A Damsel in Distress

by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “What were you doing in Piccadilly yesterday afternoon?” said Lady Caroline.

  “Piccadilly? The place where Percy fights policemen? I don’t understand.”

  Lady Caroline was no sportsman. She put one of those direct questions, capable of being answered only by “Yes” or “No”, which ought not to be allowed in controversy. They are the verbal equivalent of shooting a sitting bird.

  “Did you or did you not go to London yesterday, Maud?”

  The monstrous unfairness of this method of attack pained Maud. From childhood up she had held the customary feminine views upon the Lie Direct. As long as it was a question of suppression of the true or suggestion of the false she had no scruples. But she had a distaste for deliberate falsehood. Faced now with a choice between two evils, she chose the one which would at least leave her self-respect.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Lady Caroline looked at Lord Belpher. Lord Belpher looked at Lady Caroline.

  “You went to meet that American of yours?”

  Reggie Byng slid softly from the room. He felt that he would be happier elsewhere. He had been an acutely embarrassed spectator of this distressing scene, and had been passing the time by shuffling his feet, playing with his coat buttons and perspiring.

  “Don’t go, Reggie,” said Lord Belpher.

  “Well, what I mean to say is—family row and what not—if you see what I mean—I’ve one or two things I ought to do—”

  He vanished. Lord Belpher frowned a sombre frown. “Then it was that man who knocked my hat off?”

  “What do you mean?” said Lady Caroline. “Knocked your hat off? You never told me he knocked your hat off.”

  “It was when I was asking him to let me look inside the cab. I had grasped the handle of the door, when he suddenly struck my hat, causing it to fly off. And, while I was picking it up, he drove away.”

  “C’k,” exploded Lord Marshmoreton. “C’k, c’k, c’k.” He twisted his face by a supreme exertion of will power into a mask of indignation. “You ought to have had the scoundrel arrested,” he said vehemently. “It was a technical assault.”

  “The man who knocked your hat off, Percy,” said Maud, “was not … He was a different man altogether. A stranger.”

  “As if you would be in a cab with a stranger,” said Lady Caroline caustically. “There are limits, I hope, to even your indiscretions.”

  Lord Marshmoreton cleared his throat. He was sorry for Maud, whom he loved.

  “Now, looking at the matter broadly—”

  “Be quiet,” said Lady Caroline.

  Lord Marshmoreton subsided.

  “I wanted to avoid you,” said Maud, “so I jumped into the first cab I saw.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Percy.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You are simply trying to put us off the scent.”

  Lady Caroline turned to Maud. Her manner was plaintive. She looked like a martyr at the stake who deprecatingly lodges a timid complaint, fearful the while lest she may be hurting the feelings of her persecutors by appearing even for a moment out of sympathy with their activities.

  “My dear child, why will you not be reasonable in this matter? Why will you not let yourself be guided by those who are older and wiser than you?”

  “Exactly,” said Lord Belpher.

  “The whole thing is too absurd.”

  “Precisely,” said Lord Belpher.

  Lady Caroline turned on him irritably.

  “Please do not interrupt, Percy. Now, you’ve made me forget what I was going to say.”

  “To my mind,” said Lord Marshmoreton, coming to the surface once more, “the proper attitude to adopt on occasions like the present—”

  “Please,” said Lady Caroline.

  Lord Marshmoreton stopped, and resumed his silent communion with the stuffed bird.

  “You can’t stop yourself being in love, Aunt Caroline,” said Maud.

  “You can be stopped if you’ve somebody with a level head looking after you.”

  Lord Marshmoreton tore himself away from the bird.

  “Why, when I was at Oxford in the year ‘87,” he said chattily, “I fancied myself in love with the female assistant at a tobacconist shop. Desperately in love, dammit. Wanted to marry her. I recollect my poor father took me away from Oxford and kept me here at Belpher under lock and key. Lock and key, dammit. I was deucedly upset at the time, I remember.” His mind wandered off into the glorious past. “I wonder what that girl’s name was. Odd one can’t remember names. She had chestnut hair and a mole on the side of her chin. I used to kiss it, I recollect—”

  Lady Caroline, usually such an advocate of her brother’s researches into the family history, cut the reminiscences short.

