Love Among the Chickens

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Title: Love Among the Chickens
A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Illustrator: Armand Both
Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20532]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE AMONG THE CHICKENS ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Arthur Robinson, Sankar
Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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[Illustration: "Never mind the ink, old horse. It'll soak in."]
LOVE AMONG
THE CHICKENS
A STORY
OF THE HAPS AND MISHAPS ON
AN ENGLISH CHICKEN FARM
BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
ILLUSTRATED BY
ARMAND BOTH
NEW YORK
THE CIRCLE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1909
_Copyright, 1908, by_
A. E. BAERMAN
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. --A LETTER WITH A POSTSCRIPT
II. --UKRIDGE'S SCHEME
III. --WATERLOO, SOME FELLOW-TRAVELERS, AND A GIRL WITH BROWN HAIR
IV. --THE ARRIVAL
V. --BUCKLING TO
VI. --MR. GARNET'S NARRATIVE. HAS TO DO WITH A REUNION
VII. --THE ENTENTE CORDIALE IS SEALED
VIII. --A LITTLE DINNER AT UKRIDGE'S
IX. --DIES IRÆ
X. --I ENLIST THE SERVICES OF A MINION
XI. --THE BRAVE PRESERVER
XII. --SOME EMOTIONS AND YELLOW LUBIN
XIII. --TEA AND TENNIS
XIV. --A COUNCIL OF WAR
XV. --THE ARRIVAL OF NEMESIS
XVI. --A CHANCE MEETING
XVII. --OF A SENTIMENTAL NATURE
XVIII. --UKRIDGE GIVES ME ADVICE
XIX. --I ASK PAPA
XX. --SCIENTIFIC GOLF
XXI. --THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
XXII. --THE STORM BREAKS
XXIII. --AFTER THE STORM
EPILOGUE
* * * * *
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Never mind the ink, old horse. It'll soak in" _Frontispiece_
They had a momentary vision of an excited dog, framed in the doorway
"I've only bin and drove 'im further up," said Mrs. Beale
Things were not going very well on our model chicken farm
"Mr. Garnet," he said, "we parted recently in anger. I hope that
bygones will be bygones"
"I did think Mr. Garnet would have fainted when the best man said, 'I
can't find it, old horse'"
* * * * *
_A LETTER with a
POSTSCRIPT_
I
Mr. Jeremy Garnet stood with his back to the empty grate--for the time
was summer--watching with a jaundiced eye the removal of his breakfast
things.
"Mrs. Medley," he said.
"Sir?"
"Would it bore you if I became auto-biographical?"
"Sir?"
"Never mind. I merely wish to sketch for your benefit a portion of my
life's history. At eleven o'clock last night I went to bed, and at
once sank into a dreamless sleep. About four hours later there was a
clattering on the stairs which shook the house like a jelly. It was
the gentleman in the top room--I forget his name--returning to roost.
He was humming a patriotic song. A little while later there were a
couple of loud crashes. He had removed his boots. All this while
snatches of the patriotic song came to me through the ceiling of my
bedroom. At about four-thirty there was a lull, and I managed to get
to sleep again. I wish when you see that gentleman, Mrs. Medley, you
would give him my compliments, and ask him if he could shorten his
program another night. He might cut out the song, for a start."
"He's a very young gentleman, sir," said Mrs. Medley, in vague defense
of her top room.
"And it's highly improbable," said Garnet, "that he will ever grow
old, if he repeats his last night's performance. I have no wish to
shed blood wantonly, but there are moments when one must lay aside
one's personal prejudices, and act for the good of the race. A man who
hums patriotic songs at four o'clock in the morning doesn't seem to me
to fit into the scheme of universal happiness. So you will mention it
to him, won't you?"
"Very well, sir," said Mrs. Medley, placidly.
On the strength of the fact that he wrote for the newspapers and had
published two novels, Mrs. Medley regarded Mr. Garnet as an eccentric
individual who had to be humored. Whatever he did or said filled her
with a mild amusement. She received his daily harangues in the same
spirit as that in which a nurse listens to the outpourings of the
family baby. She was surprised when he said anything sensible enough
for her to understand.
His table being clear of breakfast and his room free from disturbing
influences, the exhilaration caused by his chat with his landlady
left Mr. Garnet. Life seemed very gray to him. He was a conscientious
young man, and he knew that he ought to sit down and do some work. On
the other hand, his brain felt like a cauliflower, and he could not
think what to write about. This is one of the things which sour the
young author even more than do those long envelopes which so
tastefully decorate his table of a morning.
He felt particularly unfitted for writing at that moment. The morning
is not the time for inventive work. An article may be polished then,
or a half-finished story completed, but 11 A.M. is not the hour at
which to invent.
Jerry Garnet wandered restlessly about his sitting room. Rarely had it
seemed so dull and depressing to him as it did then. The photographs
on the mantelpiece irritated him. There was no change in them. They
struck him as the concrete expression of monotony. His eye was caught
by a picture hanging out of the straight. He jerked it to one side,
and the effect became worse. He jerked it back again, and the thing
looked as if it had been hung in a dim light by an astigmatic
drunkard. Five minutes' pulling and hauling brought it back to a
position only a shade less crooked than that in which he had found it,
and by that time his restlessness had grown like a mushroom.
He looked out of the window. The sunlight was playing on the house
opposite. He looked at his boots. At this point conscience prodded him
sharply.
"I won't," he muttered fiercely, "I will work. I'll turn out
something, even if it's the worst rot ever written."
With which admirable sentiment he tracked his blotting pad to its
hiding place (Mrs. Medley found a fresh one every day), collected ink
and pens, and sat down.
There was a distant thud from above, and shortly afterwards a thin
tenor voice made itself heard above a vigorous splashing. The young
gentleman on the top floor was starting another day.
"Oi'll--er--sing thee saw-ongs"--brief pause, then in a triumphant
burst, as if the singer had just remembered the name--"ovarraby."
Mr. Garnet breathed a prayer and glared at the ceiling.
The voice continued:
"Ahnd--er--ta-ales of fa-arr Cahsh-meerer."
Sudden and grewsome pause. The splashing ceased. The singer could
hardly have been drowned in a hip bath, but Mr. Garnet hoped for the
best.
His hopes were shattered.
"Come," resumed the young gentleman persuasively, "into the garden,
Maud, for ther black batter nah-eet hath--er--florn."
Jerry Garnet sprang from his seat and paced the room.
"This is getting perfectly impossible," he said to himself. "I must
get out of this. A fellow can't work in London. I'll go down to some
farmhouse in the country. I can't think here. You might just as well
try to work at a musical 'At Home.'"
Here followed certain remarks about the young man upstairs, who was
now, in lighter vein, putting in a spell at a popular melody from the
Gaiety Theater.
He resumed his seat and set himself resolutely to hammer out something
which, though it might not be literature, would at least be capable of
being printed. A search through his commonplace book brought no balm.
A commonplace book is the author's rag bag. In it he places all the
insane ideas that come to him, in the groundless hope that some day he
will be able to convert them with magic touch into marketable plots.
This was the luminous item which first met Mr. Garnet's eye:
_Mem._ Dead body found in railway carriage under seat. Only one living
occupant of carriage. He is suspected of being the murderer, but
proves that he only entered carriage at twelve o'clock in the morning,
while the body has been dead since the previous night.
To this bright scheme were appended the words:
This will want some working up.
J. G.
"It will," thought Jerry Garnet grimly, "but it will have to go on
wanting as far as I'm concerned."
The next entry he found was a perfectly inscrutable lyric outburst.
There are moments of annoyance,
Void of every kind of joyance,
In the complicated course of Man's affairs;
But the very worst of any
He experiences when he
Meets a young, but active, lion on the stairs.
Sentiment unexceptionable. But as to the reason for the existence of
the fragment, his mind was a blank. He shut the book impatiently. It
was plain that no assistance was to be derived from it.
His thoughts wandered back to the idea of leaving London. London might
have suited Dr. Johnson, but he had come to the conclusion that what
he wanted to enable him to give the public of his best (as the
reviewer of the _Academy_, dealing with his last work, had expressed a
polite hope that he would continue to do) was country air. A farmhouse
by the sea somewhere ... cows ... spreading boughs ... rooks ...
brooks ... cream. In London the day stretches before a man, if he has
no regular and appointed work to do, like a long, white, dusty road.
It seems impossible to get to the end of it without vast effort. But
in the country every hour has its amusements. Up with the lark.
Morning dip. Cheery greetings. Local color. Huge breakfast. Long
walks. Flannels. The ungirt loin. Good, steady spell of work from
dinner till bedtime. The prospect fascinated him. His third novel was
already in a nebulous state in his brain. A quiet week or two in the
country would enable him to get it into shape.
He took from the pocket of his blazer a letter which had arrived some
days before from an artist friend of his who was on a sketching tour
in Devonshire and Somerset. There was a penciled memorandum on the
envelope in his own handwriting:
_Mem._ Might work K. L.'s story about M. and the W--s's into comic
yarn for one of the weeklies.
He gazed at this for a while, with a last hope that in it might be
contained the germ of something which would enable him to turn out a
morning's work; but having completely forgotten who K. L. was, and
especially what was his (or her) story about M., whoever he (or she)
might be, he abandoned this hope and turned to the letter in the
envelope.
The earlier portions of the letter dealt tantalizingly with the
scenery. "Bits," come upon by accident at the end of disused lanes and
transferred with speed to canvas, were described concisely but with
sufficient breadth to make Garnet long to see them for himself. There
were brief _résumés_ of dialogues between Lickford (the writer) and
weird rustics. The whole letter breathed of the country and the open
air. The atmosphere of Garnet's sitting room seemed to him to become
stuffier with every sentence he read.
The postscript interested him.
"... By the way, at Yeovil I came across an old friend of yours.
Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge, of all people. As large as
life--quite six foot two, and tremendously filled out. I thought he
was abroad. The last I heard of him was that he had started for Buenos
Ayres in a cattle-ship. It seems he has been in England sometime. I
met him in the refreshment room at Yeovil station. I was waiting for a
down train; he had changed on his way to town. As I opened the door I
heard a huge voice in a more or less violent altercation, and there
was S. F. U., in a villainous old suit of gray flannels (I'll swear it
was the same one that he had on last time I saw him), and a
mackintosh, though it was a blazing hot day. His pince-nez were tacked
onto his ears with wire as usual. He greeted me with effusive shouts,
and drew me aside. Then after a few commonplaces of greeting, he
fumbled in his pockets, looked pained and surprised.
"'Look here, Licky,' he said. 'You know I never borrow. It's against
my principles. But I _must_ have a shilling, or I'm a ruined man. I
seem to have had my pocket picked by some scoundrelly blackguard. Can
you, my dear fellow, oblige me with a shilling until next Tuesday
afternoon at three-thirty? I never borrow, so I'll tell you what I'll
do. I'll let you have this (producing a beastly little three-penny-bit
with a hole in it) until I can pay you back. This is of more value to
me than I can well express, Licky, my boy. A very, very dear friend
gave it to me when we parted, years ago. It's a wrench to part with
it. But grim necessity ... I can hardly do it.... Still, no, no, ...
you must take it, you must take it. Licky, old man, shake hands!
Shake hands, my boy!'
"He then asked after you, and said you were the noblest man--except
me--on earth. I gave him your address, not being able to get out of
it, but if I were you I should fly while there is yet time."
"That," said Jerry Garnet, "is the soundest bit of advice I've heard.
I will."
"Mrs. Medley," he said, when that lady made her appearance.
"Sir?"
"I'm going away for a few weeks. You can let the rooms if you like.
I'll drop you a line when I think of coming back."
"Yes, sir. And your letters. Where shall I send them, sir?"
"Till further notice," said Jerry Garnet, pulling out a giant
portmanteau from a corner of the room and flinging it open, "care of
the Dalai Lama, No. 3 Younghusband Terrace, Tibet."
"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Medley placidly.
"I'll write you my address to-night. I don't know where I'm going yet.
Is that an A. B. C. over there? Good. Give my love to that bright
young spirit on the top floor, and tell him that I hope my not being
here to listen won't interfere in any way with his morning popular
concerts."
"Yes, sir."
"And, Mrs. Medley, if a man named ----"
Mrs. Medley had drifted silently away. During his last speech a
thunderous knocking had begun on the front door.
Jerry Garnet stood and listened, transfixed. Something seemed to tell
him who was at the business end of that knocker.
He heard Mrs. Medley's footsteps pass along the hall and pause at the
door. Then there was the click of the latch. Then a volume of sound
rushed up to him where he stood over his empty portmanteau.
"Is Mr. Garnet in?"
Mrs. Medley's reply was inaudible, but apparently in the affirmative.
"Where is he?" boomed the voice. "Show me the old horse. First floor.
Thank you. Where is the man of wrath?"
There followed a crashing on the stairs such as even the young
gentleman of the top floor had been unable to produce in his nocturnal
rovings. The house shook.
And with the tramping came the thunderous voice, as the visitor once
more gave tongue.
"Garnet! GARNET!! GARNET!!!"
UKRIDGE'S SCHEME
II
Mr. Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge dashed into the room, uttering a
roar of welcome as he caught sight of Garnet, still standing petrified
athwart his portmanteau.
"My dear old man," he shouted, springing at him and seizing his hand
in a clutch that effectually woke Garnet from his stupor. "How _are_
you, old chap? This is good. By Jove, this is good! This is fine,
what?"
He dashed back to the door and looked out.
"Come on, Millie," he shouted.
Garnet was wondering who in the name of fortune Millie could possibly
be, when there appeared on the further side of Mr. Ukridge the figure
of a young woman. She paused in the doorway, and smiled pleasantly.
"Garnet, old horse," said Ukridge with some pride, "let me introduce
you to my wife. Millie, this is old Garnet. You've heard me talk about
him."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Ukridge.
Garnet bowed awkwardly. The idea of Ukridge married was something too
overpowering to be assimilated on the instant. If ever there was a man
designed by nature to be a bachelor, Stanley Ukridge was that man.
Garnet could feel that he himself was not looking his best. He knew in
a vague, impersonal way that his eyebrows were still somewhere in the
middle of his forehead, whither they had sprung in the first moment of
surprise, and that his jaw, which had dropped, had not yet resumed
its normal posture. Before committing himself to speech he made a
determined effort to revise his facial expression.
"Buck up, old horse," said Ukridge. He had a painful habit of
addressing all and sundry by that title. In his school-master days he
had made use of it while interviewing the parents of new pupils, and
the latter had gone away, as a rule, with a feeling that this must be
either the easy manner of genius or spirits, and hoping for the best.
Later, he had used it to perfect strangers in the streets. On one
occasion he had been heard to address a bishop by that title.
"Surprised to find me married, what? Garny, old boy"--sinking his
voice to what was intended to be a whisper--"take my tip. You go and
do the same. You feel another man. Give up this bachelor business.
It's a mug's game. Go and get married, my boy, go and get married. By
gad, I've forgotten to pay the cabby. Half a moment."
He was out of the door and on his way downstairs before the echoes of
his last remark had ceased to shake the window of the sitting room.
Garnet was left to entertain Mrs. Ukridge.
So far her share in the conversation had been small. Nobody talked
very much when Ukridge was on the scene. She sat on the edge of
Garnet's big basket chair, looking very small and quiet. She smiled
pleasantly, as she had done during the whole of the preceding
dialogue. It was apparently her chief form of expression.
Jerry Garnet felt very friendly toward her. He could not help pitying
her. Ukridge, he thought, was a very good person to know casually, but
a little of him, as his former headmaster had once said in a moody,
reflective voice, went a very long way. To be bound to him for life
was not the ideal state for a girl. If he had been a girl, he felt,
he would as soon have married a volcano.
"And she's so young," he thought, as he looked across at the basket
chair. "Quite a kid."
"You and Stanley have known each other a long time, haven't you?" said
the object of his pity, breaking the silence.
"Yes. Oh, yes," said Garnet. "Several years. We were masters at the
same school together."
Mrs. Ukridge leaned forward with round, shining eyes.
"Isn't he a _wonderful_ man, Mr. Garnet!" she said ecstatically.
Not yet, to judge from her expression and the tone of her voice, had
she had experience of the disadvantages attached to the position of
Mrs. Stanley Ukridge.
Garnet could agree with her there.
"Yes, he is certainly wonderful," he said.
"I believe he could do anything."
"Yes," said Garnet. He believed that Ukridge was at least capable of
anything.
"He has done so many things. Have you ever kept fowls?" she broke off
with apparent irrelevance.
"No," said Garnet. "You see, I spend so much of my time in town. I
should find it difficult."
Mrs. Ukridge looked disappointed.
"I was hoping you might have had some experience. Stanley, of course,
can turn his hand to anything, but I think experience is such a good
thing, don't you?"
"It is," said Garnet, mystified. "But--"
"I have bought a shilling book called 'Fowls and All About Them,' but
it is very hard to understand. You see, we--but here is Stanley. He
will explain it all."
"Well, Garnet, old horse," said Ukridge, reëntering the room after
another energetic passage of the stairs, "settle down and let's talk
business. Found cabby gibbering on doorstep. Wouldn't believe I didn't
want to bilk him. Had to give him an extra shilling. But now, about
business. Lucky to find you in, because I've got a scheme for you,
Garny, old boy. Yes, sir, the idea of a thousand years. Now listen to
me for a moment."
He sat down on the table and dragged a chair up as a leg rest. Then he
took off his pince-nez, wiped them, readjusted the wire behind his
ears, and, having hit a brown patch on the knee of his gray flannel
trousers several times in the apparent hope of removing it, began to
speak.
"About fowls," he said.
"What about them?" asked Garnet. The subject was beginning to interest
him. It showed a curious tendency to creep into the conversation.
"I want you to give me your undivided attention for a moment," said
Ukridge. "I was saying to my wife only the other day: 'Garnet's the
man. Clever man, Garnet. Full of ideas.' Didn't I, Millie?"
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge, smiling.
"Well?" said Garnet.
"The fact is," said Ukridge, with a Micawber-like burst of candor, "we
are going to keep fowls."
He stopped and looked at Garnet in order to see the effect of the
information. Garnet bore it with fortitude.
"Yes?" he said.
Ukridge shifted himself farther on to the table and upset the inkpot.
"Never mind," he said, "it'll soak in. Don't you worry about that, you
keep listening to me. When I said we meant to keep fowls, I didn't
mean in a small sort of way--two cocks and a couple of hens and a
ping-pong ball for a nest egg. We are going to do it on a large scale.
We are going to keep," he concluded impressively, "a chicken farm!"
"A chicken farm," echoed Mrs. Ukridge with an affectionate and
admiring glance at her husband.
"Ah," said Garnet, who felt his responsibilities as chorus.
"I've thought it all out," continued Ukridge, "and it's as clear as
mud. No expenses, large profits, quick returns. Chickens, eggs, and no
work. By Jove, old man, it's the idea of a lifetime. Just listen to me
for a moment. You buy your hen--"
"One hen?" inquired Garnet.
"Call it one for the sake of argument. It makes my calculations
clearer. Very well, then. You buy your hen. It lays an egg every day
of the week. You sell the eggs--say--six for fivepence. Keep of hen
costs nothing. Profit at least fourpence, three farthings on every
half-dozen eggs. What do you think of that, Bartholomew?"
Garnet admitted that it sounded like an attractive scheme, but
expressed a wish to overhaul the figures in case of error.
"Error!" shouted Ukridge, pounding the table with such energy that it
groaned beneath him. "Error? Not a bit of it. Can't you follow a
simple calculation like that? The thing is, you see, you get your
original hen for next to nothing. That's to say, on tick. Anybody will
let you have a hen on tick. Now listen to me for a moment. You let
your hen set, and hatch chickens. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Very
well, then. When each of the dozen has a dozen chickens, you send the
old hens back with thanks for the kind loan, and there you are,
starting business with a hundred and forty-four free chickens to your
name. And after a bit, when the chickens grow up and begin to lay, all
you have to do is to sit back in your chair and gather in the big
checks. Isn't that so, Millie?"
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge with shining eyes.
"We've fixed it all up. Do you know Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire? On the
borders of Devon. Quiet little fishing village. Bathing. Sea air.
Splendid scenery. Just the place for a chicken farm. I've been looking
after that. A friend of my wife's has lent us a jolly old house with
large grounds. All we've got to do is to get in the fowls. That's all
right. I've ordered the first lot. We shall find them waiting for us
when we arrive."
"Well," said Garnet, "I'm sure I wish you luck. Mind you let me know
how you get on."
"Let you know!" roared Ukridge. "Why, old horse, you've got to come,
too. We shall take no refusal. Shall we, Millie?"
"No, dear," murmured Mrs. Ukridge.
"Of course not," said Ukridge. "No refusal of any sort. Pack up
to-night, and meet us at Waterloo to-morrow."
"It's awfully good of you--" began Garnet a little blankly.
"Not a bit of it, not a bit of it. This is pure business. I was saying
to my wife when we came in that you were the very man for us. 'If old
Garnet's in town,' I said, 'we'll have him. A man with his flow of
ideas will be invaluable on a chicken farm.' Didn't I, Millie?"
Mrs. Ukridge murmured the response.
"You see, I'm one of these practical men. I go straight ahead,
following my nose. What you want in a business of this sort is a touch
of the dreamer to help out the practical mind. We look to you for
suggestions, Montmorency. Timely suggestions with respect to the
comfort and upbringing of the fowls. And you can work. I've seen you.
Of course you take your share of the profits. That's understood. Yes,
yes, I must insist. Strict business between friends. We must arrange
it all when we get down there. My wife is the secretary of the firm.
She has been writing letters to people, asking for fowls. So you see
it's a thoroughly organized concern. There's money in it, old horse.
Don't you forget that."
"We should be so disappointed if you did not come," said Mrs. Ukridge,
lifting her childlike eyes to Garnet's face.
Garnet stood against the mantelpiece and pondered. In after years he
recognized that that moment marked an epoch in his life. If he had
refused the invitation, he would not have--but, to quote the old
novelists, we anticipate. At any rate, he would have missed a
remarkable experience. It is not given to everyone to see Mr. Stanley
Ukridge manage a chicken farm.
"The fact is," he said at last, "I was thinking of going somewhere
where I could get some golf."
Ukridge leaped on the table triumphantly.
"Lyme Regis is just the place for you, then. Perfect hotbed of golf.
Fine links at the top of the hill, not half a mile from the farm.
Bring your clubs. You'll be able to have a round or two in the
afternoons. Get through serious work by lunch time."
"You know," said Garnet, "I am absolutely inexperienced as regards
fowls."
"Excellent!" said Ukridge. "Then you're just the man. You will bring
to the work a mind entirely unclouded by theories. You will act solely
by the light of your intelligence."
"Er--yes," said Garnet.
"I wouldn't have a professional chicken farmer about the place if he
paid to come. Natural intelligence is what we want. Then we can rely
on you?"
"Very well," said Garnet slowly. "It's very kind of you to ask me."
"It's business, Cuthbert, business. Very well, then. We shall catch
the eleven-twenty at Waterloo. Don't miss it. You book to Axminster.
Look out for me on the platform. If I see you first, I'll shout."
Garnet felt that that promise rang true.
"Then good-by for the present. Millie, we must be off. Till to-morrow,
Garnet."
"Good-by, Mr. Garnet," said Mrs. Ukridge.
Looking back at the affair after the lapse of years, Garnet was
accustomed to come to the conclusion that she was the one pathetic
figure in the farce. Under what circumstances she had married Ukridge
he did not learn till later. He was also uncertain whether at any
moment in her career she regretted it. But it was certainly pathetic
to witness her growing bewilderment during the weeks that followed, as
the working of Ukridge's giant mind was unfolded to her little by
little. Life, as Ukridge understood the word, must have struck her as
a shade too full of incident to be really comfortable. Garnet was wont
to console himself by the hope that her very genuine love for her
husband, and his equally genuine love for her, was sufficient to
smooth out the rough places of life.
As he returned to his room, after showing his visitors to the door,
the young man upstairs, who had apparently just finished breakfast,
burst once more into song:
"We'll never come back no more, boys,
We'll never come back no more."
Garnet could hear him wedding appropriate dance to the music.
"Not for a few weeks, at any rate," he said to himself, as he started
his packing at the point where he had left off.
A GIRL WITH BROWN HAIR
III
Waterloo station is one of the things which no fellow can understand.
Thousands come to it, thousands go from it. Porters grow gray-headed
beneath its roof. Buns, once fresh and tender, become hard and
misanthropic in its refreshment rooms, and look as if they had seen
the littleness of existence and were disillusioned. But there the
station stands, year after year, wrapped in a discreet gloom, always
the same, always baffling and inscrutable. Not even the porters
understand it. "I couldn't say, sir," is the civil but unsatisfying
reply with which research is met. Now and then one, more gifted than
his colleagues, will inform the traveler that his train starts from
"No. 3 or No. 7," but a moment's reflection and he hedges with No. 12.
Waterloo is the home of imperfect knowledge. The booking clerks cannot
state in a few words where tickets may be bought for any station. They
are only certain that they themselves cannot sell them.
* * * * *
The gloom of the station was lightened on the following morning at ten
minutes to eleven when Mr. Garnet arrived to catch the train to
Axminster, by several gleams of sunshine and a great deal of bustle
and movement on the various platforms. A cheery activity pervaded the
place. Porters on every hand were giving their celebrated imitations
of the car of Juggernaut, throwing as a sop to the wounded a crisp "by
your leave." Agitated ladies were pouring forth questions with the
rapidity of machine guns. Long queues surged at the mouths of the
booking offices, inside which soured clerks, sending lost sheep empty
away, were learning once more their lesson of the innate folly of
mankind. Other crowds collected at the bookstalls, and the bookstall
keeper was eying with dislike men who were under the impression that
they were in a free library.
An optimistic porter had relieved Garnet of his portmanteau and golf
clubs as he stepped out of his cab, and had arranged to meet him on
No. 6 platform, from which, he asserted, with the quiet confidence
which has made Englishmen what they are, the eleven-twenty would start
on its journey to Axminster. Unless, he added, it went from No. 4.
Garnet, having bought a ticket, after drawing blank at two booking
offices, made his way to the bookstall. Here he inquired, in a loud,
penetrating voice, if they had got "Mr. Jeremy Garnet's last novel,
'The Maneuvers of Arthur.'" Being informed that they had not, he
clicked his tongue cynically, advised the man in charge to order that
work, as the demand for it might be expected shortly to be large, and
spent a shilling on a magazine and some weekly papers. Then, with ten
minutes to spare, he went off in search of Ukridge.
He found him on platform No. 6. The porter's first choice was, it
seemed, correct. The eleven-twenty was already alongside the platform,
and presently Garnet observed his porter cleaving a path toward him
with the portmanteau and golf clubs.
"Here you are!" shouted Ukridge. "Good for you. Thought you were going
to miss it."
Garnet shook hands with the smiling Mrs. Ukridge.
"I've got a carriage," said Ukridge, "and collared two corner seats.
My wife goes down in another. She dislikes the smell of smoke when
she's traveling. Let's pray that we get the carriage to ourselves. But
all London seems to be here this morning. Get in, old horse. I'll just
see her ladyship into her carriage and come back to you."
Garnet entered the compartment, and stood at the door, looking out in
order, after the friendly manner of the traveling Briton, to thwart an
invasion of fellow-travelers. Then he withdrew his head suddenly and
sat down. An elderly gentleman, accompanied by a girl, was coming
toward him. It was not this type of fellow-traveler whom he hoped to
keep out. He had noticed the girl at the booking office. She had
waited by the side of the line, while the elderly gentleman struggled
gamely for the tickets, and he had plenty of opportunity of observing
her appearance. For five minutes he had debated with himself as to
whether her hair should rightly be described as brown or golden. He
had decided finally on brown. It then became imperative that he should
ascertain the color of her eyes. Once only had he met them, and then
only for a second. They might be blue. They might be gray. He could
not be certain. The elderly gentleman came to the door of the
compartment and looked in.
"This seems tolerably empty, my dear Phyllis," he said.
Garnet, his glance fixed on his magazine, made a note of the name. It
harmonized admirably with the hair and the eyes of elusive color.
"You are sure you do not object to a smoking carriage, my dear?"
"Oh, no, father. Not at all."
Garnet told himself that the voice was just the right sort of voice to
go with the hair, the eyes, and the name.
"Then I think--" said the elderly gentleman, getting in. The
inflection of his voice suggested the Irishman. It was not a brogue.
There were no strange words. But the general effect was Irish. Garnet
congratulated himself. Irishmen are generally good company. An
Irishman with a pretty daughter should be unusually good company.
The bustle on the platform had increased momently, until now, when,
from the snorting of the engine, it seemed likely that the train might
start at any minute, the crowd's excitement was extreme. Shrill cries
echoed down the platform. Lost sheep, singly and in companies, rushed
to and fro, peering eagerly into carriages in the search for seats.
Piercing cries ordered unknown "Tommies" and "Ernies" to "keep by
aunty, now." Just as Ukridge returned, the dreaded "Get in anywhere"
began to be heard, and the next moment an avalanche of warm humanity
poured into the carriage. A silent but bitter curse framed itself on
Garnet's lips. His chance of pleasant conversation with the lady of
the brown hair and the eyes that were either gray or blue was at an
end.
