A Damsel in Distress

by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

  The unfairness of the attack stung Maud to speech. She looked back over the months, thought of all she had suffered, and ached with self-pity.

  “I hadn’t,” she cried.

  “You hadn’t? But you let this other man, this George Bevan, make love to you.”

  “I didn’t! That was all a mistake.”

  “A mistake?”

  “Yes. It would take too long to explain, but …” She stopped. It had come to her suddenly, in a flash of clear vision, that the mistake was one which she had no desire to correct. She felt like one who, lost in a jungle, comes out after long wandering into the open air. For days she had been thinking confusedly, unable to interpret her own emotions: and now everything had abruptly become clarified. It was as if the sight of Geoffrey had been the key to a cipher. She loved George Bevan, the man she had sent out of her life for ever. She knew it now, and the shock of realization made her feel faint and helpless. And, mingled with the shock of realization, there came to her the mortification of knowing that her aunt, Lady Caroline, and her brother, Percy, had been right after all. What she had mistaken for the love of a lifetime had been, as they had so often insisted, a mere infatuation, unable to survive the spectacle of a Geoffrey who had been eating too much butter and had put on flesh.

  Geoffrey swallowed his piece of cake, and bent forward.

  “Aren’t you engaged to this man Bevan?”

  Maud avoided his eye. She was aware that the crisis had arrived, and that her whole future hung on her next words.

  And then Fate came to her rescue. Before she could speak, there was an interruption.

  “Pardon me,” said a voice. “One moment!”

  So intent had Maud and her companion been on their own affairs that neither of them observed the entrance of a third party. This was a young man with mouse-coloured hair and a freckled, badly-shaven face which seemed undecided whether to be furtive or impudent. He had small eyes, and his costume was a blend of the flashy and the shabby. He wore a bowler hat, tilted a little rakishly to one side, and carried a small bag, which he rested on the table between them.

  “Sorry to intrude, miss.” He bowed gallantly to Maud, “but I want to have a few words with Mr. Spenser Gray here.”

  Maud, looking across at Geoffrey, was surprised to see that his florid face had lost much of its colour. His mouth was open, and his eyes had taken a glassy expression.

  “I think you have made a mistake,” she said coldly. She disliked the young man at sight. “This is Mr. Raymond.”

  Geoffrey found speech.

  “Of course I’m Mr. Raymond!” he cried angrily. “What do you mean by coming and annoying us like this?”

  The young man was not discomposed. He appeared to be used to being unpopular. He proceeded as though there had been no interruption. He produced a dingy card.

  “Glance at that,” he said. “Messrs. Willoughby and Son, Solicitors. I’m son. The guv’nor put this little matter into my hands. I’ve been looking for you for days, Mr. Gray, to hand you this paper.” He opened the bag like a conjurer performing a trick, and brought out a stiff document of legal aspect. “You’re a witness, miss, that I’ve served the papers. You know what this is, of course?” he said to Geoffrey. “Action for breach of promise of marriage. Our client, Miss Yvonne Sinclair, of the Regal Theatre, is suing you for ten thousand pounds. And, if you ask me,” said the young man with genial candour, dropping the professional manner, “I don’t mind telling you, I think it’s a walk-over! It’s the best little action for breach we’ve handled for years.” He became professional again. “Your lawyers will no doubt communicate with us in due course. And, if you take my advice,” he concluded, with another of his swift changes of manner, “you’ll get ‘em to settle out of court, for, between me and you and the lamp-post, you haven’t an earthly!”

  Geoffrey had started to his feet. He was puffing with outraged innocence.

  “What the devil do you mean by this?” he demanded. “Can’t you see you’ve made a mistake? My name is not Gray. This lady has told you that I am Geoffrey Raymond!”

  “Makes it all the worse for you,” said the young man imperturbably, “making advances to our client under an assumed name. We’ve got letters and witnesses and the whole bag of tricks. And how about this photo?” He dived into the bag again. “Do you recognize that, miss?”

  Maud looked at the photograph. It was unmistakably Geoffrey. And it had evidently been taken recently, for it showed the later Geoffrey, the man of substance. It was a full-length photograph and across the stout legs was written in a flowing hand the legend, “To Babe from her little Pootles”. Maud gave a shudder and handed it back to the young man, just as Geoffrey, reaching across the table, made a grab for it.

  “I recognize it,” she said.

  Mr. Willoughby junior packed the photograph away in his bag, and turned to go.

  “That’s all for today, then, I think,” he said, affably.