  “Never mind that now.”

  “I don’t. I got over it. That’s the moral.”

  “Well,” said Lady Caroline, “at any rate poor father acted with great good sense on that occasion. There seems nothing to do but to treat Maud in just the same way. You shall not stir a step from the castle till you have got over this dreadful infatuation. You will be watched.”

  “I shall watch you,” said Lord Belpher solemnly, “I shall watch your every movement.”

  A dreamy look came into Maud’s brown eyes.

  “Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage,” she said softly.

  “That wasn’t your experience, Percy, my boy,” said Lord Marshmoreton.

  “They make a very good imitation,” said Lady Caroline coldly, ignoring the interruption.

  Maud faced her defiantly. She looked like a princess in captivity facing her gaolers.

  “I don’t care. I love him, and I always shall love him, and nothing is ever going to stop me loving him—because I love him,” she concluded a little lamely.

  “Nonsense,” said Lady Caroline. “In a year from now you will have forgotten his name. Don’t you agree with me, Percy?”

  “Quite,” said Lord Belpher.

  “I shan’t.”

  “Deuced hard things to remember, names,” said Lord Marshmoreton. “If I’ve tried once to remember that tobacconist girl’s name, I’ve tried a hundred times. I have an idea it began with an ‘L.’ Muriel or Hilda or something.”

  “Within a year,” said Lady Caroline, “you will be wondering how you ever came to be so foolish. Don’t you think so, Percy?”

  “Quite,” said Lord Belpher.

  Lord Marshmoreton turned on him irritably.

  “Good God, boy, can’t you answer a simple question with a plain affirmative? What do you mean—quite? If somebody came to me and pointed you out and said, ‘Is that your son?’ do you suppose I should say ‘Quite?’ I wish the devil you didn’t collect prayer rugs. It’s sapped your brain.”

  “They say prison life often weakens the intellect, father,” said Maud. She moved towards the door and turned the handle. Albert, the page boy, who had been courting earache by listening at the keyhole, straightened his small body and scuttled away. “Well, is that all, Aunt Caroline? May I go now?”

  “Certainly. I have said all I wished to say.”

  “Very well. I’m sorry to disobey you, but I can’t help it.”

  “You’ll find you can help it after you’ve been cooped up here for a few more months,” said Percy.

  A gentle smile played over Maud’s face.

  “Love laughs at locksmiths,” she murmured softly, and passed from the room.

  “What did she say?” asked Lord Marshmoreton, interested. “Something about somebody laughing at a locksmith? I don’t understand. Why should anyone laugh at locksmiths? Most respectable men. Had one up here only the day before yesterday, forcing open the drawer of my desk. Watched him do it. Most interesting. He smelt rather strongly of a damned bad brand of tobacco. Fellow must have a throat of leather to be able to smoke the stuff. But he didn’t strike me as an object of derision. From first to last, I was never t
empted to laugh once.”

  Lord Belpher wandered moodily to the window and looked out into the gathering darkness.

  “And this has to happen,” he said bitterly, “on the eve of my twenty-first birthday.”

  Chapter 7

  The first requisite of an invading army is a base. George, having entered Belpher village and thus accomplished the first stage in his foreward movement on the castle, selected as his base the Marshmoreton Arms. Selected is perhaps hardly the right word, as it implies choice, and in George’s case there was no choice. There are two inns at Belpher, but the Marshmoreton Arms is the only one that offers accommodation for man and beast, assuming—that is to say—that the man and beast desire to spend the night. The other house, the Blue Boar, is a mere beerhouse, where the lower strata of Belpher society gather of a night to quench their thirst and to tell one another interminable stories without any point whatsoever. But the Marshmoreton Arms is a comfortable, respectable hostelry, catering for the village plutocrats. There of an evening you will find the local veterinary surgeon smoking a pipe with the grocer, the baker, and the butcher, with perhaps a sprinkling of neighbouring farmers to help the conversation along. There is a “shilling ordinary”—which is rural English for a cut off the joint and a boiled potato, followed by hunks of the sort of cheese which believes that it pays to advertise, and this is usually well attended. On the other days of the week, until late in the evening, however, the visitor to the Marshmoreton Arms has the place almost entirely to himself.