The newcomers consisted of a middle-aged lady, addressed as aunty; a
youth called Albert, subsequently described by Garnet as the rudest
boy on earth--a proud title, honestly won; lastly, a niece of some
twenty years, stolid and seemingly without interest in life.
Ukridge slipped into his corner, adroitly foiling Albert, who had made
a dive in that direction. Albert regarded him fixedly for a space,
then sank into the seat beside Garnet and began to chew something
grewsome that smelled of aniseed.
Aunty, meanwhile, was distributing her weight evenly between the toes
of the Irish gentleman and those of his daughter, as she leaned out of
the window to converse with a lady friend in a straw hat and hair
curlers. Phyllis, he noticed, was bearing it with angelic calm. Her
profile, when he caught sight of it round aunty, struck him as a
little cold, even haughty. That, however, might be due to what she was
suffering. It is unfair to judge a lady's character from her face, at
a moment when she is in a position of physical discomfort. The train
moved off with a jerk in the middle of a request on the part of the
straw-hatted lady that her friend would "remember that, you know,
about _him_," and aunty, staggering back, sat down on a bag of food
which Albert had placed on the seat beside him.
"Clumsy!" observed Albert tersely.
"Al_bert_, you mustn't speak to aunty so."
"Wodyer want sit on my bag for, then?" inquired Albert.
They argued the point.
Garnet, who should have been busy studying character for a novel of
the lower classes, took up his magazine and began to read. The odor of
aniseed became more and more painful. Ukridge had lighted a cigar, and
Garnet understood why Mrs. Ukridge preferred to travel in another
compartment. For "in his hand he bore the brand which none but he
might smoke."
Garnet looked stealthily across the carriage to see how his lady of
the hair and eyes was enduring this combination of evils, and noticed
that she, too, had begun to read. And as she put down the book to look
out of the window at the last view of London, he saw with a thrill
that it was "The Maneuvers of Arthur." Never before had he come upon a
stranger reading his work. And if "The Maneuvers of Arthur" could make
the reader oblivious to surroundings such as these, then, felt Garnet,
it was no common book--a fact which he had long since suspected.
The train raced on toward the sea. It was a warm day, and a torpid
peace began to settle down on the carriage.
Soon only Garnet, the Irishman, and the lady were awake.
"What's your book, me dear?" asked the Irishman.
"'The Maneuvers of Arthur,' father," said Phyllis. "By Jeremy Garnet."
Garnet would not have believed without the evidence of his ears that
his name could possibly have sounded so well.
"Dolly Strange gave it to me when I left the abbey," continued
Phyllis. "She keeps a shelf of books for her guests when they are
going away. Books that she considers rubbish and doesn't want, you
know."
Garnet hated Dolly Strange without further evidence.
"And what do you think of it, me dear?"
"I like it," said Phyllis decidedly. The carriage swam before
Garnet's eyes. "I think it is very clever. I shall keep it."
"Bless you," thought Garnet, "and I will write my precious autograph
on every page, if you want it."
"I wonder who Jeremy Garnet is?" said Phyllis. "I imagine him rather
an old young man, probably with an eyeglass and conceited. He must be
conceited. I can tell that from the style. And I should think he
didn't know many girls. At least, if he thinks Pamela Grant an
ordinary sort of girl."
"Is she not?" asked her father.
"She's a cr-r-reature," said Phyllis emphatically.
This was a blow to Garnet, and demolished the self-satisfaction which
her earlier criticisms had caused to grow within him. He had always
looked on Pamela as something very much out of the ordinary run of
feminine character studies. That scene between her and the curate in
the conservatory.... And when she finds Arthur at the meet of the
Blankshire.... He was sorry she did not like Pamela. Somehow it
lowered Pamela in his estimation.
"But I like Arthur," said Phyllis, and she smiled--the first time
Garnet had seen her do so.
Garnet also smiled to himself. Arthur was the hero. He was a young
writer. Ergo, Arthur was himself.
The train was beginning to slow down. Signs of returning animation
began to be noticeable among the sleepers. A whistle from the engine,
and the train drew up in a station. Looking out of the window, Garnet
saw that it was Yeovil. There was a general exodus. Aunty became
instantly a thing of dash and electricity, collected parcels, shook
Albert, replied to his thrusts with repartee, and finally headed a
stampede out of the door.
To Garnet's chagrin the Irish gentleman and his daughter also rose.
Apparently this was to be the end of their brief acquaintanceship.
They alighted and walked down the platform.
"Where are we?" said Ukridge sleepily, opening his eyes. "Yeovil? Not
far now, old horse."
With which remark he closed his eyes again and returned to his
slumbers.
Garnet's eye, roving disconsolately over the carriage, was caught by
something lying in the far corner. It was the criticized "Maneuvers of
Arthur." The girl had left it behind.
What follows shows the vanity that obsesses our young and rising
authors. It did not enter into his mind that the book might have been
left behind of set purpose, as being of no further use to the owner.
It only occurred to him that if he did not act swiftly the lady of the
hair and eyes would suffer a loss beside which the loss of a purse or
a hand bag were trivial.
He acted swiftly.
Five seconds later he was at the end of the platform, flushed but
courteous.
"Excuse me," he said, "I think--"
"Thank you," said the girl.
Garnet made his way back to his carriage.
"They are blue," he said.
THE ARRIVAL
IV
From Axminster to Lyme Regis the line runs through country as pretty
as any that can be found in the island, and the train, as if in
appreciation of this fact, does not hurry over the journey. It was
late afternoon by the time the chicken farmers reached their
destination.
The arrangements for the carrying of luggage at Lyme Regis border on
the primitive. Boxes are left on the platform, and later, when he
thinks of it, a carrier looks in and conveys them down into the valley
and up the hill on the opposite side to the address written on the
labels. The owner walks. Lyme Regis is not a place for the halt and
maimed.
Ukridge led his band in the direction of the farm, which lay across
the valley, looking through woods to the sea. The place was visible
from the station, from which, indeed, standing as it did on the top of
a hill, the view was extensive.
Halfway up the slope on the other side of the valley the party left
the road and made their way across a spongy field, Ukridge explaining
that this was a short cut. They climbed through a hedge, crossed a
stream and another field, and after negotiating a difficult bank
topped with barbed wire, found themselves in a kitchen garden.
Ukridge mopped his forehead and restored his pince-nez to their
original position, from which the passage of the barbed wire had
dislodged them.
"This is the place," he said. "We have come in by the back way. It
saves time. Tired, Millie?"
"No, dear, thank you."
"Without being tired," said Garnet, "I am distinctly ready for tea.
What are the prospects?"
"That'll be all right," said Ukridge, "don't you worry. A most
competent man, of the name of Beale, and his wife are in charge at
present. I wrote to them telling them that we were coming to-day. They
will be ready for us."
They were at the front door by this time. Ukridge rang the bell. The
noise reëchoed through the house, but there were no answering
footsteps. He rang again. There is no mistaking the note of a bell in
an empty house. It was plain that the most competent man and his wife
were out.
"Now what are you going to do?" said Garnet.
Mrs. Ukridge looked at her husband with quiet confidence.
Ukridge fell back on reminiscence.
"This," he said, leaning against the door and endeavoring to button
his collar at the back, "reminds me of an afternoon in the Argentine.
Two other men and myself tried for three quarters of an hour to get
into an empty house, where there looked as if there might be something
to eat, and we'd just got the door open when the owner turned up from
behind a tree with a shotgun. It was a little difficult to explain.
There was a dog, too. We were glad to say good-by."
At this moment history partially repeated itself. From the other side
of the door came a dissatisfied whine, followed by a short bark.
"Halloo," said Ukridge, "Beale has a dog."
"And the dog," said Garnet, "will have us if we're not careful. What
are you going to do?"
"Let's try the back," said Ukridge. "We must get in. What right," he
added with pathos, "has a beastly mongrel belonging to a man I employ
to keep me out of my own house? It's a little hard. Here am I, slaving
to support Beale, and when I try to get into my house, his infernal
dog barks at me. But we will try kindness first. Let me get to the
keyhole. I will parley with the animal."
He put his mouth to the keyhole and roared the soothing words "Goo'
dog!" through it. Instantly the door shook as some heavy object hurled
itself against it. The barking rang through the house.
"Kindness seems to be a drug in the market," said Garnet. "Do you see
your way to trying a little force?"
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Ukridge, rising. "We'll go round
and get in at the kitchen window."
"And how long are we to stay there? Till the dog dies?"
"I never saw such a man as you," protested Ukridge. "You have a
perfect mania for looking on the dark side. The dog won't guard the
kitchen door. We shall manage to shut him up somewhere."
"Oh," said Garnet.
"And now let's get in and have something to eat, for goodness' sake."
The kitchen window proved to be insecurely latched. Ukridge flung it
open and they climbed in.
The dog, hearing the sound of voices, raced back along the passage and
flung himself at the door. He then proceeded to scratch at the panels
in the persevering way of one who feels that he is engaged upon a
business at which he is a specialist.
Inside the kitchen, Ukridge took command.
"Never mind the dog," he said, "let it scratch."
"I thought," said Garnet, "we were going to shut it up somewhere?"
"Go out and shut it into the dining room, then. Personally, I mean to
have some tea. Millie, you know how to light a fire. Garnet and I will
be collecting cups and things. When that scoundrel Beale arrives, I
shall tear him limb from limb. Deserting us like this! The man must be
a thorough fraud. He told me he was an old soldier. If this was the
sort of discipline they used to keep in his regiment, I don't wonder
that the service is going to the dogs. There goes a plate! How is the
fire getting on, Millie? I'll chop Beale into little bits. What's that
you've got there, Garny, old horse? Tea? Good! Where's the bread?
There! Another plate. Look here, I'll give that dog three minutes, and
if it doesn't stop scratching that door by then, I'll take the bread
knife and go out and have a soul-to-soul talk with it. It's a little
hard. My own house, and the first thing I find in it when I arrive is
somebody else's beastly dog scratching holes in the doors. Stop it,
you beast!"
The dog's reply was to continue his operations _piu mosso_.
Ukridge's eyes gleamed behind their glasses.
"Give me a good large jug," he said with ominous calm.
He took the largest of the jugs from the dresser and strode with it
into the scullery, whence came the sound of running water. He returned
carrying the jug in both hands. His mien was that of a general who
sees his way to a master stroke of strategy.
"Garny, old horse," he said, "tack on to the handle, and when I give
the word fling wide the gates. Then watch that beast beyond the door
get the surprise of its lifetime."
Garnet attached himself to the handle as directed. Ukridge gave the
word. They had a momentary vision of an excited dog of the mongrel
class framed in the open doorway, all eyes and teeth; then the passage
was occupied by a spreading pool, and indignant barks from the
distance told that the mongrel was thinking the thing over in some
safe retreat.
"Settled _his_ hash," said Ukridge complacently. "Nothing like
resource, Garnet, my boy. Some men would have gone on letting a good
door be ruined."
"And spoiled the dog for a ha-porth of water," said Garnet. "I suppose
we shall have to clean up that mess some time."
"There you go," said Ukridge, "looking on the dark side. Be an
optimist, my boy, be an optimist. Beale and Mrs. Beale shall clean
that passage as a penance. How is the fire, Millie?"
"The kettle is just boiling, dear."
Over a cup of tea Ukridge became the man of business.
[Illustration: They had a momentary vision of an excited dog, framed
in the doorway.]
"I wonder when those fowls are going to arrive. They should have been
here to-day. If they don't come to-morrow, I shall lodge a complaint.
There must be no slackness. They must bustle about. After tea I'll
show you the garden, and we will choose a place for a fowl run.
To-morrow we must buckle to. Serious work will begin immediately after
breakfast."
"Suppose," said Garnet, "the fowls arrive before we are ready for
them?"
"Why, then, they must wait."
"But you can't keep fowls cooped up indefinitely in a crate. I suppose
they will come in a crate. I don't know much about these things."
"Oh, that'll be all right. There's a basement to this house. We'll let
'em run about there till we're ready for them. There's always a way of
doing things if you look for it."
"I hope you are going to let the hens hatch some of the eggs,
Stanley, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge. "I should so love to have some dear
little chickens."
"Of course," said Ukridge. "My idea was this: These people will send
us fifty fowls of sorts. That means--call it forty eggs a day. Let 'em
hatch out thirty a day, and we will use the other ten for the table.
We shall want at least ten. Well, I'm hanged, that dog again! Where's
that jug?"
But this time an unforeseen interruption prevented the maneuver from
being the success it had been before. Garnet had turned the handle,
and was just about to pull the door open, while Ukridge, looking like
some modern and dilapidated version of Discobolus, stood beside him
with his jug poised, when a hoarse voice spoke from the window.
"Stand still!" said the voice, "or I'll corpse you."
Garnet dropped the handle, Ukridge dropped the jug, Mrs. Ukridge
screamed.
At the window, with a double-barreled gun in his hands, stood a short,
square, red-headed man. The muzzle of his gun, which rested on the
sill, was pointing in a straight line at the third button of Garnet's
waistcoat. With a distant recollection of the Deadwood Dick literature
of his childhood, Garnet flung both hands above his head.
Ukridge emitted a roar like that of a hungry lion.
"Beale!" he shouted. "You scoundrelly, unprincipled blackguard! What
are you doing with that gun? Why were you out? What have you been
doing? Why did you shout like that? Look what you've made me do."
He pointed to the floor. Broken crockery, spreading water, his own
shoes--exceedingly old tennis shoes--well soaked, attested the fact
that damage had been done.
"Lor'! Mr. Ukridge, sir, is that you?" said the red-headed man calmly.
"I thought you was burglars."
A sharp bark from the other side of the kitchen door, followed by a
renewal of the scratching, drew Mr. Beale's attention to his faithful
hound.
"That's Bob," he said.
"I don't know what you call the brute," said Ukridge. "Come in and tie
him up."
"'Ow am I to get in, Mr. Ukridge, sir?"
"Come in through the window, and mind what you're doing with that gun.
After you've finished with the dog, I should like a brief chat with
you, if you can spare the time and have no other engagements."
Mr. Beale, having carefully deposited his gun against the wall of the
kitchen, and dropped a pair of very limp rabbits with a thud to the
floor, proceeded to climb through the window. This operation
performed, he stood on one side while the besieged garrison passed out
by the same road.
"You will find me in the garden, Beale," said Ukridge. "I have one or
two little things to say to you."
Mr. Beale grinned affably.
The cool air of the garden was grateful after the warmth of the
kitchen. It was a pretty garden, or would have been, if it had not
been so neglected. Garnet seemed to see himself sitting in a deck
chair on the lawn, looking through the leaves of the trees at the
harbor below. It was a spot, he felt, in which it would be an easy and
pleasant task to shape the plot of his novel. He was glad he had come.
About now, outside his lodgings in town, a particularly lethal barrel
organ would be striking up the latest revolting air with which the
halls had inflicted London.
"Here you are, Beale," said Ukridge, as the red-headed man approached.
"Now, then, what have you to say?"
The hired man looked thoughtful for a while, then observed that it was
a fine evening. Garnet felt that he was begging the question. He was a
strong, healthy man, and should have scorned to beg.
"Fine evening?" shouted Ukridge. "What--on--earth has that got to do
with it? I want to know why you and Mrs. Beale were both out when we
arrived?"
"The missus went to Axminster, Mr. Ukridge, sir."
"She had no right to go to Axminster. I don't pay her large sums to go
to Axminster. You knew I was coming this evening."
"No, Mr. Ukridge, sir."
"You didn't!"
"No, Mr. Ukridge, sir."
"Beale," said Ukridge with studied calm, "one of us two is a fool."
"I noticed that, sir."
"Let us sift this matter to the bottom. You got my letter?"
"No, Mr. Ukridge, sir."
"My letter saying that I should arrive to-night. You did not get it?"
"No, sir."
"Now look here, Beale," said Ukridge, "I am certain that that letter
was posted. I remember placing it in my pocket for that purpose. It is
not there now. See. These are all the contents of my--well, I'm
hanged!"
He stood looking at the envelope he had produced from his breast
pocket. Mr. Beale coughed.
"Beale," said Ukridge, "you--er--there seems to have been a mistake."
"Yes, sir."
"You are not so much to blame as I thought."
"No, sir."
"Anyhow," said Ukridge, in inspired tones, "I'll go and slay that
infernal dog. Where's your gun, Beale?"
But better counsels prevailed, and the proceedings closed with a cold
but pleasant little dinner, at which the spared mongrel came out
unexpectedly strong with brainy and diverting tricks.
BUCKLING TO
V
Sunshine, streaming into his bedroom through the open window, woke
Garnet next day as distant clocks were striking eight. It was a lovely
morning, cool and fresh. The grass of the lawn, wet with dew, sparkled
in the sun. A thrush, who knew all about early birds and their
perquisites, was filling in the time before the arrival of the worm
with a song or two as he sat in the bushes. In the ivy a colony of
sparrows were opening the day well with a little brisk fighting. On
the gravel in front of the house lay the mongrel Bob, blinking lazily.
The gleam of the sea through the trees turned Garnet's thoughts to
bathing. He dressed quickly and went out. Bob rose to meet him,
waving an absurdly long tail. The hatchet was definitely buried now.
That little matter of the jug of water was forgotten.
"Well, Bob," said Garnet, "coming down to watch me bathe?"
Bob uttered a bark of approval and ran before him to the gate.
A walk of five minutes brought Garnet to the sleepy little town. He
passed through the narrow street, and turned on to the beach, walking
in the direction of the cob, that combination of pier and breakwater
which the misadventures of one of Jane Austen's young misses have made
known to the outside public.
The tide was high, and Garnet, leaving his clothes to the care of Bob,
dived into twelve feet of clear, cold water. As he swam he compared it
with the morning tub of town, and felt that he had done well to come
with Ukridge to this pleasant spot. But he could not rely on unbroken
calm during the whole of his visit. He did not know a great deal about
chicken farming, but he was certain that Ukridge knew less. There
would be some strenuous moments before that farm became a profitable
commercial speculation. At the thought of Ukridge toiling on a hot
afternoon to manage an undisciplined mob of fowls, and becoming more
and more heated and voluble in the struggle, he laughed and promptly
swallowed a generous mouthful of salt water. There are few things
which depress the swimmer more than an involuntary draught of water.
Garnet turned and swam back to Bob and the clothes.
As he strolled back along the beach he came upon a small, elderly
gentleman toweling his head in a vigorous manner. Hearing Garnet's
footsteps, he suspended this operation for a moment and peered out at
him from beneath a turban of towel.
It was the elderly Irishman of the journey, the father of the
blue-eyed Phyllis. Then they had come on to Lyme Regis after all.
Garnet stopped, with some idea of going back and speaking to him; but
realizing that they were perfect strangers, he postponed this action
and followed Bob up the hill. In a small place like Lyme Regis it
would surely not be difficult to find somebody who would introduce
them. He cursed the custom which made such a thing necessary. In a
properly constituted country everybody would know everybody else
without fuss or trouble.
He found Ukridge, in his shirt sleeves and minus a collar, assailing a
large ham. Mrs. Ukridge, looking younger and more childlike than ever
in brown holland, smiled at him over the teapot.
"Here he is!" shouted Ukridge, catching sight of him. "Where have you
been, old horse? I went to your room, but you weren't there. Bathing?
Hope it's made you feel fit for work, because we've got to buckle to
this morning."
"The fowls have arrived, Mr. Garnet," said Mrs. Ukridge, opening her
eyes till she looked like an astonished kitten. "_Such_ a lot of them!
They're making such a noise!"
And to support her statement there floated through the window a
cackling, which, for volume and variety of key, beat anything that
Garnet had ever heard. Judging from the noise, it seemed as if England
had been drained of fowls and the entire tribe of them dumped into the
yard of the Ukridge's farm.
"There seems to have been no stint," he said, sitting down. "Did you
order a million or only nine hundred thousand?"
"Good many, aren't there?" said Ukridge complacently. "But that's
what we want. No good starting on a small scale. The more you have,
the bigger the profits."
"What sort have you got mostly?"
"Oh, all sorts. Bless you, people don't mind what breed a fowl is, so
long as it _is_ a fowl. These dealer chaps were so infernally
particular. 'Any Dorkings?' they said. 'All right,' I said, 'bring on
your Dorkings.' 'Or perhaps you want a few Minorcas?' 'Very well,' I
said, 'show Minorcas.' They were going on--they'd have gone on for
hours, but I stopped 'em. 'Look here, Maximilian,' I said to the
manager Johnny--decent old chap, with the manners of a marquis--'look
here,' I said, 'life is short, and we're neither of us as young as we
used to be. Don't let us waste the golden hours playing guessing
games. I want fowls. You sell fowls. So give me some of all sorts.'
And he has, by Jove! There must be one of every breed ever invented."
"Where are you going to put them?"
"That spot we chose by the paddock. That's the place. Plenty of mud
for them to scratch about in, and they can go into the field when they
want to, and pick up worms, or whatever they feed on. We must rig them
up some sort of a shanty, I suppose, this morning. We'll go and tell
'em to send up some wire netting and stuff from the town."
"Then we shall want hencoops. We shall have to make those."
"Of course. So we shall. Millie, didn't I tell you that old Garnet was
the man to think of things! I forgot the coops. We can't buy some, I
suppose? On tick?"
"Cheaper to make them. Suppose we get a lot of boxes. Soap boxes are
as good as any. It won't take long to knock up a few coops."
Ukridge thumped the table with enthusiasm.
"Garny, old horse, you're a marvel. You think of everything. We'll
buckle to right away. What a noise those fowls are making. I suppose
they don't feel at home in the yard. Wait till they see the A1
residential mansions we're going to put up for them. Finished
breakfast? Then let's go out. Come along, Millie."
The red-headed Beale, discovered leaning in an attitude of thought on
the yard gate, and observing the feathered mob below, was roused from
his reflections and dispatched to the town for the wire and soap
boxes. Ukridge, taking his place at the gate, gazed at the fowls with
the affectionate eye of a proprietor.
"Well, they have certainly taken you at your word," said Garnet, "as
far as variety is concerned."
The man with the manners of a marquis seemed to have been at great
pains to send a really representative supply of fowls. There were blue
ones, black ones, white, gray, yellow, brown, big, little, Dorkings,
Minorcas, Cochin Chinas, Bantams, Orpingtons, Wyandottes, and a host
more. It was an imposing spectacle.
The hired man returned toward the end of the morning, preceded by a
cart containing the necessary wire and boxes, and Ukridge, whose
enthusiasm brooked no delay, started immediately the task of
fashioning the coops, while Garnet, assisted by Beale, draped the wire
netting about the chosen spot next to the paddock. There were little
unpleasantnesses--once a roar of anguish told that Ukridge's hammer
had found the wrong billet, and on another occasion Garnet's flannel
trousers suffered on the wire--but the work proceeded steadily. By the
middle of the afternoon things were in a sufficiently advanced state
to suggest to Ukridge the advisability of a halt for refreshments.
"That's the way to do it," said he. "At this rate we shall have the
place in A1 condition before bedtime. What do you think of those for
coops, Beale?"
The hired man examined them gravely.
"I've seen worse, sir."
He continued his examination.
"But not many," he added. Beale's passion for truth had made him
unpopular in three regiments.
"They aren't so bad," said Garnet, "but I'm glad I'm not a fowl."
"So you ought to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up
that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves."
In spite of earnest labor, the housing arrangements of the fowls were
still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the
evening's work are preserved in a letter which Garnet wrote that
night to his friend Lickford.
* * * * *
"... Have you ever played a game called 'Pigs in Clover'? We have just
finished a bout of it (with hens instead of marbles) which has lasted
for an hour and a half. We are all dead tired except the hired man,
who seems to be made of India rubber. He has just gone for a stroll to
the beach. Wants some exercise, I suppose. Personally, I feel as if I
should never move again. I have run faster and farther than I have
done since I was at school. You have no conception of the difficulty
of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having no proper
place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them inside soap
boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just occurred to me
that they ought to have had perches to roost on. It didn't strike me
before. I shall not mention it to Ukridge, or that indomitable man
will start making some, and drag me into it, too. After all, a hen can
rough it for one night, and if I did a stroke more work I should
collapse. My idea was to do the thing on the slow but sure principle.
That is to say, take each bird singly and carry it to bed. It would
have taken some time, but there would have been no confusion. But you
can imagine that that sort of thing would not appeal to Ukridge. There
is a touch of the Napoleon about him. He likes his maneuvers to be
daring and on a large scale. He said: 'Open the yard gate and let the
fowls come out into the open, then sail in and drive them in a mass
through the back door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but
there was one fatal flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens
scattering. We opened the gate, and out they all came like an audience
coming out of a theater. Then we closed in on them to bring off the
big drive. For about three seconds it looked as if we might do it.
Then Bob, the hired man's dog, an animal who likes to be in whatever's
going on, rushed out of the house into the middle of them, barking.
There was a perfect stampede, and Heaven only knows where some of
those fowls are now. There was one in particular, a large yellow bird,
which, I should imagine, is nearing London by this time. The last I
saw of it, it was navigating at the rate of knots, so to speak, in
that direction, with Bob after it barking his hardest. Presently Bob
came back, panting, having evidently given up the job. We, in the
meantime, were chasing the rest of the birds all over the garden. The
thing had now resolved itself into the course of action I had
suggested originally, except that instead of collecting them quietly
and at our leisure, we had to run miles for each one we captured.
After a time we introduced some sort of system into it. Mrs. Ukridge
(fancy him married; did you know?) stood at the door. We chased the
hens and brought them in. Then as we put each through into the
basement, she shut the door on it. We also arranged Ukridge's soap-box
coops in a row, and when we caught a fowl we put it into the coop and
stuck a board in front of it. By these strenuous means we gathered in
about two thirds of the lot. The rest are all over England. A few may
be in Dorsetshire, but I should not like to bet on it.
"So you see things are being managed on the up-to-date chicken farm on
good, sound, Ukridge principles. This is only the beginning. I look
with confidence for further exciting events. I believe, if Ukridge
kept white mice, he would manage to knock some feverish excitement out
of it. He is at present lying on the sofa, smoking one of his infernal
brand of cigars. From the basement I can hear faintly the murmur of
innumerable fowls. We are a happy family; we are, we _are_, we ARE!
"P. S. Have you ever caught a fowl and carried it to roost? You take
it under the wings, and the feel of it sets one's teeth on edge. It is
a grisly experience. All the time you are carrying it, it makes faint
protesting noises and struggles feebly to escape.
"P. P. S. You know the opinion of Pythagoras respecting fowls. That
'the soul of our granddam might haply inhabit a bird.' I hope that
yellow hen which Bob chased into the purple night is not the
grandmamma of any friend of mine."
A REUNION
VI
The day was Thursday, the date July the twenty-second. We had been
chicken farmers for a whole week, and things were beginning to settle
down to a certain extent. The coops were finished. They were not
masterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in deep
thought, as who should say: "Now what in the world have we struck
here?" But they were coops, within the meaning of the act, and we
induced the hens to become tenants. The hardest work had been the
fixing of the wire netting. This was the department of the hired man
and myself. Beale and I worked ourselves into a fever in the sun,
while the senior partner of the firm sat in the house, writing out
plans and ideas and scribbling down his accounts (which must have been
complicated) on gilt-edged correspondence cards. From time to time he
abused his creditors, who were numerous.
Ukridge's financial methods were always puzzling to the ordinary mind.
We had hardly been at the farm a day before he began to order in a
vast supply of necessary and unnecessary articles--all on credit. Some
he got from the village, others from neighboring towns. He has a way
with him, like Father O'Flynn, and the tradesmen behaved beautifully.
The things began to pour in from all sides--suits, groceries (of the
very best), a piano, a gramophone, and pictures of all kinds. He was
not one of those men who want but little here below. He wanted a great
deal, and of a superior quality. If a tradesman suggested that a small
check on account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid
fellows of the village did, he became pathetic.
"Confound it, sir," he would say with tears in his voice, laying a
hand on the man's shoulder in an elder brotherly way, "it's a trifle
hard when a gentleman comes to settle here, that you should dun him
for things before he has settled the preliminary expenses about his
house."
This sounded well, and suggested the disbursement of huge sums for
rent. The fact that the house had been lent him rent free was kept
with some care in the background. Having weakened the man with pathos,
he would strike a sterner note. "A little more of this," he would go
on, "and I'll close my account. As it is, I think I will remove my
patronage to a firm which will treat me civilly. Why, sir, I've never
heard anything like it in all my experience." Upon which the man
would knuckle under and go away forgiven, with a large order for more
goods.
Once, when Ukridge and I were alone, I ventured to expostulate. High
finance was always beyond my mental grasp. "Pay?" he exclaimed, "of
course we shall pay. You don't seem to realize the possibilities of
this business. Garny, my boy, we are on to a big thing. The money
isn't coming in yet. We must give it time. But soon we shall be
turning over hundreds every week. I am in touch with Whiteley's and
Harrod's and all the big places. Perfectly simple business matter.
Here I am, I said, with a large chicken farm with all the modern
improvements. You want eggs, I said. I supply them. I will let you
have so many hundred eggs a week, I said; what will you give for them?
