“Absolutely to-morrow. Now tell me all about your malaria.”
I felt that the time had come for me to leave. It was not merely that the conversation had taken a purely medical turn and that I was practically excluded from it; what was really driving me away was the imperative necessity of getting out in the open somewhere and thinking. My brain was whirling. The world seemed to have become suddenly full of significant and disturbing parrots. I seized my hat and rose. My hostess was able to take only an absent-minded interest in my departure. The last thing I saw as the door closed was Ukridge’s look of big-hearted tenderness as he leaned forward so as not to miss a syllable of his companion’s clinical revelations. He was not actually patting Lady Lakenheath’s hand and telling her to be a brave little woman, but short of that he appeared to be doing everything a man could do to show her that, rugged though his exterior might be, his heart was in the right place and aching for her troubles.
I walked back to my rooms. I walked slowly and pensively, bumping into lamp-posts and pedestrians. It was a relief, when I finally reached Ebury Street, to find Ukridge smoking on my sofa. I was resolved that before he left he should explain what this was all about, if I had to wrench the truth from him.
“Hallo, laddie!” he said. “Upon my Sam, Corky, old horse, did you ever in your puff hear of anything so astounding as our meeting like that? Hope you didn’t mind my pretending not to know you. The fact is my position in that house——What the dickens were you doing there, by the way?”
“I’m helping Lady Lakenheath prepare her husband’s memoirs.”
“Of course, yes. I remember hearing her say she was going to rope in someone. But what a dashed extraordinary thing it should be you! However, where was I? Oh, yes. My position in the house, Corky, is so delicate that I simply didn’t dare risk entering into any entangling alliances. What I mean to say is, if we had rushed into each other’s arms, and you had been established in the old lady’s eyes as a friend of mine, and then one of these days you had happened to make a bloomer of some kind—as you well might, laddie—and got heaved into the street on your left ear—well, you see where I would be. I should be involved in your downfall. And I solemnly assure you, laddie, that my whole existence is staked on keeping in with that female. I must get her consent!”
“Her what?”
“Her consent. To the marriage.”
“The marriage?”
Ukridge blew a cloud of smoke, and gazed through it sentimentally at the ceiling.