Love Among the Chickens

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"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 IRAE

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 role 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 reestablish 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 _blase_ 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.

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