Well, their terms did not come up to my scheduled prices, I admit, but
we mustn't sneer at small prices at first."
The upshot of it was that the firms mentioned supplied us with a
quantity of goods, agreeing to receive phantom eggs in exchange. This
satisfied Ukridge. He had a faith in the laying powers of his hens
which would have flattered those birds if they could have known of it.
It might also have stimulated their efforts in that direction, which
up to date were feeble. This, however, I attributed to the fact that
the majority of our fowls--perhaps through some sinister practical
joke on the part of the manager who had the manners of a marquis--were
cocks. It vexed Ukridge. "Here we are," he said complainingly, "living
well and drinking well, in a newly furnished house, having to keep a
servant and maintain our position in life, with expenses mounting and
not a penny coming in. It's absurd. We've got hundreds of hens (most
of them cocks, it's true, but I forgot they didn't lay), and getting
not even enough eggs for our own table. We must make some more
arrangements. Come on in and let us think the thing out."
But this speech was the outcome of a rare moment of pessimism. In his
brighter moods he continued to express unbounded faith in the hens,
and was willing to leave the thing to time.
Meanwhile, we were creating quite a small sensation in the
neighborhood. The interest of the natives was aroused at first by the
fact that nearly all of them received informal visits from our fowls,
which had strayed. Small boys would arrive in platoons, each bearing
his quota of stragglers. "Be these your 'ens, zur?" was the formula.
"If they be, we've got twenty-fower mower in our yard. Could 'ee coom
over and fetch 'em?"
However, after the hired retainer and I had completed our work with
the wire netting, desertions became less frequent. People poured in
from villages for miles around to look at the up-to-date chicken farm.
It was a pleasing and instructive spectacle to see Ukridge, in a pink
shirt without a collar, and very dirty flannel trousers, lecturing to
the intelligent natives on the breeding of fowls. They used to go away
with the dazed air of men who have heard strange matters, and Ukridge,
unexhausted, would turn to interview the next batch. I fancy we gave
Lyme Regis something to think about. Ukridge must have been in the
nature of a staggerer to the rustic mind.
It was now, as I have said, Thursday, the twenty-second of July, a
memorable date to me. A glorious, sunny morning, of the kind which
Nature provides occasionally, in an ebullition of benevolence. It is
at times such as this that we dream our dreams and compose our
masterpieces.
And a masterpiece I was, indeed, making. The new novel was growing
nobly. Striking scenes and freshets of scintillating dialogue rushed
through my mind. I had neglected my writing for the past week in favor
of the tending of fowls, but I was making up for lost time now.
Another uninterrupted quarter of an hour, and I firmly believe I
should have completed the framework of a novel that would have placed
me with the great, in that select band whose members have no Christian
names. Another quarter of an hour and posterity would have known me as
"Garnet."
But it was not to be. I had just framed the most poignant, searching
conversation between my heroine and my hero, and was about to proceed,
flushed with great thoughts, to further triumphs, when a distant shout
brought me to earth.
"Stop her! Catch her! Garnet!"
I was in the paddock at the time. Coming toward me at her best pace
was a small hen. Behind the hen was Bob, doing, as usual, the thing
that he ought not to have done. Behind Bob--some way behind--was
Ukridge. It was his shout that I had heard.
"After her, Garny, old horse!" he repeated. "A valuable bird. Must not
be lost."
When not in a catalepsy of literary composition, I am essentially the
man of action. I laid aside my novel for future reference, and, after
a fruitless lunge at the hen as it passed, joined Bob in the chase.
We passed out of the paddock in the following order: First, the hen,
as fresh as paint, and good for a five-mile spin; next, Bob, panting
but fit for anything; lastly, myself, determined, but mistrustful of
my powers of pedestrianism. In the distance Ukridge gesticulated and
shouted advice.
After the first field Bob gave up the chase, and sauntered off to
scratch at a rabbit hole. He seemed to think that he had done all that
could be expected of him in setting the thing going. His air suggested
that he knew the affair was in competent hands, and relied on me to do
the right thing.
The exertions of the past few days had left me in very fair condition,
but I could not help feeling that in competition with the hen I was
overmatched. Neither in speed nor in staying power was I its equal.
But I pounded along doggedly. Whenever I find myself fairly started on
any business I am reluctant to give it up. I began to set an
extravagant value on the capture of the small hen. All the abstract
desire for fame which had filled my mind five minutes before was
concentrated now on that one feat. In a calmer moment I might have
realized that one bird more or less would not make a great deal of
difference to the fortunes of the chicken farm, but now my power of
logical reasoning had left me. All our fortunes seemed to me to center
in the hen, now half a field in front of me.
We had been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point we
crossed the road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful
condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not
yet got one's second. I was hotter than I had ever been in my life.
Whether the hen, too, was beginning to feel the effects of its run I
do not know, but it slowed down to a walk, and even began to peck in a
tentative manner at the grass. This assumption on its part that the
chase was at an end irritated me. I felt that I should not be worthy
of the name of Englishman if I allowed myself to be treated as a
cipher by a mere bird. It should realize yet that it was no light
matter to be pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Maneuvers of
Arthur," etc.
A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of my
quarry. But it darted from me with a startled exclamation and moved
off rapidly up the hill. I followed, distressed. The pace was proving
too much for me. The sun blazed down. It seemed to concentrate its
rays on my back, to the exclusion of the surrounding scenery, in much
the same way as the moon behaves to the heroine of a melodrama. A
student of the drama has put it on record that he has seen the moon
follow the heroine round the stage, and go off with her (left). The
sun was just as attentive to me.
We were on level ground now. The hen had again slowed to a walk, and I
was capable of no better pace. Very gradually I closed in on it. There
was a high boxwood hedge in front of us. Just as I came close enough
to stake my all on a single grab, the hen dived into this and
struggled through in the mysterious way in which birds do get through
hedges.
I was in the middle of the obstacle, very hot, tired, and dirty, when
from the other side I heard a sudden shout of "Mark over! Bird to the
right!" and the next moment I found myself emerging, with a black face
and tottering knees, on to the gravel path of a private garden.
Beyond the path was a croquet lawn, on which I perceived, as through a
glass darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes and I
recognized two of the trio.
One was my Irish fellow-traveler, the other was his daughter.
The third member of the party was a man, a stranger to me. By some
miracle of adroitness he had captured the hen, and was holding it,
protesting, in a workman-like manner behind the wings.
THE ENTENTE CORDIALE
VII
It has been well observed that there are moments and moments. The
present, as far as I was concerned, belonged to the more painful
variety.
Even to my exhausted mind it was plain that there was need here for
explanations. An Irishman's croquet lawn is his castle, and strangers
cannot plunge on to it unannounced through hedges without being
prepared to give reasons.
Unfortunately, speech was beyond me. I could have done many things at
that moment. I could have emptied a water butt, lain down and gone to
sleep, or melted ice with a touch of the finger. But I could not
speak. The conversation was opened by the other man, in whose
soothing hand the hen now lay, apparently resigned to its fate.
"Come right in," he said pleasantly. "Don't knock. Your bird, I
think?"
I stood there panting. I must have presented a quaint appearance. My
hair was full of twigs and other foreign substances. My face was moist
and grimy. My mouth hung open. I wanted to sit down. My legs felt as
if they had ceased to belong to me.
"I must apologize--" I began, and ended the sentence with gasps.
Conversation languished. The elderly gentleman looked at me with what
seemed to me indignant surprise. His daughter looked through me. The
man regarded me with a friendly smile, as if I were some old crony
dropped in unexpectedly.
"I'm afraid--" I said, and stopped again.
"Hard work, big-game hunting in this weather," said the man. "Take a
long breath."
I took several and felt better.
"I must apologize for this intrusion," I said successfully.
"Unwarrantable" would have rounded off the sentence nicely, but
instinct told me not to risk it. It would have been mere bravado to
have attempted unnecessary words of five syllables at that juncture.
I paused.
"Say on," said the man with the hen encouragingly, "I'm a human being
just like yourself."
"The fact is," I said, "I didn't--didn't know there was a private
garden beyond the hedge. If you will give me my hen--"
"It's hard to say good-by," said the man, stroking the bird's head
with the first finger of his disengaged hand. "She and I are just
beginning to know and appreciate each other. However, if it must be--"
He extended the hand which held the bird, and at this point a hitch
occurred. He did his part of the business--the letting go. It was in
my department--the taking hold--that the thing was bungled. The hen
slipped from my grasp like an eel, stood for a moment overcome by the
surprise of being at liberty once more, then fled and intrenched
itself in some bushes at the farther end of the lawn.
There are times when the most resolute man feels that he can battle no
longer with fate; when everything seems against him and the only
course left is a dignified retreat. But there is one thing essential
to a dignified retreat. One must know the way out. It was that fact
which kept me standing there, looking more foolish than anyone has
ever looked since the world began. I could hardly ask to be conducted
off the premises like the honored guest. Nor would it do to retire by
the way I had come. If I could have leaped the hedge with a single
bound, that would have made a sufficiently dashing and debonair exit.
But the hedge was high, and I was incapable at the moment of achieving
a debonair leap over a footstool.
The man saved the situation. He seemed to possess that magnetic power
over his fellows which marks the born leader. Under his command we
became an organized army. The common object, the pursuit of the hen,
made us friends. In the first minute of the proceedings the Irishman
was addressing me as "me dear boy," and the other man, who had
introduced himself rapidly as Tom Chase, lieutenant in his Majesty's
navy, was shouting directions to me by name. I have never assisted at
any ceremony at which formality was so completely dispensed with. The
ice was not merely broken, it was shivered into a million fragments.
"Go in and drive her out, Garnet," shouted Mr. Chase. "In my
direction, if you can. Look out on the left, Phyllis."
Even in that disturbing moment I could not help noticing his use of
the Christian name. It seemed to me sinister. I did not like the idea
of dashing young lieutenants in the royal navy calling a girl Phyllis
whose eyes had haunted me for just over a week--since, in fact, I had
first seen them. Nevertheless, I crawled into the bushes and dislodged
the hen. She emerged at the spot where Mr. Chase was waiting with his
coat off, and was promptly enveloped in that garment and captured.
"The essence of strategy," observed Mr. Chase approvingly, "is
surprise. A devilish neat piece of work."
I thanked him. He deprecated the thanks. He had, he said, only done
his duty, as a man is bound to do. He then introduced me to the
elderly Irishman, who was, it seemed, a professor--of what I do not
know--at Dublin University. By name, Derrick. He informed me that he
always spent the summer at Lyme Regis.
"I was surprised to see you at Lyme Regis," I said. "When you got out
at Yeovil, I thought I had seen the last of you."
I think I am gifted beyond other men as regards the unfortunate
turning of sentences.
"I meant," I added speedily, "I was afraid I had."
"Ah, of course," he said, "you were in our carriage coming down. I was
confident I had seen you before. I never forget a face."
"It would be a kindness," said Mr. Chase, "if you would forget
Garnet's as now exhibited. You'll excuse the personality, but you
seem to have collected a good deal of the professor's property coming
through that hedge."
"I was wondering," I said with gratitude. "A wash--if I might?"
"Of course, me boy, of course," said the professor. "Tom, take Mr.
Garnet off to your room, and then we'll have some lunch. You'll stay
to lunch, Mr. Garnet?"
I thanked him for his kindness and went off with my friend, the
lieutenant, to the house. We imprisoned the hen in the stables, to its
profound indignation, gave directions for lunch to be served to it,
and made our way to Mr. Chase's room.
"So you've met the professor before?" he said, hospitably laying out a
change of raiment for me--we were fortunately much of a height and
build.
"I have never spoken to him," I said. "We traveled down together in a
very full carriage, and I saw him next day on the beach."
"He's a dear old boy, if you rub him the right way."
"Yes?" I said.
"But--I'm telling you this for your good and guidance--he can cut up
rough. And when he does, he goes off like a four point seven. I think,
if I were you--you don't mind my saying this?--I think, if I were you,
I should _not_ mention Mr. Tim Healy at lunch."
I promised that I would try to resist the temptation.
"And if you _could_ manage not to discuss home rule--"
"I will make an effort."
"On any other topic he will be delighted to hear your views. Chatty
remarks on bimetallism would meet with his earnest attention. A
lecture on what to do with the cold mutton would be welcomed. But not
Ireland, if you don't mind. Shall we go down?"
We got to know one another very well at lunch.
"Do you hunt hens," asked Mr. Chase, who was mixing the salad--he was
one of those men who seem to do everything a shade better than anyone
else, "for amusement or by your doctor's orders?"
"Neither," I said, "and particularly not for amusement. The fact is I
have been lured down here by a friend of mine who has started a
chicken farm--"
I was interrupted. All three of them burst into laughter. Mr. Chase in
his emotion allowed the vinegar to trickle on to the cloth, missing
the salad bowl by a clear two inches.
"You don't mean to tell us," he said, "that you really come from the
one and only chicken farm?"
I could not deny it.
"Why, you're the man we've all been praying to meet for days past.
Haven't we, professor?"
"You're right, Tom," chuckled Mr. Derrick.
"We want to know all about it, Mr. Garnet," said Phyllis Derrick.
"Do you know," continued Mr. Chase, "that you are the talk of the
town? Everybody is discussing you. Your methods are quite new and
original, aren't they?"
"Probably," I replied. "Ukridge knows nothing about fowls. I know
less. He considers it an advantage. He said our minds ought to be
unbiased by any previous experience."
"Ukridge!" said the professor. "That was the name old Dawlish, the
grocer, said. I never forget a name. He is the gentleman who lectures
on the breeding of poultry, is he not? You do not?"
I hastened to disclaim any such feat.
"His lectures are very popular," said Phyllis with a little splutter
of mirth.
"He enjoys them," I said.
"Look here, Garnet," said Mr. Chase, "I hope you won't consider all
these questions impertinent, but you've no notion of the thrilling
interest we all take--at a distance--in your farm. We have been
talking of nothing else for a week. I have dreamed of it three nights
running. Is Mr. Ukridge doing this as a commercial speculation, or is
he an eccentric millionaire?"
"He's not a millionaire. I believe he intends to be, though, before
long, with the assistance of the fowls. But I hope you won't look on
me as in any way responsible for the arrangements at the farm. I am
merely a laborer. The brain work of the business lies in Ukridge's
department."
"Tell me, Mr. Garnet," said Phyllis, "do you use an incubator?"
"Oh, yes, we have an incubator."
"I suppose you find it very useful?"
"I'm afraid we use it chiefly for drying our boots when they get wet,"
I said.
Only that morning Ukridge's spare pair of tennis shoes had permanently
spoiled the future of half-a-dozen eggs which were being hatched on
the spot where the shoes happened to be placed. Ukridge had been quite
annoyed.
"I came down here principally," I said, "in search of golf. I was told
there were links, but up to the present my professional duties have
monopolized me."
"Golf," said Professor Derrick. "Why, yes. We must have a round or two
together. I am very fond of golf. I generally spend the summer down
here improving my game."
I said I should be delighted.
* * * * *
There was croquet after lunch--a game at which I am a poor performer.
Miss Derrick and I played the professor and Chase. Chase was a little
better than myself; the professor, by dint of extreme earnestness and
care, managed to play a fair game; and Phyllis was an expert.
"I was reading a book," said she, as we stood together watching the
professor shaping at his ball at the other end of the lawn, "by an
author of the same surname as you, Mr. Garnet. Is he a relation of
yours?"
"I am afraid I am the person, Miss Derrick," I said.
"You wrote the book?"
"A man must live," I said apologetically.
"Then you must have--oh, nothing."
"I could not help it, I'm afraid. But your criticism was very kind."
"Did you know what I was going to say?"
"I guessed."
"It was lucky I liked it," she said with a smile.
"Lucky for me," I said.
"Why?"
"It will encourage me to write another book. So you see what you have
to answer for. I hope it will not trouble your conscience."
At the other end of the lawn the professor was still patting the balls
about, Chase the while advising him to allow for windage and elevation
and other mysterious things.
"I should not have thought," she said, "that an author cared a bit for
the opinion of an amateur."
"It all depends."
"On the author?"
"On the amateur."
It was my turn to play at this point. I missed--as usual.
"I didn't like your heroine, Mr. Garnet."
"That was the one crumpled rose leaf. I have been wondering why ever
since. I tried to make her nice. Three of the critics liked her."
"Really?"
"And the modern reviewer is an intelligent young man. What is a
'creature,' Miss Derrick?"
"Pamela in your book is a creature," she replied unsatisfactorily,
with the slightest tilt of the chin.
"My next heroine shall be a triumph," I said.
She should be a portrait, I resolved, from life.
Shortly after, the game came somehow to an end. I do not understand
the intricacies of croquet. But Phyllis did something brilliant and
remarkable with the balls, and we adjourned for tea, which had been
made ready at the edge of the lawn while we played.
The sun was setting as I left to return to the farm, with the hen
stored neatly in a basket in my hand. The air was deliciously cool and
full of that strange quiet which follows soothingly on the skirts of a
broiling midsummer afternoon. Far away--the sound seemed almost to
come from another world--the tinkle of a sheep bell made itself heard,
deepening the silence. Alone in a sky of the palest blue there
twinkled a small bright star.
I addressed this star.
"She was certainly very nice to me," I said. "Very nice, indeed."
The star said nothing.
"On the other hand," I went on, "I don't like that naval man. He is a
good chap, but he overdoes it."
The star winked sympathetically.
"He calls her Phyllis," I said.
"Charawk," said the hen satirically from her basket.
A LITTLE DINNER
VIII
"Edwin comes to-day," said Mrs. Ukridge.
"And the Derricks," said Ukridge, sawing at the bread in his energetic
way. "Don't forget the Derricks, Millie."
"No, dear. Mrs. Beale is going to give us a very nice dinner. We
talked it over yesterday."
"Who is Edwin?" I asked.
We were finishing breakfast on the second morning after my visit to
the Derricks. I had related my adventures to the staff of the farm on
my return, laying stress on the merits of our neighbors and their
interest in our doings, and the hired retainer had been sent off next
morning with a note from Mrs. Ukridge, inviting them to look over the
farm and stay to dinner.
"Edwin?" said Ukridge. "Beast of a cat."
"O Stanley!" said Mrs. Ukridge plaintively. "He's not. He's such a
dear, Mr. Garnet. A beautiful, pure-bred Persian. He has taken
prizes."
"He's always taking something--generally food. That's why he didn't
come down with us."
"A great, horrid _beast_ of a dog bit him, Mr. Garnet." Mrs. Ukridge's
eyes became round and shining. "And poor Edwin had to go to a cats'
hospital."
"And I hope," said Ukridge, "the experience will do him good. Sneaked
a dog's bone, Garnet, under his very nose, if you please. Naturally,
the dog lodged a protest."
"I'm so afraid that he will be frightened of Bob. He will be very
timid, and Bob's so exceedingly boisterous. Isn't he, Mr. Garnet?"
I owned that Bob's manner was not that of a Vere de Vere.
"That's all right," said Ukridge; "Bob won't hurt him, unless he tries
to steal his bone. In that case we will have Edwin made into a rug."
"Stanley doesn't like Edwin," said Mrs. Ukridge plaintively.
* * * * *
Edwin arrived early in the afternoon, and was shut into the kitchen.
He struck me as a handsome cat, but nervous. He had an excited eye.
The Derricks followed two hours later. Mr. Chase was not of the party.
"Tom had to go to London," explained the professor, "or he would have
been delighted to come. It was a disappointment to the boy, for he
wanted to see the farm."
"He must come some other time," said Ukridge. "We invite inspection.
Look here," he broke off suddenly--we were nearing the fowl run now,
Mrs. Ukridge walking in front with Phyllis Derrick--"were you ever at
Bristol?"
"Never, sir," said the professor.
"Because I knew just such another fat little buffer there a few years
ago. Gay old bird, he was. He--"
"This is the fowl run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling
feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor
stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in color. Ukridge's
breezy way of expressing himself is apt to electrify the stranger.
"You will notice the able way--ha, ha!--in which the wire netting is
arranged," I continued feverishly. "Took some doing, that. By Jove!
yes. It was hot work. Nice lot of fowls, aren't they? Rather a mixed
lot, of course. Ha, ha! That's the dealer's fault, though. We are
getting quite a number of eggs now. Hens wouldn't lay at first.
Couldn't make them."
I babbled on till from the corner of my eye I saw the flush fade from
the professor's face and his back gradually relax its pokerlike
attitude. The situation was saved for the moment, but there was no
knowing what further excesses Ukridge might indulge in. I managed to
draw him aside as we went through the fowl run, and expostulated.
"For goodness' sake, be careful," I whispered. "You've no notion how
touchy the professor is."
"But _I_ said nothing," he replied, amazed.
"Hang it, you know, nobody likes to be called a fat little buffer to
his face."
"What else could I call him? Nobody minds a little thing like that. We
can't be stilted and formal. It's ever so much more friendly to relax
and be chummy."
Here we rejoined the others, and I was left with a leaden foreboding
of grewsome things in store. I knew what manner of man Ukridge was
when he relaxed and became chummy. Friendships of years' standing had
failed to survive the test.
For the time being, however, all went well. In his rôle of lecturer he
offended no one, and Phyllis and her father behaved admirably. They
received the strangest theories without a twitch of the mouth.
"Ah," the professor would say, "now, is that really so? Very
interesting, indeed."
Only once, when Ukridge was describing some more than usually original
device for the furthering of the interests of his fowls, did a slight
spasm disturb Phyllis's look of attentive reverence.
"And you have really had no previous experience in chicken farming?"
she said.
"None," said Ukridge, beaming through his glasses, "not an atom. But I
can turn my hand to anything, you know. Things seem to come naturally
to me, somehow."
"I see," said Phyllis.
It was while matters were progressing with such beautiful smoothness
that I observed the square form of the hired retainer approaching us.
Somehow--I cannot say why--I had a feeling that he came with bad news.
Perhaps it was his air of quiet satisfaction which struck me as
ominous.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Ukridge, sir."
Ukridge was in the middle of a very eloquent excursus on the feeding
of fowls. The interruption annoyed him.
"Well, Beale," he said, "what is it?"
"That there cat, sir, what came to-day."
"O Beale," cried Mrs. Ukridge in agitation, "_what_ has happened?"
"Having something to say to the missus--"
"What has happened? O Beale, don't say that Edwin has been hurt? Where
is he? Oh, _poor_ Edwin!"
"Having something to say to the missus--"
"If Bob has bitten him, I hope he had his nose _well_ scratched," said
Mrs. Ukridge vindictively.
"Having something to say to the missus," resumed the hired retainer
tranquilly, "I went into the kitchen ten minutes back. The cat was
sitting on the mat."
Beale's narrative style closely resembled that of a certain book I had
read in my infancy. I wish I could remember its title. It was a
well-written book.
"Yes, Beale, yes?" said Mrs. Ukridge. "Oh, do go on!"
"'Halloo, puss,' I says to him, 'and 'ow are you, sir?' 'Be careful,'
says the missus. ''E's that timid,' she says, 'you wouldn't believe,'
she says. ''E's only just settled down, as you may say,' she says.
'Ho, don't you fret,' I says to her, ''im and me we understands each
other. 'Im and me,' I says, 'is old friends. 'E's me dear old pal,
Corporal Banks, of the Skrimshankers.' She grinned at that, ma'am,
Corporal Banks being a man we'd 'ad many a 'earty laugh at in the old
days. 'E was, in a manner of speaking, a joke between us."
"Oh, do--go--on, Beale! What has happened to Edwin?"
The hired retainer proceeded in calm, even tones.
"We was talking there, ma'am, when Bob, which had followed me unknown,
trotted in. When the cat ketched sight of 'im sniffing about, there
was such a spitting and swearing as you never 'eard, and blowed," said
Mr. Beale amusedly, as if the recollection tickled him, "blowed if the
old cat didn't give one jump and move in quick time up the chimley,
where 'e now remains, paying no 'eed to the missus's attempts to get
him down again."
Sensation, as they say in the reports.
"But he'll be cooked," cried Phyllis, open-eyed.
Ukridge uttered a roar of dismay.
"No, he won't. Nor will our dinner. Mrs. Beale always lets the kitchen
fire out during the afternoon. It's a cold dinner we'll get to-night,
if that cat doesn't come down."
The professor's face fell. I had remarked on the occasion when I had
lunched with him his evident fondness for the pleasures of the table.
Cold, impromptu dinners were plainly not to his taste.
We went to the kitchen in a body. Mrs. Beale was standing in front of
the empty grate making seductive cat noises up the chimney.
"What's all this, Mrs. Beale?" said Ukridge.
"He won't come down, sir, not while he thinks Bob's about. And how I'm
to cook dinner for five with him up the chimney I don't see, sir."
"Prod at him with a broom handle, Mrs. Beale," urged Ukridge.
"I 'ave tried that, sir, but I can't reach him, and I've only bin and
drove 'im further up. What must be," added Mrs. Beale philosophically,
"must be. He may come down of his own accord in the night. Bein'
'ungry."
"Then what we must do," said Ukridge in a jovial manner which to me at
least seemed out of place, "is to have a regular, jolly, picnic
dinner, what? Whack up whatever we have in the larder, and eat that."
"A regular, jolly, picnic dinner," repeated the professor gloomily. I
could read what was passing in his mind.
"That will be delightful," said Phyllis.
[Illustration: "I've only bin and drove 'im further up," said Mrs.
Beale.]
"Er--I think, my dear sir," said her father, "it would be hardly fair
of us to give any further trouble to Mrs. Ukridge and yourself. If you
will allow me, therefore, I will--"
Ukridge became gushingly hospitable. He refused to think of allowing
his guests to go empty away. He would be able to whack up something,
he said. There was quite a good deal of the ham left, he was sure. He
appealed to me to indorse his view that there was a tin of sardines
and part of a cold fowl and plenty of bread and cheese.
"And after all," he said, speaking for the whole company in the
generous, comprehensive way enthusiasts have, "what more do we want in
weather like this? A nice, light, cold dinner is ever so much better
for us than a lot of hot things."
The professor said nothing. He looked wan and unhappy.
We strolled out again into the garden, but somehow things seemed to
drag. Conversation was fitful, except on the part of Ukridge, who
continued to talk easily on all subjects, unconscious of the fact that
the party was depressed, and at least one of his guests rapidly
becoming irritable. I watched the professor furtively as Ukridge
talked on, and that ominous phrase of Mr. Chase's concerning
four-point-seven guns kept coming into my mind. If Ukridge were to
tread on any of his pet corns, as he might at any minute, there would
be an explosion. The snatching of the dinner from his very mouth, as
it were, and the substitution of a bread-and-cheese and sardines menu
had brought him to the frame of mind when men turn and rend their
nearest and dearest.
The sight of the table, when at length we filed into the dining room,
sent a chill through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very
hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was
enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humoring. A
huge cheese faced us in almost a swash-buckling way, and I noticed
that the professor shivered slightly as he saw it. Sardines, looking
more oily and uninviting than anything I had ever seen, appeared in
their native tin beyond the loaf of bread. There was a ham, in its
third quarter, and a chicken which had suffered heavily during a
previous visit to the table.
We got through the meal somehow, and did our best to delude ourselves
into the idea that it was all great fun, but it was a shallow
pretense. The professor was very silent by the time we had finished.
Ukridge had been terrible. When the professor began a story--his
stories would have been the better for a little more briskness and
condensation--Ukridge interrupted him before he had got halfway
through, without a word of apology, and began some anecdote of his
own. He disagreed with nearly every opinion he expressed. It is true
that he did it all in such a perfectly friendly way, and was obviously
so innocent of any intention of giving offense, that another man might
have overlooked the matter. But the professor, robbed of his good
dinner, was at the stage when he had to attack somebody. Every moment
I had been expecting the storm to burst.
It burst after dinner.
We were strolling in the garden when some demon urged Ukridge, apropos
of the professor's mention of Dublin, to start upon the Irish
question. My heart stood still.
Ukridge had boomed forth some very positive opinions of his own on the
subject of Ireland before I could get near enough to him to stop him.
When I did, I suppose I must have whispered louder than I had
intended, for the professor heard my words, and they acted as the
match to the powder.
"He's touchy on the Irish question, is he?" he thundered. "Drop it, is
it? And why? Why, sir? I'm one of the best-tempered men that ever came
from Ireland, let me tell you, and I will not stay here to be insulted
by the insinuation that I cannot discuss Irish affairs as calmly as
anyone."
"But, professor--"
"Take your hand off my arm, Mr. Garnet. I will not be treated like a
child. I am as competent to discuss the affairs of Ireland without
heat as any man, let me tell you."
"Father--"
"And let me tell you, Mr. Ukridge, that I consider your opinions
poisonous. Poisonous, sir. And you know nothing whatever about the
subject, sir. I don't wish to see you or to speak to you again.
Understand that, sir. Our acquaintance began to-day, and it will
cease to-day. Good night to you. Come, Phyllis, me dear. Mrs. Ukridge,
good night."
Mr. Chase, when he spoke of four-point-seven guns, had known what he
was talking about.
