A Damsel in Distress - P. G. Wodehouse (best books to read for young adults .TXT) 📗

deep blue eyes and their sweet, pensive expression as they searched the middle distance he seemed like a young angel. How was the watcher to know that the thought behind that far-off gaze was simply a speculation as to whether the bird on the cedar tree was or was not within range of his catapult? Certainly Maud had no such suspicion. She worked hopefully day by day to rouse Albert to an appreciation of the nobler things of life.

Not but what it was tough going. Even she admitted that. Albert’s soul did not soar readily. It refused to leap from the earth. His reception of the poem she was reading could scarcely have been called encouraging. Maud finished it in a hushed voice, and looked pensively across the dappled water of the pool. A gentle breeze stirred the water-lilies, so that they seemed to sigh.

“Isn’t that beautiful, Albert?” she said.

Albert’s blue eyes lit up. His lips parted eagerly,

“That’s the first hornet I seen this year,” he said pointing.

Maud felt a little damped.

“Haven’t you been listening, Albert?”

“Oh, yes, m’lady! Ain’t he a wopper, too?”

“Never mind the hornet, Albert.”

“Very good, m’lady.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘Very good, m’lady.’ It’s like⁠—like⁠—” She paused. She had been about to say that it was like a butler, but, she reflected regretfully, it was probably Albert’s dearest ambition to be like a butler. “It doesn’t sound right. Just say ‘Yes.’ ”

“Yes, m’lady.”

Maud was not enthusiastic about the “M’lady,” but she let it go. After all, she had not quite settled in her own mind what exactly she wished Albert’s attitude towards herself to be. Broadly speaking, she wanted him to be as like as he could to a medieval page, one of those silk-and-satined little treasures she had read about in the Ingoldsby Legends. And, of course, they presumably said “my lady.” And yet⁠—she felt⁠—not for the first time⁠—that it is not easy, to revive the Middle Ages in these curious days. Pages like other things, seem to have changed since then.

“That poem was written by a very clever man who married one of my ancestresses. He ran away with her from this very castle in the seventeenth century.”

“Lor’,” said Albert as a concession, but he was still interested in the hornet.

“He was far below her in the eyes of the world, but she knew what a wonderful man he was, so she didn’t mind what people said about her marrying beneath her.”

“Like Susan when she married the pleeceman.”

“Who was Susan?”

“Red-’eaded gel that used to be cook ’ere. Mr. Keggs says to ’er, ’e says, ‘You’re marrying beneath you, Susan,’ ’e says. I ’eard ’im. I was listenin’ at the door. And she says to ’im, she says, ‘Oh, go and boil your fat ’ead,’ she says.”

This translation of a favourite romance into terms of the servants’ hall chilled Maud like a cold shower. She recoiled from it.

“Wouldn’t you like to get a good education, Albert,” she said perseveringly, “and become a great poet and write wonderful poems?”

Albert considered the point, and shook his head.

“No, m’lady.”

It was discouraging. But Maud was a girl of pluck. You cannot leap into strange cabs in Piccadilly unless you have pluck. She picked up another book from the stone seat.

“Read me some of this,” she said, “and then tell me if it doesn’t make you feel you want to do big things.”

Albert took the book cautiously. He was getting a little fed up with all this sort of thing. True, ’er ladyship gave him chocolates to eat during these sessions, but for all that it was too much like school for his taste. He regarded the open page with disfavour.

“Go on,” said Maud, closing her eyes. “It’s very beautiful.”

Albert began. He had a husky voice, due, it is to be feared, to precocious cigarette smoking, and his enunciation was not as good as it might have been.

“Wiv’ blekest morss the flower-ports
Was-I mean were-crusted one and orl;
Ther rusted niles fell from the knorts
That ’eld the pear to the garden-worll.
Ther broken sheds looked sed and stringe;
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn their ancient thatch
Er-pon ther lownely moated gringe,
She only said ‘Me life is dreary,
’E cometh not,’ she said.”

Albert rather liked this part. He was never happy in narrative unless it could be sprinkled with a plentiful supply of “he said’s” and “she said’s.” He finished with some gusto.

“She said - I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I was dead.”

Maud had listened to this rendition of one of her most adored poems with much the same feeling which a composer with an oversensitive ear would suffer on hearing his pet opus assassinated by a schoolgirl. Albert, who was a willing lad and prepared, if such should be her desire, to plough his way through the entire seven stanzas, began the second verse, but Maud gently took the book away from him. Enough was sufficient.

“Now, wouldn’t you like to be able to write a wonderful thing like that, Albert?”

“Not me, m’lady.”

“You wouldn’t like to be a poet when you grow up?”

Albert shook his golden head.

“I want to be a butcher when I grow up, m’lady.”

Maud uttered a little cry.

“A butcher?”

“Yus, m’lady. Butchers earn good money,” he said, a light of enthusiasm in his blue eyes, for he was now on his favourite subject. “You’ve got to ’ave meat, yer see, m’lady. It ain’t like poetry, m’lady, which no one wants.”

“But, Albert,” cried Maud faintly. “Killing poor animals. Surely you wouldn’t like that?”

Albert’s eyes glowed softly, as might an acolyte’s at the sight of the censer.

“Mr. Widgeon down at the ’ome farm,” he murmured reverently, “he says, if I’m a good boy, ’e’ll let me watch ’im kill a pig Toosday.”

He gazed out over the water-lilies, his thoughts far away. Maud shuddered. She wondered if medieval pages were ever quite as earthy as this.

“Perhaps you had better go now, Albert. They may be needing you in the house.”

“Very good, m’lady.”

Albert rose, not unwilling to call it a day.