“I dare say we shall,” agreed Sir Richard. “But in case we don’t, I’ll relieve you of my snuff-box and my eyeglass now.”
Exasperated, Jimmy let fall the modest bundle which contained his nightgear. “Dang me, if I ever met such a leery cove in all my puff!” he said. “You never saw me lift that lobb!”
“I warned you that I was a shockingly light sleeper,” said Sir Richard.
“Bubbled by a gudgeon!” said Jimmy disgustedly, handing over the booty. “Here you are: there’s no need for you to go calling in any harman, eh?”
“None at all,” replied Sir Richard.
“Damme, you’re a blood after my own fancy, guv’nor! No hard feeling?”
“Not the least in the world.”
“I wish I knew what your lay might be,” Jimmy said wistfully, and departed, shaking his head over the problem.
Downstairs he found Pen Creed, who had also awakened early. She bade him a cheerful good-morning, and said that she had been out, and was of the opinion that it was going to be a hot day. When he asked her if she and her uncle meant to board the next stage-coach to Bristol, she replied prudently that her uncle had not yet told her what they were going to do.
“You are bound for Bristol, ain’t you?” enquired Jimmy.
“Oh yes!” said Pen, with a beautiful disregard for the truth.
They were standing in the taproom, which, at that hour of the morning, was empty, and just as Pen was beginning to say that she wanted her breakfast, the landlady came through the door leading from the kitchen, and asked them if they had heard the news.
“What news?” Pen asked uneasily.
“Why, everyone’s in quite a pucker up at Wroxhall, us being quiet folk, and not used to town-ways. But there’s my boy Jim come in saying there’s one of they Bow Street Runners come down by the Mail. What he may want, surely to goodness there’s none of us knows! They do say as how he stopped off at Calne, and come on easy-like to Wroxhall. And there he be, poking his nose into respectable houses, and asking all manner of questions! Well, what I say is, we’ve nothing to hide, and he may come here if he pleases, but he will learn nothing.”
“Is he coming here?” asked Pen, in a faint voice.
“Going to all the inns hereabout, by what they tell me,” responded the landlady. “Jim took the notion into his head it’s all along of the stage-coach which you and your good uncle was on, sir, for seemingly he’s been asking a mort of questions about the passengers. Our Sam looks to see him here inside of half an hour. “Well,” I says, “let him come, for I’m an honest woman, and there’s never been a word said against the house, not to my knowledge!” Your breakfast will be on the table in ten minutes, sir.”
She bustled into the parlour, leaving Pen rather pale, and Jimmy Yarde suddenly thoughtful. “Runners, eh?” said that worthy, stroking his chin. “There now!”
“I have never seen one,” said Pen, with a creditable show of nonchalance. “It will be most interesting. I wonder what he can want?”
“There’s no telling,” replied Jimmy, his lashless eyes dwelling upon her in a considering stare. “No telling at all. Seems to me, though, he won’t be wanting a flash young chub like you.”
“Why, of course not!” replied Pen, forcing a laugh.
“That’s what I thought,” said Jimmy, transferring his gaze to the long coat which had been flung across one of the tables. “Might that be your toge, young shaver?”
“Yes, but I didn’t need it after all. It is much warmer outside than I thought it would be.”
He picked it up, shook out its folds, and gave it to her. “Don’t you go leaving things about in common taprooms!” he said austerely. “There’s plenty of files—ah, even in these quiet parts!—would be glad to get their dabblers on to a good toge like that.”
“Oh yes! Thank you! I’ll take it upstairs!” said Pen, glad of an opportunity to escape.
“You couldn’t do better,” approved Jimmy. “Then we’ll have a bit of food, and though I don’t hold with harmen in general—which is to say, with Law-officers, young shaver—why, I’m a peaceable man, and if any such be wishful to search me, they’re welcome.”
He strolled into the parlour, with the air of one whose conscience is clean, and Pen hurried off upstairs, to tap urgently on Sir Richard’s door.
His voice called to her to come in, and she entered to find him putting the finishing touches to his cravat. He met her eyes in the mirror, and said: “Well, brat?”