DIES IRÆ
IX
Why is it, I wonder, that stories of Retribution calling at the wrong
address strike us as funny instead of pathetic? I myself had been
amused by them many a time. In a book which I had just read, a shop
woman, being vexed with an omnibus conductor, had thrown a
superannuated orange at him. It had found its billet not on him, but
on a perfectly inoffensive spectator. The missile, we are told, "'it a
young copper full in the hyeball." I had enjoyed this when I read it,
but now that fate had arranged a precisely similar situation, with
myself in the rôle of the young copper, the fun of the thing appealed
to me not at all.
It was Ukridge who was to blame for the professor's regrettable
explosion and departure, and he ought by all laws of justice to have
suffered for it. As it was, I was the only person materially affected.
It did not matter to Ukridge. He did not care twopence one way or the
other. If the professor were friendly, he was willing to talk to him
by the hour on any subject, pleasant or unpleasant. If, on the other
hand, he wished to have nothing more to do with us, it did not worry
him. He was content to let him go. Ukridge was a self-sufficing
person.
But to me it was a serious matter. More than serious. If I have done
my work as historian with any adequate degree of skill, the reader
should have gathered by this time the state of my feelings.
My love had grown with the days. Mr. J. Holt Schooling, or somebody
else with a taste for juggling with figures, might write a very
readable page or so of statistics in connection with the growth of
love in the heart of a man. In some cases it is, I believe, slow. In
my own I can only say that Jack's beanstalk was a backward plant in
comparison. It is true that we had not seen a great deal of one
another, and that, when we had met, our interviews had been brief and
our conversation conventional; but it is the intervals between the
meetings that do the real damage. Absence, as the poet neatly remarks,
makes the heart grow fonder. And now, thanks to Ukridge's amazing
idiocy, a barrier had been thrust between us. As if the business of
fishing for a girl's heart were not sufficiently difficult and
delicate without the addition of needless obstacles! It was terrible
to have to reëstablish myself in the good graces of the professor
before I could so much as begin to dream of Phyllis.
Ukridge gave me no balm.
"Well, after all," he said, when I pointed out to him quietly but
plainly my opinion of his tactlessness, "what does it matter? There
are other people in the world besides the old buffer. And we haven't
time to waste making friends, as a matter of fact. The farm ought to
keep us busy. I've noticed, Garny, old boy, that you haven't seemed
such a whale for work lately as you might be. You must buckle to, old
horse. We are at a critical stage. On our work now depends the success
of the speculation. Look at those cocks. They're always fighting.
Fling a stone at them. What's the matter with you? Can't get the novel
off your chest, what? You take my tip, and give your mind a rest.
Nothing like manual labor for clearing the brain. All the doctors say
so. Those coops ought to be painted to-day or to-morrow. Mind you, I
think old Derrick would be all right if one persevered--"
"And didn't call him a fat old buffer, and contradict everything he
said and spoil all his stories by breaking in with chestnuts of your
own in the middle," I interrupted with bitterness.
"Oh, rot, old boy! He didn't mind being called a fat old buffer. You
keep harping on that. A man likes one to be chatty with him. What was
the matter with old Derrick was a touch of liver. You should have
stopped him taking that cheese. I say, old man, just fling another
stone at those cocks, will you? They'll eat one another."
I had hoped, fearing the while that there was not much chance of such
a thing happening, that the professor might get over his feeling of
injury during the night, and be as friendly as ever next day. But he
was evidently a man who had no objection whatever to letting the sun
go down upon his wrath, for, when I met him on the beach the
following morning, he cut me in the most uncompromising fashion.
Phyllis was with him at the time, and also another girl who was, I
supposed from the strong likeness between them, her sister. She had
the same soft mass of brown hair. But to me she appeared almost
commonplace in comparison.
It is never pleasant to be cut dead. It produces the same sort of
feeling as is experienced when one treads on nothing where one
imagined a stair to be. In the present instance the pang was mitigated
to a certain extent--not largely--by the fact that Phyllis looked at
me. She did not move her head, and I could not have declared
positively that she moved her eyes; but nevertheless she certainly
looked at me. It was something. She seemed to say that duty compelled
her to follow her father's lead, and that the act must not be taken as
evidence of any personal animus.
That, at least, was how I read off the message.
Two days later I met Mr. Chase in the village.
"Halloo! so you're back," I said.
"You've discovered my secret," said he. "Will you have a cigar or a
cocoanut?"
There was a pause.
"Trouble, I hear, while I was away," he said.
I nodded.
"The man I live with, Ukridge, did it. Touched on the Irish question."
"Home rule?"
"He mentioned it among other things."
"And the professor went off?"
"Like a bomb."
"He would. It's a pity."
I agreed.
I am glad to say that I suppressed the desire to ask him to use his
influence, if any, with Professor Derrick to effect a reconciliation.
I felt that I must play the game.
"I ought not to be speaking to you, you know," said Mr. Chase. "You're
under arrest."
"He's still--" I stopped for a word.
"Very much so. I'll do what I can."
"It's very good of you."
"But the time is not yet ripe. He may be said at present to be
simmering down."
"I see. Thanks. Good-by."
"So long."
And Mr. Chase walked on with long strides to the Cob.
* * * * *
The days passed slowly. I saw nothing more of Phyllis or her sister.
The professor I met once or twice on the links. I had taken earnestly
to golf in this time of stress. Golf, it has been said, is the game of
disappointed lovers. On the other hand, it has further been pointed
out that it does not follow that, because a man is a failure as a
lover, he will be any good at all on the links. My game was distinctly
poor at first. But a round or two put me back into my proper form,
which is fair. The professor's demeanor at these accidental meetings
on the links was a faithful reproduction of his attitude on the beach.
Only by a studied imitation of the absolute stranger did he show that
he had observed my presence.
Once or twice after dinner, when Ukridge was smoking one of his
special cigars while Mrs. Ukridge petted Edwin (now moving in society
once more, and in his right mind), I walked out across the fields
through the cool summer night till I came to the hedge that shut off
the Derricks' grounds. Not the hedge through which I had made my first
entrance, but another, lower, and nearer the house. Standing there
under the shade of a tree I could see the lighted windows of the
drawing-room.
Generally there was music inside, and, the windows being opened on
account of the warmth of the night, I was able to make myself a little
more miserable by hearing Phyllis sing. It deepened the feeling of
banishment.
I shall never forget those furtive visits. The intense stillness of
the night, broken by an occasional rustling in the grass or the hedge;
the smell of the flowers in the garden beyond; the distant drone of
the sea.
"God makes sech nights, all white and still,
Fur'z you can look and listen."
Another day had generally begun before I moved from my hiding place,
and started for home, surprised to find my limbs stiff and my clothes
bathed with dew.
Life seemed a poor institution during these days.
I ENLIST A MINION'S SERVICES
X
It would be interesting to know to what extent the work of authors is
influenced by their private affairs. If life is flowing smoothly for
them, are the novels they write in that period of content colored with
optimism? And if things are running crosswise, do they work off the
resultant gloom on their faithful public? If, for instance, Mr. W. W.
Jacobs had toothache, would he write like Mr. Hall Caine? If Maxim
Gorky were invited to lunch by the Czar, would he sit down and dash
off a trifle in the vein of Mr. Dooley? Probably great authors have
the power of detaching their writing self from their living, workaday
self. For my own part, the frame of mind in which I now found myself
completely altered the scheme of my novel. I had designed it as a
light-comedy effort. Here and there a page or two to steady the
reader, and show him what I could do in the way of pathos if I cared
to try; but in the main a thing of sunshine and laughter. But now
great slabs of gloom began to work themselves into the scheme of it.
Characters whom I had hitherto looked upon as altogether robust
developed fatal illnesses. A magnificent despondency became the
keynote of the book. Instead of marrying, my hero and heroine had a
big scene in the last chapter, at the end of which she informed him
that she was already secretly wedded to another, a man with whom she
had not even a sporting chance of being happy. I could see myself
correcting proofs made pulpy by the tears of emotional printers.
It would not do. I felt that I must make a determined effort to shake
off my depression. More than ever the need for conciliating the
professor was borne in upon me. Day and night I spurred my brain to
think of some suitable means of engineering a reconciliation.
In the meantime I worked hard among the fowls, drove furiously on the
links, and swam about the harbor when the affairs of the farm did not
require my attention.
Things were not going very well on our model chicken farm. Little
accidents marred the harmony of life in the fowl run. On one occasion
a hen fell into a pot of tar, and came out an unspeakable object.
Chickens kept straying into the wrong coops, and, in accordance with
fowl etiquette, were promptly pecked to death by the resident. Edwin
murdered a couple of Wyandottes, and was only saved from execution by
the tears of Mrs. Ukridge.
In spite of these occurrences, however, his buoyant optimism never
deserted Ukridge. They were incidents, annoying, but in no way
affecting the prosperity of the farm.
"After all," he said, "what's one bird more or less? Yes, I know I was
angry when that beast of a cat lunched off those two, but that was
more for the principle of the thing. I'm not going to pay large sums
for chickens so that a beastly cat can lunch well. Still, we've plenty
left, and the eggs are coming in better now, though we've a deal of
leeway to make up yet in that line. I got a letter from Whiteley's
this morning asking when my first consignment was to arrive. You know,
these people make a mistake in hurrying a man. It annoys him. It
irritates him. When we really get going, Garny, my boy, I shall drop
Whiteley's. I shall cut them out of my list, and send my eggs to their
trade rivals. They shall have a sharp lesson. It's a little hard. Here
am I, worked to death looking after things down here, and these men
have the impertinence to bother me about their wretched business!"
[Illustration: Things were not going very well on our model chicken
farm.]
It was on the morning after this that I heard him calling me in a
voice in which I detected agitation. I was strolling about the
paddock, as was my habit after breakfast, thinking about Phyllis and
my wretched novel. I had just framed a more than usually murky scene
for use in the earlier part of the book, when Ukridge shouted to me
from the fowl run.
"Garnet, come here," he cried, "I want you to see the most astounding
thing."
I joined him.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Blest if I know. Look at those chickens. They've been doing that for
the last half hour."
I inspected the chickens. There was certainly something the matter
with them. They were yawning broadly, as if we bored them. They stood
about singly and in groups, opening and shutting their beaks. It was
an uncanny spectacle.
"What's the matter with them?"
"It looks to me," I said, "as if they were tired of life. They seem
hipped."
"Oh, do look at that poor little brown one by the coop," said Mrs.
Ukridge sympathetically, "I'm sure it's not well. See, it's lying
down. What _can_ be the matter with it?"
"Can a chicken get a fit of the blues?" I asked. "Because, if so,
that's what they've got. I never saw a more bored-looking lot of
birds."
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Ukridge. "We'll ask Beale. He once
lived with an aunt who kept fowls. He'll know all about it. Beale!"
No answer.
"_Beale_!!"
A sturdy form in shirt sleeves appeared through the bushes, carrying
a boot. We seemed to have interrupted him in the act of cleaning it.
"Beale, you know about fowls. What's the matter with these chickens?"
The hired retainer examined the _blasé_ birds with a wooden expression
on his face.
"Well?" said Ukridge.
"The 'ole thing 'ere," said the hired retainer, "is these 'ere fowls
have bin and got the roop."
I had never heard of the disease before, but it sounded quite
horrifying.
"Is that what makes them yawn like that?" said Mrs. Ukridge.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Poor things!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And have they all got it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What ought we to do?" asked Ukridge.
The hired retainer perpended.
"Well, my aunt, sir, when 'er fowls 'ad the roop, she give them snuff.
Give them snuff, she did," he repeated with relish, "every morning."
"Snuff!" said Mrs. Ukridge.
"Yes, ma'am. She give them snuff till their eyes bubbled."
Mrs. Ukridge uttered a faint squeak at this vivid piece of word
painting.
"And did it cure them?" asked Ukridge.
"No, sir," responded the expert soothingly. "They died."
"Oh, go away, Beale, and clean your beastly boots," said Ukridge.
"You're no use. Wait a minute. Who would know about this infernal roop
thing? One of those farmer chaps would, I suppose. Beale, go off to
farmer Leigh at Up Lyme, and give him my compliments, and ask him what
he does when his fowls get the roop."
"Yes, sir."
"No, I'll go, Ukridge," I said, "I want some exercise."
I whistled to Bob, who was investigating a mole heap in the paddock,
and set off to consult farmer Leigh. He had sold us some fowls shortly
after our arrival, so might be expected to feel a kindly interest in
their ailing families.
The path to Up Lyme lies across deep-grassed meadows. At intervals it
passes over a stream by means of foot bridges. The stream curls
through the meadows like a snake.
And at the first of these bridges I met Phyllis.
I came upon her quite suddenly. The other end of the bridge was hidden
from my view. I could hear somebody coming through the grass, but not
till I was on the bridge did I see who it was. We reached the bridge
simultaneously. She was alone. She carried a sketching block. All
nice girls sketch a little.
There was room for one alone on the foot bridge, and I drew back to
let her pass.
As it is the privilege of woman to make the first sign of recognition,
I said nothing. I merely lifted my hat in a noncommitting fashion.
"Are you going to cut me, I wonder?" I said to myself.
She answered the unspoken question as I hoped it would be answered.
"Mr. Garnet," she said, stopping at the end of the bridge.
"Miss Derrick?"
"I couldn't tell you so before, but I am so sorry this has happened."
"You are very kind," I said, realizing as I said it the miserable
inadequacy of the English language. At a crisis when I would have
given a month's income to have said something neat, epigrammatic,
suggestive, yet withal courteous and respectful, I could only find a
hackneyed, unenthusiastic phrase which I should have used in accepting
an invitation from a bore to lunch with him at his club.
"Of course you understand my friends must be my father's friends."
"Yes," I said gloomily, "I suppose so."
"So you must not think me rude if I--I--"
"Cut me," said I with masculine coarseness.
"Don't seem to see you," said she, with feminine delicacy, "when I am
with my father. You will understand?"
"I shall understand."
"You see"--she smiled--"you are under arrest, as Tom says."
Tom!
"I see," I said.
"Good-by."
"Good-by."
I watched her out of sight, and went on to interview Mr. Leigh.
We had a long and intensely uninteresting conversation about the
maladies to which chickens are subject. He was verbose and
reminiscent. He took me over his farm, pointing out as he went
Dorkings and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally
fatal, with, as far as I could gather, Christian Science principles.
I left at last with instructions to paint the throats of the stricken
birds with turpentine--a task imagination boggled at, and one which I
proposed to leave exclusively to Ukridge and the hired retainer. As I
had a slight headache, a visit to the Cob would, I thought, do me
good. I had missed my bath that morning, and was in need of a breath
of sea air.
It was high tide, and there was deep water on three sides of the Cob.
In a small boat in the offing Professor Derrick appeared, fishing. I
had seen him engaged in this pursuit once or twice before. His only
companion was a gigantic boatman, by name Harry Hawk.
I sat on the seat at the end of the Cob, and watched the professor. It
was an instructive sight, an object lesson to those who hold that
optimism has died out of the race. I had never seen him catch a fish.
He did not look to me as if he were at all likely to catch a fish. Yet
he persevered.
There are few things more restful than to watch some one else busy
under a warm sun. As I sat there, my mind ranged idly over large
subjects and small. I thought of love and chicken farming. I mused on
the immortality of the soul. In the end I always returned to the
professor. Sitting, as I did, with my back to the beach, I could see
nothing but his boat. It had the ocean to itself.
I began to ponder over the professor. I wondered dreamily if he were
very hot. I tried to picture his boyhood. I speculated on his future,
and the pleasure he extracted from life.
It was only when I heard him call out to Hawk to be careful, when a
movement on the part of that oarsman set the boat rocking, that I
began to weave romances round him in which I myself figured.
But, once started, I progressed rapidly. I imagined a sudden upset.
Professor struggling in water. Myself (heroically): "Courage! I'm
coming!" A few rapid strokes. Saved! Sequel: A subdued professor,
dripping salt water and tears of gratitude, urging me to become his
son-in-law. That sort of thing happened in fiction. It was a shame
that it should not happen in real life. In my hot youth I once had
seven stories in seven weekly penny papers in the same month all
dealing with a situation of the kind. Only the details differed. In
"Not Really a Coward," Vincent Devereux had rescued the earl's
daughter from a fire, whereas in "Hilda's Hero" it was the peppery old
father whom Tom Slingsby saved. Singularly enough, from drowning. In
other words, I, a very mediocre scribbler, had effected seven times in
a single month what the powers of the universe could not manage once,
even on the smallest scale.
I was a little annoyed with the powers of the universe.
* * * * *
It was at precisely three minutes to twelve--for I had just consulted
my watch--that the great idea surged into my brain. At four minutes to
twelve I had been grumbling impotently at Providence. By two minutes
to twelve I had determined upon a manly and independent course of
action.
Briefly, it was this. Since dramatic accident and rescue would not
happen of its own accord, I would arrange one for myself. Hawk looked
to me the sort of man who would do anything in a friendly way for a
few shillings.
* * * * *
That afternoon I interviewed Mr. Hawk at the Net and Mackerel.
"Hawk," I said to him darkly, over a mystic and conspirator-like pot,
"I want you, the next time you take Professor Derrick out
fishing"--here I glanced round, to make sure that we were not
overheard--"to upset him."
His astonished face rose slowly from the rim of the pot, like a full
moon.
"What 'ud I do that for?" he gasped.
"Five shillings, I hope," said I; "but I am prepared to go to ten."
He gurgled.
I argued with the man. I was eloquent, but at the same time concise.
My choice of words was superb. I crystallized my ideas into pithy
sentences which a child could have understood.
At the end of half an hour he had grasped all the salient points of
the scheme. Also he imagined that I wished the professor upset by way
of a practical joke. He gave me to understand that this was the type
of humor which was to be expected from a gentleman from London. I am
afraid he must at one period of his career have lived at one of those
watering places to which trippers congregate. He did not seem to think
highly of the Londoner.
I let it rest at that. I could not give my true reason, and this
served as well as any.
At the last moment he recollected that he, too, would get wet when the
accident took place, and raised his price to a sovereign.
A mercenary man. It is painful to see how rapidly the old simple
spirit is dying out in rural districts. Twenty years ago a fisherman
would have been charmed to do a little job like that for a shilling.
THE BRAVE PRESERVER
XI
I could have wished, during the next few days, that Mr. Harry Hawk's
attitude toward myself had not been so unctuously confidential and
mysterious. It was unnecessary, in my opinion, for him to grin
meaningly whenever he met me in the street. His sly wink when we
passed each other on the Cob struck me as in indifferent taste. The
thing had been definitely arranged (half down and half when it was
over), and there was no need for any cloak and dark-lantern effects. I
objected strongly to being treated as the villain of a melodrama. I
was merely an ordinary well-meaning man, forced by circumstances into
doing the work of Providence. Mr. Hawk's demeanor seemed to say:
"We are two reckless scoundrels, but bless you, _I_ won't give away
your guilty secret."
The climax came one morning as I was going along the street toward the
beach. I was passing a dark doorway, when out shimmered Mr. Hawk as if
he had been a specter instead of the most substantial man within a
radius of ten miles.
"St!" he whispered.
"Now look here, Hawk," I said wrathfully, for the start he had given
me had made me bite my tongue, "this has got to stop. I refuse to be
haunted in this way. What is it now?"
"Mr. Derrick goes out this morning, zur."
"Thank goodness for that," I said. "Get it over this morning, then,
without fail. I couldn't stand another day of this."
I went on to the Cob, where I sat down. I was excited. Deeds of great
import must shortly be done. I felt a little nervous. It would never
do to bungle the thing. Suppose by some accident I were to drown the
professor, or suppose that, after all, he contented himself with a
mere formal expression of thanks and refused to let bygones be
bygones. These things did not bear thinking of.
I got up and began to pace restlessly to and fro.
Presently from the farther end of the harbor there put off Mr. Hawk's
boat, bearing its precious cargo. My mouth became dry with excitement.
Very slowly Mr. Hawk pulled round the end of the Cob, coming to a
standstill some dozen yards from where I was performing my beat. It
was evidently here that the scene of the gallant rescue had been
fixed.
My eyes were glued upon Mr. Hawk's broad back. The boat lay almost
motionless on the water. I had never seen the sea smoother.
It seemed as if this perfect calm might continue for ever. Mr. Hawk
made no movement. Then suddenly the whole scene changed to one of vast
activity. I heard Mr. Hawk utter a hoarse cry, and saw him plunge
violently in his seat. The professor turned half round, and I caught
sight of his indignant face, pink with emotion. Then the scene changed
again with the rapidity of a dissolving view. I saw Mr. Hawk give
another plunge, and the next moment the boat was upside down in the
water, and I was shooting head foremost to the bottom, oppressed with
the indescribably clammy sensation which comes when one's clothes are
thoroughly wet.
I rose to the surface close to the upturned boat. The first sight I
saw was the spluttering face of Mr. Hawk. I ignored him and swam to
where the professor's head bobbed on the waters.
"Keep cool," I said. A silly remark in the circumstances.
He was swimming energetically but unskillfully. In his shore clothes
it would have taken him at least a week to struggle to land.
I knew all about saving people from drowning. We used to practice it
with a dummy in the swimming bath at school. I attacked him from the
rear and got a good grip of him by the shoulders. I then swam on my
back in the direction of land, and beached him at the feet of an
admiring crowd. I had thought of putting him under once or twice just
to show him he was being rescued, but decided against such a course as
needlessly realistic. As it was, I fancy he had swallowed two or three
hearty draughts of sea water.
The crowd was enthusiastic.
"Brave young feller," said somebody.
I blushed. This was fame.
"Jumped in, he did, sure enough, an' saved the gentleman!"
"Be the old soul drownded?"
"That girt fule, 'Arry 'Awk!"
I was sorry for Mr. Hawk. Popular opinion, in which the professor
wrathfully joined, was against him. I could not help thinking that my
fellow-conspirator did well to keep out of it all. He was now sitting
in the boat, which he had restored to its normal position, baling
pensively with an old tin can. To satire from the shore he paid no
attention.
The professor stood up and stretched out his hand to me.
I grasped it.
"Mr. Garnet," he said, for all the world as if he had been the father
of the heroine of "Hilda's Hero," "we parted recently in anger. Let me
thank you for your gallant conduct, and hope that bygones will be
bygones."
[Illustration: "Mr. Garnet," he said, "we parted recently in anger. I
hope that bygones will be bygones."]
Like Mr. Samuel Weller, I liked his conversation much. It was "werry
pretty."
I came out strong. I continued to hold his hand. The crowd raised a
sympathetic cheer.
I said:
"Professor, the fault was mine. Show that you have forgiven me by
coming up to the farm and putting on something dry."
"An excellent idea, me boy. I _am_ a little wet."
We walked briskly up the hill to the farm. Ukridge met us at the gate.
He diagnosed the situation rapidly.
"You're all wet," he said.
I admitted it.
"Professor Derrick has had an unfortunate boating accident," I
explained.
"And Mr. Garnet heroically dived in, in all his clothes, and saved me
life," broke in the professor. "A hero, sir. _A-choo!_"
"You're catching cold, old horse," said Ukridge, all friendliness and
concern, his little differences with the professor having vanished
like thawed snow. "This'll never do. Come upstairs and get into
something of Garnet's. My own toggery wouldn't fit, what? Come along,
come along. I'll get you some hot water. Mrs. Beale--Mrs. _Beale_! We
want a large can of hot water. At once. What? Yes, immediately. What?
Very well, then, as soon as you can. Now, then, Garny, my boy, out
with the duds. What do you think of this, now, professor? A sweetly
pretty thing in gray flannel. Here's a shirt. Get out of that wet
toggery, and Mrs. Beale shall dry it. Don't attempt to tell me about
it till you've changed. Socks? Socks forward. Show socks. Here you
are. Coat? Try this blazer. That's right. That's right."
He bustled about till the professor was clothed, then marched him
downstairs and gave him a cigar.
"Now, what's all this? What happened?"
The professor explained. He was severe in his narration upon the
unlucky Mr. Hawk.
"I was fishing, Mr. Ukridge, with me back turned, when I felt the boat
rock violently from one side to the other to such an extent that I
nearly lost me equilibrium. And then the boat upset. The man's a fool,
sir. I could not see what had happened, my back being turned, as I
say."
"Garnet must have seen. What happened, Marmaduke?"
I tried to smooth things over for Mr. Hawk.
"It was very sudden," I said. "It seemed to me as if the man had got
an attack of cramp. That would account for it. He has the reputation
of being a most sober and trustworthy fellow."
"Never trust that sort of man," said Ukridge. "They are always the
worst. It's plain to me that this man was beastly drunk, and upset the
boat while trying to do a dance."
The professor was in the best of tempers, and I worked strenuously to
keep him so. My scheme had been so successful that its iniquity did
not worry me. I have noticed that this is usually the case in matters
of this kind. It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.
"We must go round the links together one of these days, Mr. Garnet,"
said the professor. "I have noticed you there on several occasions,
playing a strong game. I have lately taken to using a Schenectady
putter. It is wonderful what a difference it makes."
Golf is a great bond of union. We wandered about the grounds
discussing the game, the _entente cordiale_ growing more firmly
established every moment.
"We must certainly arrange a meeting," concluded the professor. "I
shall be interested to see how we stand with regard to one another. I
have improved my game considerably since I have been down
here--considerably."
"My only feat worthy of mention since I started the game," I said,
"has been to halve a round with Angus McLurkin at St. Andrew's."
"_The_ McLurkin?" asked the professor, impressed.
"Yes. But it was one of his very off days, I fancy. He must have had
gout, or something. And I have certainly never played so well since."
"Still--" said the professor. "Yes, we must really arrange to meet."
With Ukridge, who was in one of his less tactless moods, he became
very friendly.
Ukridge's ready agreement with his strictures on the erring Hawk had a
great deal to do with this. When a man has a grievance he feels drawn
to those who will hear him patiently and sympathize. Ukridge was all
sympathy.
"The man is an unprincipled scoundrel," he said, "and should be torn
limb from limb. Take my advice, Cholmondeley, and don't go out with
him again. Show him that you are not a man to be trifled with. The
spilled child dreads the water, what? Human life isn't safe with such
men as Hawk roaming about."
"You are perfectly right, sir. The man can have no defense. I shall
not employ him again."
I felt more than a little guilty while listening to this duet on the
subject of the man whom I had lured from the straight and narrow
path. But my attempts at excusing him were ill received. Indeed, the
professor showed such distinct signs of becoming heated that I
abandoned my fellow-conspirator to his fate with extreme promptness.
After all, an addition to the stipulated reward--one of these
days--would compensate him for any loss which he might sustain from
the withdrawal of the professor's custom. Mr. Harry Hawk was in good
enough case. I would see that he did not suffer.
Filled with these philanthropic feelings, I turned once more to talk
with the professor of niblicks and approach shots and holes done in
three without a brassy. We were a merry party at lunch--a lunch,
fortunately, in Mrs. Beale's best vein, consisting of a roast chicken
and sweets. Chicken had figured somewhat frequently of late on our
daily bill of fare.
We saw the professor off the premises in his dried clothes, and I
turned back to put the fowls to bed in a happier frame of mind than I
had known for a long time. I whistled rag-time airs as I worked.
"Rum old buffer," said Ukridge meditatively. "My goodness, I should
have liked to see him in the water. Why do I miss these good things?"
SOME EMOTIONS
XII
The fame which came to me through that gallant rescue was a little
embarrassing. I was a marked man. Did I walk through the village,
heads emerged from windows, and eyes followed me out of sight. Did I
sit on the beach, groups formed behind me and watched in silent
admiration. I was the man of the moment.
"If we'd wanted an advertisement for the farm," said Ukridge on one of
these occasions, "we couldn't have had a better one than you, Garny,
my boy. You have brought us three distinct orders for eggs during the
last week. And I'll tell you what it is, we need all the orders we
can get that'll bring us in ready money. The farm is in a critical
condition, Marmaduke. The coffers are low, decidedly low. And I'll
tell you another thing. I'm getting precious tired of living on
nothing but chicken and eggs. So's Millie, though she doesn't say so."
"So am I," I said, "and I don't feel like imitating your wife's proud
reserve. I never want to see a chicken again except alive."
For the last week monotony had been the keynote of our commissariat.
We had cold chicken and eggs for breakfast, boiled chicken and eggs
for lunch, and roast chicken and eggs for dinner. Meals became a
nuisance, and Mrs. Beale complained bitterly that we did not give her
a chance. She was a cook who would have graced an alderman's house,
and served up noble dinners for gourmets, and here she was in this
remote corner of the world ringing the changes on boiled chicken and
roast chicken and boiled eggs and poached eggs. Mr. Whistler, set to
paint signboards for public houses, might have felt the same restless
discontent. As for her husband, the hired retainer, he took life as
tranquilly as ever, and seemed to regard the whole thing as the most
exhilarating farce he had ever been in. I think he looked on Ukridge
as an amiable lunatic, and was content to rough it a little in order
to enjoy the privilege of observing his movements. He made no
complaints of the food. When a man has supported life for a number of
years on incessant army beef, the monotony of daily chicken and eggs
scarcely strikes him.
"The fact is," said Ukridge, "these tradesmen round here seem to be a
sordid, suspicious lot. They clamor for money."
He mentioned a few examples. Vickers, the butcher, had been the first
to strike, with the remark that he would like to see the color of Mr.
