‘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
amused eye at her. ‘Already? ’ he murmured.
‘Well, I have been asleep, so it seems soon to me. Are you very weary, sir?’
‘By no means. I am becoming entirely resigned.’
The new passenger, having apparently settled matters with the guard, at this moment pulled open the door, and tried to climb up into the coach. He was a small, spare man, in a catskin waistcoat, and jean-pantaloons. He had a sharp face, with a pair of twinkling, lashless eyes set deep under sandy brows. His proposed entrance into the coach was resolutely opposed. The thin woman cried out that there was no room; the lawyer’s clerk said that the way the Company over-loaded its vehicles was a scandal; and the farmer recommended the newcomer to climb on to the roof.
‘There ain’t an inch of room up there,’ protested the stranger. ‘Lord, I don’t take up much space! Squeeze up, coves!’
‘Full-up! Try the boot!’ said the farmer.
‘Cast your winkers over me, cull: I don’t take up no more room than what a bodkin would!’ pleaded the stranger. ‘Besides, there’s a set of flash young coves on the roof. I’d be mortal afraid to sit with ’em, so I would!’
Sir Richard, casting an experienced eye over the man, mentally wrote him down as one probably better known to the Bow Street Runners than to himself. He was not surprised, however, to hear Miss Creed offering to squeeze up to make room, for he had, by this time, formed a very fair estimate of his charge’s warmheartedness.
Pen, edging close to Sir Richard, coaxed the farmer to see for himself that there was room enough for one more passenger. The man in the catskin waistcoat grinned at her, and hopped into the coach. ‘Dang me if I didn’t think you was a flash cull too!’ he said, squeezing himself into the vacant place. ‘I’m obliged to ye, young shaver. When coves do Jimmy Yarde a service he don’t forget it neither.’
The lawyer, who seemed to have much the same opinion of Mr Yarde as that held by Sir Richard, sniffed, and folded his hands tightly on the box which he held on his knees.
‘Lord bless you!’ said Mr Yarde, observing this gesture with a tolerant smile, ‘I ain’t no boman prig!’
‘What’s a boman prig?’ asked Pen innocently.
‘There, now! If you ain’t a werry suckling!’ said Mr Yarde, almost disconcerted. ‘A boman prig, young gentleman, is what I trust you’ll never be. It’s a cove as ends up in Rumbo – ah, and likely on the Nubbing Cheat afore he’s much older!’
Much intrigued, Pen demanded a translation of these strange terms. Sir Richard, having pondered and discarded the notion of commanding her to exchange places with him, lay back and listened with lazy enjoyment to her initiation into the mysteries of thieves’ cant.
A party of young gentlemen, who had been spectators of a cock-fight held in the district, had been taken up at Chippenham, and had crowded on to the roof. From the sounds preceding thence, it seemed certain that they had been refreshing themselves liberally. There was a good deal of shouting, some singing, and much drumming with heels upon the roof. The motherly woman and the thin spinster began to look alarmed, and the lawyer’s clerk said that the behaviour of modern young men was disgraceful. Pen was too deeply engaged in conversation with Jimmy Yarde to pay much heed to the commotion, but when, after the coach had rumbled on for another five miles, the pace was suddenly accelerated, and the top-heavy vehicle bounced over ruts and pot-holes, and swung perilously first to one side and then to the other, she broke off her enthralling discourse, and looked enquiringly at Sir Richard.
A violent lurch flung her into his arms. He restored her to her own seat, saying dryly: ‘More adventure for you. I hope you are enjoying it?’
‘But what is happening?’
‘I apprehend that one of the would-be sprigs of fashion above has taken it into his head to tool the coach,’ he replied.
‘Lord ha’ mercy!’ exclaimed the motherly woman. ‘Do youmean that one of they pesky, drunken lads is a-driving of us, sir?’
‘So I should suppose, ma’am.’
The spinster uttered a faint shriek. ‘Good God, what will become of us?’
‘We shall end, I imagine, in the ditch,’ said Sir Richard, with unruffled calm.
Babel at once broke forth, the spinster demanding to be let out at once, the motherly woman trying to attract the coachman’s notice by hammering against the roof with her sunshade, the farmer sticking his head out of the window to shout threats and abuse, Jimmy Yarde laughing, and the lawyer’s clerk angrily demanding of Sir Richard why he did not do something?
‘What would you wish me to do?’ asked Sir Richard, steadying Pen with a comfortingly strong arm.
‘Stop the coach! Oh, sir, pray stop it!’ begged the motherly woman.