“Sir, we must leave this place instantly!” said Pen impetuously. “We are in the greatest danger!”
“Why? Has your aunt arrived?” asked Sir Richard, preserving his calm.
“Worse!” Pen declared. “A Bow Street Runner!”
“Ah, I thought you were a house-breaker in the first place!” said Sir Richard, shaking his head.
“I am not a house-breaker! You know I am not!”
“If the Runners are after you, it is obvious to me that you are a desperate character,” he replied, slipping his snuff-box into his pocket. “Let us go downstairs, and have some breakfast.”
“Please, dear sir, be serious! I am sure that my Aunt must have set the Runner on to me!”
“My dear child, if there is any one thing more certain than another it is that Bow Street has never heard of your existence. Don’t be silly!”
“Oh!” She heaved a sigh of relief. “I do trust you are right, but it is just the sort of thing Aunt Almeria would do!”
“You are the best judge of that, no doubt, but you may take it from me that it is not in the least the sort of thing a Bow Street Runner would do. You will probably find that the man he wants is our friend Mr Yarde.”
“Yes, at first I thought that too, but he says the Runner is welcome to search him if he wants to.”
“Then it is safe to assume that Mr Yarde has disposed of whatever booty it was he ran off with. Breakfast!”
In considerable trepidation, Pen followed him down to the parlour. They found Jimmy Yarde discussing a plate of cold beef. He greeted Sir Richard with a grin and a wink, obviously quite unabashed by his previous encounter with him that morning, to which he referred in the frankest terms. “When I meet up with a leery cove, I don’t bear malice,” he announced, raising a tankard of ale. “So here’s your wery good health, guv’nor, and no hard feelings!”
Sir Richard seemed to be rather bored, and merely nodded. Jimmy Yarde fixed him with a twinkling eye, and said: “And no splitting to any harman about poor old Jimmy boning your lobb, because he never did, and you know well it’s in your pocket at this wery moment. What’s more,” he added handsomely, “I wouldn’t fork you now I has your measure, gov’nor, not for fifty Yellow Boys!”
“I’m glad of that,” said Sir Richard.
“No splitting?” Jimmy said, his head on one side.
“Not if I am allowed to eat my breakfast in peace,” replied Sir Richard wearily.
“All’s bowman then!” said Jimmy, “and not another word will you hear from me, guv’nor, till we gets to Bristol. Damme if I don’t ride outside the rattler, just to oblige you!”
Sir Richard looked meditatively at him, but said nothing. Pen sat down facing the window, and watched the road for signs of a Bow Street Runner.
Contary to the landlady’s expectations, the Runner did not reach the inn until some little time after the breakfast covers had been removed, and Jimmy Yarde had strolled out to lounge at his ease on a bench set against the wall of the hostelry.
The Runner entered the inn by way of the yard at the back of it, and the first person he encountered was Sir Richard, who was engaged in settling his account with the landlord. Miss Creed, at his elbow, drew his attention to the Runner’s arrival by urgently twitching his coat sleeve. He looked up, with raised brows, saw the newcomer, and lifted his quizzing-glass.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” said the Runner, touching his hat. “Me not meaning to intrude, but being wishful to speak with the landlord.”
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“Certainly,” said Sir Richard, his brows still expressive of languid surprise.
“At your convenience, sir: no hurry, sir!” said the Runner, retreating to a discreet distance.
The sigh which escaped Miss Creed was one of such profound relief that it was plain her alarms had not until that moment been allayed. Sir Richard finished paying his shot, and with a brief: “Come, Pen!” tossed over his shoulder, left the taproom.
“He didn’t come to find me!” breathed Pen.
“Of course he didn’t.”
“I couldn’t help being a little alarmed. What shall we do now, sir?”
“Shake off your very undesirable travelling-acquaintance,” he replied briefly.
She gave a gurgle. “Yes, but how? I have such a fear that he means to go with us to Bristol.”