Ukridge's money before supplying further joints. Dawlish, the grocer,
had expressed almost exactly similar sentiments two days later, and
the ranks of these passive resisters had been receiving fresh recruits
ever since. To a man the tradesmen of Lyme Regis seemed as deficient
in simple faith as they were in Norman blood.
"Can't you pay some of them a little on account?" I suggested. "It
would set them going again."
"My dear old man," said Ukridge impressively, "we need every penny of
ready money we can raise for the farm. The place simply eats money.
That infernal roop let us in for I don't know what."
That insidious epidemic had indeed proved costly. We had painted the
throats of the chickens with the best turpentine--at least, Ukridge
and Beale had--but in spite of their efforts dozens had died, and we
had been obliged to sink much more money than was pleasant in
restocking the run.
"No," said Ukridge, summing up, "these men must wait. We can't help
their troubles. Why, good gracious, it isn't as if they'd been waiting
for the money long. We've not been down here much over a month. I
never heard such a scandalous thing. 'Pon my word, I've a good mind to
go round and have a straight talk with one or two of them. I come and
settle down here, and stimulate trade, and give them large orders, and
they worry me with bills when they know I'm up to my eyes in work,
looking after the fowls. One can't attend to everything. This business
is just now at its most crucial point. It would be fatal to pay any
attention to anything else with things as they are. These scoundrels
will get paid all in good time."
It is a peculiarity of situations of this kind that the ideas of
debtor and creditor as to what constitutes good time never coincide.
I am afraid that, despite the urgent need for strict attention to
business, I was inclined to neglect my duties about this time. I had
got into the habit of wandering off, either to the links, where I
generally found the professor and sometimes Phyllis, or on long walks
by myself. There was one particular walk, along the Ware cliff,
through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever set eyes on,
which more than any other suited my mood. I would work my way through
the woods till I came to a small clearing on the very edge of the
cliff. There I would sit by the hour. Somehow I found that my ideas
flowed more readily in that spot than in any other. My novel was
taking shape. It was to be called, by the way, if it ever won through
to the goal of a title, "The Brown-haired Girl."
I had not been inside the professor's grounds since the occasion when
I had gone in through the boxwood hedge. But on the afternoon
following my financial conversation with Ukridge I made my way thither
after a toilet which, from its length, should have produced better
results than it did.
Not for four whole days had I caught so much as a glimpse of Phyllis.
I had been to the links three times, and had met the professor twice,
but on both occasions she had been absent. I had not had the courage
to ask after her. I had an absurd idea that my voice or my manner
would betray me in some way.
The professor was not at home. Nor was Mr. Chase. Nor was Miss Norah
Derrick, the lady I had met on the beach with the professor. Miss
Phyllis, said the maid, was in the garden.
I went into the garden. She was sitting under the cedar by the tennis
lawn, reading. She looked up as I approached.
To walk any distance under observation is one of the most trying
things I know. I advanced in bad order, hoping that my hands did not
really look as big as they felt. The same remark applied to my feet.
In emergencies of this kind a diffident man could very well dispense
with extremities. I should have liked to be wheeled up in a bath
chair.
I said it was a lovely afternoon; after which there was a lull in the
conversation. I was filled with a horrid fear that I was boring her. I
had probably arrived at the very moment when she was most interested
in her book. She must, I thought, even now be regarding me as a
nuisance, and was probably rehearsing bitter things to say to the
servant for not having had the sense to explain that she was out.
"I--er--called in the hope of seeing Professor Derrick," I said.
"You would find him on the links," she replied. It seemed to me that
she spoke wistfully.
"Oh, it--it doesn't matter," I said. "It wasn't anything important."
This was true. If the professor had appeared then and there, I should
have found it difficult to think of anything to say to him which would
have accounted for my anxiety to see him.
We paused again.
"How are the chickens, Mr. Garnet?" said she.
The situation was saved. Conversationally, I am like a clockwork toy.
I have to be set going. On the affairs of the farm I could speak
fluently. I sketched for her the progress we had made since her visit.
I was humorous concerning roop, epigrammatic on the subject of the
hired retainer and Edwin.
"Then the cat did come down from the chimney?" said Phyllis.
We both laughed, and--I can answer for myself--felt the better for it.
"He came down next day," I said, "and made an excellent lunch off one
of our best fowls. He also killed another, and only just escaped death
himself at the hands of Ukridge."
"Mr. Ukridge doesn't like him, does he?"
"If he does, he dissembles his love. Edwin is Mrs. Ukridge's pet. He
is the only subject on which they disagree. Edwin is certainly in the
way on a chicken farm. He has got over his fear of Bob, and is now
perfectly lawless. We have to keep a constant eye on him."
"And have you had any success with the incubator? I love incubators. I
have always wanted to have one of my own, but we have never kept
fowls."
"The incubator has not done all that it should have done," I said.
"Ukridge looks after it, and I fancy his methods are not the right
methods. I don't know if I have got the figures absolutely correct,
but Ukridge reasons on these lines. He says you are supposed to keep
the temperature up to a hundred and five degrees. I think he said a
hundred and five. Then the eggs are supposed to hatch out in a week or
so. He argues that you may just as well keep the temperature at
seventy-two, and wait a fortnight for your chickens. I am certain
there's a fallacy in the system somewhere, because we never seem to
get as far as the chickens. But Ukridge says his theory is
mathematically sound and he sticks to it."
"Are you quite sure that the way you are doing it is the best way to
manage a chicken farm?"
"I should very much doubt it. I am a child in these matters. I had
only seen a chicken in its wild state once or twice before we came
down here. I had never dreamed of being an active assistant on a real
farm. The whole thing began like Mr. George Ade's fable of the author.
An author--myself--was sitting at his desk trying to turn out
something that could be converted into breakfast food, when a friend
came in and sat down on the table and told him to go right on and not
mind him."
"Did Mr. Ukridge do that?"
"Very nearly that. He called at my rooms one beautiful morning when I
was feeling desperately tired of London and overworked and dying for a
holiday, and suggested that I should come to Lyme Regis with him and
help him farm chickens. I have not regretted it."
"It is a lovely place, isn't it?"
"The loveliest I have ever seen. How charming your garden is."
"Shall we go and look at it? You have not seen the whole of it."
As she rose I saw her book, which she had laid face downward on the
grass beside her. It was that same much-enduring copy of "The
Maneuvers of Arthur." I was thrilled. This patient perseverance must
surely mean something.
She saw me looking at it.
"Did you draw Pamela from anybody?" she asked suddenly.
I was glad now that I had not done so. The wretched Pamela, once my
pride, was for some reason unpopular with the only critic about whose
opinion I cared, and had fallen accordingly from her pedestal.
As we wandered down the gravel paths she gave me her opinion of the
book. In the main it was appreciative. I shall always associate the
scent of yellow lubin with the higher criticism.
"Of course I don't know anything about writing books," she said.
"Yes?" My tone implied, or I hoped it did, that she was an expert on
books, and that if she was not it didn't matter.
"But I don't think you do your heroines well. I have got 'The
Outsider'--"
(My other novel. Bastable & Kirby, six shillings. Satirical. All about
society, of which I know less than I know about chicken farming.
Slated by _Times_ and _Spectator_. Well received by the _Pelican_.)
"--and," continued Phyllis, "Lady Maud is exactly the same as Pamela
in 'The Maneuvers of Arthur.' I thought you must have drawn both
characters from some one you knew."
"No," I said; "no."
"I am so glad," said Phyllis.
And then neither of us seemed to have anything to say.
My knees began to tremble. I realized that the moment had arrived when
my fate must be put to the touch, and I feared that the moment was
premature. We cannot arrange these things to suit ourselves. I knew
that the time was not yet ripe, but the magic scent of the yellow
lubin was too much for me.
"Miss Derrick--" I said hoarsely.
Phyllis was looking with more intentness than the attractions of the
flower justified at a rose she held in her hand. The bees hummed in
the lubin.
"Miss Derrick--" I said, and stopped again.
"I say, you people," said a cheerful voice, "tea is ready. Halloo,
Garnet, how are you? That medal arrived yet from the humane society?"
I spun round. Mr. Tom Chase was standing at the end of the path. I
grinned a sickly grin.
"Well, Tom," said Phyllis.
And there was, I thought, just the faintest trace of annoyance in her
voice.
"I've been bathing," said Mr. Chase.
"Oh," I replied. "And I wish," I added, "that you'd drowned yourself."
But I added it silently to myself.
TEA AND TENNIS
XIII
"Met the professor's late boatman on the Cob," said Mr. Chase,
dissecting a chocolate cake.
"Clumsy man," said Phyllis, "I hope he was ashamed of himself. I shall
never forgive him for trying to drown papa."
My heart bled for Mr. Henry Hawk, that modern martyr.
"When I met him," said Tom Chase, "he looked as if he had been trying
to drown his sorrow as well."
"I knew he drank," said Phyllis severely, "the very first time I saw
him."
"You might have warned the professor," murmured Mr. Chase.
"He couldn't have upset the boat if he had been sober."
"You never know. He may have done it on purpose."
"How absurd!"
"Rather rough on the man, aren't you?" I said.
"Merely a suggestion," continued Mr. Chase airily. "I've been reading
sensational novels lately, and it seems to me that Hawk's cut out to
be a minion. Probably some secret foe of the professor's bribed him."
My heart stood still. Did he know, I wondered, and was this all a
roundabout way of telling me that he knew?
"The professor may be a member of an anarchist league, or something,
and this is his punishment for refusing to assassinate the Kaiser."
"Have another cup of tea, Tom, and stop talking nonsense."
Mr. Chase handed in his cup.
"What gave me the idea that the upset was done on purpose was this. I
saw the whole thing from the Ware cliff. The spill looked to me just
like dozens I had seen at Malta."
"Why do they upset themselves on purpose at Malta particularly?"
inquired Phyllis.
"Listen carefully, my dear, and you'll know more about the ways of the
navy that guards your coasts than you did before. When men are allowed
on shore at Malta, the owner has a fancy to see them snugly on board
again at a certain reasonable hour. After that hour any Maltese
policeman who brings them aboard gets one sovereign, cash. But he has
to do all the bringing part of it on his own. Consequence is, you see
boats rowing out to the ship, carrying men who have overstayed their
leave; and, when they get near enough, the able-bodied gentleman in
custody jumps to his feet, upsets the boat, and swims to the gangway.
The policemen, if they aren't drowned--they sometimes are--race him,
and whichever gets there first wins. If it's the policeman, he gets
his sovereign. If it's the sailor, he is considered to have arrived
not in a state of custody, and gets off easier. What a judicious
remark that was of the Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of
South Carolina! Just one more cup, please, Phyllis."
"But how does all that apply?" I asked, dry-mouthed.
"Why, Hawk upset the professor just as those Maltese were upset.
There's a patent way of doing it. Furthermore, by judicious
questioning, I found that Hawk was once in the navy, and stationed at
Malta. _Now_, who's going to drag in Sherlock Holmes?"
"You don't really think--" I said, feeling like a criminal in the
dock when the case is going against him.
"I think friend Hawk has been reënacting the joys of his vanished
youth, so to speak."
"He ought to be prosecuted," said Phyllis, blazing with indignation.
Alas, poor Hawk!
"Nobody's safe with a man of that sort hiring out a boat."
Oh, miserable Hawk!
"But why on earth," I asked, as calmly as possible, "should he play a
trick like that on Professor Derrick, Chase?"
"Pure animal spirits, probably. Or he may, as I say, be a minion."
I was hot all over.
"I shall tell father that," said Phyllis in her most decided voice,
"and see what he says. I don't wonder at the man taking to drink after
doing such a thing."
"I--I think you're making a mistake," I said.
"I never make mistakes," Mr. Chase replied. "I am called Archibald the
All Right, for I am infallible. I propose to keep a reflective eye
upon the jovial Hawk."
He helped himself to another section of the chocolate cake.
"Haven't you finished yet, Tom?" inquired Phyllis. "I'm sure Mr.
Garnet's getting tired of sitting talking here."
I shot out a polite negative. Mr. Chase explained with his mouth full
that he had by no means finished. Chocolate cake, it appeared, was the
dream of his life. When at sea he was accustomed to lie awake o'
nights thinking of it.
"You don't seem to realize," he said, "that I have just come from a
cruise on a torpedo boat. There was such a sea on, as a rule, that
cooking operations were entirely suspended, and we lived on ham and
sardines--without bread."
"How horrible!"
"On the other hand," added Mr. Chase philosophically, "it didn't
matter much, because we were all ill most of the time."
"Don't be nasty, Tom."
"I was merely defending myself. I hope Mr. Hawk will be able to do as
well when his turn comes. My aim, my dear Phyllis, is to show you in a
series of impressionist pictures the sort of thing I have to go
through when I'm not here. Then perhaps you won't rend me so savagely
over a matter of five minutes' lateness for breakfast."
"Five minutes! It was three quarters of an hour, and everything was
simply frozen."
"Quite right, too, in weather like this. You're a slave to convention,
Phyllis. You think breakfast ought to be hot, so you always have it
hot. On occasion I prefer mine cold. Mine is the truer wisdom. I have
scoffed the better part, as the good Kipling has it. You can give the
cook my compliments, Phyllis, and tell her--gently, for I don't wish
the glad news to overwhelm her--that I enjoyed that cake. Say that I
shall be glad to hear from her again. Care for a game of tennis,
Garnet?"
"What a pity Norah isn't here," said Phyllis. "We could have had a
four."
"But she is at present wasting her sweetness on the desert air of
Yeovil. You had better sit out and watch us, Phyllis. Tennis in this
sort of weather is no job for the delicately nurtured feminine. I will
explain the finer points of my play as we go on. Look out particularly
for the Doherty Back-handed Slosh. A winning stroke every time."
We proceeded to the tennis court. I played with the sun in my eyes. I
might, if I chose, emphasize that fact, and attribute my subsequent
rout to it, adding, by way of solidifying the excuse, that I was
playing in a strange court with a borrowed racket, and that my mind
was preoccupied--firstly, with _l'affaire_ Hawk; secondly, and
chiefly, with the gloomy thought that Phyllis and my opponent seemed
to be on fiendishly good terms with each other. Their manner at tea
had been almost that of an engaged couple. There was a thorough
understanding between them. I will not, however, take refuge behind
excuses. I admit, without qualifying the statement, that Mr. Chase was
too good for me. I had always been under the impression that
lieutenants in the royal navy were not brilliant at tennis. I had met
them at various houses, but they had never shone conspicuously. They
had played an earnest, unobtrusive game, and generally seemed glad
when it was over. Mr. Chase was not of this sort. His service was
bottled lightning. His returns behaved like jumping crackers. He won
the first game in precisely four strokes. He served. I know now how
soldiers feel under fire. The balls whistled at me like live things.
Only once did I take the service with the full face of the racket, and
then I seemed to be stopping a bullet. I returned it into the net.
"Game," said Mr. Chase.
I felt a worm, and no man. Phyllis, I thought, would probably judge my
entire character from this exhibition. A man, she would reflect, who
could be so feeble and miserable a failure at tennis, could not be
good for much in any department of life. She would compare me
instructively with my opponent, and contrast his dash and brilliance
with my own inefficiency. Somehow, the massacre was beginning to have
a bad effect on my character. My self-respect was ebbing. A little
more of this, and I should become crushed--a mere human jelly. It was
my turn to serve. Service is my strong point at tennis. I am
inaccurate but vigorous, and occasionally send in a quite unplayable
shot. One or two of these, even at the expense of a fault or so, and I
might be permitted to retain at least a portion of my self-respect.
I opened with two faults. The sight of Phyllis, sitting calm and cool
in her chair under the cedar, unnerved me. I served another fault. And
yet another.
"Here, I say, Garnet," observed Mr. Chase plaintively, "do put me out
of this hideous suspense. I'm becoming a mere bundle of quivering
ganglions."
I loath facetiousness in moments of stress. I frowned austerely, made
no reply, and served another fault, my fifth.
Matters had reached a crisis. Even if I had to lob it under hand, I
must send the ball over the net with this next stroke.
I restrained myself this time, eschewing the careless vigor which had
marked my previous efforts. The ball flew in a slow semicircle, and
pitched inside the correct court. At least, I told myself, I had not
served a fault.
What happened then I cannot exactly say. I saw my opponent spring
forward like a panther and whirl his racket. The next moment the back
net was shaking violently and the ball was rolling swiftly along the
ground on a return journey to the other court.
"Love--forty," said Mr. Chase. "Phyllis!"
"Yes?"
"That was the Doherty Slosh."
"I thought it must be," said Phyllis.
The game ended with another brace of faults.
In the third game I managed to score fifteen. By the merest chance I
returned one of his red-hot serves, and--probably through
surprise--he failed to send it back again.
In the fourth and fifth games I omitted to score.
We began the sixth game. And now for some reason I played really well.
I struck a little vein of brilliance. I was serving, and this time a
proportion of my serves went over the net instead of trying to get
through. The score went from fifteen all to forty-fifteen. Hope began
to surge through my veins. If I could keep this up, I might win yet.
The Doherty Slosh diminished my lead by fifteen. The Renshaw Slam
brought the score to Deuce. Then I got in a really fine serve, which
beat him. 'Vantage in. Another Slosh. Deuce. Another Slam. 'Vantage
out. It was an awesome moment. There is a tide in the affairs of men
which taken at the flood--I served. Fault. I served again--a beauty.
He returned it like a flash into the corner of the court. With a
supreme effort I got to it. We rallied. I was playing like a
professor. Then whizz!
The Doherty Slosh had beaten me on the post.
"Game _and_--" said Mr. Chase, twirling his racket into the air and
catching it by the handle. "Good game that last one."
I turned to see what Phyllis thought of it. At the eleventh hour I had
shown her of what stuff I was made.
She had disappeared.
"Looking for Miss Derrick?" said Chase, jumping the net, and joining
me in my court; "she's gone into the house."
"When did she go?"
"At the end of the fifth game," said Chase.
"Gone to dress for dinner, I suppose," he continued. "It must be
getting late. I think I ought to be going, too, if you don't mind.
The professor gets a little restive if I keep him waiting for his
daily bread. Great Scott, that watch can't be right! What do you make
it? Yes, so do I. I really think I must run. You won't mind? Good
night, then. See you to-morrow, I hope."
I walked slowly out across the fields. That same star, in which I had
confided on a former occasion, was at its post. It looked placid and
cheerful. _It_ never got beaten by six games to love under the eyes of
its particular lady star. _It_ was never cut out ignominiously by
infernally capable lieutenants in his Majesty's navy. No wonder it was
cheerful.
It must be pleasant to be a star.
A COUNCIL OF WAR
XIV
"The fact is," said Ukridge, "if things go on as they are now, old
horse, we shall be in the cart. This business wants bucking up. We
don't seem to be making headway. What we want is time. If only these
scoundrels of tradesmen would leave us alone for a spell, we might get
things going properly. But we're hampered and worried and rattled all
the time. Aren't we, Millie?"
"Yes, dear."
"You don't let me see the financial side of the thing," I said,
"except at intervals. I didn't know we were in such a bad way. The
fowls look fit enough, and Edwin hasn't had one for a week."
"Edwin knows as well as possible when he's done wrong, Mr. Garnet,"
said Mrs. Ukridge. "He was so sorry after he had killed those other
two."
"Yes," said Ukridge. "I saw to that."
"As far as I can see," I continued, "we're going strong. Chicken for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a shade monotonous, but look at the
business we're doing. We sold a whole heap of eggs last week."
"It's not enough, Garny, my boy. We sell a dozen eggs where we ought
to be selling a hundred, carting them off in trucks for the London
market. Harrod's and Whiteley's and the rest of them are beginning to
get on their hind legs, and talk. That's what they're doing. You see,
Marmaduke, there's no denying it--we _did_ touch them for a lot of
things on account, and they agreed to take it out in eggs. They seem
to be getting tired of waiting."
"Their last letter was quite pathetic," said Mrs. Ukridge.
I had a vision of an eggless London. I seemed to see homes rendered
desolate and lives embittered by the slump, and millionaires bidding
against one another for the few specimens Ukridge had actually managed
to dispatch to Brompton and Bayswater.
"I told them in my last letter but three," continued Ukridge
complainingly, "that I proposed to let them have the eggs on the
_Times_ installment system, and they said I was frivolous. They said
that to send thirteen eggs as payment for goods supplied to the value
of twenty-five pounds one shilling and sixpence was mere trifling.
Trifling! when those thirteen eggs were absolutely all we had over
that week after Mrs. Beale had taken what she wanted for the kitchen.
I tell you what it is, old boy, that woman literally eats eggs."
"The habit is not confined to her," I said.
"What I mean to say is, she seems to bathe in them."
An impressive picture to one who knew Mrs. Beale.
"She says she needs so many for puddings, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge. "I
spoke to her about it yesterday. And, of course, we often have
omelets."
"She can't make omelets without breakings eggs," I urged.
"She can't make them without breaking us," said Ukridge. "One or two
more omelets and we're done for. Another thing," he continued, "that
incubator thing won't work. _I_ don't know what's wrong with it."
"Perhaps it's your dodge of letting down the temperature."
I had touched upon a tender point.
"My dear fellow," he said earnestly, "there's nothing the matter with
my figures. It's a mathematical certainty. What's the good of
mathematics if not to help you work out that sort of thing? No,
there's something wrong with the machine itself, and I shall probably
make a complaint to the people I got it from. Where did we get the
incubator, Millie?"
"Harrod's, I think, dear. Yes, it was Harrod's. It came down with the
first lot of things from there."
"Then," said Ukridge, banging the table with his fist, while his
glasses flashed triumph, "we've got 'em! Write and answer that letter
of theirs to-night, Millie. Sit on them."
"Yes, dear."
"And tell 'em that we'd have sent 'em their confounded eggs weeks ago
if only their rotten, twopenny-ha'penny incubator had worked with any
approach to decency."
"Or words to that effect," I suggested.
"Add in a postscript that I consider that the manufacturer of the
thing ought to rent a padded cell at Earlswood, and that they are
scoundrels for palming off a groggy machine of that sort on me. I'll
teach them!"
"Yes, dear."
"The ceremony of opening the morning's letters at Harrod's ought to be
full of interest and excitement to-morrow," I said.
This dashing counter stroke served to relieve Ukridge's pessimistic
mood. He seldom looked on the dark side of things for long at a time.
He began now to speak hopefully of the future. He planned out
ingenious, if somewhat impracticable, improvements in the farm. Our
fowls were to multiply so rapidly and consistently that within a short
space of time Dorsetshire would be paved with them. Our eggs were to
increase in size till they broke records, and got three-line notices
in the "Items of Interest" column of the _Daily Mail_. Briefly, each
hen was to become a happy combination of rabbit and ostrich.
"There is certainly a good time coming," I said. "May it be soon.
Meanwhile, there remain the local tradesmen. What of them?"
Ukridge relapsed once more into pessimism.
"They are the worst of the lot," he said. "I don't mind about the
London men so much. They only write. And a letter or two hurts nobody.
But when it comes to butchers and bakers and grocers and fishmongers
and fruiterers, and what not, coming up to one's house and dunning one
in one's own garden--well, it's a little hard, what?"
It may be wondered why, before things came to such a crisis, I had not
placed my balance at the bank at the disposal of the senior partner
for use on behalf of the firm. The fact was that my balance was at
the moment small. I have not yet in the course of this narrative gone
into my pecuniary position, but I may state here that it was an
inconvenient one. It was big with possibilities, but of ready cash
there was but a meager supply. My parents had been poor, but I had a
wealthy uncle. Uncles are notoriously careless of the comfort of their
nephews. Mine was no exception. He had views. He was a great believer
in matrimony, as, having married three wives--not, I should add,
simultaneously--he had every right to be. He was also of opinion that
the less money the young bachelor possessed, the better. The
consequence was that he announced his intention of giving me a
handsome allowance from the day that I married, but not an instant
before. Till that glad day I would have to shift for myself. And I am
bound to admit that--for an uncle--it was a remarkably sensible idea.
I am also of opinion that it is greatly to my credit, and a proof of
my pure and unmercenary nature, that I did not instantly put myself up
to be raffled for, or rush out into the streets and propose marriage
to the first lady I met. I was making enough with my pen to support
myself, and, be it ever so humble, there is something pleasant in a
bachelor existence, or so I had thought until very recently.
I had thus no great stake in Ukridge's chicken farm. I had contributed
a modest five pounds to the preliminary expenses, and another five
pounds after the roop incident. But further I could not go with
safety. When his income is dependent on the whims of editors and
publishers, the prudent man keeps something up his sleeve against a
sudden slump in his particular wares. I did not wish to have to make a
hurried choice between matrimony and the workhouse.
Having exhausted the subject of finance--or, rather, when I began to
feel that it was exhausting me--I took my clubs and strolled up the
hill to the links to play off a match with a sportsman from the
village. I had entered some days previously a competition for a trophy
(I quote the printed notice) presented by a local supporter of the
game, in which up to the present I was getting on nicely. I had
survived two rounds, and expected to beat my present opponent, which
would bring me into the semi-final. Unless I had bad luck, I felt that
I ought to get into the final, and win it. As far as I could gather
from watching the play of my rivals, the professor was the best of
them, and I was convinced that I should have no difficulty with him.
But he had the most extraordinary luck at golf, though he never
admitted it. He also exercised quite an uncanny influence on his
opponent. I have seen men put completely off their stroke by his good
fortune.
I disposed of my man without difficulty. We parted a little coldly. He
decapitated his brassy on the occasion of his striking Dorsetshire
instead of his ball, and he was slow in recovering from the complex
emotions which such an episode induces.
In the clubhouse I met the professor, whose demeanor was a welcome
contrast to that of my late antagonist. The professor had just routed
his opponent, and so won through to the semi-final. He was warm but
jubilant.
I congratulated him, and left the place.
Phyllis was waiting outside. She often went round the course with him.
"Good afternoon," I said. "Have you been round with the professor?"
"Yes. We must have been in front of you. Father won his match."
"So he was telling me. I was very glad to hear it."
"Did you win, Mr. Garnet?"
"Yes. Pretty easily. My opponent had bad luck all through. Bunkers
seemed to have a magnetic attraction for him."
"So you and father are both in the semi-final? I hope you will play
very badly."
"Thank you, Miss Derrick," I said.
"Yes, it does sound rude, doesn't it? But father has set his heart on
winning this year. Do you know that he has played in the final round
two years running now?"
"Really?"
"Both times he was beaten by the same man."
"Who was that? Mr. Derrick plays a much better game than anybody I
have seen on these links."
"It was nobody who is here now. It was a Colonel Jervis. He has not
come to Lyme Regis this year. That is why father is hopeful."
"Logically," I said, "he ought to be certain to win."
"Yes; but, you see, you were not playing last year, Mr. Garnet."
"Oh, the professor can make rings round me," I said.
"What did you go round in to-day?"
"We were playing match play, and only did the first dozen holes; but
my average round is somewhere in the late eighties."
"The best father has ever done is ninety, and that was only once. So
you see, Mr. Garnet, there's going to be another tragedy this year."
"You make me feel a perfect brute. But it's more than likely, you must
remember, that I shall fail miserably if I ever do play your father in
the final. There are days when I play golf very badly."
Phyllis smiled. "Do you really have your off days?"
"Nearly always. There are days when I slice with my driver as if it
were a bread knife."
"Really?"
"And when I couldn't putt to hit a haystack."
"Then I hope it will be on one of those days that you play father."
"I hope so, too," I said.
"You hope so?"
"Yes."
"But don't you want to win?"
"I should prefer to please you."
Mr. Lewis Waller could not have said it better.
"Really, how very unselfish of you, Mr. Garnet," she replied with a
laugh. "I had no idea that such chivalry existed. I thought a golfer
would sacrifice anything to win a game."
"Most things."
"And trample on the feelings of anybody."
"Not everybody," I said.
At this point the professor joined us.
XV
THE ARRIVAL OF NEMESIS
Some people do not believe in presentiments. They attribute that
curious feeling that something unpleasant is going to happen to such
mundane causes as liver or a chill or the weather. For my own part, I
think there is more in the matter than the casual observer might
imagine.
I awoke three days after my meeting with the professor at the
clubhouse filled with a dull foreboding. Somehow I seemed to know that
that day was going to turn out badly for me. It may have been liver or
a chill, but it was certainly not the weather. The morning was
perfect, the most glorious of a glorious summer. There was a haze over
the valley and out to sea which suggested a warm noon, when the sun
should have begun the serious duties of the day. The birds were
singing in the trees and breakfasting on the lawn, while Edwin, seated
on one of the flower beds, watched them with the eye of a connoisseur.
Occasionally, when a sparrow hopped in his direction, he would make a
sudden spring, and the bird would fly away to the other side of the
lawn. I had never seen Edwin catch a sparrow. I believe they looked on
him as a bit of a crank, and humored him by coming within springing
distance, just to keep him amused. Dashing young cock sparrows would
show off before their particular hen sparrows, and earn a cheap
reputation for dare-deviltry by going within so many yards of Edwin's
lair and then darting away.
Bob was in his favorite place on the gravel. I took him with me down
to the Cob to watch me bathe.
"What's the matter with me to-day, Robert, old man?" I asked him as I
dried myself.
He blinked lazily, but contributed no suggestion.
