A Damsel in Distress, P. G. Wodehouse [read along books .txt] 📗

written with a prophetic eye to her special case, so nearly did it crystallize in magic words her own story.

        "With blackest moss the flower-pots
         Were thickly crusted, one and all."

Well, no, not that particular part, perhaps. If he had found so much as one flower-pot of his even thinly crusted with any foreign substance, Lord Marshmoreton would have gone through the place like an east wind, dismissing gardeners and under-gardeners with every breath. But—

         "She only said 'My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,' she said.
         She said 'I am aweary, aweary.
            I would that I were dead!"

How exactly—at these moments when she was not out on the links picking them off the turf with a midiron or engaged in one of those other healthful sports which tend to take the mind off its troubles—those words summed up her case.

Why didn't Geoffrey come? Or at least write? She could not write to him. Letters from the castle left only by way of the castle post-bag, which Rogers, the chauffeur, took down to the village every evening. Impossible to entrust the kind of letter she wished to write to any mode of delivery so public—especially now, when her movements were watched. To open and read another's letters is a low and dastardly act, but she believed that Lady Caroline would do it like a shot. She longed to pour out her heart to Geoffrey in a long, intimate letter, but she did not dare to take the risk of writing for a wider public. Things were bad enough as it was, after that disastrous sortie to London.

At this point a soothing vision came to her—the vision of George Bevan knocking off her brother Percy's hat. It was the only pleasant thing that had happened almost as far back as she could remember. And then, for the first time, her mind condescended to dwell for a moment on the author of that act, George Bevan, the friend in need, whom she had met only the day before in the lane. What was George doing at Belpher? His presence there was significant, and his words even more so. He had stated explicitly that he wished to help her.

She found herself oppressed by the irony of things. A knight had come to the rescue—but the wrong knight. Why could it not have been Geoffrey who waited in ambush outside the castle, and not a pleasant but negligible stranger? Whether, deep down in her consciousness, she was aware of a fleeting sense of disappointment in Geoffrey, a swiftly passing thought that he had failed her, she could hardly have said, so quickly did she crush it down.

She pondered on the arrival of George. What was the use of his being somewhere in the neighbourhood if she had no means of knowing where she could find him? Situated as she was, she could not wander at will about the countryside, looking for him. And, even if she found him, what then? There was not much that any stranger, however pleasant, could do.

She flushed at a sudden thought. Of course there was something George could do for her if he were willing. He could receive, despatch and deliver letters. If only she could get in touch with him, she could—through him—get in touch with Geoffrey.

The whole world changed for her. The sun was setting and chill little winds had begun to stir the lily-pads, giving a depressing air to the scene, but to Maud it seemed as if all Nature smiled. With the egotism of love, she did not perceive that what she proposed to ask George to do was practically to fulfil the humble role of the hollow tree in which lovers dump letters, to be extracted later; she did not consider George's feelings at all. He had offered to help her, and this was his job. The world is full of Georges whose task it is to hang about in the background and make themselves unobtrusively useful.

She had reached this conclusion when Albert, who had taken a short cut the more rapidly to accomplish his errand, burst upon her dramatically from the heart of a rhododendron thicket.

"M'lady! Gentleman give me this to give yer!"

Maud read the note. It was brief, and to the point.

"I am staying near the castle at a cottage they call 'the one down by Platt's'. It is a rather new, red-brick place. You can easily find it. I shall be waiting there if you want me."

It was signed "The Man in the Cab".

"Do you know a cottage called 'the one down by Platt's', Albert?" asked Maud.

"Yes, m'lady. It's down by Platt's farm. I see a chicken killed there Wednesday week. Do you know, m'lady, after a chicken's 'ead is cut orf, it goes running licketty-split?"

Maud shivered slightly. Albert's fresh young enthusiasms frequently jarred upon her.

"I find a friend of mine is staying there. I want you to take a note to him from me."

"Very good, m'lady."

"And, Albert—"

"Yes, m'lady?"

"Perhaps it would be as well if you said nothing about this to any of your friends."

In Lord Marshmoreton's study a council of three was sitting in debate. The subject under discussion was that other note which George had written and so ill-advisedly entrusted to one whom he had taken for a guileless gardener. The council consisted of Lord Marshmoreton, looking rather shamefaced, his son Percy looking swollen and serious, and Lady Caroline Byng, looking like a tragedy queen.

"This," Lord Belpher was saying in a determined voice, "settles it.
From now on Maud must not be allowed out of our sight."

Lord Marshmoreton spoke.

"I rather wish," he said regretfully, "I hadn't spoken about the note. I only mentioned it because I thought you might think it amusing."

"Amusing!" Lady Caroline's voice shook the furniture.

"Amusing that the fellow should have handed me of all people a letter for Maud," explained her brother. "I don't want to get Maud into trouble."

"You are criminally weak," said Lady Caroline severely. "I really honestly believe that you were capable of giving the note to that poor, misguided girl, and saying nothing about it." She flushed. "The insolence of the man, coming here and settling down at the very gates of the castle! If it was anybody but this man Platt who was giving him shelter I should insist on his being turned out. But that man Platt would be only too glad to know that he is causing us annoyance."

