A Damsel in Distress, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse [bookreader TXT] 📗

with him! The old boy has come to life—absolutely! He's gassing away sixteen to the dozen to a frightfully pretty girl with gold hair. If you slew the old bean round at an angle of about forty-five, Bevan, old top, you can see her. Take a look. He won't see you. He's got his back to us."

"Do you call her pretty?" asked Alice disparagingly.

"Now that I take a good look, precious," replied Reggie with alacrity, "no! Absolutely not! Not my style at all!"

His wife crumbled bread.

"I think she must know you, Reggie dear," she said softly. "She's waving to you."

"She's waving to me," said George, bringing back the sunshine to Reggie's life, and causing the latter's face to lose its hunted look. "I know her very well. Her name's Dore. Billie Dore."

"Old man," said Reggie, "be a good fellow and slide over to their table and cover our retreat. I know there's nothing to be afraid of really, but I simply can't face the old boy."

"And break the news to him that I've gone, Mr. Bevan," added Alice.

"Very well, I'll say good-bye, then."

"Good-bye, Mr. Bevan, and thank you ever so much."

Reggie shook George's hand warmly.

"Good-bye, Bevan old thing, you're a ripper. I can't tell you how bucked up I am at the sportsmanlike way you've rallied round. I'll do the same for you one of these days. Just hold the old boy in play for a minute or two while we leg it. And, if he wants us, tell him our address till further notice is Paris. What ho! What ho! What ho! Toodle-oo, laddie, toodle-oo!"

George threaded his way across the room. Billie Dore welcomed him with a friendly smile. The earl, who had turned to observe his progress, seemed less delighted to see him. His weather-beaten face wore an almost furtive look. He reminded George of a schoolboy who has been caught in some breach of the law.

"Fancy seeing you here, George!" said Billie. "We're always meeting, aren't we? How did you come to separate yourself from the pigs and chickens? I thought you were never going to leave them."

"I had to run up on business," explained George. "How are you, Lord
Marshmoreton?"

The earl nodded briefly.

"So you're on to him, too?" said Billie. "When did you get wise?"

"Lord Marshmoreton was kind enough to call on me the other morning and drop the incognito."

"Isn't dadda the foxiest old thing!" said Billie delightedly. "Imagine him standing there that day in the garden, kidding us along like that! I tell you, when they brought me his card last night after the first act and I went down to take a slant at this Lord Marshmoreton and found dadda hanging round the stage door, you could have knocked me over with a whisk-broom."

"I have not stood at the stage-door for twenty-five years," said
Lord Marshmoreton sadly.

"Now, it's no use your pulling that Henry W. Methuselah stuff," said Billie affectionately. "You can't get away with it. Anyone can see you're just a kid. Can't they, George?" She indicated the blushing earl with a wave of the hand. "Isn't dadda the youngest thing that ever happened?"

"Exactly what I told him myself."

Lord Marshmoreton giggled. There is no other verb that describes the sound that proceeded from him.

"I feel young," he admitted.

"I wish some of the juveniles in the shows I've been in," said Billie, "were as young as you. It's getting so nowadays that one's thankful if a juvenile has teeth." She glanced across the room. "Your pals are walking out on you, George. The people you were lunching with," she explained. "They're leaving."

"That's all right. I said good-bye to them." He looked at Lord
Marshmoreton. It seemed a suitable opportunity to break the news.
"I was lunching with Mr. and Mrs. Byng," he said.

Nothing appeared to stir beneath Lord Marshmoreton's tanned forehead.

"Reggie Byng and his wife, Lord Marshmoreton," added George.

This time he secured the earl's interest. Lord Marshmoreton started.

"What!"

"They are just off to Paris," said George.

"Reggie Byng is not married!"

"Married this morning. I was best man."

"Busy little creature!" interjected Billie.

"But—but—!"

"You know his wife," said George casually. "She was a Miss Faraday.
I think she was your secretary."

It would have been impossible to deny that Lord Marshmoreton showed emotion. His mouth opened, and he clutched the tablecloth. But just what the emotion was George was unable to say till, with a sigh that seemed to come from his innermost being, the other exclaimed "Thank Heaven!"

George was surprised.

"You're glad?"

"Of course I'm glad!"

"It's a pity they didn't know how you were going to feel. It would have saved them a lot of anxiety. I rather gathered they supposed that the shock was apt to darken your whole life."

"That girl," said Lord Marshmoreton vehemently, "was driving me crazy. Always bothering me to come and work on that damned family history. Never gave me a moment's peace . . ."

"I liked her," said George.

"Nice enough girl," admitted his lordship grudgingly. "But a damned nuisance about the house; always at me to go on with the family history. As if there weren't better things to do with one's time than writing all day about my infernal fools of ancestors!"

"Isn't dadda fractious today?" said Billie reprovingly, giving the Earl's hand a pat. "Quit knocking your ancestors! You're very lucky to have ancestors. I wish I had. The Dore family seems to go back about as far as the presidency of Willard Filmore, and then it kind of gets discouraged and quite cold. Gee! I'd like to feel that my great-great-great-grandmother had helped Queen Elizabeth with the rent. I'm strong for the fine old stately families of England."

"Stately old fiddlesticks!" snapped the earl.

