Love Among the Chickens

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

"I'm very sorry, but I couldn't know--could I? I thought you always
played like that."

"I know. I knew you would. It nearly turned my hair white. I didn't
see how a girl could ever care for a man who was so bad at tennis."

"One doesn't love a man because he's good at tennis."

"What _does_ a girl see to love in a man?" I inquired abruptly; and
paused on the verge of a great discovery.

"Oh, I don't know," she replied, most unsatisfactorily.

And I could draw no views from her.

"But about father," said she. "What _are_ we to do?"

"He objects to me."

"He's perfectly furious with you."

"Blow, blow," I said, "thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind--"

"He'll never forgive you."

"As man's ingratitude. I saved his life--at the risk of my own. Why, I
believe I've got a legal claim on him. Whoever heard of a man having
his life saved, and not being delighted when his preserver wanted to
marry his daughter? Your father is striking at the very root of the
short-story writer's little earnings. He mustn't be allowed to do it."

"Jerry!"

I started.

"Again!" I said.

"What?"

"Say it again. Do, please. Now."

"Very well. Jerry!"

"It was the first time you had called me by my Christian name. I don't
suppose you've the remotest notion how splendid it sounds when you
say it. There is something poetical, something almost holy, about it."

"Jerry, please!"

"Say on."

"Do be sensible. Don't you see how serious this is? We must think how
we can make father consent."

"All right," I said. "We'll tackle the point. I'm sorry to be
frivolous, but I'm so happy I can't keep it all in. I've got you, and
I can't think of anything else."

"Try."

"I'll pull myself together.... Now, say on once more."

"We can't marry without father's consent."

"Why not?" I said, not having a marked respect for the professor's
whims. "Gretna Green is out of date, but there are registrars."

"I hate the very idea of a registrar," she said with decision.
"Besides--"

"Well?"

"Poor father would never get over it. We've always been such friends.
If I married against his wishes, he would--oh, you know--not let me
come near him again, and not write to me. And he would hate it all the
time he was doing it. He would be bored to death without me."

"Anybody would," I said.

"Because, you see, Norah has never been quite the same. She has spent
such a lot of her time on visits to people that she and father don't
understand each other so well as he and I do. She would try and be
nice to him, but she wouldn't know him as I do. And, besides, she will
be with him such a little, now she's going to be married."

"But, look here," I said, "this is absurd. You say your father would
never see you again, and so on, if you married me. Why? It's
nonsense. It isn't as if I were a sort of social outcast. We were the
best of friends till that man Hawk gave me away like that."

"I know. But he's very obstinate about some things. You see, he thinks
the whole thing has made him look ridiculous, and it will take him a
long time to forgive you for that."

I realized the truth of this. One can pardon any injury to oneself,
unless it hurts one's vanity. Moreover, even in a genuine case of
rescue, the rescued man must always feel a little aggrieved with his
rescuer when he thinks the matter over in cold blood. He must regard
him unconsciously as the super regards the actor manager, indebted to
him for the means of supporting existence, but grudging him the lime
light and the center of the stage and the applause. Besides, everyone
instinctively dislikes being under an obligation which he can never
wholly repay. And when a man discovers that he has experienced all
these mixed sensations for nothing, as the professor had done, his
wrath is likely to be no slight thing.

Taking everything into consideration, I could not but feel that it
would require more than a little persuasion to make the professor
bestow his blessing with that genial warmth which we like to see in
our fathers-in-law elect.

"You don't think," I said, "that time, the great healer, and so on--he
won't feel kindlier disposed toward me--say in a month's time?"

"Of course, he _might_," said Phyllis; but she spoke doubtfully.

"He strikes me, from what I have seen of him, as a man of moods. I
might do something one of these days which would completely alter his
views. We will hope for the best."

"About telling father--"

"Need we tell him?" I asked.

"Yes, we must. I couldn't bear to think that I was keeping it from
him. I don't think I've ever kept anything from him in my life.
Nothing bad, I mean."

"You count this among your darker crimes, then?"

"I was looking at it from father's point of view. He will be awfully
angry. I don't know how I shall begin telling him."

"Good heavens!" I cried, "you surely don't think I'm going to let you
do that! Keep safely out of the way while you tell him? Not much. I'm
coming back with you now, and we'll break the bad news together."

"No, not to-night. He may be tired and rather cross. We had better
wait till to-morrow. You might speak to him in the morning."

"Where shall I find him?"

"He is certain to go to the beach before breakfast to bathe."

"Good. To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day. I'll be
there."