"Quite!" said Lord Belpher.

"You must go to this man as soon as possible," continued Lady Caroline, fixing her brother with a commanding stare, "and do your best to make him see how abominable his behaviour is."

"Oh, I couldn't!" pleaded the earl. "I don't know the fellow. He'd throw me out."

"Nonsense. Go at the very earliest opportunity."

"Oh, all right, all right, all right. Well, I think I'll be slipping out to the rose garden again now. There's a clear hour before dinner."

There was a tap at the door. Alice Faraday entered bearing papers, a smile of sweet helpfulness on her pretty face.

"I hoped I should find you here, Lord Marshmoreton. You promised to go over these notes with me, the ones about the Essex branch—"

The hunted peer looked as if he were about to dive through the window.

"Some other time, some other time. I—I have important matters—"

"Oh, if you're busy—"

"Of course, Lord Marshmoreton will be delighted to work on your notes, Miss Faraday," said Lady Caroline crisply. "Take this chair. We are just going."

Lord Marshmoreton gave one wistful glance through the open window.
Then he sat down with a sigh, and felt for his reading-glasses.

CHAPTER 10.

Your true golfer is a man who, knowing that life is short and perfection hard to attain, neglects no opportunity of practising his chosen sport, allowing neither wind nor weather nor any external influence to keep him from it. There is a story, with an excellent moral lesson, of a golfer whose wife had determined to leave him for ever. "Will nothing alter your decision?" he says. "Will nothing induce you to stay? Well, then, while you're packing, I think I'll go out on the lawn and rub up my putting a bit." George Bevan was of this turn of mind. He might be in love; romance might have sealed him for her own; but that was no reason for blinding himself to the fact that his long game was bound to suffer if he neglected to keep himself up to the mark. His first act on arriving at Belpher village had been to ascertain whether there was a links in the neighbourhood; and thither, on the morning after his visit to the castle and the delivery of the two notes, he repaired.

At the hour of the day which he had selected the club-house was empty, and he had just resigned himself to a solitary game, when, with a whirr and a rattle, a grey racing-car drove up, and from it emerged the same long young man whom, a couple of days earlier, he had seen wriggle out from underneath the same machine. It was Reggie Byng's habit also not to allow anything, even love, to interfere with golf; and not even the prospect of hanging about the castle grounds in the hope of catching a glimpse of Alice Faraday and exchanging timorous words with her had been enough to keep him from the links.

Reggie surveyed George with a friendly eye. He had a dim recollection of having seen him before somewhere at some time or other, and Reggie had the pleasing disposition which caused him to rank anybody whom he had seen somewhere at some time or other as a bosom friend.

"Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!" he observed.

"Good morning," said George.

"Waiting for somebody?"

"No."

"How about it, then? Shall we stagger forth?"

"Delighted."

George found himself speculating upon Reggie. He was unable to place him. That he was a friend of Maud he knew, and guessed that he was also a resident of the castle. He would have liked to question Reggie, to probe him, to collect from him inside information as to the progress of events within the castle walls; but it is a peculiarity of golf, as of love, that it temporarily changes the natures of its victims; and Reggie, a confirmed babbler off the links, became while in action a stern, silent, intent person, his whole being centred on the game. With the exception of a casual remark of a technical nature when he met George on the various tees, and an occasional expletive when things went wrong with his ball, he eschewed conversation. It was not till the end of the round that he became himself again.

"If I'd known you were such hot stuff," he declared generously, as George holed his eighteenth putt from a distance of ten feet, "I'd have got you to give me a stroke or two."

"I was on my game today," said George modestly. "Sometimes I slice as if I were cutting bread and can't putt to hit a haystack."

"Let me know when one of those times comes along, and I'll take you on again. I don't know when I've seen anything fruitier than the way you got out of the bunker at the fifteenth. It reminded me of a match I saw between—" Reggie became technical. At the end of his observations he climbed into the grey car.

"Can I drop you anywhere?"

"Thanks," said George. "If it's not taking you out your way."

"I'm staying at Belpher Castle."

"I live quite near there. Perhaps you'd care to come in and have a drink on your way?"

"A ripe scheme," agreed Reggie

Ten minutes in the grey car ate up the distance between the links and George's cottage. Reggie Byng passed these minutes, in the intervals of eluding carts and foiling the apparently suicidal intentions of some stray fowls, in jerky conversation on the subject of his iron-shots, with which he expressed a deep satisfaction.

"Topping little place! Absolutely!" was the verdict he pronounced on the exterior of the cottage as he followed George in. "I've often thought it would be a rather sound scheme to settle down in this sort of shanty and keep chickens and grow a honey coloured beard, and have soup and jelly brought to you by the vicar's wife and so forth. Nothing to worry you then. Do you live all alone here?"

George was busy squirting seltzer into his guest's glass.

"Yes. Mrs. Platt comes in and cooks for me.