"It's no good looking bored," I went on, "because I'm going to talk
about myself, however much it bores you. Here am I, as fit as a prize
fighter; living in the open air for I don't know how long; eating
good, plain food; bathing every morning--sea bathing, mind you; and
yet what's the result? I feel beastly."
Bob yawned and gave a little whine.
"Yes," I said, "I know I'm in love. But that can't be it, because I
was in love just as much a week ago, and I felt all right then. But
isn't she an angel, Bob? Eh? Isn't she? But how about Tom Chase? Don't
you think he's a dangerous man? He calls her by her Christian name,
you know, and behaves generally as if she belonged to him. And then
he sees her every day, while I have to trust to meeting her at odd
times, and then I generally feel like such a fool I can't think of
anything to talk about except golf and the weather. He probably sings
duets with her after dinner. And you know what comes of duets after
dinner."
Here Bob, who had been trying for some time to find a decent excuse
for getting away, pretended to see something of importance at the
other end of the Cob, and trotted off to investigate it, leaving me to
finish dressing by myself.
"Of course," I said to myself, "it may be merely hunger. I may be all
right after breakfast, but at present I seem to be working up for a
really fine fit of the blues."
I whistled for Bob and started for home. On the beach I saw the
professor some little distance away and waved my towel in a friendly
manner. He made no reply.
Of course it was possible that he had not seen me, but for some reason
his attitude struck me as ominous. As far as I could see, he was
looking straight at me, and he was not a shortsighted man. I could
think of no reason why he should cut me. We had met on the links on
the previous morning, and he had been friendliness itself. He had
called me "me dear boy," supplied me with ginger beer at the
clubhouse, and generally behaved as if he had been David and I
Jonathan. Yet in certain moods we are inclined to make mountains out
of mole-hills, and I went on my way, puzzled and uneasy, with a
distinct impression that I had received the cut direct.
I felt hurt. What had I done that Providence should make things so
unpleasant for me? It would be a little hard, as Ukridge would have
said, if, after all my trouble, the professor had discovered some
fresh crow to pluck with me. Perhaps Ukridge had been irritating him
again. I wished he would not identify me so completely with Ukridge. I
could not be expected to control the man. Then I reflected that they
could hardly have met in the few hours between my parting from the
professor at the clubhouse and my meeting with him on the beach.
Ukridge rarely left the farm. When he was not working among the fowls,
he was lying on his back in the paddock, resting his massive mind.
I came to the conclusion that, after all, the professor had not seen
me.
"I'm an idiot, Bob," I said, as we turned in at the farm gate, "and I
let my imagination run away with me."
Bob wagged his tail in approval of the sentiment.
Breakfast was ready when I got in. There was a cold chicken on the
sideboard, deviled chicken on the table, and a trio of boiled eggs,
and a dish of scrambled eggs. I helped myself to the latter and sat
down.
Ukridge was sorting the letters.
"Morning, Garny," he said. "One for you, Millie."
"It's from Aunt Elizabeth," said Mrs. Ukridge, looking at the
envelope.
"Wish she'd inclose a check. She could spare it."
"I think she would, dear, if she knew how much it was needed. But I
don't like to ask her. She's so curious and says such horrid things."
"She does," said Ukridge gloomily. He probably spoke from experience.
"Two for you, Sebastian. All the rest for me. Eighteen of them, and
all bills."
He spread them out on the table like a pack of cards, and drew one at
a venture.
"Whiteley's," he said. "Getting jumpy. Are in receipt of my favor of
the 7th inst, and are at a loss to understand--all sorts of things.
Would like something on account."
"Grasping of them," I said.
"They seem to think I'm doing it for fun. How can I let them have
their money when there isn't any?"
"Sounds difficult."
"Here's one from Dorchester--Smith, the man I got the gramophone from.
Wants to know when I'm going to settle up for sixteen records."
"Sordid man!"
I wanted to get on with my own correspondence, but Ukridge was one of
those men who compel one's attention when they are talking.
"The chicken men, the dealer people, you know, want me to pay up for
the first lot of hens. Considering that they all died of roop, and
that I was going to send them back, anyhow, after I'd got them to
hatch out a few chickens, I call that cool. I can't afford to pay
heavy sums for birds which die off quicker than I can get them in. It
isn't business."
It was not my business, at any rate, so I switched off my attention
from Ukridge's troubles and was opening the first of my two letters
when an exclamation from Mrs. Ukridge made me look up.
She had dropped the letter she had been reading and was staring
indignantly in front of her. There were two little red spots on her
cheeks.
"I shall never speak to Aunt Elizabeth again," she said.
"What's the matter, old chap?" inquired Ukridge affectionately,
glancing up from his pile of bills. "Aunt Elizabeth been getting on
your nerves again? What's she been saying this time?"
Mrs. Ukridge left the room with a sob.
Ukridge sprang at the letter.
"If that demon doesn't stop writing letters and upsetting Millie I
shall lynch her," he said. I had never seen him so genuinely angry. He
turned over the pages till he came to the passage which had caused the
trouble. "Listen to this, Garnet. 'I'm sorry, but not surprised, to
hear that the chicken farm is not proving a great success. I think you
know my opinion of your husband. He is perfectly helpless in any
matter requiring the exercise of a little common sense and business
capability.' I like that! 'Pon my soul, I like that! You've known me
longer than she has, Garny, and you know that it's just in matters
requiring common sense that I come out strong. What?"
"Of course, old man," I replied dutifully. "The woman must be a fool."
"That's what she calls me two lines farther on. No wonder Millie was
upset. Why can't these cats leave people alone?"
"O woman, woman!" I threw in helpfully.
"Always interfering--"
"Beastly!"
"--and backbiting--"
"Awful!"
"I shan't stand it!"
"I shouldn't."
"Look here! On the next page she calls me a gaby!"
"It's time you took a strong hand."
"And in the very next sentence refers to me as a perfect guffin.
What's a guffin, Garny, old boy?"
"It sounds indecent."
"I believe it's actionable."
"I shouldn't wonder."
Ukridge rushed to the door.
"Millie!" he shouted.
No answer.
He slammed the door, and I heard him dashing upstairs.
I turned with a sense of relief to my letters. One was from Lickford.
It bore a Cornish postmark. I glanced through it, and laid it aside
for a more exhaustive perusal later on.
The other was in a strange handwriting. I looked at the signature.
Patrick Derrick. This was queer. What had the professor to say to me?
The next moment my heart seemed to spring to my throat.
"Sir," the letter began.
A pleasant, cheery beginning!
Then it got off the mark, so to speak, like lightning. There was no
sparring for an opening, no dignified parade of set phrases leading up
to the main point. It was the letter of a man who was almost too
furious to write. It gave me the impression that, if he had not
written it, he would have been obliged to have taken some very violent
form of exercise by way of relief to his soul.
"You will be good enough," he wrote, "to look on our acquaintance as
closed. I have no wish to associate with persons of your stamp. If we
should happen to meet, you will be good enough to treat me as a total
stranger, as I shall treat you. And, if I may be allowed to give you a
word of advice, I should recommend you in future, when you wish to
exercise your humor, to do so in some less practical manner than by
bribing boatmen to upset your" (_friends_ crossed out thickly, and
_acquaintances_ substituted). "If you require further enlightenment in
this matter, the inclosed letter may be of service to you."
With which he remained mine faithfully, Patrick Derrick.
The inclosed letter was from one Jane Muspratt. It was bright and
interesting.
DEAR SIR: My Harry, Mr. Hawk, sas to me how it was him
upseting the boat and you, not because he is not steddy in a
boat which he is no man more so in Lyme Regis but because
one of the gentmen what keeps chikkens up the hill, the
little one, Mr. Garnick his name is, says to him Hawk, I'll
give you a sovrin to upset Mr. Derrick in your boat, and my
Harry being esily led was took in and did but he's sory now
and wishes he hadn't, and he sas he'll niver do a prackticle
joke again for anyone even for a bank note.
Yours obedly
JANE MUSPRATT.
O woman, woman!
At the bottom of everything! History is full of cruel tragedies caused
by the lethal sex.
Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman. Who let Samson in so
atrociously? Woman again. Why did Bill Bailey leave home? Once more,
because of a woman. And here was I, Jerry Garnet, harmless,
well-meaning writer of minor novels, going through the same old mill.
I cursed Jane Muspratt. What chance had I with Phyllis now? Could I
hope to win over the professor again? I cursed Jane Muspratt for the
second time.
My thoughts wandered to Mr. Harry Hawk. The villain! The scoundrel!
What business had he to betray me? Well, I could settle with him. The
man who lays a hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is
justly disliked by society; so the woman Muspratt, culpable as she
was, was safe from me. But what of the man Hawk? There no such
considerations swayed me. I would interview the man Hawk. I would give
him the most hectic ten minutes of his career. I would say things to
him the recollection of which would make him start up shrieking in his
bed in the small hours of the night. I would arise, and be a man and
slay him--take him grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes,
broad-blown, as flush as May; at gaming, swearing, or about some act
that had no relish of salvation in it.
The demon!
My life--ruined. My future--gray and blank. My heart--shattered. And
why? Because of the scoundrel--Hawk.
Phyllis would meet me in the village, on the Cob, on the links, and
pass by as if I were the invisible man. And why? Because of the
reptile--Hawk. The worm--Hawk. The varlet--Hawk.
I crammed my hat on and hurried out of the house toward the village.
A CHANCE MEETING
XVI
I roamed the place in search of the varlet for the space of half an
hour, and, after having drawn all his familiar haunts, found him at
length leaning over the sea wall near the church, gazing thoughtfully
into the waters below.
I confronted him.
"Well," I said, "you're a beauty, aren't you?"
He eyed me owlishly. Even at this early hour, I was grieved to see, he
showed signs of having looked on the bitter while it was brown.
"Beauty?" he echoed.
"What have you got to say for yourself?"
It was plain that he was engaged in pulling his faculties together by
some laborious process known only to himself. At present my words
conveyed no meaning to him. He was trying to identify me. He had seen
me before somewhere, he was certain, but he could not say where, or
who I was.
"I want to know," I said, "what induced you to be such an abject idiot
as to let our arrangement get known?"
I spoke quietly. I was not going to waste the choicer flowers of
speech on a man who was incapable of understanding them. Later on,
when he had awakened to a sense of his position, I would begin really
to talk to him.
He continued to stare at me. Then a sudden flash of intelligence lit
up his features.
"Mr. Garnick," he said.
"You've got it at last."
He stretched out a huge hand.
"I want to know," I said distinctly, "what you've got to say for
yourself after letting our affair with the professor become public
property?"
He paused a while in thought.
"Dear sir," he said at last, as if he were dictating a letter, "dear
sir, I owe you--ex--exp--"
"You do," said I grimly. "I should like to hear it."
"Dear sir, listen me."
"Go on, then."
"You came me. You said, 'Hawk, Hawk, ol' fren', listen me. You tip
this ol' bufflehead into sea,' you said, 'an' gormed if I don't give
'ee a gould savrin.' That's what you said me. Isn't that what you said
me?"
I did not deny it.
"Ve' well. I said you, 'Right,' I said. I tipped the ol' soul into
sea, and I got the gould savrin."
"Yes, you took care of that. All this is quite true, but it's beside
the point. We are not disputing about what happened. What I want to
know for the third time--is what made you let the cat out of the bag?
Why couldn't you keep quiet about it?"
He waved his hand.
"Dear sir," he replied. "This way. Listen me."
It was a tragic story that he unfolded. My wrath ebbed as I listened.
After all, the fellow was not so greatly to blame. I felt that in his
place I should have acted as he had done. Fate was culpable, and fate
alone.
It appeared that he had not come well out of the matter of the
accident. I had not looked at it hitherto from his point of view.
While the rescue had left me the popular hero, it had had quite the
opposite result for him. He had upset his boat and would have drowned
his passenger, said public opinion, if the young hero from
London--myself--had not plunged in, and at the risk of his life
brought the professor to shore. Consequently, he was despised by all
as an inefficient boatman. He became a laughing stock. The local wags
made laborious jests when he passed. They offered him fabulous sums to
take their worst enemies out for a row with him. They wanted to know
when he was going to school to learn his business. In fact, they
behaved as wags do and always have done at all times all the world
over.
Now, all this Mr. Hawk, it seemed, would have borne cheerfully and
patiently for my sake, or, at any rate, for the sake of the good
golden sovereign I had given him. But a fresh factor appeared in the
problem, complicating it grievously. To wit, Miss Jane Muspratt.
"She said me," explained Mr. Hawk with pathos, "'Harry 'Awk,' she
said, 'yeou'm a girt fule, an' I don't marry noone as is ain't to be
trusted in a boat by hisself, and what has jokes made about him by
that Tom Leigh.' I punched Tom Leigh," observed Mr. Hawk
parenthetically. "'So,' she said me, 'yeou can go away, an' I don't
want to see yeou again.'"
This heartless conduct on the part of Miss Muspratt had had the
natural result of making him confess all in self-defense, and she had
written to the professor the same night.
I forgave Mr. Hawk. I think he was hardly sober enough to understand,
for he betrayed no emotion.
"It is fate, Hawk," I said, "simply fate. There is a divinity that
shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will, and it's no good
grumbling."
"Yiss," said Mr. Hawk, after chewing this sentiment for a while in
silence, "so she said me, 'Hawk,' she said--like that--'you're a girt
fule--'"
"That's all right," I replied. "I quite understand. As I say, it's
simply fate. Good-by."
And I left him.
As I was going back, I met the professor and Phyllis.
They passed me without a look.
I wandered on in quite a fervor of self-pity. I was in one of those
moods when life suddenly seems to become irksome, when the future
stretches blank and gray in front of one. In such a mood it is
imperative that one should seek distraction. The shining example of
Mr. Harry Hawk did not lure me. Taking to drink would be a nuisance.
Work was what I wanted. I would toil like a navvy all day among the
fowls, separating them when they fought, gathering in the eggs when
they laid, chasing them across country when they got away, and even,
if necessity arose, painting their throats with turpentine when they
were stricken with roop. Then, after dinner, when the lamps were lit,
and Mrs. Ukridge petted Edwin and sewed, and Ukridge smoked cigars and
incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling Mose," I would steal away
to my bedroom and write--and write--and _write_--and go on writing
till my fingers were numb and my eyes refused to do their duty. And,
when time had passed, I might come to feel that it was all for the
best. A man must go through the fire before he can write his
masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. What we lose
on the swings we make up on the roundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the man,
might become a depressed, hopeless wreck, with the iron planted
irremovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet, the author, should turn
out such a novel of gloom that strong critics would weep and the
public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorways became a shambles.
Thus might I some day feel that all this anguish was really a
blessing--effectively disguised.
But I doubted it.
We were none of us very cheerful now at the farm. Even Ukridge's
spirit was a little daunted by the bills which poured in by every
post. It was as if the tradesmen of the neighborhood had formed a
league and were working in concert. Or it may have been due to thought
waves. Little accounts came not in single spies but in battalions. The
popular demand for a sight of the color of his money grew daily. Every
morning at breakfast he would give us fresh bulletins of the state of
mind of each of our creditors, and thrill us with the announcement
that Whiteley's were getting cross and Harrod's jumpy, or that the
bearings of Dawlish, the grocer, were becoming over-heated. We lived
in a continual atmosphere of worry. Chicken and nothing but chicken
at meals, and chicken and nothing but chicken between meals, had
frayed our nerves. An air of defeat hung over the place. We were a
beaten side, and we realized it. We had been playing an uphill game
for nearly two months, and the strain was beginning to tell. Ukridge
became uncannily silent. Mrs. Ukridge, though she did not understand,
I fancy, the details of the matter, was worried because Ukridge was.
Mrs. Beale had long since been turned into a soured cynic by the lack
of chances vouchsafed her for the exercise of her art. And as for me,
I have never since spent so profoundly miserable a week. I was not
even permitted the anodyne of work. There seemed to be nothing to do
on the farm. The chickens were quite happy, and only asked to be let
alone and allowed to have their meals at regular intervals. And every
day one or more of their number would vanish into the kitchen, and
Mrs. Beale would serve up the corpse in some cunning disguise, and we
would try to delude ourselves into the idea that it was something
altogether different.
There was one solitary gleam of variety in our menu. An editor sent me
a check for a guinea for a set of verses. We cashed that check and
trooped round the town in a body, laying out the money. We bought a
leg of mutton and a tongue and sardines and pineapple chunks and
potted meat and many other noble things, and had a perfect banquet.
After that we relapsed into routine again.
Deprived of physical labor, with the exception of golf and
bathing--trivial sports compared with work in the fowl runs at its
hardest--I tried to make up for it by working at my novel.
It refused to materialize.
I felt, like the man in the fable, as if some one had played a mean
trick on me, and substituted for my brain a side order of
cauliflower. By no manner of means could I get the plot to shape
itself. I could not detach my mind from my own painful case. Instead
of thinking of my characters, I sat in my chair and thought miserably
of Phyllis.
The only progress I achieved was with my villain.
I drew him from the professor and made him a blackmailer. He had
several other social defects, but that was his profession. That was
the thing he did really well.
It was on one of the many occasions on which I had sat in my room, pen
in hand, through the whole of a lovely afternoon, with no better
result than a slight headache, that I bethought me of that little
paradise on the Ware Cliff, hung over the sea and backed by green
woods. I had not been there for sometime, owing principally to an
entirely erroneous idea that I could do more solid work sitting in a
straight, hard chair at a table than lying on soft turf with the sea
wind in my eyes.
But now the desire to visit that little clearing again drove me from
my room. In the drawing-room below, the gramophone was dealing
brassily with "Mister Blackman." Outside, the sun was just thinking of
setting. The Ware Cliff was the best medicine for me. What does
Kipling say?
And soon you will find that the sun and the wind
And the Djinn of the Garden, too,
Have lightened the Hump, Cameelious Hump,
The Hump that is black and blue.
His instructions include digging with a hoe and a shovel also, but I
could omit that. The sun and wind were what I needed.
I took the upper road. In certain moods I preferred it to the path
along the cliff. I walked fast. The exercise was soothing.
To reach my favorite clearing I had to take to the fields on the left
and strike down hill in the direction of the sea. I hurried down the
narrow path.
I broke into the clearing at a jog trot, and stood panting. And at the
same moment, looking cool and beautiful in her white dress, Phyllis
entered it from the other side. Phyllis--without the professor.
OF A SENTIMENTAL NATURE
XVII
She was wearing a Panama, and she carried a sketching block and camp
stool.
"Good evening," I said.
"Good evening," said she.
It is curious how different the same words can sound when spoken by
different people. My "good evening" might have been that of a man with
a particularly guilty conscience caught in the act of doing something
more than usually ignoble. She spoke like a somewhat offended angel.
"It's a lovely evening," I went on pluckily.
"Very."
"The sunset!"
"Yes."
"Er--"
She raised a pair of blue eyes, devoid of all expression save a faint
suggestion of surprise, gazed through me for a moment at some object a
couple of thousand miles away, and lowered them again, leaving me with
a vague feeling that there was something wrong with my personal
appearance.
Very calmly she moved to the edge of the cliff, arranged her camp
stool, and sat down. Neither of us spoke a word. I watched her while
she filled a little mug with water from a little bottle, opened her
paint box, selected a brush, and placed her sketching block in
position.
She began to paint.
Now, by all the laws of good taste, I should before this have made a
dignified exit. When a lady shows a gentleman that his presence is
unwelcome, it is up to him, as an American friend of mine pithily
observed to me on one occasion, to get busy and chase himself, and
see if he can make the tall timber in two jumps. In other words, to
retire. It was plain that I was not regarded as an essential ornament
of this portion of the Ware Cliff. By now, if I had been the perfect
gentleman, I ought to have been a quarter of a mile away.
But there is a definite limit to what a man can do. I remained.
The sinking sun flung a carpet of gold across the sea. Phyllis's hair
was tinged with it. Little waves tumbled lazily on the beach below.
Except for the song of a distant blackbird running through its
repertory before retiring for the night, everything was silent.
Especially Phyllis.
She sat there, dipping and painting and dipping again, with never a
word for me--standing patiently and humbly behind her.
"Miss Derrick," I said.
She half turned her head.
"Yes?"
One of the most valuable things which a lifetime devoted to sport
teaches a man is "never play the goose game." Bold attack is the
safest rule in nine cases out of ten, wherever you are and whatever
you may be doing. If you are batting, attack the ball. If you are
boxing, get after your man. If you are talking, go to the point.
"Why won't you speak to me?" I said.
"I don't understand you."
"Why won't you speak to me?"
"I think you know, Mr. Garnet."
"It is because of that boat accident?"
"Accident!"
"Episode," I amended.
She went on painting in silence. From where I stood I could see her
profile. Her chin was tilted. Her expression was determined.
"Is it?" I said.
"Need we discuss it?"
"Not if you do not wish."
I paused.
"But," I added, "I should have liked a chance to defend myself....
What glorious sunsets there have been these last few days. I believe
we shall have this sort of weather for another month."
"I should not have thought that possible."
"The glass is going up," I said.
"I was not talking about the weather."
"It was dull of me to introduce such a worn-out topic."
"You said you could defend yourself."
"I said I should like the chance to do so."
"Then you shall have it."
"That is very kind of you. Thank you."
"Is there any reason for gratitude?"
"Every reason."
"Go on, Mr. Garnet. I can listen while I paint. But please sit down.
I don't like being talked to from a height."
I sat down on the grass in front of her, feeling as I did so that the
change of position in a manner clipped my wings. It is difficult to
speak movingly while sitting on the ground. Instinctively, I avoided
eloquence. Standing up, I might have been pathetic and pleading.
Sitting down, I was compelled to be matter of fact.
"You remember, of course, the night you and Professor Derrick dined
with us? When I say dined, I use the word in a loose sense."
For a moment I thought she was going to smile. We were both thinking
of Edwin. But it was only for a moment, and then her face grew cold
once more, and the chin resumed its angle of determination.
"Yes," she said.
"You remember the unfortunate ending of the festivities?"
"Well?"
"I naturally wished to mend matters. It occurred to me that an
excellent way would be by doing your father a service. It was seeing
him fishing that put the idea of a boat accident into my head. I hoped
for a genuine boat accident. But those things only happen when one
does not want them. So I determined to engineer one."
"You didn't think of the shock to my father."
"I did. It worried me very much."
"But you upset him all the same."
"Reluctantly."
She looked up and our eyes met. I could detect no trace of forgiveness
in hers.
"You behaved abominably," she said.
"I played a risky game, and I lost. And I shall now take the
consequences. With luck I should have won. I did not have luck, and I
am not going to grumble about it. But I am grateful to you for letting
me explain. I should not have liked you to go on thinking that I
played practical jokes on my friends. That is all I have to say, I
think. It was kind of you to listen. Good-by, Miss Derrick."
I got up.
"Are you going?"
"Why not?"
"Please sit down again."
"But you wish to be alone--"
"Please sit down!"
There was a flush on the fair cheek turned toward me, and the chin was
tilted higher.
I sat down.
To westward the sky had changed to the hue of a bruised cherry. The
sun had sunk below the horizon, and the sea looked cold and leaden.
The blackbird had long since gone to bed.
"I am glad you told me, Mr. Garnet."
She dipped her brush in the water.
"Because I don't like to think badly of--people."
She bent her head over her painting.
"Though I still think you behaved very wrongly. And I am afraid my
father will never forgive you for what you did."
Her father! As if he counted!
"But you do?" I said eagerly.
"I think you are less to blame than I thought you were at first."
"No more than that?"
"You can't expect to escape all consequences. You did a very stupid
thing."
"Consider the temptation."
The sky was a dull gray now. It was growing dusk. The grass on which I
sat was wet with dew.
I stood up.
"Isn't it getting a little dark for painting?" I said. "Are you sure
you won't catch cold? It's very damp."
"Perhaps it is. And it is late, too."
She shut her paint box and emptied the little mug on the grass.
"You will let me carry your things?" I said.
I think she hesitated, but only for a moment. I possessed myself of
the camp stool, and we started on our homeward journey. We were both
silent. The spell of the quiet summer evening was on us.
"'And all the air a solemn stillness holds,'" she said softly. "I love
this cliff, Mr. Garnet. It's the most soothing place in the world."
"I have found it so this evening."
She glanced at me quickly.
"You're not looking well," she said. "Are you sure you are not
overworking yourself?"
"No, it's not that."
Somehow we had stopped, as if by agreement, and were facing each
other. There was a look in her eyes I had never seen there before.
The twilight hung like a curtain between us and the world. We were
alone together in a world of our own.
"It is because I had displeased you," I said.
She laughed nervously.
"I have loved you ever since I first saw you," I said doggedly.
UKRIDGE GIVES ME ADVICE
XVIII
Hours after--or so it seemed to me--we reached the spot at which our
ways divided. We stopped, and I felt as if I had been suddenly cast
back into the workaday world from some distant and pleasanter planet.
I think Phyllis must have had something of the same sensation, for we
both became on the instant intensely practical and businesslike.
"But about your father," I said briskly. I was not even holding her
hand.
"That's the difficulty."
"He won't give his consent?"
"I'm afraid he wouldn't dream of it."
"You can't persuade him?"
"I can in most things, but not in this. You see, even if nothing had
happened, he wouldn't like to lose me just yet, because of Norah."
"Norah!"
"My sister. She's going to be married in October. I wonder if we shall
ever be as happy as they will?"
I laughed scornfully.
"Happy! They will be miserable compared with us. Not that I know who
the man is."
"Why, Tom, of course. Do you mean to say you really didn't know?"
"Tom! Tom Chase?"
"Of course."
I gasped.
"Well, I'm--hanged," I said. "When I think of the torments I've been
through because of that wretched man, and all for nothing, I don't
know what to say."
"Don't you like Tom?"
"Very much. I always did. But I was awfully jealous of him."
"You weren't! How silly of you."
"Of course I was. He was always about with you, and called you
Phyllis, and generally behaved as if you and he were the heroine and
hero of a musical comedy, so what else could I think? I heard you
singing duets after dinner once. I drew the worst conclusions."
"When was that?"
"It was shortly after Ukridge had got on your father's nerves, and
nipped our acquaintance in the bud. I used to come every night to the
hedge opposite your drawing-room window, and brood there by the hour."
"Poor old boy!"
"Hoping to hear you sing. And when you did sing, and he joined in all
flat, I used to scold. You'll probably find most of the bark worn off
the tree I leaned against."
"Poor old man! Still, it's all over now, isn't it?"
"And when I was doing my very best to show off before you at tennis,
you went away just as I got into form."
"I'm very sorry, but I couldn't know--could I? I thought you always
played like that."
"I know. I knew you would. It nearly turned my hair white. I didn't
see how a girl could ever care for a man who was so bad at tennis."
"One doesn't love a man because he's good at tennis."
"What _does_ a girl see to love in a man?" I inquired abruptly; and
paused on the verge of a great discovery.
"Oh, I don't know," she replied, most unsatisfactorily.
And I could draw no views from her.
"But about father," said she. "What _are_ we to do?"
"He objects to me."
"He's perfectly furious with you."
"Blow, blow," I said, "thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind--"
"He'll never forgive you."
"As man's ingratitude. I saved his life--at the risk of my own. Why, I
believe I've got a legal claim on him. Whoever heard of a man having
his life saved, and not being delighted when his preserver wanted to
marry his daughter? Your father is striking at the very root of the
short-story writer's little earnings. He mustn't be allowed to do it."
"Jerry!"
I started.
"Again!" I said.
"What?"
"Say it again. Do, please. Now."
"Very well. Jerry!"
"It was the first time you had called me by my Christian name. I don't
suppose you've the remotest notion how splendid it sounds when you
say it. There is something poetical, something almost holy, about it."
"Jerry, please!"
"Say on."
"Do be sensible. Don't you see how serious this is? We must think how
we can make father consent."
"All right," I said. "We'll tackle the point. I'm sorry to be
frivolous, but I'm so happy I can't keep it all in. I've got you, and
I can't think of anything else."
"Try."
"I'll pull myself together.... Now, say on once more."
"We can't marry without father's consent."
"Why not?" I said, not having a marked respect for the professor's
whims. "Gretna Green is out of date, but there are registrars."
"I hate the very idea of a registrar," she said with decision.
"Besides--"
"Well?"
"Poor father would never get over it. We've always been such friends.
If I married against his wishes, he would--oh, you know--not let me
come near him again, and not write to me. And he would hate it all the
time he was doing it. He would be bored to death without me."
"Anybody would," I said.
"Because, you see, Norah has never been quite the same. She has spent
such a lot of her time on visits to people that she and father don't
understand each other so well as he and I do. She would try and be
nice to him, but she wouldn't know him as I do. And, besides, she will
be with him such a little, now she's going to be married."
"But, look here," I said, "this is absurd. You say your father would
never see you again, and so on, if you married me. Why? It's
nonsense. It isn't as if I were a sort of social outcast. We were the
best of friends till that man Hawk gave me away like that."
"I know. But he's very obstinate about some things. You see, he thinks
the whole thing has made him look ridiculous, and it will take him a
long time to forgive you for that."
