The Corinthian Read online

  ‘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 stagecoach.’

  ‘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 schoolboy, 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 rôle 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.’

  Several of the passengers looked reproachfully at Sir Richard, and, that no doubt of his severity might linger in their minds, Pen subsided into crushed silence, folding her hands on her knees, and casting down her eyes.

  Sir Richard saw that he would figure for the rest of the journey as an oppressor, and mentally rehearsed a speech which was destined for Miss Creed’s sole edification.

  She disarmed him by falling asleep with her cheek against his shoulder. She slept between one stage and the next, and when roused by the coach’s halting with its usual lurch, opened her eyes, smiled drowsily up at Sir Richard and murmured: ‘I’m glad you came. Are you glad you came?’

  ‘Very. Wake up!’ said Sir Richard, wondering what more imprudent remarks might be hovering on her tongue.

  She yawned, and straightened herself. An altercation seemed to be in progress between the guard and someone standing in the inn-yard. A farmer, who had boarded the coach at Calne, and was seated beside Pen, said that he thought the trouble was that the would-be passenger was not upon the way-bill.

  ‘Well, he cannot come inside, that is certain!’ said the thin woman. ‘It is shocking, the way one is crowded already!’

  ‘Where are we?’ enquired Pen.

  ‘Chippenham,’ responded the farmer. ‘That’s where the Bath road goes off, see?’

  She sat forward to look out of the window. ‘Chippenham already? Oh yes, so it is! I know it well.’

  Sir Richard cocked an