Uncle Fred in the Springtime (33 page)

‘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.