Джорджетт Хейер - The Corinthian

“I have not the slightest desire to help Piers, who seems to me to be behaving in a most reprehensible fashion.”

“Oh no, indeed he cannot help it! I see that I had better tell you their whole story.”

Without giving Sir Richard time to protest, she launched into a rapid and colourful account of the young lovers’ tribulations. The account, being freely embellished with her own comments, was considerably involved, and Sir Richard several times interrupted it to crave enlightenment on some obscure point. At the end of it, he remarked without any noticeable display of enthusiasm: “A most affecting history. For myself, I find the theme of Montague and Capulet hopelessly outmoded, however.”

“Well, I have made up my mind to it that there is only one thing for them to do. They must elope.”

Sir Richard, who had been playing with his quizzing-glass, let it fall, and spoke with startling severity. “Enough of this! Now, understand me, brat, I will engage to fob off the irate father, but there it must end! This extremely tedious pair of lovers may elope to-morrow for anything I care, but I will have no hand in it, and I will not permit you to have a hand in it either. Do you see?”

Pen looked speculatively at him. There was no smile visible in his eyes, which indeed looked much sterner than she had ever believed they could. Plainly, he would not lend any support to her scheme of eloping with Miss Daubenay herself. It would be better, decided Pen, to tell him nothing about this. But she was not one to let a challenge rest unanswered, and she replied with spirit: “You may do as you choose, but you have no right to tell me what I must or must not do! It is not in the least your affair.”

“It is going to be very much my affair,” replied Sir Richard.

“I don’t understand what you can possibly mean by saying anything so silly!”

“I daresay you don’t, but you will.”

“Well, we won’t dispute about that,” said Pen pacifically.

He laughed suddenly. “Indeed, I hope we shan’t!”

“And you won’t tell Major Daubenay that Lydia’s story was false?”

“What do you want me to tell him?” he asked, succumbing to the coaxing note in her voice, and the pleading look in her candid eyes.

“Why, that I have been with my tutor in Bath, but that I was so troublesome that my Mama—”

“The widow?”

“Yes, and now you will understand why she is a widow!”

“If you are supposed to favour your mythical father, I do understand. He perished on the gallows.”

“That is what Jimmy Yarde calls the Nubbing Cheat.”

“I daresay it is, but I beg you won’t.”

“Oh, very well! Where was I?”

“With your tutor.”

“To be sure. Well, I was so troublesome that my Mama sent you to bring me home. I expect you are a trustee, or something of that nature. And you may say all the horridest things about me to Major Daubenay that you like. In fact, you had better tell him that I am very bad, besides being quite a pauper.”

“Have no fear! I will draw such a picture of you as must make him thankful that his daughter has escaped becoming betrothed to such a monster.”

“Yes, do!” said Pen cordially “And then I must see Piers.”

“And then?” asked Sir Richard.

She sighed. “I haven’t thought of that yet. Really, we have so much on our hands that I cannot be teased with thinking of any more plans just now!”

“Will you let me suggest a plan to you, Pen?”

“Yes, certainly, if you can think of one. But first I should like to see Piers, because I still cannot quite believe that he truly wishes to marry Lydia. Why, she does nothing but cry, Richard!”

Sir Richard looked down at her enigmatically. “Yes,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better if you saw Piers first. People—especially young men—change a great deal in five years, brat.”

“True,” she said, in a melancholy tone. “But I didn’t change!”

“I think perhaps you did,” he said gently.

She seemed unconvinced, and he did not press the point. The waiter came in to clear away the covers, and hardly had he left the parlour than Major Daubenay’s card was brought to Sir Richard.

Pen, changing colour, exclaimed: “Oh dear, now I wish I weren’t here! I suppose I can’t escape now, can I?”

“Hardly. You would undoubtedly walk straight into the Major’s arms. But I won’t let him beat you.”

“Well, I hope you won’t!” said Pen fervently. “Tell me quickly, how does a person look depraved? Do I look depraved?”

“Not in the least. The best you can hope for is to look sulky.”

She retired to a chair in the corner, and sprawled in it, trying to scowl. “Like this?”

“Excellent!” approved Sir Richard.

A minute later, Major Daubenay was ushered into the parlour. He was a harassed-looking man, with a high colour, and upon finding himself confronted by the tall, immaculate figure of a Corinthian, he exclaimed: “Good Gad! You are Sir Richard Wyndham!”

Pen, glowering in the corner, could only admire the perfection of Sir Richard’s bow. The Major’s slightly protuberant eyes discovered her. “And this is the young dog who has been trifling with my daughter!”

“Again?” said Sir Richard wearily.

The Major’s eyes stared at him. “Upon my soul, sir! Do you tell me that this—this young scoundrel is in the habit of seducing innocent females?”

“Dear me, is it as bad as that?” asked Sir Richard.

“No, sir, it is not!” fumed the Major. “But when I tell you that my daughter has confessed that she went out last night to meet him clandestinely in a wood, and has met him many times before in Bath—”

Up came Sir Richard’s quizzing-glass. “I condole with you,” he said. “Your daughter would appear to be a young lady of enterprise.”

“My daughter,” declared the Major, “is a silly little miss! I do not know what young people are coming to! This young man—dear me, he looks no more than a lad!—is, I understand, a relative of yours?”

“My cousin,” said Sir Richard. “I am—er—his mother’s trustee. She is a widow.”

“I see that I have come to the proper person!” said the Major.

Sir Richard raised one languid hand. “I beg you will acquit me of all responsibility, sir. My part is merely to remove my cousin from the care of a tutor who has proved himself wholly incapable of controlling his—er—activities, and to convey him to his mother’s home.”

“But what are you doing in Queen Charlton, then?” demanded the Major.

It was plain that Sir Richard considered the question an impertinence. “I have acquaintances in the neighbourhood, sir. I scarcely think I need trouble you with the reasons which led me to break a journey which cannot be other than—er—excessively distasteful to me. Pen, make your bow!”

“Pen?” repeated the Major, glaring at her.

“He was named after the great Quaker,” explained Sir Richard.

“Indeed! Then I would have you know, sir, that his behaviour scarcely befits his name!”

“You are perfectly right,” agreed Sir Richard. “I regret to say that he has been a constant source of anxiety to his widowed parent.”

“He seems very young,” said the Major, scanning Pen critically.

“But, alas, old in sin!”

The Major was slightly taken aback. “Oh, come, come, sir! I daresay it is not as bad as that! One must make allowances for young people. To be sure, it is very reprehensible, and I do not by any means exonerate my daughter from blame, but the springtime of life, you know, sir! Young people take such romantic notions into their heads—not but what I am excessively shocked to learn of clandestine meetings! But when two young persons fall in love, I believe—”

“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’s shameless 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 chairback 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?”

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?”