Uncle Fred in the Springtime

by P. G. Wodehouse

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  ‘I will make myself plain.’

  ‘I still don’t see,’ said Lord Bosham, who had been brooding with bent brows, ‘why he should have slipped kayo drops in —’

  ‘George!’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  Lord Ickenham regarded the young man for a moment with a reproving eye.

  ‘Emsworth,’ he resumed, ‘came to me and told me a strange and romantic story —’

  ‘And now,’ said Valerie, ‘you’re telling us one.’

  ‘My dear! It seemed that he had become sentimentally attached to a certain young woman … or person … or party … however you may choose to describe her —’

  ‘What!’

  Lord Bosham appeared stunned.

  ‘Why, dash it, he was a hundred last birthday!’ ‘Your father is a man of about my own age.’

  ‘And mine,’ said the Duke.

  ‘I should describe him as being in the prime of life.’ ‘Exactly,’ said the Duke.

  ‘I often say that life begins at sixty.’

  ‘So do I,’ said the Duke. ‘Frequently.’

  ‘That, at any rate,’ proceeded Lord Ickenham, ‘was how Emsworth felt. The fever of spring was coursing through his veins, and he told himself that there was life in the old dog yet. I use the expression “old dog” in no derogatory sense. He conceived a deep attachment for this girl, and persuaded me to bring her here as my daughter.’

  Lady Constance had now abandoned altogether any attempt at preserving a patrician calm. She uttered a cry which, if it had proceeded from a less aristocratic source, might almost have been called a squeal..

  ‘What! You mean that my brother is infatuated with that child?’

  ‘Where did he meet her?’ asked Lord Bosham.

  ‘It was his dearest wish,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘to make her his bride.’

  ‘Where did he meet her?’ asked Lord Bosham.

  ‘It not infrequently happens that men in the prime of life pass through what might be described as an Indian summer of the affections, and when this occurs the object of their devotion is generally pretty juvenile.’

  ‘What beats me,’ said Lord Bosham, ‘is where on earth he could have met. I didn’t know the guv’nor ever stirred from the old home.’

  It seemed to Lord Ickenham that this was a line of enquiry which it would be well to check at its source.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t interrupt,’ he said, brusquely.

  ‘Yes, dash it, you oaf,’ said the Duke, ‘stop interrupting.’

  ‘Can’t you see, George,’ cried Lady Constance despairingly, ‘that we are all almost off our heads with worry and anxiety, and you keep interrupting.’

  ‘Very trying,’ said Lord Ickenham.

  Lord Bosham appeared wounded. He was not an abnormally sensitive young man, but this consensus of hostile feeling seemed to hurt him.

  ‘Well, if a chap can’t say a word,’ he said, ‘perhaps you would prefer that I withdrew.’

  ‘Yes, do.’

  ‘Right ho,’ said Lord Bosham. ‘Then I will. Anybody who wants me will find me having a hundred up in the billiard-room. Not that I suppose my movements are of the slightest interest.’

  He strode away, plainly piqued, and his passing seemed to Lord Ickenham to cause a marked improvement in the atmosphere. He had seldom met a young man with such a gift for asking inconvenient questions. Freed of this heckler, he addressed himself to his explanation with renewed confidence.

  ‘Well, as I say, Emsworth had conceived this infatuation for a girl who, in the prime of life though he was, might have been his granddaughter. And he asked me as an old friend to help him. He anticipated that there would be opposition to the match, and his rather ingenious scheme was that I should come to Blandings Castle posing as the Sir Roderick Glossop who was expected, and should bring the girl with me as my daughter. He was good enough to say that my impressive deportment would make an excellent background for her. His idea — shrewd, however one may deplore it — was that you, Lady Constance, would find yourself so attracted by the girl’s personality that the task of revealing the truth to you would become a simple one. He relied on her — I quote his expression — to fascinate you.’

  Lady Constance drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  ‘Oh, did he?’

  The Duke put a question.

  ‘Who is this frightful girl? An absolute outsider, of course?’

  ‘Yes, her origin is humble. She is the daughter of a retired Silver Ring bookie.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘Yes. Well, Emsworth came to me and proposed this scheme, and you can picture my dismay as I listened. Argument, I could see, would have been useless. The man was obsessed.’

  ‘You use such lovely language,’ said Valerie, who had sniffed.

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of writing fairy stories?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I have.’

  ‘You should.’

  The look the Duke cast at the sardonic girl could scarcely have been sourer if she had been Lord Bosham.

  ‘Never mind all that, dash it. First Bosham, now you. Interruptions all the time. Get on, get on, get on. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes?’

  ‘So,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘I did not attempt argument. I agreed to his proposal. The impression I tried to convey — and, I think, succeeded in conveying — was that I approved. I consented to the monstrous suggestion that I should come here under a false name and bring the girl as my daughter. And shall I tell you why?’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Valerie.

