Love Among the Chickens
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P. G. Wodehouse >> Love Among the Chickens
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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?"
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