‘Bless your heart, ma’am, it’ll stop of its own this gait!’ grinned Jimmy Yarde.
Hardly had he spoken than a particularly sharp bend in the road proved to be too much for the amateur coachman’s skill. He took the corner too wide, the near-hind wheels mounted a slight bank, and skidded down the farther side into a deep ditch, and everyone inside the vehicle was flung rudely over. There were screams from the women, oaths from the farmer, the cracking noise of split wood, and the shatter of broken glass. The coach lay at a crazy angle with sprigs of thorn-hedge thrusting in through the broken windows.
Pen, whose face was smothered in the many capes of Sir Richard’s drab driving-coat, gasped, and struggled to free herself from a hold which had suddenly clamped her to Sir Richard’s side. He relaxed it, saying: ‘Hurt, Pen?’
‘No, not in the least! Thank you so very much for holding me! Are you hurt?’
A splinter of glass had cut his cheek slightly, but since he had been holding on to the leather arm-rest hanging in the corner of the coach, he had not been thrown, like everyone else, off his seat. ‘No, only annoyed,’ he replied. ‘My good woman, this is neither the time nor the place for indulging in a fit of the vapours!’
This acid rider was addressed to the spinster, who, finding herself pitch-forked on top of the lawyer’s clerk, had gone off into strong hysterics.
‘Here, let me get my dabblers on to that there door!’ said Jimmy Yarde, hoisting himself up by seizing the opposite arm-rest. ‘Dang me if next time I travel in a rattler I don’t ride on the roof, flash-culls or no!’
The coach not having collapsed quite on to its side, but being supported by the bank and the hedge bordering the ditch, it was not difficult to force open the door, or to climb out through it. The spinster had indeed to be lifted out, since she had stiffened all over, and would do nothing but scream and drum her heels, but Pen scrambled out with an agility which scorned helping hands, and the motherly woman said that provided every gentleman would turn his back upon her she would engage to get out by herself too.
It was now considerably after nine o’clock, but although the sun had gone, the summer sky was still light, and the air warm. The travellers found themselves on a deserted stretch of road, a couple of miles short of the little town of Wroxhall, and rather more than thirty miles from Bristol. The most cursory inspection of the coach was enough to convince them that it would need extensive repairs before being able to take the road again; and Sir Richard, who had gone immediately to the horses, returned to Pen’s side in a few moments with the news that one of the wheelers had badly strained a tendon. He had been right in thinking that the reins had been handed over to one of the outside passengers. To tool the coach was a common enough pastime amongst young men who aspired to be whips, but that any paid coachman could have been foolish enough to relinquish his seat to an amateur far gone in drink was incomprehensible, until the coachman’s own condition had been realized.
Pen, who was sitting on Sir Richard’s portmanteau, received the news of complete breakdown with perfect equanimity, but all the other inside passengers burst into vociferous complaint, and besieged the guard with demands to be instant
ly conveyed to Bristol, by means unspecified. Between his indignation at his colleague’s gross misconduct, and his exasperation at being shouted at by six or seven persons at once, the unfortunate man was for some time incapable of collecting his wits, but presently it was suggested that if the travellers would only be patient, he would ride back on one of the leaders to Chippenham, and there try to procure some sort of a vehicle to convey them to Wroxhall, where they would be obliged to remain until the next Accommodation coach to Bristol picked them up there early on the following morning.
Several persons decided to set forward on foot for Wroxhall at once, but the spinster was still having hysterics, the motherly woman said that her corns would not permit of her tramping two miles, and the lawyer’s clerk held to it that he had a right to be conveyed to Bristol that night. There was a marked tendency in one or two persons to turn to Sir Richard, as being plainly a man accustomed to command. This tendency had the effect of making Sir Richard, not in the least gratified, walk over to Pen’s side, and say languidly, but with decision: ‘This, I fancy, is where we part company with our fellow-travellers.’
‘Yes, do let us!’ assented Pen blithely. ‘You know, I have been thinking, and I have a much better scheme now. We won’t go to Bristol at all!’
‘This is very sudden,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Do I understand youto mean that you have made up your mind to return to London?’
‘No, no, of course not! Only now that we have broken down I think it would be silly to wait for another coach, because very likely we should be overtaken by my aunt. And I never really wanted to go to Bristol, after all.’
‘In that case, it seems perhaps a pity that we came so far upon the road to it,’ said Sir Richard.
Her eyes twinkled. ‘Stupid! I mean, my home is not in Bristol, but near to it, and I think it would be much better, besides being like a real adventure, to walk the rest of the way.’
‘Where is your home?’ demanded Sir Richard.
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