  It is to be questioned whether in the whole length and breadth of the world there is a more admirable spot for a man in love to pass a day or two than the typical English village. The Rocky Mountains, that traditional stamping-ground for the heartbroken, may be well enough in their way; but a lover has to be cast in a pretty stem mould to be able to be introspective when at any moment he may meet an annoyed cinnamon bear. In the English village there are no such obstacles to meditation. It combines the comforts of civilization with the restfulness of solitude in a manner equalled by no other spot except the New York Public Library. Here your lover may wander to and fro unmolested, speaking to nobody, by nobody addressed, and have the satisfaction at the end of the day of sitting down to a capitally cooked chop and chips, lubricated by golden English ale.

  Belpher, in addition to all the advantages of the usual village, has a quiet charm all its own, due to the fact that it has seen better days. In a sense, it is a ruin, and ruins are always soothing to the bruised soul. Ten years before, Belpher had been a flourishing centre of the South of England oyster trade. It is situated by the shore, where Hayling Island, lying athwart the mouth of the bay, forms the waters into a sort of brackish lagoon, in much the same way as Fire Island shuts off the Great South Bay of Long Island from the waves of the Atlantic. The water of Belpher Creek is shallow even at high tide, and when the tide runs out it leaves glistening mud flats, which it is the peculiar taste of the oyster to prefer to any other habitation. For years Belpher oysters had been the mainstay of gay supper parties at the Savoy, the Carlton and Romano’s. Dukes doted on them; chorus girls wept if they were not on the bill of fare. And then, in an evil hour, somebody discovered that what made the Belpher Oyster so particularly plump and succulent was the fact that it breakfasted, lunched and dined almost entirely on the local sewage. There is but a thin line ever between popular homage and execration. We see it in the case of politicians, generals and prize-fighters; and oysters are no exception to the rule. There was a typhoid scare—quite a passing and unjustified scare, but strong enough to do its deadly work; and almost overnight Belpher passed from a place of flourishing industry to the sleepy, by-the-world-forgotten spot which it was when George Bevan discovered it. The shallow water is still there; the mud is still there; even the oyster-beds are still there; but not the oysters nor the little world of activity which had sprung up around them. The glory of Belpher is dead; and over its gates Ichabod is written. But, if it has lost in importance, it has gained in charm; and George, for one, had no regrets. To him, in his present state of mental upheaval, Belpher was the ideal spot.

  It was not at first that George roused himself to the point of asking why he was here and what—now that he was here—he proposed to do. For two languorous days he loafed, sufficiently occupied with his thoughts. He smoked long, peaceful pipes in the stable-yard, watching the ostlers as they groomed the horses; he played with the Inn puppy, bestowed respectful caresses on the Inn cat. He walked down the quaint cobbled street to the harbour, sauntered along the shore, and lay on his back on the little beach at the other side of the lagoon, from where he could see the red roofs of the village, while the imitation waves splashed busily on the stones, trying to conceal with bustle and energy the fact that the water even two hundred yards from the shore was only eighteen inches deep. For it is the abiding hope of Belpher Creek that it may be able to deceive the occasional visitor into mistaking it for the open sea.

  And presently the tide would ebb. The waste of waters became a sea of mud, cheerfully covered as to much of its surface with green grasses. The evening sun struck rainbow colours from the moist softness. Birds sang in the thickets. And George, heaving himself up, walked back to the friendly cosiness of the Marshmoreton Arms. And the remarkable part of it was that everything seemed perfectly natural and sensible to him, nor had he any particular feeling that in falling in love with Lady Maud Marsh and pursuing her to Belpher he had set himself anything in the nature of a hopeless task. Like one kissed by a goddess in a dream, he walked on air; and, while one is walking on air, it is easy to overlook the boulders in the path.

