A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse (pocket ebook reader txt) 📕

“Couldn’t get a word out of him. Oysters garrulous and tombs chatty in comparison. Absolutely. All I know is that he popped one into the officer’s waistband. What led up to it is more than I can tell you. How would it be to stagger to the library and join the postmortem?”

“The postmortem?”

“Well, I met the mater and his lordship on their way to the library, and it looked to me very much as if the mater must have got hold of an evening paper on her journey from town. When did she arrive?”

“Only a short while ago.”

“Then that’s what’s happened. She would have bought an evening paper to read in the train. By Jove, I wonder if she got hold of the one that had the poem about it. One chappie was so carried away by the beauty of the episode that he treated it in verse. I think we ought to look in and see what’s happening.”

Maud hesitated again. But she was a girl of spirit. And she had an intuition that her best defence would be attack. Bluff was what was needed. Wide-eyed, innocent wonder⁠ ⁠… After all, Percy couldn’t be certain he had seen her in Piccadilly.

“All right.”

“By the way, dear old girl,” inquired Reggie, “did your little business come out satisfactorily? I forgot to ask.”

“Not very. But it was awfully sweet of you to take me into town.”

“How would it be,” said Reggie nervously, “not to dwell too much on that part of it? What I mean to say is, for heaven’s sake don’t let the mater know I rallied round.”

“Don’t worry,” said Maud with a laugh. “I’m not going to talk about the thing at all.”

Lord Belpher, meanwhile, in the library, had begun with the aid of a whisky and soda to feel a little better. There was something about the library with its sombre half tones that soothed his bruised spirit. The room held something of the peace of a deserted city. The world, with its violent adventures and tall policemen, did not enter here. There was balm in those rows and rows of books which nobody ever read, those vast writing tables at which nobody ever wrote. From the broad mantelpiece the bust of some unnamed ancient looked down almost sympathetically. Something remotely resembling peace had begun to steal into Percy’s soul, when it was expelled by the abrupt opening of the door and the entry of Lady Caroline Byng and his father. One glance at the face of the former was enough to tell Lord Belpher that she knew all.

He rose defensively.

“Let me explain.”

Lady Caroline quivered with repressed emotion. This masterly woman had not lost control of herself, but her aristocratic calm had seldom been so severely tested. As Reggie had surmised, she had read the report of the proceedings in the evening paper in the train, and her world had been reeling ever since. Caesar, stabbed by Brutus, could scarcely have experienced a greater shock. The other members of her family had disappointed her often. She had become inured to the spectacle of her brother working in the garden in corduroy trousers and in other ways behaving in a manner beneath the dignity of an Earl of Marshmoreton. She had resigned herself to the innate flaw in the character of Maud which had allowed her to fall in love with a nobody whom she had met without an introduction. Even Reggie had exhibited at times democratic traits of which she thoroughly disapproved. But of her nephew Percy she had always been sure. He was solid rock. He, at least, she had always felt, would never do anything to injure the family prestige. And now, so to speak, “Lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.” In other words, Percy was the worst of the lot. Whatever indiscretions the rest had committed, at least they had never got the family into the comic columns of the evening papers. Lord Marshmoreton might wear corduroy trousers and refuse to entertain the County at garden parties and go to bed with a book when it was his duty to act as host at a formal ball; Maud might give her heart to an impossible person whom nobody had ever heard of; and Reggie might be seen at fashionable restaurants with pugilists; but at any rate evening paper poets had never written facetious verses about their exploits. This crowning degradation had been reserved for the hitherto blameless Percy, who, of all the young men of Lady Caroline’s acquaintance, had till now appeared to have the most scrupulous sense of his position, the most rigid regard for the dignity of his great name. Yet, here he was, if the carefully considered reports in the daily press were to be believed, spending his time in the very spring-tide of his life running about London like a frenzied Hottentot, brutally assaulting the police. Lady Caroline felt as a bishop might feel if he suddenly discovered that some favourite curate had gone over to the worship of Mumbo Jumbo.

“Explain?” she cried. “How can you explain? You⁠—my nephew, the heir to the title, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of London⁠ ⁠… your name in the papers⁠ ⁠…”

“If you knew the circumstances.”

“The circumstances? They are in the evening paper. They are in print.”

“In verse,” added Lord Marshmoreton. He chuckled amiably at the recollection. He was an easily amused man. “You ought to read it, my boy. Some of it was capital⁠ ⁠…”

“John!”

“But deplorable, of course,” added Lord Marshmoreton hastily. “Very deplorable.” He endeavoured to regain his sister’s esteem by a show of righteous indignation. “What do you mean by it, damn it? You’re my only son. I have watched you grow from child to boy, from boy to man, with tender solicitude. I have wanted to be proud of you. And all the time, dash it, you are prowling about London like a lion, seeking whom you may devour, terrorising the metropolis, putting harmless policemen in fear of their lives⁠ ⁠…”

“Will you listen