“But we are not going to Bristol. While he is being interrogated by that Runner, we, my child, are going to walk quietly out by the back door, and proceed by ways, which I trust will not prove as devious as the tapster’s description of them, to Colerne. There we shall endeavour to hire a vehicle to carry us to Queen Charlton.”
“Oh, famous!” cried Pen. “Let us go at once!”
Five minutes later they left the inn unobtrusively, by way of the yard, found themselves in a hayfield, and skirted it to a gate leading into a ragged spinney.
The village of Colerne was rather less than three miles distant, but long before they had reached it Sir Richard was tired of his portmanteau. “Pen Creed, you are a pestilent child!” he told her.
“Why, what have I done?” she asked, with one of her wide, enquiring looks.
“You have hailed me from my comfortable house—”
“I didn’t! It was you who would come!”
“I was drunk.”
“Well, that was not my fault,” she pointed out.
“Don’t interrupt me! You have made me travel for miles in a conveyance smelling strongly of dirt and onions—”
“That was the fat woman’s husband,” interpolated Pen. “I noticed it myself.”
“No one could have failed to notice it. And I am not partial to onions. You drew a portrait of me which led everyone in the coach to regard me in the light of an oppressor of innocent youth—”
“Not the thin, disagreeable man. He wanted me to be oppressed.”
“He was a person of great discrimination. Not content with that, you pitchforked me into what threatens to be a life-friendship with a pickpocket, to escape from whose advances I am obliged to tramp five miles, carrying a portmanteau which is much heavier than I had supposed possible. It only remains for me to become embroiled in an action for kidnapping, which I feel reasonably assured your aunt will bring against me.”
“Yes, and now I come to think of it, I remember that you said you were going to be married,” said Pen, quite unimpressed by these strictures. “Will she be very angry with you?”
“I hope she will be so very angry that she will wish never to see my face again,” said Sir Richard calmly. “In fact, brat, that reflection so far outweighs all other considerations that I forgive you the rest.”
“I think you are a very odd sort of person,” said Pen. “Why did you ask her to marry you, if you did not wish to?”
“I didn’t. During the past two days that is the only folly I have not committed.”
“Well, why did you mean to ask her, then?”
“You should know.”
“But you are a man! No one could make you do anything you did not choose to do!”
“They came mighty near it. If you had not dropped out of the window into my arms, I have little doubt that I should at this moment be receiving the congratulations of my acquaintance.”
“Well, I must say I do not think you are at all just to me, then, to call me a pestilent child! I saved you—though, indeed, I didn’t know it—from a horrid fate.”
“True. But need I have been saved in a noisome stagecoach?”
“That was part of the adventure. Besides, I explained to you at the outset why I was travelling on the stage. You must own that we are having a very exciting time! And, what is more, you have had more adventure than I, for you actually shared a room with a real thief!”
“So I did,” said Sir Richard, apparently much struck by this circumstance.
“And I can plainly see a cottage ahead of us, so I expect we have reached Colerne,” she said triumphantly.
In a few moments, she was found to have been right. They walked into the village, and fetched up at the best-looking inn.
“Now, what particular lie shall we tell here?” asked Sir Richard.
“A wheel came off our post-chaise,” replied Pen promptly.
“Are you never at a loss?” he enquired, regarding her in some amusement.
“Well, to tell you the truth I haven’t had very much experience,” she confided.
“Believe me, no one would suspect that.”
“No, I must say I think I was quite born to be a vagabond,” she said seriously.
The story of the faulty wheel was accepted by the landlord of the Green Man without question. If he thought it strange that the travellers should have left the main highway to brave the perils of rough country lanes, his mild surprise was soon dissipated by the announcement that they were on their way to Queen Charlton, and had attempted to find a shorter road. He said that they would have done better to have followed the Bristol road to Cold Ashton, but that perhaps they were strangers in these parts?
“Precisely,” said Sir Richard. “But we are going to visit friends at Queen Charlton, and we wish to hire some sort of a vehicle to carry us there.”