  He bowed again in his courtly way, tilted the hat a little more to the left, and, having greeted one of the distressed gentlewomen who loitered limply in his path with a polite “If you please, Mabel!” which drew upon him a freezing stare of which he seemed oblivious, he passed out, leaving behind him strained silence.

  Maud was the first to break it.

  “I think I’ll be going,” she said.

  The words seemed to rouse her companion from his stupor.

  “Let me explain!”

  “There’s nothing to explain.”

  “It was just a … it was just a passing … It was nothing … nothing.”

  “Pootles!” murmured Maud.

  Geoffrey followed her as she moved to the door.

  “Be reasonable!” pleaded Geoffrey. “Men aren’t saints! It was nothing! … Are you going to end … everything … just because I lost my head?”

  Maud looked at him with a smile. She was conscious of an overwhelming relief. The dim interior of Ye Cosy Nooke no longer seemed depressing. She could have kissed this unknown “Babe” whose businesslike action had enabled her to close a regrettable chapter in her life with a clear conscience.

  “But you haven’t only lost your head, Geoffrey,” she said. “You’ve lost your figure as well.”

  She went out quickly. With a convulsive bound Geoffrey started to follow her, but was checked before he had gone a yard.

  There are formalities to be observed before a patron can leave Ye Cosy Nooke.

  “If you please!” said a distressed gentlewomanly voice.

  The lady whom Mr. Willoughby had addressed as Mabel—erroneously, for her name was Ernestine—was standing beside him with a slip of paper.

  “Six and twopence,” said Ernestine.

  For a moment this appalling statement drew the unhappy man’s mind from the main issue.

  “Six and twopence for a cup of chocolate and a few cakes?” he cried, aghast. “It’s robbery!”

  “Six and twopence, please!” said the queen of the bandits with undisturbed calm. She had been through this sort of thing before. Ye Cosy Nooke did not get many customers; but it made the most of those it did get.

  “Here!” Geoffrey produced a half-sovereign. “I haven’t time to argue!”

  The distressed brigand showed no gratification. She had the air of one who is aloof from worldly things. All she wanted was rest and leisure—leisure to meditate upon the body upstairs. All flesh is as grass. We are here today and gone tomorrow. But there, beyond the grave, is peace.

  “Your change?” she said.

  “Damn the change!”

  “You are forgetting your hat.”

  “Damn my hat!”

  Geoffrey dashed from the room. He heaved his body through the door. He lumbered down the stairs.

  Out in Bond Street the traffic moved up and the traffic moved down. Strollers strolled upon the sidewalks.

  But Maud had gone.

  Chapter 27

  IN his bedroom at the Carlton Hotel George Bevan was pa
cking. That is to say, he had begun packing; but for the last twenty minutes he had been sitting on the side of the bed, staring into a future which became bleaker and bleaker the more he examined it. In the last two days he had been no stranger to these grey moods, and they had become harder and harder to dispel. Now, with the steamer-trunk before him gaping to receive its contents, he gave himself up whole-heartedly to gloom.

  Somehow the steamer-trunk, with all that it implied of partings and voyagings, seemed to emphasize the fact that he was going out alone into an empty world. Soon he would be on board the liner, every revolution of whose engines would be taking him farther away from where his heart would always be. There were moments when the torment of this realization became almost physical.

  It was incredible that three short weeks ago he had been a happy man. Lonely, perhaps, but only in a vague, impersonal way. Not lonely with this aching loneliness that tortured him now. What was there left for him? As regards any triumphs which the future might bring in connection with his work, he was, as Mac the stage-door keeper had said, “blarzy”. Any success he might have would be but a stale repetition of other successes which he had achieved. He would go on working, of course, but—. The ringing of the telephone bell across the room jerked him back to the present. He got up with a muttered malediction. Someone calling up again from the theatre probably. They had been doing it all the time since he had announced his intention of leaving for America by Saturday’s boat.

  “Hello?” he said wearily.

  “Is that George?” asked a voice. It seemed familiar, but all female voices sound the same over the telephone.

  “This is George,” he replied. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you know my voice?”

  “I do not.”

  “You’ll know it quite well before long. I’m a great talker.’

  “Is that Billie?”

  “It is not Billie, whoever Billie may be. I am female, George.”

  “So is Billie.”

  “Well, you had better run through the list of your feminine friends till you reach me.”

  “I haven’t any feminine friends.”

  “None?”

  “That’s odd.” “Why?”

