Love Among the Chickens
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P. G. Wodehouse >> Love Among the Chickens
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11 [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 IRAE
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 _resumes_ 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, reentering 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."
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