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

He was conscious of the need for a quiet cigarette. He was fond of Maud, but a man can’t spend all his time with the women.

“Pigs squeal like billy-o, m’lady!” he observed by way of adding a parting treasure to Maud’s stock of general knowledge. “Oo! ’Ear ’em a mile orf, you can!”

Maud remained where she was, thinking, a wistful figure. Tennyson’s “Mariana” always made her wistful even when rendered by Albert. In the occasional moods of sentimental depression which came to vary her normal cheerfulness, it seemed to her that the poem might have been written with a prophetic eye to her special case, so nearly did it crystallize in magic words her own story.

With blackest moss the flowerpots
Were thickly crusted, one and all.

Well, no, not that particular part, perhaps. If he had found so much as one flowerpot of his even thinly crusted with any foreign substance, Lord Marshmoreton would have gone through the place like an east wind, dismissing gardeners and under-gardeners with every breath. But⁠—

She only said “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said.
She said “I am aweary, aweary.
I would that I were dead!”

How exactly⁠—at these moments when she was not out on the links picking them off the turf with a midiron or engaged in one of those other healthful sports which tend to take the mind off its troubles⁠—those words summed up her case.

Why didn’t Geoffrey come? Or at least write? She could not write to him. Letters from the castle left only by way of the castle postbag, which Rogers, the chauffeur, took down to the village every evening. Impossible to entrust the kind of letter she wished to write to any mode of delivery so public⁠—especially now, when her movements were watched. To open and read another’s letters is a low and dastardly act, but she believed that Lady Caroline would do it like a shot. She longed to pour out her heart to Geoffrey in a long, intimate letter, but she did not dare to take the risk of writing for a wider public. Things were bad enough as it was, after that disastrous sortie to London.

At this point a soothing vision came to her⁠—the vision of George Bevan knocking off her brother Percy’s hat. It was the only pleasant thing that had happened almost as far back as she could remember. And then, for the first time, her mind condescended to dwell for a moment on the author of that act, George Bevan, the friend in need, whom she had met only the day before in the lane. What was George doing at Belpher? His presence there was significant, and his words even more so. He had stated explicitly that he wished to help her.

She found herself oppressed by the irony of things. A knight had come to the rescue⁠—but the wrong knight. Why could it not have been Geoffrey who waited in ambush outside the castle, and not a pleasant but negligible stranger? Whether, deep down in her consciousness, she was aware of a fleeting sense of disappointment in Geoffrey, a swiftly passing thought that he had failed her, she could hardly have said, so quickly did she crush it down.

She pondered on the arrival of George. What was the use of his being somewhere in the neighbourhood if she had no means of knowing where she could find him? Situated as she was, she could not wander at will about the countryside, looking for him. And, even if she found him, what then? There was not much that any stranger, however pleasant, could do.

She flushed at a sudden thought. Of course there was something George could do for her if he were willing. He could receive, despatch and deliver letters. If only she could get in touch with him, she could⁠—through him⁠—get in touch with Geoffrey.

The whole world changed for her. The sun was setting and chill little winds had begun to stir the lily-pads, giving a depressing air to the scene, but to Maud it seemed as if all Nature smiled. With the egotism of love, she did not perceive that what she proposed to ask George to do was practically to fulfil the humble role of the hollow tree in which lovers dump letters, to be extracted later; she did not consider George’s feelings at all. He had offered to help her, and this was his job. The world is full of Georges whose task it is to hang about in the background and make themselves unobtrusively useful.

She had reached this conclusion when Albert, who had taken a shortcut the more rapidly to accomplish his errand, burst upon her dramatically from the heart of a rhododendron thicket.

“M’lady! Gentleman give me this to give yer!”

Maud read the note. It was brief, and to the point.

“I am staying near the castle at a cottage they call ‘the one down by Platt’s.’ It is a rather new, redbrick place. You can easily find it. I shall be waiting there if you want me.”

It was signed “The Man in the Cab.”

“Do you know a cottage called ‘the one down by Platt’s,’ Albert?” asked Maud.

“Yes, m’lady. It’s down by Platt’s farm. I see a chicken killed there Wednesday week. Do you know, m’lady, after a chicken’s ’ead is cut orf, it goes running licketty-split?”

Maud shivered slightly. Albert’s fresh young enthusiasms frequently jarred upon her.

“I find a friend of mine is staying there. I want you to take a note to him from me.”

“Very good, m’lady.”

“And, Albert⁠—”

“Yes, m’lady?”

“Perhaps it would be as well if you said nothing about this to any of your friends.”

In Lord Marshmoreton’s study a council of three was sitting in debate. The subject under discussion was that other note which George had written and so ill-advisedly entrusted to one whom he had taken for a guileless gardener. The council consisted of Lord Marshmoreton, looking rather shamefaced, his son Percy looking swollen and serious, and Lady Caroline Byng, looking like a tragedy queen.

“This,”