The Corinthian

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “I hardly think so. In any event, they are not going to see you.”

  “No, I must say I feel it might be excessively awkward if I were forced to appear,” remarked Pen. “In fact, sir, I think—I think I had better go home, don’t you?”

  He looked at her. “To your Aunt Almeria, brat?”

  “Yes, of course. There is nowhere else for me to go.”

  “And Cousin Fred?”

  “Well, I hope that after all the adventures I have gone through he will not want to marry me any more,” said Pen optimistically. “He is very easily shocked, you know.”

  “Such a man would not be at all the husband for you,” he said, shaking his head. “You must undoubtedly choose some one who is not at all easily shocked.”

  “Perhaps I had better mend my ways,” said Pen, with a swift unhappy smile.

  “That would be a pity, for your ways are delightful. I have a better plan than yours, Pen.”

  She got up quickly from the table. “No, no! Please no, sir!” she said in a choking voice.

  He too rose, and held out his hand. “Why do you say that? I want you to marry me, Pen.”

  “Oh Richard, I wish you would not!” she begged, retreating to the window. “Indeed, I don’t want you to offer for me. It is extremely obliging of you, but I could not!”

  “Obliging of me! What nonsense is this?”

  “Yes, yes, I know why you have said it!” she said distressfully. “You feel that you have compromised me, but indeed you haven’t, for no one will ever know the truth!”

  “I detect the fell hand of Mr Luttrell,” said Sir Richard rather grimly. “What pernicious rubbish has he been putting into your head, my little one?”

  This term of endearment made Pen wink away a sudden tear. “Oh no! Only I was stupid not to think of it before. Really, I have no more sense than Lydia! But you are so much older than I am that it truly did not occur to me—until Piers came, and that you told him, to save my face, that we were betrothed! Then I saw what a little fool I had been! But it does not signify, sir, for Piers will never breathe a word, even to Lydia, and Aunt Almeria need not know that I have been with you all the time.”

  “Pen, will you stop talking nonsense? I am not in the least chivalrous, my dear: you may ask my sister, and she will tell you that I am the most selfish creature alive. I never do anything to please anyone but myself.”

  “That I know to be untrue!” Pen said. “If your sister thinks it, she doesn’t know you. And I am not talking nonsense. Piers was shocked to find me with you, and you did think he had reason, or you would not have said what you did.”

  “Oh yes!” he responded. “I am well aware of what the world would think of this escapade, but, believe me, my little love, I don’t offer marriage from motives of chivalry. To be plain with you, I started on this adventure because I was drunk, and because I was bored, and because I thought I had to do something which was distasteful to me. I stayed in it because I found myself enjoying it as I have not enjoyed anything for years.”

  “You did not enjoy the stage-coach,” she reminded him.

  “No, but we need not make a practice of travelling by the stage-coach, need we?” he said, smiling down at her. “Briefly, Pen, when I met you I was about to contract a marriage of convenience. Within twelve hours of making your acquaintance, I knew that no matter what might happen, I would not contract that marriage. Within twenty-four hours, my dear, I knew that I had found what I had come to believe did not exist’

  “What was that?” she asked shyly.

  His smile was a little twisted. “A woman—no, a chit of a girl! An impertinent, atrocious, audacious brat—whom I am very sure I cannot live without.”

  “Oh!” said Pen, blushing furiously. “How kind of you to say that to me! I know just why you do, and indeed I am very grateful to you for putting it so prettily!”

  “And you don’t believe a word of it!”

  “No, for I am very sure you would not have thought of marrying me if Piers had not been in love with Lydia Daubenay,” she said simply. “You are sorry for me, because of that, and so—”

  “Not in the least.”

  “I think you are a little, Richard. And I quite see that to a person like you—for it is no use to pretend to me that you are selfish, because I know that you are nothing of the sort—to a person like you, it must seem that you are bound in honour to marry me. Now, confess! That is true, is it not? Don’t—please don’t tell me polite lies!”

  “Very well,” he replied. “It is true that having embroiled you in this situation I ought in honour to offer you the protection of my name. But I am offering you my heart, Pen.”

