Pelham Wodehouse - A Damsel in Distress

“You don’t look a day over forty.”

“Oh, come, come, my boy! … I mean, Mr. Bevan.”

“You don’t honestly.”

“I’m forty-eight.”

“The Prime of Life.”

“And you don’t think I look it?”

“You certainly don’t.”

“Well, well, well! By the way, have you tobacco, my boy. I came without my pouch.”

“Just at your elbow. Pretty good stuff. I bought it in the village.”

“The same I smoke myself.”

“Quite a coincidence.”

“Distinctly.”

“Match?”

“Thank you, I have one.”

George filled his own pipe. The thing was becoming a love-feast.

“What was I saying?” said Lord Marshmoreton, blowing a comfortable cloud. “Oh, yes.” He removed his pipe from his mouth with a touch of embarrassment. “Yes, yes, to be sure!”

There was an awkward silence.

“You must see for yourself,” said the earl, “how impossible it is.”

George shook his head.

“I may be slow at grasping a thing, but I’m bound to say I can’t see that.”

Lord Marshmoreton recalled some of the things his sister had told him to say. “For one thing, what do we know of you? You are a perfect stranger.”

“Well, we’re all getting acquainted pretty quick, don’t you think? I met your son in Piccadilly and had a long talk with him, and now you are paying me a neighbourly visit.”

“This was not intended to be a social call.”

“But it has become one.”

“And then, that is one point I wish to make, you know. Ours is an old family, I would like to remind you that there were Marshmoretons in Belpher before the War of the Roses.”

“There were Bevans in Brooklyn before the B.R.T.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was only pointing out that I can trace my ancestry a long way. You have to trace things a long way in Brooklyn, if you want to find them.”

“I have never heard of Brooklyn.”

“You’ve heard of New York?”

“Certainly.”

“New York’s one of the outlying suburbs.”

Lord Marshmoreton relit his pipe. He had a feeling that they were wandering from the point.

“It is quite impossible.”

“I can’t see it.”

“Maud is so young.”

“Your daughter could be nothing else.”

“Too young to know her own mind,” pursued Lord Marshmoreton, resolutely crushing down a flutter of pleasure. There was no doubt that this singularly agreeable man was making things very difficult for him. It was disarming to discover that he was really capital company—the best, indeed, that the earl could remember to have discovered in the more recent period of his rather lonely life. “At present, of course, she fancies that she is very much in love with you … It is absurd!”

“You needn’t tell me that,” said George. Really, it was only the fact that people seemed to go out of their way to call at his cottage and tell him that Maud loved him that kept him from feeling his cause perfectly hopeless. “It’s incredible. It’s a miracle.”

“You are a romantic young man, and you no doubt for the moment suppose that you are in love with her.”

“No!” George was not going to allow a remark like that to pass unchallenged. “You are wrong there. As far as I am concerned, there is no question of its being momentary or supposititious or anything of that kind. I am in love with your daughter. I was from the first moment I saw her. I always shall be. She is the only girl in the world!”

“Stuff and nonsense!”

“Not at all. Absolute, cold fact.”

“You have known her so little time.”

“Long enough.”

Lord Marshmoreton sighed. “You are upsetting things terribly.”

“Things are upsetting me terribly.”

“You are causing a great deal of trouble and annoyance.”

“So did Romeo.”

“Eh?”

“I said—So did Romeo.”

“I don’t know anything about Romeo.”

“As far as love is concerned, I begin where he left off.”

“I wish I could persuade you to be sensible.”

“That’s just what I think I am.”

“I wish I could get you to see my point of view.”

“I do see your point of view. But dimly. You see, my own takes up such a lot of the foreground.”

There was a pause.

“Then I am afraid,” said Lord Marshmoreton, “that we must leave matters as they stand.”

“Until they can be altered for the better.”

“We will say no more about it now.”

“Very well.”

“But I must ask you to understand clearly that I shall have to do everything in my power to stop what I look on as an unfortunate entanglement.”

“I understand,”

“Very well.”

Lord Marshmoreton coughed. George looked at him with some surprise. He had supposed the interview to be at an end, but the other made no move to go. There seemed to be something on the earl’s mind.

“There is—ah—just one other thing,” said Lord Marshmoreton. He coughed again. He felt embarrassed. “Just—just one other thing,” he repeated.

The reason for Lord Marshmoreton’s visit to George had been twofold. In the first place, Lady Caroline had told him to go. That would have been reason enough. But what made the visit imperative was an unfortunate accident of which he had only that morning been made aware.

It will be remembered that Billie Dore had told George that the gardener with whom she had become so friendly had taken her name and address with a view later on to send her some of his roses. The scrap of paper on which this information had been written was now lost. Lord Marshmoreton had been hunting for it since breakfast without avail.

Billie Dore had made a decided impression upon Lord Marshmoreton. She belonged to a type which he had never before encountered, and it was one which he had found more than agreeable. Her knowledge of roses and the proper feeling which she manifested towards rose-growing as a life-work consolidated the earl’s liking for her. Never, in his memory, had he come across so sensible and charming a girl; and he had looked forward with a singular intensity to meeting her again. And now some too zealous housemaid, tidying up after the irritating manner of her species, had destroyed the only clue to her identity.

It was not for some time after this discovery that hope dawned again for Lord Marshmoreton. Only after he had given up the search for the missing paper as fruitless did he recall that it was in George’s company that Billie had first come into his life. Between her, then, and himself George was the only link.

It was primarily for the purpose of getting Billie’s name and address from George that he had come to the cottage. And now that the moment had arrived for touching upon the subject, he felt a little embarrassed.

“When you visited the castle,” he said, “when you visited the castle …”

“Last Thursday,” said George helpfully.

“Exactly. When you visited the castle last Thursday, there was a young lady with you.”

Not realizing that the subject had been changed, George was under the impression that the other had shifted his front and was about to attack him from another angle. He countered what seemed to him an insinuation stoutly.

“We merely happened to meet at the castle. She came there quite independently of me.”

Lord Marshmoreton looked alarmed. “You didn’t know her?” he said anxiously.

“Certainly I knew her. She is an old friend of mine. But if you are hinting …”

“Not at all,” rejoined the earl, profoundly relieved. “Not at all. I ask merely because this young lady, with whom I had some conversation, was good enough to give me her name and address. She, too, happened to mistake me for a gardener.”