Uncle Fred in the Springtime (15 page)

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘Chap
who comes whistling and singing outside my window,’ said the Duke, like the
heroine of an old-fashioned novelette speaking of her lover. ‘I’ve been trying
to get to grips with him ever since I arrived, but he eludes me. Well I can
wait. I’ve got a dozen best new-laid eggs in my room, and sooner or later….
But I was telling you about Horace.’

‘Yes, I
want to hear all about Horace. Your nephew, you say?’

‘One of
them. My late brother’s son. He’s potty. The other’s my late sister’s son. He’s
potty, too. My late brother was potty. So was my late sister.’

‘And
where would you rank Horace in this galaxy of goofiness? Is he, in your opinion,
above or below the family average?’

The
Duke considered.

‘Above.
Decidedly above. After what happened in the hall just now, most emphatically
above. Do you know what happened in the hall just now?’

‘I’m
sorry, no. I’m a stranger in these parts myself.’

‘It
shocked me profoundly.’

‘What
happened in the hall?’

‘And
always the “Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond”,’ said the Duke peevishly. ‘A
song I’ve hated all my life. Who wrote the beastly thing?’

‘Burns,
I believe. But you were going to tell me what happened in the hall.’

‘Yes.
So I was. It showed me that I had wronged that chap Baxter. I expect you met
Baxter at the station. My secretary. He was on your train. He should have come
down with me, but he insisted on remaining in London on the plea that he had
work to do in connection with a history of my family that I’m writing. I didn’t
believe him. It seemed to me that he had a furtive look in his eye. My feeling
all along was that he was planning to go on some toot. And when Horace told me
this morning that he had seen him at some dance or other a couple of nights
ago, leaping about all over the place in the costume of a Corsican brigand, I
was all ready for him. The moment his foot crossed the threshold, I sacked him.
And then this thing happened in the hall.’

‘You
were going to tell me about that, weren’t you?’

‘I am
telling you about it. It was when we were in the hall. Connie had taken your
daughter out to show her the portraits in the gallery, though why any girl
should be supposed to be anxious to look at that collection of gargoyles is
more than I can imagine. I should be vastly surprised to learn that there was
an uglier lot of devils in the whole of England than Emsworth’s ancestors.
However, be that as it may, Connie had taken your daughter to see them, leaving
Bosham and your nephew and myself in the hall.

And in
comes Horace. And no sooner had I directed his attention to your nephew than he
gives a jump and says “Pongo!” See! “Pongo!” Like that. Your nephew looked
taken aback, and said in a low voice that his name was Basil.’

‘Brave
lad!’

‘What?’

‘I
said, “Brave lad!”‘

‘Why?’

‘Why
not?’ argued Lord Ickenham.

The
Duke turned this over for a moment, and seemed to see justice in it.

‘What
had happened, you see, was that Horace had mistaken him for a friend of his.
Well, all right. Nothing so very remarkable about that, you are saying. Sort of
thing that might happen to anyone. Quite. But mark the sequel. If Burns thought
“Loch Lomond” rhymes with “before ye”,’ said the Duke, with a return of his
peevishness, ‘he must have been a borderline case.’

‘And
the sequel, you were about to say?’

‘Eh?
Oh, the sequel. I’m coming to that. Not that there are many rhymes to “Loch
Lomond”. Got to be fair to the chap, I suppose. Yes, the sequel. Well, right on
top of this, Connie comes back with your daughter. She’s charming.’

‘I have
not met Lady Constance.’

‘Your
daughter, I mean.’

‘Oh,
very. Her name is Gwendoline.’

‘So she
told us. But that didn’t stop Horace from going up to her and calling her
Polly.’

‘Polly?’

‘Polly.
“Why, hullo, Polly!” were his exact words.’

Lord
Ickenham reflected.

‘The
conclusion that suggests itself is that he had mistaken her for a girl called
Polly.’

‘Exactly.
The very thought that flashed on me. Well, you can imagine that that made me realize
that matters were grave. One bloomer of that sort — yes. But when it happens
twice in two minutes, you begin to fear the worst. I’ve always been uneasy
about Horace’s mental condition, ever since he had measles as a boy and
suddenly shot up to the height of about eight foot six. It stands to reason a
chap’s brain can’t be all that way from his heart and still function normally.
Look at the distance the blood’s got to travel. Well, here we are,’ said the
Duke, as they passed through the great front door that stood hospitably open. ‘Hullo,
where’s everybody? Dressing, I suppose. You’ll be wanting to go to your room. I’ll
take you there. You’re in the Red Room. The bathroom’s at the end of the
passage. What was I saying? Oh, yes. I said I began to fear the worst. I
reasoned the whole thing out. A chap can’t be eight foot six and the son of my
late brother and expect to carry on as if nothing had happened. Something’s
bound to give. I remembered what he had told me about thinking he had seen
Baxter at the Ball, and it suddenly struck me like a blow that he must have
developed — I don’t know what you call it, but I suppose there’s some
scientific term for it when a feller starts seeing things.’

‘You
mean a sublunary medulla oblongata diathesis.’

‘Very
possibly. I can see now why that girl broke off the engagement. She must have
realized that he had got this — whatever it was you said, and decided it wasn’t
good enough. No girl wants a potty husband, though it’s dashed hard not to get
one nowadays. Here’s your room. I wish you would see what you can do for the
boy. Can’t you examine him or something?’

‘I
shall be delighted to examine him. Just give me time to have a bath, and I will
be at his disposal.’

‘Then I’ll
send him to you. If there’s anything to be done for him, I’d be glad if you
would do it. What with him and Bosham and Emsworth and that whistling feller, I
feel as if I were living in a private asylum, and I don’t like it.’

