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