  “You told me in the garden two nights ago that you looked on me as a pal.”

  George sat down abruptly. He felt boneless.

  “Is—is that you?” he stammered. “It can’t be—Maud!”

  “How clever of you to guess. George, I want to ask you one or two things. In the first place, are you fond of butter?”

  George blinked. This was not a dream. He had just still hurt most convincingly. He needed the evidence to assure himself that he was awake.

  “Butter?” he queried. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, well, if you don’t even know what butter means, I expect it’s all right. What is your weight, George?”

  “About a hundred and eighty pounds. But I don’t understand.”

  “Wait a minute.” There was a silence at the other end of the wire. “About thirteen stone,” said Maud’s voice. “I’ve been doing it in my head. And what was it this time last year?”

  “About the same, I think. I always weigh about the same.”

  “How wonderful! George!”

  “Yes?”

  “This is very important. Have you ever been in Florida?”

  “I was there one winter.”

  “Do you know a fish called the pompano?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “How do you mean? It’s just a fish. You eat it.”

  “I know. Go into details.”

  “There aren’t any details. You just eat it.”

  The voice at the other end of the wire purred with approval. “I never heard anything so splendid. The last man who mentioned pompano to me became absolutely lyrical about sprigs of parsley and melted butter. Well, that’s that. Now, here’s another very important point. How about wall-paper?”

  George pressed his unoccupied hand against his forehead. This conversation was unnerving him.

  “I didn’t get that,” he said.

  “Didn’t get what?”

  “I mean, I didn’t quite catch what you said that time. It sounded to me like ‘What about wall-paper?”

  “It was ‘What about wall-paper?’ Why not?”

  “But,” said George weakly, “it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, but it does. I mean, what about wall-paper for your den?”

  “My den?”

  “Your den. You must have a den. Where do you suppose you’re going to work, if you don’t? Now, my idea would be some nice quiet grass-cloth. And, of course, you would have lots of pictures and books. And a photograph of me. I’ll go and be taken specially. Then there would be a piano for you to work on, and two or three really comfortable chairs. And—well, that would be about all, wouldn’t it?”

  George pulled himself together.

  “Hello!” he said.

  “Why do you say ‘Hello’?”

  “I forgot I was in London. I should have said ‘Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Well, then, what does it all mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “What you’ve been saying—about butter and pompanos and wall-paper and my den and all that? I don’t understand.”

  “How stupid of you! I was asking you what sort of wall-paper you would like in your den after we were married and settled down.”

  George dropped the receiver. It clashed against the side of the table. He groped for it blindly.

  “Hello!” he said.

  “Don’t say ‘Hello!’ It sounds so abrupt!”

  “What did you say then?”

  “I said ‘Don’t say Hello!”

  “No, before that! Before that! You said something about getting married.”

  “Well, aren’t we going to get married? Our engagement is announced in the Morning Post.”

  “But—But—”

  “George!” Maud’s voice shook. “Don’t tell me you are going to jilt me!” she said tragically. “Because, if you are, let me know in time, as I shall want to bring an action for breach of promise. I’ve just met such a capable young man who will look after the whole thing for me. He wears a bowler hat on the side of his head and calls waitresses ‘Mabel’. Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Will you marry me?”

  “But—But—how about—I mean, what about—I mean how about—?”

  “Make up your mind what you do mean.”

  “The other fellow!” gasped George.

  A musical laugh was wafted to him over the wire.

  “What about him?”

  “Well, what about him?” said George.

  “Isn’t a girl allowed to change her mind?” said Maud.

  George yelped excitedly. Maud gave a cry.

  “Don’t sing!” she said. “You nearly made me deaf.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “Certainly I have!”

  “And you really think—You really want—I mean, you really want—You really think—”

  “Don’t be so incoherent!”

  “Maud!”

  “Well?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Gosh!”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said Gosh! And listen to me, when I say Gosh, I mean Gosh! Where are you? I must see you. Where can we meet? I want to see you! For Heaven’s sake, tell me where you are. I want to see you! Where are you? Where are you?”

  “I’m downstairs.”

  “Where? Here at the ‘Carlton’?”

  “Here at the ‘Carlton’!”

  “Alone?”

  “Quite alone.”

  “You won’t be long!” said George.

  He hung up the receiver, and bounded across the room to where his coat hung over the back of a chair. The edge of the steamer-trunk caught his shin.

  “Well,”
said George to the steamer-trunk, “and what are you butting in for? Who wants you, I should like to know!”

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