The
Duke stumped off, and Lord Ickenham, armed with his great sponge Joyeuse, made
his way to the bathroom. He had just got back from a refreshing dip, when there
was a knock at the door and Horace entered. And, having done so, he stood
staring dumbly.

Horace
Davenport’s face had two features that called for attention. From his father he
had inherited the spacious Dunstable nose; from his mother, a
Hilsbury-Hepworth, the large, fawnlike eyes which distinguish that family. This
nose, as he gazed at Lord Ickenham, was twitching like a rabbit’s, and in the
eyes behind their tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles there was dawning slowly a
look of incredulous horror. It was as if he had been cast for the part of
Macbeth and was starting to run through the Banquo’s ghost scene.

The events of the evening
had come as a great shock to Horace. Firmly convinced for some time past that
his Uncle Alaric was one of England’s outstanding schizophrenic cases, a
naturally nervous disposition had led him to look on the latter’s mental condition
as something which might at any moment spread to himself, like a cold in the
head. The double hallucination which he had so recently experienced, coming on
top of the delusion he had had about seeing Baxter at the Ball, had rendered
him apprehensive in the last degree, and he had welcomed the suggestion that he
should get together with Sir Roderick Glossop for a quiet talk.

And
now, so all his senses told him, he was suffering yet another hallucination. In
the bath-robed figure before him, he could have sworn that he was gazing at his
late
fiancée’s
uncle, the Earl of Ickenham.

Yet
this was the Red Room, and in the Red Room he had been specifically informed,
Sir Roderick Glossop was to be found. Moreover, in the other’s demeanour there
was no suggestion of recognition, merely a courteous air of mild enquiry.

After
what seemed an age-long pause, he managed to speak.

‘Sir
Roderick Glossop?’

‘Yes.’

‘Er —
my name’s Davenport.’

‘Of
course, yes. Come in, my dear fellow. You won’t mind if I dress while we are
talking? I haven’t left myself too much time.’

Horace
watched him with a dazed eye as he dived with boyish animation into a studded
shirt. The grey head, popping out a moment later at shirt’s end, gave him a
renewed sense of shock, so intensely Ickenhamian was it in every respect.

A
sudden feeble hope came to him that this time there might be a simple
explanation. It might prove to be one of those cases of extraordinary physical
resemblance of which you read in the papers.

‘I — er
— I say,’ he asked, ‘do you by any chance know a man named Lord Ickenham?’

‘Lord
Ickenham?’ said Lord Ickenham, springing into dress trousers like a trained
acrobat. ‘Yes. I’ve met him.’

‘You’re
amazingly like him, aren’t you?’

Lord
Ickenham did not reply for a moment. He was tying his tie, and on these occasions
the conscientious man anxious to give of his best at the dinner table rivets
his attention on the task in hand. Presently the frown passed from his face,
and he was his genial self again.

‘I’m
afraid I missed that. You were saying —’

‘You
and Lord Ickenham look exactly alike, don’t you?’

His companion
seemed surprised.

‘Well,
that’s a thing nobody has ever said to me before. Considering that Lord
Ickenham is tall and slender — while I am short and stout….’

‘Short?’

‘Quite
short.’

‘And
stout?’

‘Extremely
stout.’

A low
gulp escaped Horace Davenport. It might have been the expiring gurgle of that
feeble hope. The sound caused his companion to look at him sharply, and as he
did so his manner changed.

‘You
really must forgive me,’ he said. ‘I fear I missed the point of what you have
been saying. Inexcusable of me, for your uncle gave me your case history. He
told me how in the hall this evening you mistook my daughter and nephew for old
acquaintances, and there was something about thinking that a man you saw at
some Ball in London was his secretary Mr Baxter. Was that the first time this
sort of thing happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.
The delusion metabolis came on quite suddenly, as it so often does. Can you
suggest anything that might account for it?’

Horace
hesitated. He shrank from putting his secret fears into words. ‘Well, I was
wondering….’

‘Yes?’

‘Is
loopiness hereditary?’

‘It can
be, no doubt.’

‘Noses
are.’

‘True.’

‘This
beezer of mine has come down through the ages.’

‘Indeed?’

‘So
what I was wondering was, if a chap’s got a dotty uncle, is he bound to catch
it?’

‘I
would not say it was inevitable. Still…. How dotty is your uncle?’

‘Quite
fairly dotty.’

‘I see.
Had your father any such structural weakness?’

‘No.
No, he was all right. He collected Japanese prints,’ said Horace, with an
afterthought.

‘He
didn’t think he
was
a Japanese print?’

‘Oh,
no. Rather not.’

‘Then
that is all right. I feel sure that there need be no real anxiety. I am
convinced that all that we are suffering from is some minor nervous lesion,
brought about possibly by worry. Have we been worried lately?’

The
question seemed to affect Horace Davenport much as it might have affected Job.
He stared at his companion as at one who does not know the half of it.

‘Have
we!’

‘We
have?’

‘You
bet we have.’

‘Then
what we need is a long sea voyage.’

‘But,
dash it, we’re a rotten sailor. Would you mind awfully if we got a second
opinion?’

‘By all
means.’

‘The
other chap might simply tell us to go to Bournemouth or somewhere.’

‘Bournemouth
would be just as good. We came here in our car, did we not? Then directly after
dinner I advise that we steal quietly off, without going through the strain of
saying goodbye to anyone, and drive to London. Having reached London, we can
pack anything that may be necessary and go to Bournemouth and stay there.’

‘And
you think that that will put us right?’

‘Unquestionably.’

‘And
one other point. Would there be any medical objection to just one good, stiff,
energetic binge in London? You see,’ said Horace, with a touch of apology, ‘we
do rather feel, what with one thing and another, as if we wanted taking out of
ourself at the moment.’