  ‘Because a sudden thought had struck me. Was it not possible, I asked myself, that if Emsworth were to see this girl at B landings Castle — in the surroundings of his own home — with the portraits of his ancestors gazing down at her —’

  ‘Dashed ugly set of mugs,’ said the Duke. ‘Why they ever wanted to have themselves painted…. However, never mind that. I see what you’re getting at. You thought it might cause him to take another look at the frightful little squirt and realize he was making an ass of himself?’

  ‘Exactly. And that is just what happened. The scales fell from his eyes. His infatuation ceased as suddenly as it had begun. This evening he told her it could never be, and she has left for London.’

  ‘Then, dash it, everything’s all right.’

  ‘Thank Heaven!’ cried Lady Constance.

  Lord Ickenham shook his head gravely.

  ‘I am afraid you are both overlooking something. There are such things as breach of promise cases.

  ‘What!’

  ‘I fear so. He tells me the girl took the thing badly. She went off muttering threats.’

  ‘Then what is to be done?’

  ‘There is only one thing to be done, Lady Constance. You must make a financial settlement with her.’

  ‘Buy her off,’ explained the Duke. ‘That’s the way to handle it. You can always buy these females off. I recollect, when I was at Oxford…. However, that is neither here nor there. The point is, how much?’

  Lord Ickenham considered.

  ‘A girl of that class,’ he said, at length, ‘would have very limited ideas about money. Three hundred pounds would seem a fortune to her. In fact, I think I might be able to settle with her for two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Odd,’ said the Duke, struck by the coincidence. ‘That was the sum my potty nephew was asking me for this afternoon.’

  ‘Curious,’ said Lord Ickenham.

  ‘Had some dashed silly story about wanting it so that he could get married.’

  ‘Fancy! Well, then, Lady Constance, if you will give me three hundred pounds — to be on the safe side — I will run up to London tomorrow morning and see what I can do.’

  ‘I will write you a cheque.’

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ said the Duke. ‘What you want on these occasions is to roll the money about in front of them in solid cash. That time at Oxford…. And I happe
n, strangely enough, to have that exact sum in this very room.’

  ‘Why, so you have,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘We were talking about it not long ago, weren’t we?’

  The Duke unlocked a drawer in the writing-table.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Take it, and see what you can do. Remember, it is imperative to roll it about.’

  ‘And if more is required —’ said Lady Constance.

  ‘I doubt if it will be necessary to sweeten the kitty any further. This should be ample. But there is one other thing,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘This unfortunate infatuation of Emsworth’s must never be allowed to come out.’

  ‘Well, dash it,’ said the Duke, staring. ‘Of course not. I know, and Connie knows, that Emsworth’s as potty as a March hare, but naturally we don’t want the world to know it.’

  ‘If people got to hear of this,’ said Lady Constance, with a shiver, ‘we should be the laughing stock of the county.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘But there is one danger which does not appear to have occurred to you. It is possible, Valerie, my dear, that you have been thinking of telling your aunt that you met me here.’

  Valerie Twistleton smiled a short, sharp smile. Hers was at the same time a loving and a vengeful nature. She loved her Horace, and it was her intention to punish this erring uncle drastically for the alarm and despondency he had caused him. She had been looking forward with bright anticipation to the cosy talk which she would have with Jane, Countess of Ickenham, on the latter’s return from the South of France.

  ‘It is,’ she said, ‘just possible.’

  Lord Ickenham’s manner was very earnest.

  ‘You mustn’t do it, my dear. It would be fatal. You are probably unaware that your aunt expressed a strong wish that I should remain at Ickenham during her absence. If she discovered that I had disobeyed her instructions, I should be compelled, in order to put things right for myself, to tell her the whole story. And my dear wife,’ said Lord Ickenham, turning to Lady Constance, ‘has just one fault. She is a gossip. With no desire to harm a soul, she would repeat the story. In a week it would be all over England.’

  The imperiousness of a hundred fighting ancestors descended upon Lady Constance.

  ‘Miss Twistleton,’ she said, in the voice which Lord Emsworth would have recognized as the one which got things done, ‘you are not to breathe a word to Lady Ickenham of having met Lord Ickenham here.’

  For an instant, it seemed as if Valerie Twistleton was about to essay the mad task of defying this woman. Then, as their eyes met, she seemed to wilt.

  ‘Very well,’ she said meekly.

  Lord Ickenham’s eyes beamed with fond approval. He placed a kindly hand on her shoulder and patted it.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. My favourite niece,’ he said.

  And he went off to inform Pongo that, owing to having received pennies from heaven, he was in a position not only to solve the tangled affairs of Polly Pott but also to spend nearly three weeks in London with him — with money in his pocket, moreover, to disburse on any little treat that might suggest itself, such as another visit to the Dog Races.

  There was a tender expression on his handsome face as he made his way up the stairs. What a pleasure it was, he was feeling, to be able to scatter sweetness and light. Especially in London in the springtime, when, as has been pointed out, he was always at his best.

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