"Did you see his eyes flash then, George? That's what they call aristocratic rage. It's the fine old spirit of the Marshmoretons boiling over."

"I noticed it," said George. "Just like lightning."

"It's no use trying to fool us, dadda," said Billie. "You know just as well as I do that it makes you feel good to think that, every time you cut yourself with your safety-razor, you bleed blue!"

"A lot of silly nonsense!" grumbled the earl.

"What is?"

"This foolery of titles and aristocracy. Silly fetish-worship!
One man's as good as another. . . ."

"This is the spirit of '76!" said George approvingly.

"Regular I.W.W. stuff," agreed Billie. "Shake hands the President of the Bolsheviki!"

Lord Marshmoreton ignored the interruption. There was a strange look in his eyes. It was evident to George, watching him with close interest, that here was a revelation of the man's soul; that thoughts, locked away for years in the other's bosom were crying for utterance.

"Damned silly nonsense! When I was a boy, I wanted to be an engine-driver. When I was a young man, I was a Socialist and hadn't any idea except to work for my living and make a name for myself. I was going to the colonies. Canada. The fruit farm was actually bought. Bought and paid for!" He brooded a moment on that long-lost fruit farm. "My father was a younger son. And then my uncle must go and break his neck hunting, and the baby, poor little chap, got croup or something . . . And there I was, saddled with the title, and all my plans gone up in smoke . . . Silly nonsense! Silly nonsense!"

He bit the end of a cigar. "And you can't stand up against it," he went on ruefully. "It saps you. It's like some damned drug. I fought against it as long as I could, but it was no use. I'm as big a snob as any of them now. I'm afraid to do what I want to do. Always thinking of the family dignity. I haven't taken a free step for twenty-five years."

George and Billie exchanged glances. Each had the uncomfortable feeling that they were eavesdropping and hearing things not meant to be heard. George rose.

"I must be getting along now," he said. "I've one or two things to do. Glad to have seen you again, Billie. Is the show going all right?"

"Fine. Making money for you right along."

"Good-bye, Lord Marshmoreton."

The earl nodded without speaking. It was not often now that he rebelled even in thoughts against the lot which fate had thrust upon him, and never in his life before had he done so in words. He was still in the grip of the strange discontent which had come upon him so abruptly.

There was a silence after George had gone.

"I'm glad we met George," said Billie. "He's a good boy." She spoke soberly. She was conscious of a curious feeling of affection for the sturdy, weather-tanned little man opposite her. The glimpse she had been given of his inner self had somehow made him come alive for her.

"He wants to marry my daughter," said Lord Marshmoreton. A few moments before, Billie would undoubtedly have replied to such a statement with some jocular remark expressing disbelief that the earl could have a daughter old enough to be married. But now she felt oddly serious and unlike her usual flippant self.

"Oh?" was all she could find to say.

"She wants to marry him."

Not for years had Billie Dore felt embarrassed, but she felt so now. She judged herself unworthy to be the recipient of these very private confidences.

"Oh?" she said again.

"He's a good fellow. I like him. I liked him the moment we met. He knew it, too. And I knew he liked me."

A group of men and girls from a neighbouring table passed on their way to the door. One of the girls nodded to Billie. She returned the nod absently. The party moved on. Billie frowned down at the tablecloth and drew a pattern on it with a fork.

"Why don't you let George marry your daughter, Lord Marshmoreton?"

The earl drew at his cigar in silence.

"I know it's not my business," said Billie apologetically, interpreting the silence as a rebuff.

"Because I'm the Earl of Marshmoreton."

"I see."

"No you don't," snapped the earl. "You think I mean by that that I think your friend isn't good enough to marry my daughter. You think that I'm an incurable snob. And I've no doubt he thinks so, too, though I took the trouble to explain my attitude to him when we last met. You're wrong. It isn't that at all. When I say 'I'm the Earl of Marshmoreton', I mean that I'm a poor spineless fool who's afraid to do the right thing because he daren't go in the teeth of the family."

"I don't understand. What have your family got to do with it?"

"They'd worry the life out of me. I wish you could meet my sister Caroline! That's what they've got to do with it. Girls in my daughter's unfortunate position have got to marry position or money."

"Well, I don't know about position, but when it comes to money—why, George is the fellow that made the dollar-bill famous. He and Rockefeller have got all there is, except the little bit they have let Andy Carnegie have for car-fare."

"What do you mean? He told me he worked for a living." Billie was becoming herself again. Embarrassment had fled.

"If you call it work. He's a composer."

"I know. Writes tunes and things."

Billie regarded him compassionately.

"And I suppose, living out in the woods the way that you do that you haven't a notion that they pay him for it."

"Pay him? Yes, but how much? Composers were not rich men in my day."

"I wish you wouldn't talk of 'your day' as if you telling the boys down at the corner store about the good times they all had before the Flood. You're one of the Younger Set and don't let me have to tell you again. Say, listen! You know that show you saw last night. The one where I was supported by a few underlings. Well, George wrote the music for that."

"I know. He told me so."

"Well, did he tell you that he draws three per cent of the gross receipts? You saw the house we had last night. It was a fair average house. We are playing to over fourteen thousand dollars a week. George's little bit of that is—I can't do it in my head, but it's a round four hundred dollars. That's eighty pounds of your money. And did he tell you that this same