The smile faded from the landlord’s face when he heard this, and he shook his head. There were no vehicles for hire at Colerne. There was, in fact, only one suitable carriage, and that his own gig. “Which I’d be pleased to let out to your honour if I had but a man to send with it. But the lads is all out haymaking, and I can’t go myself. Maybe the blacksmith could see what’s to be done to patch up your chaise, sir?”
“Quite useless!” said Sir Richard truthfully. “The wheel is past repairing. Moreover, I instructed my postilion to ride back to Wroxhall. What will you take for lending your gig to me without a man to go with it?”
“Well, sir, it ain’t that so much, but how will I get it back?”
“Oh, one of Sir Jasper’s grooms will drive it back!” said Pen. “You need have no fear on that score!”
“Would that be Sir Jasper Luttrell, sir?”
“Yes, indeed, we are going on a visit to him.”
The landlord was plainly shaken. Sir Jasper was apparently well-known to him; on the other hand Sir Richard was not. He cast him a doubtful, sidelong look, and slowly shook his head.
“Well, if you won’t let out your gig on hire, I suppose I shall have to buy it,” said Sir Richard.
“Buy my gig, sir?” gasped the landlord, staggered.
“And the horse too, of course,” added Sir Richard, pulling out his purse.
The landlord blinked at him. “Well, I’m sure, sir! If that’s the way it is, I don’t know but what I could let you drive the gig over yourself—seeing as how you’re a friend of Sir Jasper. Come to think of it, I won’t be needing it for a couple of days. Only you’ll have to rest the old horse afore you send him back, mind!”
Sir Richard raised no objection to this, and after coming to terms with an ease which led to the landlord’s expressing the wish that there were more gentlemen like Sir Richard to be met with, the travellers had only to wait until the cob had been harnessed to the gig, and led round to the front of the inn.
The gig was neither smart nor well-sprung, and the cob’s gait was more sure than swift, but Pen was delighted with the whole equipage. She sat perched up beside Sir Richard, enjoying the hot sunshine, and pointing out to him the manifold superiorities of the Somerset countryside over any other county.
They did not reach Queen Charlton until dusk, since the wa
y to it was circuitous, and often very rough. When they came within sight of the village, Sir Richard said: “Well, brat, what now? Am I to drive you to Sir Jasper Luttrell’s house?”
Pen, who had become rather silent during the last five miles of their drive, said with a little gasp: “I have been thinking that perhaps it would be better if I sent a message in the morning! It is not Piers, you know, but, though I did not think of her at the time, it—it has occurred to me that perhaps Lady Luttrell may not perfectly understand ...”
Her voice died away unhappily. She was revived by Sir Richard’s saying in matter-of-fact tones: “A very good notion. We will drive to an inn.”
“The George was always accounted the best,” offered Pen. “I have never actually been inside it, but my father was used to say its cellars were excellent.”
The George was discovered to be an ancient half-timbered hostelry with beamed ceilings, and wainscoted parlours. It was a rambling house, with a large yard, and many chintz-hung bedrooms. There was no difficulty in procuring a private parlour, and by the time Pen had washed the dust of the roads from her face, and unpacked the cloak-bag, her spirits, which had sunk unaccountably, had begun to lift again. Dinner was served in the parlour, and neither the landlord nor his wife seemed to recognize in the golden-haired stripling the late Mr Creed’s tomboyish little girl.
“If only my aunt does not discover me before I have found Piers!” Pen said, helping herself to some more raspberries.
“We will circumvent her. But touching this question of Piers, do you—er—suppose that he will be able to extricate you from your present difficulties?”
“Well, he will have to, if I marry him, won’t he?”
“Undoubtedly. But—you must not think me an incorrigible wet blanket—it is not precisely easy to be married at a moment’s notice.”
“Isn’t it? I didn’t know,” said Pen innocently. “Oh well, I dare say we shall fly to Gretna Green then! We used to think that would be a splendid adventure.”
“Gretna Green in those clothes?” enquired Sir Richard, levelling his quizzing-glass at her.
“Well, no, I suppose not. But when Piers has explained it all to Lady Luttrell, I expect she will be able to get some proper clothes for me.”
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