  She searched feverishly for her handkerchief, and mopped her brimming eyes with it. “Oh, I do thank you!” she said in a muffled voice. “You have such beautiful manners, sir!”

  “Pen, you impossible child!” he exclaimed. “I am trying to tell you that I love you, and all you will say is that I have beautiful manners!”

  “You cannot fall in love with a person in three days!” she objected.

  He had taken a step towards her, but he checked himself at that. “I see.”

  She gave her eyes a final wipe, and said apologetically: “I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to cry, only I think I am a little tired, besides having had a shock on account of Piers, you know.”

  Sir Richard, who had been intimately acquainted with many women, thought that he did know. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Did you care so much, Pen?”

  “No, but I thought I did, and it is all very lowering, if you understand what I mean, sir.”

  “I suppose I do. I am too old for you, am I not?”

  “I am too young for you,” said Pen unsteadily. “I dare say you think I am amusing—in fact, I know you do, for you are for ever laughing at me—but you would very soon grow tired of laughing, and—and perhaps be sorry that you had married me.”

  “I am never tired of laughing.”

  “Please do not say any more!” she implored. “It has been such a splendid adventure until Piers came, and forced you to say what you did! I—I would rather that you didn’t say any more, Richard, if you please!”

  He perceived that his careful strategy in allowing her to meet her old playfellow before declaring himself had been mistaken. There did not seem to be any way of explaining this. No doubt, he thought, she had from the outset regarded him in an avuncular light. He wondered how deeply her affections had been rooted in the dream-figure of Piers Luttrell, and, misreading her tears, feared that her heart had indeed suffered a severe wound. He wanted very much to catch her up in his arms, overbearing her resistance and her scruples, but her very trust in him set up a barrier between them. He said, with a shadow of a smile: “I have given myself a hard task, have I not?”

  She did not understand him, and so said nothing. Not until Piers had shown her a shocked face, and Sir Richard had claimed her as his prospective wife, had she questioned her own heart. Sir Richard had been merely her delightful travelling companion, an immensely superior personage on whom one could place one’s dependence. The object of her journey had obsessed her thoughts to such a degree that she had never paused to ask herself whether the entrance into her life of a Corinthian had not altered the whole complexion of her adventure. But it had; and when she had encountered Piers, it had been suddenly borne in upon her that she did not care two pins for him. The Corinthian had ousted him from her mind and heart. Then Piers had turned the adventure into a faintly sordid intrigue, and Sir Richard had made his declaration, not because he had wanted to (for if he had, why should he have held his tongue till then?) but because honour had forced the words out of him. It was absurd to think that a man of fashion, nearing his thirtieth year, could have fallen head-over-ears in love with a miss scarcely out of the schoolroom, however easily the miss might have tumbled into love with him.

  “Very well, Miss Creed,” said Sir Richard. “I will woo you in form, and according to all the di
ctates of convention.”

  The ubiquitous waiter chose this moment to come into the parlour to clear the table. Turning to gaze out of the window, Miss Creed reflected that in a more perfect world no servant would intrude upon his legitimate business at unreasonable moments. While the waiter, who seemed from his intermittent sniffs to be suffering from a cold in the head, shuffled about the room, clattering plates and dishes together on a tray, she resolutely winked away another tear, and fixed her attention on a mongrel dog, scratching for fleas in the middle of the street. But this object of interest was presently sent scuttling to cover by the approach of a smart curricle drawn by a pair of fine bays, and driven by a young blood in a coat of white drab cloth, with as many as fifteen capes, and two tiers of pockets. A Belcher handkerchief protruded from an inner pocket, and the coat was flung open to display an astonishing view of a kerseymere waistcoat, woven in stripes of blue and yellow, and a cravat of white muslin spotted with black. A bouquet was stuck in a button-hole of the driving-coat, and a tall hat with a conical crown and an Allen brim was set at a rakish angle on the head of this exquisite.

  The equipage drew up outside the George, and a small Tiger jumped down from the back of the curricle, and ran to the horses’ heads. The exquisite cast aside the rug that covered his legs, and alighted, permitting Miss Creed a glimpse of white corduroy breeches, and short boots with very long tops. He passed into the inn while she was still blinking at such a vision, and set up a shout for the landlord.