I realized the truth of this. One can pardon any injury to oneself,
unless it hurts one's vanity. Moreover, even in a genuine case of
rescue, the rescued man must always feel a little aggrieved with his
rescuer when he thinks the matter over in cold blood. He must regard
him unconsciously as the super regards the actor manager, indebted to
him for the means of supporting existence, but grudging him the lime
light and the center of the stage and the applause. Besides, everyone
instinctively dislikes being under an obligation which he can never
wholly repay. And when a man discovers that he has experienced all
these mixed sensations for nothing, as the professor had done, his
wrath is likely to be no slight thing.
Taking everything into consideration, I could not but feel that it
would require more than a little persuasion to make the professor
bestow his blessing with that genial warmth which we like to see in
our fathers-in-law elect.
"You don't think," I said, "that time, the great healer, and so on--he
won't feel kindlier disposed toward me--say in a month's time?"
"Of course, he _might_," said Phyllis; but she spoke doubtfully.
"He strikes me, from what I have seen of him, as a man of moods. I
might do something one of these days which would completely alter his
views. We will hope for the best."
"About telling father--"
"Need we tell him?" I asked.
"Yes, we must. I couldn't bear to think that I was keeping it from
him. I don't think I've ever kept anything from him in my life.
Nothing bad, I mean."
"You count this among your darker crimes, then?"
"I was looking at it from father's point of view. He will be awfully
angry. I don't know how I shall begin telling him."
"Good heavens!" I cried, "you surely don't think I'm going to let you
do that! Keep safely out of the way while you tell him? Not much. I'm
coming back with you now, and we'll break the bad news together."
"No, not to-night. He may be tired and rather cross. We had better
wait till to-morrow. You might speak to him in the morning."
"Where shall I find him?"
"He is certain to go to the beach before breakfast to bathe."
"Good. To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day. I'll be
there."
* * * * *
"Ukridge," I said, when I got back, "can you give me audience for a
brief space? I want your advice."
This stirred him like a trumpet blast. When a man is in the habit of
giving unsolicited counsel to everyone he meets, it is as invigorating
as an electric shock to him to be asked for it spontaneously.
"What's up, old horse?" he asked eagerly. "I'll tell you what to do.
Get on to it. Bang it out. Here, let's go into the garden."
I approved of this. I can always talk more readily in the dark, and I
did not wish to be interrupted by the sudden entrance of the hired
retainer or Mrs. Beale. We walked down to the paddock. Ukridge lit a
cigar.
"I'm in love, Ukridge," I said.
"What!"
"More--I'm engaged."
A huge hand whistled through the darkness and smote me heavily between
the shoulder blades.
"Thanks," I said; "that felt congratulatory."
"By Jove! old boy, I wish you luck. 'Pon my word, I do. Fancy you
engaged! Best thing in the world for you. Never knew what happiness
was till I married. A man wants a helpmeet--"
"And this man," I said, "seems likely to go on wanting. That's where I
need your advice. I'm engaged to Miss Derrick."
"Miss Derrick!" He spoke as if he hardly knew whom I meant.
"You can't have forgotten her! Good heavens, what eyes some men have!
Why, if I'd only seen her once, I should have remembered her all my
life."
"I know now. She came to dinner here with her father, that fat little
buffer."
"As you were careful to call him at the time. Thereby starting all the
trouble."
"You fished him out of the water afterwards."
"Quite right."
"Why, it's a perfect romance, old horse. It's like the stories you
read."
"And write. But they all end happily. 'There is none, my brave young
preserver, to whom I would more willingly intrust my daughter's
happiness.' Unfortunately, in my little drama, the heavy father seems
likely to forget his cue."
"The old man won't give his consent?"
"Probably not."
"But why? What's the matter with you? If you marry, you'll come into
your uncle's money, and all that."
"True. Affluence stares me in the face."
"And you fished him out of the water."
"After previously chucking him in."
"What!"
"At any rate, by proxy."
I explained. Ukridge, I regret to say, laughed.
"You vagabond!" he said. "'Pon my word, old horse, to look at you, one
would never have thought you'd have had it in you."
"I can't help looking respectable."
"What are you going to do about it? The old man's got it up against
you good and strong, there's no doubt of that."
"That's where I wanted your advice. You're a man of resource. What
would you do if you were in my place?"
Ukridge tapped me impressively on the shoulder.
"Marmaduke," he said, "there's one thing that'll carry you through any
mess."
"And that is--"
"Cheek, my boy--cheek! Gall! Why, take my case. I never told you how I
came to marry, did I? I thought not. Well, it was this way. You've
heard us mention Millie's Aunt Elizabeth--what? Well, then, when I
tell you that she was Millie's nearest relative, and it was her
consent I had to gather, you'll see that it wasn't a walk-over."
"Well?" I said.
"First time I saw Millie was in a first-class carriage on the
underground. I'd got a third-class ticket, by the way. We weren't
alone. It was five a side. But she sat opposite me, and I fell in love
with her there and then. We both got out at South Kensington. I
followed her. She went to a house in Thurloe Square. I waited outside
and thought it over. I had got to get into that house and make her
acquaintance. So I rang the bell. 'Is Lady Lichenhall at home?' I
asked. You note the artfulness? My asking for Lady Lichenhall made 'em
think I was one of the upper ten--what?"
"How were you dressed?" I could not help asking.
"Oh, it was one of my frock-coat days. I'd been to see a man about
tutoring his son. There was nothing the matter with my appearance.
'No,' said the servant, 'nobody of that name lives here. This is Lady
Lakenheath's house.' So, you see, I had luck at the start, because the
two names were a bit alike. Well, I got the servant to show me in
somehow, and, once in, you can wager I talked for all I was worth.
Kept up a flow of conversation about being misdirected and coming to
the wrong house, and so on. Went away, and called a few days later.
Called regularly. Met 'em at every theater they went to, and bowed,
and finally got away with Millie before her aunt could tell what was
happening, or who I was or what I was doing or anything."
"And what's the moral?" I said.
"Why, go in hard. Rush 'em. Bustle 'em. Don't give 'em a moment's
rest."
"Don't play the goose game," I said with that curious thrill we feel
when somebody's independent view of a matter coincides with one's own.
"That's it. Don't play the goose game. Don't give 'em time to think.
Why, if I'd given Millie's aunt time to think, where should we have
been? Not at Lyme Regis together, I'll bet."
"Ukridge," I said, "you inspire me. You would inspire a caterpillar. I
will go to the professor--I was going anyhow--but now I shall go
aggressively, and bustle him. I will surprise a father's blessing out
of him, if I have to do it with a crowbar!"
I ASK PAPA
XIX
Reviewing the matter later, I see that I made a poor choice of time
and place. But at the moment this did not strike me. It is a simple
thing, I reflected, for a man to pass another by haughtily and without
recognition, when they meet on dry land; but when the said man, being
an indifferent swimmer, is accosted in the water and out of his depth,
the feat becomes a hard one.
When, therefore, having undressed on the Cob on the following morning,
I spied in the distance, as I was about to dive, the gray head of the
professor bobbing on the face of the waters, I did not hesitate. I
plunged in and swam rapidly toward him.
His face was turned in the opposite direction when I came up with him,
and it was soon evident that he had not observed my approach. For
when, treading water easily in his immediate rear, I wished him good
morning in my most conciliatory tones, he stood not upon the order of
his sinking, but went under like so much pig iron. I waited
courteously until he rose to the surface once more, when I repeated my
remark.
He expelled the last remnant of water from his mouth with a wrathful
splutter, and cleared his eyes with the back of his hand.
"The water is delightfully warm," I said.
"Oh, it's you!" said he, and I could not cheat myself into believing
that he spoke cordially.
"You are swimming splendidly this morning," I said, feeling that an
ounce of flattery is often worth a pound of rhetoric. "If," I added,
"you will allow me to say so."
"I will not," he snapped. "I--" Here a small wave, noticing that his
mouth was open, walked in. "I wish," he resumed warmly, "as I said in
me letter, to have nothing to do with you. I consider ye've behaved in
a manner that can only be described as abominable, and I will thank ye
to leave me alone."
"But, allow me--"
"I will not allow ye, sir. I will allow ye nothing. Is it not enough
to make me the laughingstock, the butt, sir, of this town, without
pursuing me in this manner when I wish to enjoy a quiet swim?"
His remarks, which I have placed on paper as if they were continuous
and uninterrupted, were punctuated in reality by a series of gasps and
puffings as he received and ejected the successors of the wave he had
swallowed at the beginning of our little chat. The art of conducting
bright conversation while in the water is not given to every swimmer.
This he seemed to realize, for, as if to close the interview, he
proceeded to make his way as quickly as he could toward the shore.
Using my best stroke, I shot beyond him and turned, treading water as
before.
"But, professor," I said, "one moment."
I was growing annoyed with the man. I could have ducked him but for
the reflection that my prospects of obtaining his consent to my
engagement with Phyllis would hardly have been enhanced thereby. No
more convincing proof of my devotion can be given than this, that I
did not seize that little man by the top of his head, thrust him under
water, and keep him there.
I restrained myself. I was suave. Soothing, even.
"But, professor," I said, "one moment."
"Not one," he spluttered. "Go away, sir. I will have nothing to say to
you."
"I shan't keep you a minute."
He had been trying all this while to pass me and escape to the shore,
but I kept always directly in front of him. He now gave up the attempt
and came to standstill.
"Well?" he said.
Without preamble I gave out the text of the address I was about to
deliver to him.
"I love your daughter Phyllis, Mr. Derrick. She loves me. In fact, we
are engaged," I said.
He went under as if he had been seized with cramp. It was a little
trying having to argue with a man, of whom one could not predict with
certainty that at any given moment he would not be under water. It
tended to spoil one's flow of eloquence. The best of arguments is
useless if the listener suddenly disappears in the middle of it.
However, I persevered.
"Mr. Derrick," I said, as his head emerged, "you are naturally
surprised."
"You--you--you--"
So far from cooling him, liberal doses of water seemed to make him
more heated.
"You impudent scoundrel!"
He said that--not I. What I said was more gentlemanly, more courteous,
on a higher plane altogether.
I said winningly: "Mr. Derrick, cannot we let bygones be bygones?"
From his expression I gathered that we could not.
I continued. I was under the unfortunate necessity of having to
condense my remarks. I was not able to let myself go as I could have
wished, for time was an important consideration. Erelong, swallowing
water at his present rate, the professor must inevitably become
waterlogged. It behooved me to be succinct.
"I have loved your daughter," I said rapidly, "ever since I first saw
her. I learned last night that she loved me. But she will not marry me
without your consent. Stretch your arms out straight from the
shoulders and fill your lungs well, and you can't sink. So I have come
this morning to ask for your consent. I know we have not been on the
best of terms lately."
"You--"
"For Heaven's sake, don't try to talk. Your one chance of remaining on
the surface is to keep your lungs well filled. The fault," I said
generously, "was mine. But when you have heard my explanation, I am
sure you will forgive me. There, I told you so."
He reappeared some few feet to the left. I swam up and resumed:
"When you left us so abruptly after our little dinner party, you put
me in a very awkward position. I was desperately in love with your
daughter, and as long as you were in the frame of mind in which you
left, I could not hope to find an opportunity of telling her so. You
see what a fix I was in, don't you? I thought for hours and hours, to
try and find some means of bringing about a reconciliation. You
wouldn't believe how hard I thought. At last, seeing you fishing one
morning when I was on the Cob, it struck me all of a sudden that the
very best way would be to arrange a little boating accident. I was
confident that I could rescue you all right."
"You young blackguard!"
He managed to slip past me, and made for the shore again.
"Strike out--but hear me," I said, swimming by his side. "Look at the
thing from the standpoint of a philosopher. The fact that the rescue
was arranged oughtn't really to influence you in the least. You didn't
know it at the time, therefore relatively it was not, and you were
genuinely saved from a watery grave."
I felt that I was becoming a shade too metaphysical, but I could not
help it. What I wanted to point out was that I had certainly pulled
him out of the water, and that the fact that I had caused him to be
pushed in had nothing to do with the case. Either a man is a gallant
rescuer or he is not a gallant rescuer. There is no middle course. I
had saved his life, for he would have drowned if he had been left to
himself, and was consequently entitled to his gratitude. And that was
all that there was to be said about it.
These things I endeavored to make plain to him as we swam along. But
whether it was that the salt water he had swallowed dulled his
intelligence or that my power of stating a case neatly was to seek,
the fact remains that he reached the beach an unconvinced man.
We faced one another, dripping.
"Then may I consider," I said, "that your objections are removed? We
have your consent?"
He stamped angrily, and his bare foot came down on a small but
singularly sharp pebble. With a brief exclamation he seized the foot
with one hand and hopped. While hopping, he delivered his ultimatum.
Probably this is the only instance on record of a father adopting this
attitude in dismissing a suitor.
"You may not," he said. "You may not consider any such thing. My
objections were never more--absolute. You detain me in the water till
I am blue, sir, blue with cold, in order to listen to the most
preposterous and impudent nonsense I ever heard."
This was unjust. If he had heard me attentively from the first and
avoided interruptions and not behaved like a submarine, we should
have got through our little business in half the time. We might both
have been dry and clothed by now.
I endeavored to point this out to him.
"Don't talk to me, sir," he roared, hobbling off across the beach to
his dressing tent. "I will not listen to you. I will have nothing to
do with you. I consider you impudent, sir."
"I am sure it was unintentional, Mr. Derrick."
"Isch!" he said--being the first occasion and the last on which I ever
heard that remarkable word proceed from the mouth of man.
And he vanished into his tent, while I, wading in once more, swam back
to the Cob and put on my clothes.
And so home, as Pepys would have said, to breakfast, feeling
depressed.
SCIENTIFIC GOLF
XX
As I stood with Ukridge in the fowl run on the morning following my
maritime conversation with the professor, regarding a hen that had
posed before us, obviously with a view to inspection, there appeared a
man carrying an envelope.
Ukridge, who by this time saw, as Calverley almost said, "under every
hat a dun," and imagined that no envelope could contain anything but a
small account, softly and silently vanished away, leaving me to
interview the enemy.
"Mr. Garnet, sir?" said the foe.
I recognized him. He was Professor Derrick's gardener. What did this
portend? Had the merits of my pleadings come home to the professor
when he thought them over, and was there a father's blessing inclosed
in the envelope which was being held out to me?
I opened the envelope. No, father's blessings were absent. The letter
was in the third person. Professor Derrick begged to inform Mr. Garnet
that, by defeating Mr. Saul Potter, he had qualified for the final
round of the Lyme Regis Golf Tournament, in which, he understood, Mr.
Garnet was to be his opponent. If it would be convenient for Mr.
Garnet to play off the match on the present afternoon, Professor
Derrick would be obliged if he would be at the clubhouse at half-past
two. If this hour and day were unsuitable, would he kindly arrange
others. The bearer would wait.
The bearer did wait, and then trudged off with a note, beautifully
written in the third person, in which Mr. Garnet, after numerous
compliments and thanks, begged to inform Professor Derrick that he
would be at the clubhouse at the hour mentioned.
"And," I added--to myself, not in the note--"I will give him such a
licking that he'll brain himself with a cleek."
For I was not pleased with the professor. I was conscious of a
malicious joy at the prospect of snatching the prize from him. I knew
he had set his heart on winning the tournament this year. To be
runner-up two years in succession stimulates the desire for the first
place. It would be doubly bitter to him to be beaten by a newcomer,
after the absence of his rival, the colonel, had awakened hope in him.
And I knew I could do it. Even allowing for bad luck--and I am never a
very unlucky golfer--I could rely almost with certainty on crushing
the man.
"And I'll do it," I said to Bob, who had trotted up.
I often make Bob the recipient of my confidences. He listens
appreciatively and never interrupts. And he never has grievances of
his own. If there is one person I dislike, it is the man who tries to
air his grievances when I wish to air mine.
"Bob," I said, running his tail through my fingers, "listen to me. If
I am in form this afternoon, and I feel in my bones that I shall be, I
shall nurse the professor. I shall play with him. Do you understand
the principles of match play at golf, Robert? You score by holes, not
strokes. There are eighteen holes. I shall toy with the professor,
Bob. I shall let him get ahead, and then catch him up. I shall go
ahead myself, and let him catch me up. I shall race him neck and neck
till the very end. Then, when his hair has turned white with the
strain, and he's lost a couple of stone in weight, and his eyes are
starting out of his head, I shall go ahead and beat him by a hole.
_I'll_ teach him, Robert. He shall taste of my despair, and learn by
proof in some wild hour how much the wretched dare. And when it's all
over, and he's torn all his hair out and smashed all his clubs, I
shall go and commit suicide off the Cob. Because, you see, if I can't
marry Phyllis, I shan't have any use for life."
Bob wagged his tail cheerfully.
"I mean it," I said, rolling him on his back and punching him on the
chest till his breathing became stertorous. "You don't see the sense
of it, I know. But then you've got none of the finer feelings. You're
a jolly good dog, Robert, but you're a rank materialist. Bones and
cheese and potatoes with gravy over them make you happy. You don't
know what it is to be in love. You'd better get right side up now, or
you'll have apoplexy."
It has been my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate
nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played
euchre with the heathen Chinee, I state but the facts. I do not,
therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of
mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but
I have my off moments.
I felt ruthless toward the professor. I cannot plead ignorance of the
golfer's point of view as an excuse for my plottings. I knew that to
one whose soul is in the game, as the professor's was, the agony of
being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all
other agonies. I knew that if I scraped through by the smallest
possible margin, his appetite would be destroyed, his sleep o' nights
broken. He would wake from fitful slumber moaning that if he had only
used his iron at the tenth hole all would have been well; that if he
had aimed more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear
and blank; that a more judicious manipulation of his brassy
throughout might have given him something to live for. All these
things I knew.
And they did not touch me. I was adamant.
* * * * *
The professor was waiting for me at the clubhouse, and greeted me with
a cold and stately inclination of the head.
"Beautiful day for golf," I observed in my gay, chatty manner.
He bowed in silence.
"Very well," I thought. "Wait--just wait."
"Miss Derrick is well, I hope?" I added aloud.
That drew him. He started. His aspect became doubly forbidding.
"Miss Derrick is perfectly well, sir, I thank you."
"And you? No bad effect, I hope, from your dip yesterday?"
"Mr. Garnet, I came here for golf, not conversation," he said.
We made it so. I drove off from the first tee. It was a splendid
drive. I should not say so if there were anyone else to say so for me.
Modesty would forbid. But, as there is no one, I must repeat the
statement. It was one of the best drives of my experience. The ball
flashed through the air, took the bunker with a dozen feet to spare,
and rolled onto the green. I had felt all along that I should be in
form. Unless my opponent was equally above himself, he was a lost man.
The excellence of my drive had not been without its effect on the
professor. I could see that he was not confident. He addressed his
ball more strangely and at greater length than anyone I had ever seen.
He waggled his club over it as if he were going to perform a conjuring
trick. Then he struck and topped it.
The ball rolled two yards.
He looked at it in silence. Then he looked at me--also in silence.
I was gazing seaward.
When I looked round, he was getting to work with a brassy.
This time he hit the bunker and rolled back. He repeated this maneuver
twice.
"Hard luck!" I murmured sympathetically on the third occasion, thereby
going as near to being slain with an iron as it has ever been my lot
to go. Your true golfer is easily roused in times of misfortune, and
there was a red gleam in the eye the professor turned to me.
"I shall pick my ball up," he growled.
We walked on in silence to the second tee.
He did the second hole in four, which was good. I won it in three,
which--unfortunately for him--was better.
I won the third hole.
I won the fourth hole.
I won the fifth hole.
I glanced at my opponent out of the corner of my eyes. The man was
suffering. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
His play had become wilder and wilder at each hole in arithmetical
progression. If he had been a plow, he could hardly have turned up
more soil. The imagination recoiled from the thought of what he would
be doing in another half hour if he deteriorated at his present speed.
A feeling of calm and content stole over me. I was not sorry for him.
All the viciousness of my nature was uppermost in me. Once, when he
missed the ball clean at the fifth tee, his eye met mine, and we stood
staring at each other for a full half minute without moving. I believe
if I had smiled then, he would have attacked me without hesitation.
There is a type of golfer who really almost ceases to be human under
stress of the wild agony of a series of foozles.
The sixth hole involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of
cross-country work. There is a nasty ditch to be negotiated. Many an
optimist has been reduced to blank pessimism by that ditch. "All hope
abandon, ye who enter here," might be written on a notice board over
it.
The professor "entered there." The unhappy man sent his ball into its
very jaws. And then madness seized him. The merciful laws of golf,
framed by kindly men who do not wish to see the asylums of Great
Britain overcrowded, enact that in such a case the player may take his
ball and throw it over his shoulder. The same to count as one stroke.
But vaulting ambition is apt to try and drive out from the ditch,
thinking thereby to win through without losing a stroke. This way
madness lies.
It was a grisly sight to see the professor, head and shoulders above
the ditch, hewing at his obstinate Haskell.
"_Sixteen_!" said the professor at last between his teeth. Then,
having made one or two further comments, he stooped and picked up his
ball.
"I give you this hole," he said.
We walked on.
I won the seventh hole.
I won the eighth hole.
The ninth we halved, for in the black depth of my soul I had formed a
plan of fiendish subtlety. I intended to allow him to win--with
extreme labor--eight holes in succession.
Then, when hope was once more strong in him, I would win the last, and
he would go mad.
* * * * *
I watched him carefully as we trudged on. Emotions chased one another
across his face. When he won the tenth hole he merely refrained from
oaths. When he won the eleventh a sort of sullen pleasure showed in
his face. It was at the thirteenth that I detected the first dawning
of hope. From then onward it grew. When, with a sequence of shocking
shots, he took the seventeenth hole in eight, he was in a parlous
condition. His run of success had engendered within him a desire for
conversation. He wanted, as it were, to flap his wings and crow. I
could see dignity wrestling with talkativeness.
I gave him a lead.
"You have got back your form now," I said.
Talkativeness had it. Dignity retired hurt. Speech came from him with
a rush. When he brought off an excellent drive from the eighteenth
tee, he seemed to forget everything.
"Me dear boy--" he began, and stopped abruptly in some confusion.
Silence once more brooded over us as we played ourselves up the
fairway and on to the green.
He was on the green in four. I reached it in three. His sixth stroke
took him out.
I putted carefully to the very mouth of the hole.
I walked up to my ball and paused. I looked at the professor. He
looked at me.
"Go on," he said hoarsely.
Suddenly a wave of compassion flooded over me. What right had I to
torture the man like this? He had not behaved well to me, but in the
main it was my fault. In his place I should have acted in precisely
the same way. In a flash I made up my mind.
"Professor," I said.
"Go on," he repeated.
"That looks a simple shot," I said, eyeing him steadily, "but I might
easily miss it."
He started.
"And then you would win the championship."
He dabbed at his forehead with a wet ball of a handkerchief.
"It would be very pleasant for you after getting so near it the last
two years."
"Go on," he said for the third time. But there was a note of
hesitation in his voice.
"Sudden joy," I said, "would almost certainly make me miss it."
We looked at each other. He had the golf fever in his eyes.
"If," I said slowly, lifting my putter, "you were to give your consent
to my marriage with Phyllis--"
He looked from me to the ball, from the ball to me, and back again to
the ball. It was very, very near the hole.
"I love her," I said, "and I have discovered she loves me.... I shall
be a rich man from the day I marry--"
His eyes were still fixed on the ball.
"Why not?" I said.
He looked up, and burst into a roar of laughter.
"You young divil," said he, smiting his thigh, "you young divil,
you've beaten me."
I swung my putter, and drove the ball far beyond the green.
"On the contrary," I said, "you have beaten me."
* * * * *
I left the professor at the clubhouse and raced back to the farm. I
wanted to pour my joys into a sympathetic ear. Ukridge, I knew, would
offer that same sympathetic ear. A good fellow, Ukridge. Always
interested in what you had to tell him--never bored.
"Ukridge," I shouted.
No answer.
I flung open the dining-room door. Nobody.
I went into the drawing-room. It was empty.
I searched through the garden, and looked into his bedroom. He was not
in either.
"He must have gone for a stroll," I said.
I rang the bell.
The hired retainer appeared, calm and imperturbable as ever.
"Sir?"
"Oh, where is Mr. Ukridge, Beale?"
"Mr. Ukridge, sir," said the hired retainer nonchalantly, "has gone."
"Gone!"
"Yes, sir. Mr. Ukridge and Mrs. Ukridge went away together by the
three o'clock train."
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
XXI
"Beale," I said, "what do you mean? Where have they gone?"
"Don't know, sir. London, I expect."
"When did they go? Oh, you told me that. Didn't they say why they were
going?"
"No, sir."
"Didn't you ask? When you saw them packing up and going to the
station, didn't you do anything?"
"No, sir."
"Why on earth not?"
"I didn't see them, sir. I only found out as they'd gone after they'd
been and went, sir. Walking down by the 'Net and Mackerel,' met one
of them coastguards. 'Oh,' says he, 'so you're moving?' 'Who's
a-moving?' I says to him. 'Well,' he says to me, 'I seen your Mr.
Ukridge and his missus get into the three o'clock train for Axminster.
I thought as you was all a-moving.' 'Ho!' I says, 'Ho!' wondering, and
I goes on. When I gets back, I asks the missus did she see them
packing their boxes, and she says, 'No,' she says, they didn't pack no
boxes as she knowed of. And blowed if they had, Mr. Garnet, sir."
"What, they didn't pack!"
"No, sir."
We looked at one another.
"Beale," I said.
"Sir?"
"Do you know what I think?"
"Yes, sir."
"They've bolted."
"So I says to the missus, sir. It struck me right off, in a manner of
speaking."
"This is awful," I said.
"Yes, sir."
His face betrayed no emotion, but he was one of those men whose
expression never varies. It's a way they have in the army.
"This wants thinking out, Beale," I said.
"Yes, sir."
"You'd better ask Mrs. Beale to give me some dinner, and then I'll
think it out."
"Yes, sir."
I was in an unpleasant position. Ukridge, by his defection, had left
me in charge of the farm. I could dissolve the concern, I supposed, if
I wished, and return to London; but I particularly desired to remain
in Lyme Regis. To complete the victory I had won on the links, it was
necessary for me to continue as I had begun. I was in the position of
a general who has conquered a hostile country, and is obliged to
soothe the feelings of the conquered people before his labors can be
considered at an end. I had rushed the professor. It must now be my
aim to keep him from regretting that he had been rushed. I must,
therefore, stick to my post with the tenacity of a boy on a burning
deck. There would be trouble. Of that I was certain. As soon as the
news got about that Ukridge had gone, the deluge would begin. His
creditors would abandon their passive tactics and take active steps.
The siege of Port Arthur would be nothing to it. There was a chance
that aggressive measures would be confined to the enemy at our gates,
the tradesmen of Lyme Regis. But the probability was that the news
would spread and the injured merchants of Dorchester and Axminster
rush to the scene of hostilities. I foresaw unpleasantness.
I summoned Beale after dinner and held a council of war. It was no
time for airy persiflage.
I said, "Beale, we're in the cart."
"Sir?"
"Mr. Ukridge going away like this has left me in a most unpleasant
position. I would like to talk it over with you. I dare say you know
that we--that Mr. Ukridge owes a considerable amount of money
roundabout here to tradesmen?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, when they find out that he has--er--"
"Shot the moon, sir," suggested the hired retainer helpfully.
"Gone up to town," I said. "When they find that he has gone up to
town, they are likely to come bothering us a good deal."
"Yes, sir."
"I fancy that we shall have them all round here by the day after
to-morrow at the latest. Probably earlier. News of this sort always
spreads quickly. The point is, then, what are we to do?"
He propounded no scheme, but stood in an easy attitude of attention,
waiting for me to continue.
I continued.
"Let's see exactly how we stand," I said. "My point is that I
particularly wish to go on living down here for at least another
fortnight. Of course, my position is simple. I am Mr. Ukridge's guest.
I shall go on living as I have been doing up to the present. He asked
me down here to help him look after the fowls, so I shall go on
looking after them. I shall want a chicken a day, I suppose, or
perhaps two, for my meals, and there the thing ends, as far I am
concerned. Complications set in when we come to consider you and Mrs.
Beale. I suppose you won't care to stop on after this?"
The hired retainer scratched his chin and glanced out of the window.
The moon was up and the garden looked cool and mysterious in the dim
light.
"It's a pretty place, Mr. Garnet, sir," he said.
"It is," I said, "but about other considerations? There's the matter
of wages. Are yours in arrears?"
"Yes, sir. A month."
"And Mrs. Beale's the same, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir. A month."
"H'm. Well, it seems to me, Beale, you can't lose anything by stopping
on."
"I can't be paid any less than I have been, sir," he agreed.
"Exactly. And, as you say, it's a pretty place. You might just as well
stop on and help me in the fowl run. What do you think?"
"Very well, sir."
"And Mrs. Beale will do the same?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's excellent. You're a hero, Beale. I sha'n't forget you. There's
a check coming to me from a magazine in another week for a short
story. When it arrives I'll look into that matter of back wages. Tell
Mrs. Beale I'm much obliged to her, will you?"
"Yes, sir."
