothes? I don’t understand!’

  ‘Well, it’s rather a long story,’ Pen said.

  He seemed slightly dazed. He ran his hand through his hair, in a gesture she knew well, and said: ‘But Major Daubenay – Sir Richard Wyndham –’

  ‘They are both part of the story,’ replied Pen. She had been looking keenly at him, and thinking that he had not greatly changed, and she added: ‘I should have known you anywhere! Have I altered so much?’

  ‘Yes. At least, I don’t know. It’s your hair, I suppose, cut short like that, and – and those clothes!’

  He sounded shocked, which made her think that perhaps he had changed a little. ‘Well, I truly am Pen Creed,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I see that you are, now that I have had time to look at you. But I cannot understand it! I could not help hearing some of what was said, though I tried not to – until I heard Miss Daubenay’s name!’

  ‘Please, Piers, don’t fly into a rage again!’ Pen said rather nervously, for she distinctly heard his teeth grind together. ‘I can explain everything!’

  ‘I do not know whether I am on my head or my heels!’ he complained. ‘You have been imposing on her! How could you do such a thing? Why did you?’

  ‘I haven’t!’ said Pen. ‘And I must say, I do think you might be a little more glad to see me!’

  ‘Of course I am glad! But to come here masquerading as a boy, and playing pranks on a defenceless – That was why she failed last night!’

  ‘No, it wasn’t! She saw the stammering-man killed, and ran away, you stupid creature!’

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I was there, of course.’

  ‘With her?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘You have been imposing on her!’

  ‘I tell you it’s no such thing! I met her by the merest chance.’

  ‘Tell me this!’ commanded Piers. ‘Does she know that you are a girl?’

  ‘No, but –’

  ‘I knew it!’ he declared. ‘And I distinctly heard the Major say that she had met you in Bath! I don’t know why you did it, but it is the most damnable trick in the world! And Lydia – deceiving me – encouraging your advances – oh, my eyes are open now!’

  ‘If you say another word, I shall box your ears!’ said Pen indignantly. ‘I would not have believed you could have grown into such a stupid, tiresome creature! I never met Lydia Daubenay in my life until last night, and if you don’t believe me you may go and ask her!’

  He looked rather taken aback, and said in an uncertain tone: ‘But if you did not know her, how came you to be with her in the wood last night?’

  ‘That was chance. The silly little thing swooned, and I –’

  ‘She is not a silly little thing!’ interrupted Piers, firing up.

  ‘Yes, she is, very silly. For what must she do, upon reaching home, but tell her Papa that it was not you she had gone to meet, but me!’

  This announcement surprised him. His bewildered grey eyes sought enlightenment in Pen’s face; he said with a rueful grin: ‘Oh Pen, do sit down and explain! You never could tell a story so that one could make head or tail of it!’

  She came away from the table, and sat down on the window-seat. After a pained glance at her attire, Piers seated himself beside her. Each took critical stock of the other, but whereas Pen looked Piers frankly over, he surveyed her rather shyly, and showed a tendency to avert his gaze when it encountered hers.

  He was a well-favoured young man, not precisely handsome, but with a pleasant face, a good pair of shoulders, and easy, open manners. Since he was four years her senior, he had always seemed to her, in the old days, very large, far more experienced than herself, and quite worthy of being looked up to. She was conscious, as she sat beside him on the window-seat of a faint feeling of disappointment. He seemed to her little more than a boy, and instead of assuming his old mastery in his dealings with her, he was obviously shy, and unable to think of anything to say. Their initial encounter had of course been unfortunate, but Pen thought that he might, upon discovering her identity, have exhibited more pleasure at meeting her again. She felt forlorn all at once, as though a door had been shut in her face. A vague suspicion that what was behind the shut door was not what she had imagined