  “Good gracious, sir, such an odd creature has arrived! I wish you could have seen him!” Pen exclaimed. “Only fancy! He has a blue-and-yellow striped waistcoat, and a spotted tie!”

  “I wear them myself sometimes,” murmured Sir Richard apologetically.

  She turned, determined to keep the conversation to such unexceptionable subjects. “You, sir? I cannot believe such a thing to be possible!”

  “It sounds remarkably like the insignia of the Four-Horse Club,” he said. “But what in the name of all that’s wonderful should one of our members be doing in Queen Charlton?”

  A confused sound of conversation reached them from the entrance-parlour. Above it the landlord’s voice, which was rather high-pitched, said clearly: “My best parlour is bespoke by Sir Richard Wyndham, sir, but if your honour would condescend—”

  “What?”

  There was no difficulty at all in hearing the monosyllable, for it was positively shouted.

  “Oh, my God!” said Sir Richard, and turned to run a quick eye over Miss Creed. “Careful now, brat! I fancy I know this traveller. What in the world have you done to that cravat? Come here!”

  He had barely time to straighten Miss Creed’s crumpled tie when the same penetrating voice uttered: “Where? In there? Don’t be a fool, man! I know him well!” and hasty footsteps were heard crossing the entrance-parlour.

  The door was flung open; the gentleman in the fifteen-caped driving-coat strode in, and, upon setting eyes on Sir Richard, cast his hat and gloves from him, and started forward, exclaiming: “Ricky! Ricky, you dog, what are you doing here?”

  Pen, effacing herself by the window, watched the tall young man wring Sir Richard’s hand, and wondered where she could have seen him before. He seemed vaguely familiar to her, and the very timbre of his reckless voice touched a cord of memory.

  “Well, upon my soul!” he said. “If this don’t beat all! I don’t know what the deuce you’re doing here, but you’re the very man I want to see. Ricky, does that offer of yours hold good? Damme, if it does, I’m off to the Peninsula by the first boat! There’s the devil and all to pay in the family this time!”

  “I know it,” Sir Richard said. “I take it you have heard the news about Beverley?”

  “My God, don’t tell me you’ve heard it?”

  “I found him,” Sir Richard said.

  The Honourable Cedric clapped a hand to his head. “Found him? What, you weren’t looking for him, Ricky, were you? How many more people know about it? Where’s that damned necklace?”

  “Unless the law-officers have now got it, I fancy it is in one Captain Trimble’s pocket. It was once in my possession, but I handed it over to Beverley, to—er—restore to your father. When he was murdered—”

  Cedric recoiled, his jaw dropping. “What’s that? Murdered? Ricky, not Bev?”

  “Ah!” said Sir Richard, “so you didn’t know?”

  “Good God!” Cedric said. His roving eye alighted on the decanter and the glasses which the waiter had left upon the table. He poured himself out a glass, and tossed it off. “That’s better. So Bev’s been murdered, has he? Well, I came here with a little notion of murdering him myself. Who did it?”

  “Trimble, I imagine,” Sir Richard replied.

  Cedric paused in the act of refilling his glass, and looked up quickly. “For the sake of the necklace?”

  “Presumably.”

  To Pen’s astonishment, Cedric broke into a shout of laughter. “Oh, by God, but that’s rich!” he gasped. “Oh, blister me, Ricky, that’s hell’s own jest!”

  Sir Richard put up his eyeglass, surveying his young friend through it with faint surprise. “I did not, of course, expect the news to prostrate you with grief, but I confess I was hardly prepared—”

  “Paste, dear old boy! nothing but paste!” said Cedric, doubled up over a chair-back.

  The eyeglass dropped. “Dear me!” said Sir Richard. “Yes, I ought to have thought of that. Saar?”

  “Years ago!” Cedric said, wiping his streaming eyes with the Belcher handkerchief. “Only came out when I—I, mark you, Ricky!—set the Bow Street Runners on to it! I thought m’ father was devilish lukewarm over the affair. Never guessed, however! There was m’ mother sending messenger upon messenger up to Brook Street, and the girls nagging at me, so off I went to Bow Street. Fact is, my head’s never at its best in the morning. No sooner had I set the bloodhounds on to the damned necklace than I began to think the thing over. I told you Bev was a bad man, Ricky. I’ll lay you a monkey he stole the necklace.”