Having concluded that delicate business, I strolled out into the
garden with Bob. It was abominable of Ukridge to desert me in this
way. Even if I had not been his friend, it would have been bad. The
fact that we had known each other for years made it doubly
discreditable. He might at least have warned me and given me the
option of leaving the sinking ship with him.
But, I reflected, I ought not to be surprised. His whole career, as
long as I had known him, had been dotted with little eccentricities of
a type which an unfeeling world generally stigmatizes as shady. They
were small things, it was true; but they ought to have warned me. We
are most of us wise after the event. When the wind has blown we
generally discover a multitude of straws which should have shown us
which way it was blowing.
Once, I remembered, in our school-master days, when guineas, though
regular, were few, he had had occasion to increase his wardrobe. If I
recollect rightly, he thought he had a chance of a good position in
the tutoring line, and only needed good clothes to make it his. He
took four pounds of his salary in advance--he was in the habit of
doing this; he never had any of his salary left by the end of term, it
having vanished in advance loans beforehand. With this he was to buy
two suits, a hat, new boots, and collars. When it came to making the
purchases, he found, what he had overlooked previously in his
optimistic way, that four pounds did not go very far. At the time, I
remember, I thought his method of grappling with the situation
humorous. He bought a hat for three and sixpence, and got the suits
and the boots on the installment system, paying a small sum in
advance, as earnest of more to come. He then pawned one suit to pay
the first few installments, and finally departed, to be known no more.
His address he had given, with a false name, at an empty house, and
when the tailor arrived with the minions of the law, all he found was
an annoyed caretaker and a pile of letters written by himself,
containing his bill in its various stages of evolution.
Or again. There was a bicycle and photograph shop near the school. He
blew into this one day and his roving eye fell on a tandem bicycle. He
did not want a tandem bicycle, but that influenced him not at all. He
ordered it, provisionally. He also ordered an enlarging camera, a
Kodak, and a magic lantern. The order was booked and the goods were to
be delivered when he had made up his mind concerning them. After a
week the shopman sent round to ask if there were any further
particulars which Mr. Ukridge would like to learn before definitely
ordering them. Mr. Ukridge sent word back that he was considering the
matter, and that in the meantime would he be so good as to let him
have that little clockwork man in his window, which walked when wound
up? Having got this, and not paid for it, Ukridge thought that he had
done handsomely by the bicycle and photograph man, and that things
were square between them. The latter met him a few days afterwards and
expostulated plaintively. Ukridge explained. "My good man," he said,
"you know, I really think we need say no more about the matter.
Really, you've come out of it very well. Now, look here, which would
you rather be owed for? A clockwork man, which is broken, and you can
have it back, or a tandem bicycle, an enlarging camera, a Kodak, and
a magic lantern? What?" His reasoning was too subtle for the
uneducated mind. The man retired, puzzled and unpaid, and Ukridge kept
the clockwork toy.
A remarkable financier, Ukridge. I sometimes think that he would have
done well in the city.
I did not go to bed till late that night. There was something so
peaceful in the silence that brooded over everything that I stayed on,
enjoying it. Perhaps it struck me as all the more peaceful because I
could not help thinking of the troublous times that were to come.
Already I seemed to hear the horrid roar of a herd of infuriated
creditors. I seemed to see fierce brawlings and sackings in progress
in this very garden.
"It will be a coarse, brutal spectacle, Robert," I said.
Bob uttered a little whine, as if he, too, were endowed with powers of
prophecy.
THE STORM BREAKS
XXII
Rather to my surprise, the next morning passed off uneventfully. By
lunch time I had come to the conclusion that the expected trouble
would not occur that day, and I felt that I might well leave my post
for the afternoon while I went to the professor's to pay my respects.
The professor was out when I arrived. Phyllis was in, and as we had a
good many things of no importance to say to each other, it was not
till the evening that I started for the farm again.
As I approached the sound of voices smote my ears.
I stopped. I could hear Beale speaking. Then came the rich notes of
Vickers, the butcher. Then Beale again. Then Dawlish, the grocer.
Then a chorus.
The storm had burst, and in my absence.
I blushed for myself. I was in command, and I had deserted the fort in
time of need. What must the faithful hired man be thinking of me?
Probably he placed me, as he had placed Ukridge, in the ragged ranks
of those who have shot the moon.
Fortunately, having just come from the professor's, I was in the
costume which of all my wardrobe was most calculated to impress. To a
casual observer I should probably suggest wealth and respectability. I
stopped for a moment to cool myself, for, as is my habit when pleased
with life, I had been walking fast, then I opened the gate and strode
in, trying to look as opulent as possible.
It was an animated scene that met my eyes. In the middle of the lawn
stood the devoted Beale, a little more flushed than I had seen him
hitherto, parleying with a burly and excited young man without a coat.
Grouped round the pair were some dozen men, young, middle-aged, and
old, all talking their hardest. I could distinguish nothing of what
they were saying. I noticed that Beale's left cheek bone was a little
discolored, and there was a hard, dogged expression on his face. He,
too, was in his shirt sleeves.
My entry created no sensation. Nobody, apparently, had heard the latch
click, and nobody had caught sight of me. Their eyes were fixed on the
young man and Beale. I stood at the gate and watched them.
There seemed to have been trouble already. Looking more closely I
perceived sitting on the grass apart a second young man. His face was
obscured by a dirty pocket handkerchief, with which he dabbed tenderly
at his features. Every now and then the shirt-sleeved young man flung
his hand toward him with an indignant gesture, talking hard the
while. It did not need a preternaturally keen observer to deduce what
had happened. Beale must have fallen out with the young man who was
sitting on the grass and smitten him, and now his friend had taken up
the quarrel.
"Now this," I said to myself, "is rather interesting. Here in this one
farm we have the only three known methods of dealing with duns. Beale
is evidently an exponent of the violent method. Ukridge is an apostle
of evasion. I shall try conciliation. I wonder which of us will be the
most successful."
Meanwhile, not to spoil Beale's efforts by allowing him too little
scope for experiment, I refrained from making my presence known, and
continued to stand by the gate, an interested spectator.
Things were evidently moving now. The young man's gestures became
more vigorous. The dogged look on Beale's face deepened. The comments
of the ring increased in point and pungency.
"What did you hit him for, then?"
This question was put, always in the same words and with the same air
of quiet triumph, at intervals of thirty seconds by a little man in a
snuff-colored suit with a purple tie. Nobody ever answered him or
appeared to listen to him, but he seemed each time to think that he
had clinched the matter and cornered his opponent.
Other voices chimed in.
"You hit him, Charlie. Go on. You hit him."
"We'll have the law."
"Go on, Charlie."
Flushed with the favor of the many-headed, Charlie now proceeded from
threats to action. His right fist swung round suddenly. But Beale was
on the alert. He ducked sharply, and the next minute Charlie was
sitting on the ground beside his fallen friend. A hush fell on the
ring, and the little man in the purple tie was left repeating his
formula without support.
I advanced. It seemed to me that the time had come to be conciliatory.
Charlie was struggling to his feet, obviously anxious for a second
round, and Beale was getting into position once more. In another five
minutes conciliation would be out of the question.
"What's all this?" I said.
My advent caused a stir. Excited men left Beale and rallied round me.
Charlie, rising to his feet, found himself dethroned from his position
of man of the moment, and stood blinking at the setting sun and
opening and shutting his mouth. There was a buzz of conversation.
"Don't all speak at once, please," I said. "I can't possibly follow
what you say. Perhaps you will tell me what you want?"
I singled out a short, stout man in gray. He wore the largest whiskers
ever seen on human face.
"It's like this, sir. We all of us want to know where we are."
"I can tell you that," I said, "you're on our lawn, and I should be
much obliged if you would stop digging your heels into it."
This was not, I suppose, conciliation in the strictest and best sense
of the word, but the thing had to be said.
"You don't understand me, sir," he said excitedly. "When I said we
didn't know where we were, it was a manner of speaking. We want to
know how we stand."
"On your heels," I replied gently, "as I pointed out before."
"I am Brass, sir, of Axminster. My account with Mr. Ukridge is ten
pounds eight shillings and fourpence. I want to know--"
The whole strength of the company now joined in.
"You know me, Mr. Garnet. Appleby, in the High--" (voice lost in the
general roar) "... and eightpence."
"My account with Mr. Uk----"
"... settle--"
"I represent Bodger--"
A diversion occurred at this point. Charlie, who had long been eyeing
Beale sourly, dashed at him with swinging fists and was knocked down
again. The whole trend of the meeting altered once more. Conciliation
became a drug. Violence was what the public wanted. Beale had three
fights in rapid succession. I was helpless. Instinct prompted me to
join the fray, but prudence told me that such a course would be fatal.
At last, in a lull, I managed to catch the hired retainer by the arm
as he drew back from the prostrate form of his latest victim.
"Drop it, Beale," I whispered hotly, "drop it. We shall never manage
these people if you knock them about. Go indoors and stay there while
I talk to them."
"Mr. Garnet, sir," said he, the light of battle dying out of his eyes,
"it's 'ard. It's cruel 'ard. I ain't 'ad a turn-up, not to _call_ a
turn-up, since I've bin a time-expired man. I ain't hitting of 'em,
Mr. Garnet, sir, not hard I ain't. That there first one of 'em he
played me dirty, hittin' at me when I wasn't looking. They can't say
as I started it."
"That's all right, Beale," I said soothingly. "I know it wasn't your
fault, and I know it's hard on you to have to stop, but I wish you
would go indoors. I must talk to these men, and we sha'n't have a
moment's peace while you're here. Cut along."
"Very well, sir. But it's 'ard. Mayn't I 'ave just one go at that
Charlie, Mr. Garnet?" he asked wistfully.
"No, no. Go in."
"And if they goes for you, sir, and tries to wipe the face off you?"
"They won't, they won't. If they do, I'll shout for you."
He went reluctantly into the house, and I turned again to my audience.
"If you will kindly be quiet for a moment--" I said.
"I am Appleby, Mr. Garnet, in the High Street. Mr. Ukridge--"
"Eighteen pounds fourteen shillings--"
"Kindly glance--"
I waved my hands wildly above my head.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!" I shouted.
The babble continued, but diminished gradually in volume. Through the
trees, as I waited, I caught a glimpse of the sea. I wished I was out
on the Cob, where beyond these voices there was peace. My head was
beginning to ache, and I felt faint for want of food.
"Gentlemen!" I cried, as the noise died away.
The latch of the gate clicked. I looked up and saw a tall thin young
man in a frock coat and silk hat enter the garden. It was the first
time I had seen the costume in the country.
He approached me.
"Mr. Ukridge, sir?" he said.
"My name is Garnet. Mr. Ukridge is away at the moment."
"I come from Whiteley's, Mr. Garnet. Our Mr. Blenkinsop having written
on several occasions to Mr. Ukridge, calling his attention to the fact
that his account has been allowed to mount to a considerable figure,
and having received no satisfactory reply, desired me to visit him. I
am sorry that he is not at home."
"So am I," I said with feeling.
"Do you expect him to return shortly?"
"No," I said, "I do not."
He was looking curiously at the expectant band of duns. I forestalled
his question.
"Those are some of Mr. Ukridge's creditors," I said. "I am just about
to address them. Perhaps you will take a seat. The grass is quite dry.
My remarks will embrace you as well as them."
Comprehension came into his eyes, and the natural man in him peeped
through the polish.
"Great Scott, has he done a bunk?" he cried.
"To the best of my knowledge, yes," I said.
He whistled.
I turned again to the local talent.
"Gentlemen!" I shouted.
"Hear, hear!" said some idiot.
"Gentlemen, I intend to be quite frank with you. We must decide just
how matters stand between us." (A voice: "Where's Ukridge?") "Mr.
Ukridge left for London suddenly (bitter laughter) yesterday
afternoon. Personally I think he will come back very shortly."
Hoots of derision greeted this prophecy.
I resumed:
"I fail to see your object in coming here. I have nothing for you. I
couldn't pay your bills if I wanted to."
It began to be borne in upon me that I was becoming unpopular.
"I am here simply as Mr. Ukridge's guest," I proceeded. After all, why
should I spare the man? "I have nothing whatever to do with his
business affairs. I refuse absolutely to be regarded as in any way
indebted to you. I am sorry for you. You have my sympathy. That is all
I can give you, sympathy--and good advice."
Dissatisfaction. I was getting myself disliked. And I had meant to be
so conciliatory, to speak to these unfortunates words of cheer which
should be as olive oil poured into a wound. For I really did
sympathize with them. I considered that Ukridge had used them
disgracefully. But I was irritated. My head ached abominably.
"Then am I to tell our Mr. Blenkinsop," asked the frock-coated one,
"that the money is not and will not be forthcoming?"
"When next you smoke a quiet cigar with your Mr. Blenkinsop," I
replied courteously, "and find conversation flagging, I rather think I
_should_ say something of the sort."
"We shall, of course, instruct our solicitors at once to institute
legal proceedings against your Mr. Ukridge."
"Don't call him my Mr. Ukridge. You can do whatever you please."
"That is your last word on the subject."
"I hope so."
"Where's our money?" demanded a discontented voice from the crowd.
Then Charlie, filled with the lust of revenge, proposed that the
company should sack the place.
"We can't see the color of our money," he said pithily, "but we can
have our own back."
That settled it. The battle was over. The most skillful general must
sometimes recognize defeat. I could do nothing further with them. I
had done my best for the farm. I could do no more.
I lit my pipe and strolled into the paddock.
Chaos followed. Indoors and out of doors they raged without check.
Even Beale gave the thing up. He knocked Charlie into a flower bed and
then disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
It was growing dusk. From inside the house came faint sounds of mirth,
as the sacking party emptied the rooms of their contents. In the fowl
run a hen was crooning sleepily in its coop. It was a very soft,
liquid, soothing sound.
Presently out came the invaders with their loot--one with a picture,
another with a vase, another bearing the gramophone upside down.
Then I heard somebody--Charlie again, it seemed to me--propose a raid
on the fowl run.
The fowls had had their moments of unrest since they had been our
property, but what they had gone through with us was peace compared
with what befell them then. Not even on that second evening of our
visit, when we had run unmeasured miles in pursuit of them, had there
been such confusion. Roused abruptly from their beauty sleep, they
fled in all directions. The summer evening was made hideous with the
noise of them.
"Disgraceful, sir. Is it not disgraceful!" said a voice at my ear.
The young man from Whiteley's stood beside me. He did not look happy.
His forehead was damp. Somebody seemed to have stepped on his hat and
his coat was smeared with mold.
I was turning to answer him, when from the dusk in the direction of
the house came a sudden roar. A passionate appeal to the world in
general to tell the speaker what all this meant.
There was only one man of my acquaintance with a voice like that. I
walked without hurry toward him.
"Good evening, Ukridge," I said.
AFTER THE STORM
XXIII
A yell of welcome drowned the tumult of the looters.
"Is that you, Garny, old horse? What's up? What's the matter? Has
everybody gone mad? Who are those blackguardly scoundrels in the fowl
run? What are they doing? What's been happening?"
"I have been entertaining a little meeting of your creditors," I said.
"And now they are entertaining themselves."
"But what did you let them do it for?"
"What is one among so many?" I said.
"Oh," moaned Ukridge, as a hen flashed past us, pursued by a criminal,
"it's a little hard. I can't go away for a day--"
"You can't," I said. "You're right there. You can't go away without a
word--"
"Without a word? What do you mean? Garny, old boy, pull yourself
together. You're overexcited. Do you mean to tell me you didn't get my
note?"
"What note?"
"The one I left on the dining-room table."
"There was no note there."
"What!"
I was reminded of the scene that had taken place on the first day of
our visit.
"Feel in your pockets," I said.
And history repeated itself. One of the first things he pulled out was
the note.
"Why, here it is!" he said in amazement.
"Of course. Where did you expect it to be? Was it important?"
"Why, it explained the whole thing."
"Then," I said, "I wish you'd let me read it. A note that can explain
what's happened ought to be worth reading."
I took the envelope from his hand and opened it.
It was too dark to read, so I lit a match. A puff of wind extinguished
it. There is always just enough wind to extinguish a match.
I pocketed the note.
"I can't read it now," I said. "Tell me what it was about."
"It was telling you to sit tight and not to worry about us going
away--"
"That's good about worrying. You're a thoughtful chap, Ukridge."
"--because we should be back in a day or two."
"And what sent you up to town?"
"Why, we went to touch Millie's Aunt Elizabeth."
A light began to shine on my darkness.
"Oh!" I said.
"You remember Aunt Elizabeth? We got a letter from her not so long
ago."
"I know whom you mean. She called you a gaby."
"And a guffin."
"Of course. I remember thinking her a shrewd and discriminating old
lady, with a great gift of description. So you went to touch her?"
"That's it. I suddenly found that things were getting into an A1
tangle, and that we must have more money. So I naturally thought of
Aunt Elizabeth. She isn't what you might call an admirer of mine, but
she's very fond of Millie, and would do anything for her if she's
allowed to chuck about a few home-truths before doing it. So we went
off together, looked her up at her house, stated our painful case, and
corralled the money. Millie and I shared the work. She did the asking,
while I inquired after the rheumatism. She mentioned the precise
figure that would clear us. I patted the toy Pomeranian. Little beast!
Got after me quick, when I wasn't looking, and chewed my ankle."
"Thank Heaven for that," I said.
"In the end Millie got the money and I got the home truths."
"Did she call you a gaby?"
"Twice. And a guffin three times."
"But you got the money?"
"Rather. And I'll tell you another thing. I scored heavily at the end
of the visit. Lady Lakenheath was doing stunts with proverbs--"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Quoting proverbs, you know, bearing on the situation. 'Ah, my dear,'
she said to Millie, 'marry in haste, repent at leisure!' 'I'm afraid
that proverb doesn't apply to us,' said Millie, 'because I haven't
repented.' What do you think of that, old horse?"
"Millie's an angel," I replied.
Just then the angel joined us. She had been exploring the house, and
noting the damage done. Her eyes were open to their fullest extent as
she shook hands with me.
"Oh, Mr. Garnet," she said, "_couldn't_ you have stopped them?"
I felt a cur. Had I done as much as I might have done to stem the
tide?
"I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Ukridge," I said. "I really don't think I
could have done more. We tried every method. Beale had seven fights,
and I made a speech on the lawn, but it was all no good."
"Perhaps we can collect these men and explain things," I added. "I
don't believe any of them know you've come back."
"Send Beale round," said Ukridge. "Beale!"
The hired retainer came running out at the sound of the well-known
voice.
"Lumme, Mr. Ukridge, sir!" he gasped.
It was the first time Beale had ever betrayed any real emotion in my
presence. To him, I suppose, the return of Ukridge was as sensational
and astounding an event as the reappearance of one from the tomb would
have been. He was not accustomed to find those who had shot the moon
revisiting their old haunts.
"Go round the place and tell those blackguards that I've come back,
and would like to have a word with them on the lawn. And if you find
any of them stealing my fowls, knock them down."
"I 'ave knocked down one or two," said Beale with approval. "That
Charlie--"
"That's right, Beale. You're an excellent man, and I will pay you your
back wages to-night before I go to bed."
"Those fellers, sir," said Beale, having expressed his gratification,
"they've been and scattered most of them birds already, sir. They've
been chasin' of 'em for this hour back."
Ukridge groaned.
"Demons!" he said. "Demons!"
Beale went off.
The audience assembled on the lawn in the moonlight. Ukridge, with his
cap well over his eyes and his mackintosh hanging around him like a
Roman toga, surveyed them stonily, and finally began his speech.
"You--you--you--you blackguards!" he said.
I always like to think of Ukridge as he appeared at that moment. There
have been times when his conduct did not recommend itself to me. It
has sometimes happened that I have seen flaws in him. But on this
occasion he was at his best. He was eloquent. He dominated his
audience.
He poured scorn upon his hearers, and they quailed. He flung invective
at them, and they wilted.
It was hard, he said, it was a little hard that a gentleman could not
run up to London for a couple of days on business without having his
private grounds turned upside down. He had intended to deal well by
the tradesmen of the town, to put business in their way, to give them
large orders. But would he? Not much. As soon as ever the sun had
risen and another day begun, their miserable accounts should be paid
in full and their connection with him be cut off. Afterwards it was
probable that he would institute legal proceedings against them for
trespass and damage to property, and if they didn't all go to prison
they might consider themselves uncommonly lucky, and if they didn't
fly the spot within the brief space of two ticks he would get among
them with a shotgun. He was sick of them. They were no gentlemen, but
cads. Scoundrels. Creatures that it would be rank flattery to describe
as human beings. That's the sort of things _they_ were. And now they
might go--_quick_!
The meeting then dispersed, without the usual vote of thanks.
* * * * *
We were quiet at the farm that night. Ukridge sat like Marius among
the ruins of Carthage and refused to speak. Eventually he took Bob
with him and went for a walk.
Half an hour later I, too, wearied of the scene of desolation. My
errant steps took me in the direction of the sea. As I approached I
was aware of a figure standing in the moonlight, gazing moodily out
over the waters. Beside the figure was a dog.
I would not disturb his thoughts. The dark moments of massive minds
are sacred. I forebore to speak to him. As readily might one of the
generals of the Grand Army have opened conversation with Napoleon
during the retreat from Moscow.
I turned softly and walked the other way. When I looked back he was
still there.
[Illustration: "I did think Mr. Garnet would have fainted when the
best man said, 'I can't find it, old horse!'"]
EPILOGUE
ARGUMENT. From the _Morning Post: "... and graceful, wore a simple
gown of stiff satin and old lace, and a heavy lace veil fell in soft
folds over the shimmering skirt. A reception was subsequently held by
Mrs. O'Brien, aunt of the bride, at her house in Ennismore Gardens."_
IN THE SERVANTS' HALL
THE COOK. ... And as pretty a wedding, Mr. Hill, as ever I did see.
THE BUTLER. Indeed, Mrs. Minchley? And how did our niece look?
THE COOK (_closing her eyes in silent rapture_). Well,
_there_! That lace! (_In a burst of ecstacy_.) Well, _there_!!
Words can't describe it, Mr. Hill.
THE BUTLER. Indeed, Mrs. Minchley?
THE COOK. And Miss Phyllis--Mrs. Garnet, I _should_ say--she was as
calm as calm. And looking beautiful as--well, there! Now, Mr. Garnet,
he _did_ look nervous, if you like, and when the best man--such a
queer-looking awkward man, in a frock coat that _I_ wouldn't have been
best man at a wedding in--when he lost the ring and said--quite loud,
everybody could hear him--"I can't find it, old horse!" why I did
think Mr. Garnet would have fainted away, and so I said to Jane, as
was sitting beside me. But he found it at the last moment, and all
went on as merrily, as you may say, as a wedding bell.
JANE (_sentimentally_). Reely, these weddings, you know, they do give
you a sort of feeling, if you catch my meaning, Mrs. Minchley.
THE BUTLER (_with the air of a high priest who condescends for once to
unbend and frolic with lesser mortals_). Ah! it'll be your turn next,
Miss Jane.
JANE (_who has long had designs on this dignified bachelor_). Oh, Mr.
Hill, reely! You do poke your fun.
[_Raises her eyes to his, and drops them swiftly, leaving him
with a pleasant sensation of having said a good thing
particularly neatly, and a growing idea that he might do
worse than marry Jane, take a nice little house in Chelsea
somewhere, and let lodgings. He thinks it over._
TILBY (_a flighty young person who, when she has a moment or two to
spare from the higher flirtation with the local policeman, puts in a
little light work about the bedrooms_). Oh, I say, this'll be one in
the eye for Riggetts, pore little feller. (_Assuming an air of
advanced melodrama._) Ow! She 'as forsiken me! I'll go and blow me
little 'ead off with a blunderbuss! Ow that one so fair could be so
false!
MASTER THOMAS RIGGETTS (_the page boy, whose passion for the lady who
has just become Mrs. Garnet has for many months been a byword in the
servants' hall_). Huh! (_To himself bitterly._) Tike care, tike care,
lest some day you drive me too far. [_Is left brooding darkly._
UPSTAIRS
THE BRIDE. ... Thank you.... Oh, thank you.... Thank you so much....
Thank you _so_ much ... oh, thank you.... Thank you.... Thank you _so_
much.
THE BRIDEGROOM. Thanks.... Oh, thanks.... Thanks awf'lly.... Thanks
awf'lly.... Thanks awf'lly.... Oh, thanks awf'lly ... (_with a
brilliant burst of invention, amounting almost to genius_) Thanks
_frightfully_.
THE BRIDE (_to herself, rapturously_). A-a-a-h!
THE BRIDEGROOM (_dabbing at his forehead with his handkerchief during
a lull_). I shall drop.
THE BEST MAN (_appearing suddenly at his side with a glass_). Bellows
to mend, old horse, what? Keep going. You're doing fine. Bless you.
Bless you.
[_Drifts away._
ELDERLY STRANGER (_to bridegroom_). Sir, I have jigged your wife on my
knee.
THE BRIDEGROOM (_with absent politeness_). Ah! Lately?
ELDERLY STRANGER. When she was a baby, sir.
THE BRIDEGROOM (_from force of habit_). Oh, thanks. Thanks awf'lly.
THE BRIDE (_to herself_). _Why_ can't one get married every
day!... (_catching sight of a young gentleman whose bi-weekly conversation
with her in the past was wont to consist of two remarks on the weather and
one proposal of marriage_). _Oh_! Oh, what a _shame_ inviting poor
little Freddy Fraddle! Aunt Kathleen _must_ have known! How could she be
so cruel! Poor little fellow, he must be suffering dreadfully!
POOR LITTLE FREDDY FRADDLE (_addressing his immortal soul as he
catches sight of the bridegroom, with a set smile on his face, shaking
hands with an obvious bore_). Poor devil, poor, poor devil! And to
think that I--! Well, well! There but for the grace of God goes
Frederick Fraddle.
THE BRIDEGROOM (_to the_ OBVIOUS BORE). Thanks. Thanks awf'lly.
THE OBVIOUS BORE (_in measured tones_).... are going, as you say, to
Wales for your honeymoon, you should on no account miss the
opportunity of seeing the picturesque ruins of Llanxwrg Castle, which
are among the most prominent spectacles of Carnarvonshire, a county,
which I understand you to say, you propose to include in your visit.
The ruins are really part of the village of Twdyd-Prtsplgnd, but your
best station would be Golgdn. There is a good train service to and
from that spot. If you mention my name to the custodian of the ruins,
he will allow you to inspect the grave of the celebrated ----
IMMACULATE YOUTH (_interrupting_). Hello, Garnet, old man. Don't know
if you remember me. Latimer, of Oriel. I was a fresher in your third
year. Gratters!
THE BRIDEGROOM (_with real sincerity for once_). Thanks. Thanks
awf'lly.
[_They proceed to talk Oxford shop together, to the exclusion
of the O. B., who glides off in search of another victim_.
IN THE STREET
THE COACHMAN (_to his horse_). _Kim_ up, then!
THE HORSE (_to itself_). Deuce of a time these people are. Why don't
they hurry. I want to be off. I'm certain we shall miss that train.
THE BEST MAN (_to crowd of perfect strangers, with whom in some
mysterious way he has managed to strike up a warm friendship_). Now,
then, you men, stand by. Wait till they come out, then blaze away.
Good handful first shot. That's what you want.
THE COOK (_in the area, to_ JANE). Oh, I do 'ope they won't miss that
train, don't you? Oh, here they come. Oh, don't Miss Phyllis--Mrs.
Garnet--look--well, there. And I can remember her a little slip of a
girl only so high, and she used to come to my kitchen, and she used to
say, "Mrs. Minchley," she used to say--it seems only yesterday--"Mrs.
Minchley, I want--"
[_Left reminiscing._
THE BRIDE (_as the page boy's gloomy eye catches hers, "smiles as she
was wont to smile_").
MASTER RIGGETTS (_with a happy recollection of his latest-read work of
fiction--"Sir Rupert of the Hall": Meadowsweet Library--to himself_).
"Good-by, proud lady. Fare you well. And may you never regret.
May--you--nevorrr--regret!"
[_Dives passionately into larder, and consoles himself with jam._
THE BEST MAN (_to his gang of bravoes_). Now, then, you men, bang it
in.
[_They bang it in._
THE BRIDEGROOM (_retrieving his hat_). Oh-- [_Recollects himself in
time._
THE BEST MAN. Oh, shot, sir! Shot, indeed!
[_The_ BRIDE _and_ BRIDEGROOM _enter the carriage amid a storm of
rice._
THE BEST MAN (_coming to carriage window_). Garny, old horse.
THE BRIDEGROOM. Well?
THE BEST MAN. Just a moment. Look here, I've got a new idea. The best
ever, 'pon my word it is. I'm going to start a duck farm and run it
without water. What? You'll miss your train? Oh, no, you won't.
There's plenty of time. My theory is, you see, that ducks get thin by
taking exercise and swimming about and so on, don't you know, so that,
if you kept them on land always, they'd get jolly fat in about half
the time--and no trouble and expense. See? What? You bring the missus
down there. I'll write you the address. Good-by. Bless you. Good-by,
Mrs. Garnet.
THE BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM (_simultaneously, with a smile apiece_).
Good-by.
[_They catch the train and live happily ever afterwards._]
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's Love Among the Chickens, by P. G. Wodehouse
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