Perdita Read Online Free

tight till Maude got in touch with us. If she did not come in person, we were sunk.
    The nag they hitched up to the whiskey was as old as Adam. Dawdle is too racy a word for her gait. I could have walked on my own two feet faster, though not so far. The old jade, Ginger she was named, hinting at a livelier youth, poked along at a frisky two or so miles an hour, till at last a road marker loomed ahead, at a crossroads. I was alert for the markers as the territory was not familiar to me, but I remembered Marlborough had been named by Perdita as the troupe’s next stop. The word Marlborough did not appear. Devizes, five miles, the marker said.
    Fearful that I was on the wrong road, I stopped at the next farm for direction. Yes, the farmer’s wife told me, I would have made better time had I turned left a mile back, but there was no sign posted, as she recalled, for everyone knew well enough the route to Marlborough. I was not more than a mile or two out of my way, if I just cared to turn Ginger around and head back. There was a tantalizing aroma of freshly-baked bread on the air, the sizzle of bacon coming from her kitchen, and a hole as big as a boot inside of me, for the day was wearing on. A feeble question as to the closest inn where I could take luncheon brought forth the hoped-for offer.
    "Have you not ate yet?” she asked, astonished. "Why, miss, it’s two o’clock. I’ve fed the hands an hour ago, and am just making up a mess of beans and bacon for myself. Join me, do. I don’t get much company.”
    I bolted the meal with unseemly haste, outlining as I ate that I was in a dreadful hurry, but changing some of the details to protect the guilty party. I implied I was on my way to a deathbed, which satisfied the woman as to my incoherent condition. Ginger did not increase her pace as the afternoon dragged on. Quite the contrary. I was strongly tempted to jump out and push her up the hills, of which there are an inordinate number, all of them going up, on the road from Chippenham to Marlborough. There was ample time to worry myself sick, to plan lectures for Perdita, to pity her, to wonder if I had done the right thing in not taking her home, to know I had not, yet to confirm that almost any fate was better than Mr. Croft. The sun became hot as the afternoon wore on, but when I put off my pelisse, the wind was chilly. All in all, it was about the least enjoyable drive I have ever endured.
    There was some doubt too, towards its end, as to whether Ginger was going to go the course. A dead horse to cope with seemed an appropriate third calamity to visit me. When we approached the harbingers of Marlborough, Ginger was still hacking. The houses grew closer together, signs of commercial establishments sprang up—bakery, abattoir, tannery. The sun had not quite set when at last I pushed Ginger into town.
    I decided to stable her at once, leave her off at the hostelry agreed upon in Chippenham, before she dropped from exhaustion. With this done, my next project was to discover my charge, before she mounted a stage, to discredit her fair reputation forever. Tuck’s Traveling Theater had their handbills posted along the main street, proclaiming Reimer’s Hall as the scene of the night’s performance. Unsure whether they had booked into an inn or planned to sleep in their caravan, I asked for the location of the hall, knowing they must show up there sooner or later, but certainly sooner than seven-thirty, the hour the show was to begin. The place was at the edge of town.
    It was six-thirty when I reached it. It was not so large as to have any noble clients or anything of that sort. There would be no one to see her, if by any chance she had sweet-talked Daugherty into letting her take to the boards. I sound like a very ineffectual person to confess that, after coming so far, I was unable to gain entry into the hall, but so it was. The front door was locked, the back door was locked. I banged and hammered at both entrances,