  Sir Richard nodded. “Quite true.”

  “Damme, I call that going too far! M’ mother had a secret hiding-place made for it in her chaise. M’father knew. I knew. Bev knew. Dare say the girls knew. But no one else, d’ye mark me? Thought it all out at White’s. Nothing like brandy for clearing the head! Then I remembered that Bev took himself off to Bath last week. Never could imagine why! Thought I’d better look into things m’self. Just made up my mind to take a little journey to Bath, when in walked m’ father in a deuce of a pucker. He’d heard from Melissa that I’d been to Bow Street. Pounced on me, looking as queer as Dick’s hatband, and wanting to know what the devil I meant by setting the Runners on to it. Now, Ricky, dear boy, would you say I was a green ’un? Give you my word I never guessed what was coming! Always thought m’ father meant to stick to the diamonds! He sold ’em three years ago when he had that run of bad luck! Had ’em copied, so that no one was the wiser, not even my mother! He was as mad as Bedlam with me, and damme, I don’t blame him, for if my Runner ran the necklace to earth there’d be the devil to pay, and no pitch hot! So that’s why I’m here. But what beats me is, what in thunder brought you here?”

  “You told me to run,” murmured Sir Richard.

  “So I did, but to tell you the truth I never thought you would, dear boy. But why here? Out with it, Ricky! You never came here in search of Bev!”

  “No, I didn’t. I came upon purely—er—family affairs. I fancy you have never met my young cousin, Pen Brown?”

  “Never knew you had a cousin of that name. Who is he?” said Cedric cheerfully.

  Sir Richard made a slight movement, indicating Pen’s presence. The room was deeply shadowed, for the waiter had not yet brought in the candles, and the twilight was fading. Cedric turned his head, and stared with narrowed eyes towards the window-seat, where Pen had been sitting, half hidden by the curtains. “Damme, I never saw you!” he exclaimed. “How d’ye do?”

 
; “Mr Brandon, Pen,” Sir Richard explained.

  She came forward to shake hands, just as the waiter entered with a couple of chandeliers. He set them down upon the table, and moved across the room to draw the curtains. The sudden glow of candlelight for a moment dazzled Cedric, but as he released Pen’s hand his vision cleared, and became riveted on her guinea-gold curls. A portentous frown gathered on his brow, as he struggled with an erratic memory. “Hey, wait a minute!” he said. “I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” replied Pen in a small voice.

  “That’s what I thought. But there’s something about you—did you say he was a cousin of yours, Ricky?”

  “A distant cousin,” amended Sir Richard.

  “Name of Brown?”

  Sir Richard sighed. “Is it so marvellous?”

  “Damme, dear boy, I’ve known you from m’ cradle, but I never heard of any relative of yours called Brown! What’s the game?”

  “If I had guessed that you were so interested in the ramifications of my family, Cedric, I would have informed you of Pen’s existence.”

  The waiter, interested, but unable to prolong his labours in the parlour, slowly and sadly withdrew.

  “Something devilish queer about this!” pronounced Cedric, with a shake of his head. “Something at the back of my mind, too. Where’s that burgundy?”

  “Well, I thought at first that I had met you before,” offered Pen. “But that was because of your likeness to the stam—to the other Mr Brandon.”

  “Don’t tell me you knew him!” exclaimed Cedric.

  “Not very well. We happened to meet him here.”

  “I’ll tell you what, my lad: he was no fit company for a suckling like you,” said Cedric severely. He frowned upon her again, but apparently abandoned the effort to recall the errant memory, and turned back to Sir Richard. “But your cousin don’t explain your being here, Ricky. Damme, what did bring you to this place?”

  “Chance,” replied Sir Richard. “I was—er—constrained to escort my cousin to this neighbourhood, upon urgent family affairs. Upon the way, we encountered an individual who was being pursued by a Bow Street Runner—your Runner, Ceddie—and who slipped a certain necklace into my cousin’s pocket.”