  Consider his position, you faint-hearted and self-pitying young men who think you have a tough row to hoe just because, when you pay your evening visit with the pound box of candy under your arm, you see the handsome sophomore from Yale sitting beside her on the porch, playing the ukulele. If ever the world has turned black to you in such a situation and the moon gone in behind a cloud, think of George Bevan and what he was up against. You are at least on the spot. You can at least put up a fight. If there are ukuleles in the world, there are also guitars, and tomorrow it may be you and not he who sits on the moonlit porch; it may be he and not you who arrives late. Who knows? Tomorrow he may not show up till you have finished the Bedouin’s Love Song and are annoying the local birds, roosting in the trees, with Poor Butterfly.

  What I mean to say is, you are on the map. You have a sporting chance. Whereas George… Well, just go over to England and try wooing an earl’s daughter whom you have only met once—and then without an introduction; whose brother’s hat you have smashed beyond repair; whose family wishes her to marry some other man: who wants to marry some other man herself—and not the same other man, but another other man; who is closely immured in a mediaeval castle … Well, all I say is—try it. And then go back to your porch with a chastened spirit and admit that you might be a whole lot worse off.

  George, as I say, had not envisaged the peculiar difficulties of his position. Nor did he until the evening of his second day at the Marshmoreton Arms. Until then, as I have indicated, he roamed in a golden mist of dreamy meditation among the soothing by-ways of the village of Belpher. But after lunch on the second day it came upon him that all this sort of thing was pleasant but not practical. Action was what was needed. Action.

  The first, the obvious move was to locate the castle. Inquiries at the Marshmoreton Arms elicited the fact that it was “a step” up the road that ran past the front door of the inn. But this wasn’t the day of the week when the general public was admitted. The sightseer could invade Belpher Castle on Thursdays only, between the hours of two and four. On other days of the week all he could do was to stand like Moses on Pisgah and take in the general effect from a distance. As this was all that George had hoped to be able to do, he set forth.

  It speedily became evident to George that “a step” was a euphemism. Five miles did he tramp before, trudging wearily up a winding lane, he came out o
n a breeze-swept hill-top, and saw below him, nestling in its trees, what was now for him the centre of the world. He sat on a stone wail and lit a pipe. Belpher Castle. Maud’s home. There it was. And now what?

  The first thought that came to him was practical, even prosaic– the thought that he couldn’t possibly do this five-miles-there and-five-miles-back walk, every time he wanted to see the place. He must shift his base nearer the scene of operations. One of those trim, thatched cottages down there in the valley would be just the thing, if he could arrange to take possession of it. They sat there all round the castle, singly and in groups, like small dogs round their master. They looked as if they had been there for centuries. Probably they had, as they were made of stone as solid as that of the castle. There must have been a time, thought George, when the castle was the central rallying-point for all those scattered homes; when rumour of danger from marauders had sent all that little community scuttling for safety to the sheltering walls.

  For the first time since he had set out on his expedition, a certain chill, a discomforting sinking of the heart, afflicted George as he gazed down at the grim grey fortress which he had undertaken to storm. So must have felt those marauders of old when they climbed to the top of this very hill to spy out the land. And George’s case was even worse than theirs. They could at least hope that a strong arm and a stout heart would carry them past those solid walls; they had not to think of social etiquette. Whereas George was so situated that an unsympathetic butler could put him to rout by refusing him admittance.

  The evening was drawing in. Already, in the brief time he had spent on the hill-top, the sky had turned from blue to saffron and from saffron to grey. The plaintive voices of homing cows floated up to him from the valley below. A bat had left its shelter and was wheeling around him, a sinister blot against the sky. A sickle moon gleamed over the trees. George felt cold. He turned. The shadows of night wrapped him round, and little things in the hedgerows chirped and chittered mockery at him as he stumbled down the lane.