* * * * *

"Ukridge," I said, when I got back, "can you give me audience for a
brief space? I want your advice."

This stirred him like a trumpet blast. When a man is in the habit of
giving unsolicited counsel to everyone he meets, it is as invigorating
as an electric shock to him to be asked for it spontaneously.

"What's up, old horse?" he asked eagerly. "I'll tell you what to do.
Get on to it. Bang it out. Here, let's go into the garden."

I approved of this. I can always talk more readily in the dark, and I
did not wish to be interrupted by the sudden entrance of the hired
retainer or Mrs. Beale. We walked down to the paddock. Ukridge lit a
cigar.

"I'm in love, Ukridge," I said.

"What!"

"More--I'm engaged."

A huge hand whistled through the darkness and smote me heavily between
the shoulder blades.

"Thanks," I said; "that felt congratulatory."

"By Jove! old boy, I wish you luck. 'Pon my word, I do. Fancy you
engaged! Best thing in the world for you. Never knew what happiness
was till I married. A man wants a helpmeet--"

"And this man," I said, "seems likely to go on wanting. That's where I
need your advice. I'm engaged to Miss Derrick."

"Miss Derrick!" He spoke as if he hardly knew whom I meant.

"You can't have forgotten her! Good heavens, what eyes some men have!
Why, if I'd only seen her once, I should have remembered her all my
life."

"I know now. She came to dinner here with her father, that fat little
buffer."

"As you were careful to call him at the time. Thereby starting all the
trouble."

"You fished him out of the water afterwards."

"Quite right."

"Why, it's a perfect romance, old horse. It's like the stories you
read."

"And write. But they all end happily. 'There is none, my brave young
preserver, to whom I would more willingly intrust my daughter's
happiness.' Unfortunately, in my little drama, the heavy father seems
likely to forget his cue."

"The old man won't give his consent?"

"Probably not."

"But why? What's the matter with you? If you marry, you'll come into
your uncle's money, and all that."

"True. Affluence stares me in the face."

"And you fished him out of the water."

"After previously chucking him in."

"What!"

"At any rate, by proxy."

I explained. Ukridge, I regret to say, laughed.

"You vagabond!" he said. "'Pon my word, old horse, to look at you, one
would never have thought you'd have had it in you."

"I can't help looking respectable."

"What are you going to do about it? The old man's got it up against
you good and strong, there's no doubt of that."

"That's where I wanted your advice. You're a man of resource. What
would you do if you were in my place?"

Ukridge tapped me impressively on the shoulder.

"Marmaduke," he said, "there's one thing that'll carry you through any
mess."

"And that is--"

"Cheek, my boy--cheek! Gall! Why, take my case. I never told you how I
came to marry, did I? I thought not. Well, it was this way. You've
heard us mention Millie's Aunt Elizabeth--what? Well, then, when I
tell you that she was Millie's nearest relative, and it was her
consent I had to gather, you'll see that it wasn't a walk-over."

"Well?" I said.

"First time I saw Millie was in a first-class carriage on the
underground. I'd got a third-class ticket, by the way. We weren't
alone. It was five a side. But she sat opposite me, and I fell in love
with her there and then. We both got out at South Kensington. I
followed her. She went to a house in Thurloe Square. I waited outside
and thought it over. I had got to get into that house and make her
acquaintance. So I rang the bell. 'Is Lady Lichenhall at home?' I
asked. You note the artfulness? My asking for Lady Lichenhall made 'em
think I was one of the upper ten--what?"

"How were you dressed?" I could not help asking.

"Oh, it was one of my frock-coat days. I'd been to see a man about
tutoring his son. There was nothing the matter with my appearance.
'No,' said the servant, 'nobody of that name lives here. This is Lady
Lakenheath's house.' So, you see, I had luck at the start, because the
two names were a bit alike. Well, I got the servant to show me in
somehow, and, once in, you can wager I talked for all I was worth.
Kept up a flow of conversation about being misdirected and coming to
the wrong house, and so on. Went away, and called a few days later.
Called regularly. Met 'em at every theater they went to, and bowed,
and finally got away with Millie before her aunt could tell what was
happening, or who I was or what I was doing or anything."

"And what's the moral?" I said.

"Why, go in hard. Rush 'em. Bustle 'em. Don't give 'em a moment's
rest."

"Don't play the goose game," I said with that curious thrill we feel
when somebody's independent view of a matter coincides with one's own.

"That's it. Don't play the goose game. Don't give 'em time to think.
Why, if I'd given Millie's aunt time to think, where should we have
been? Not at Lyme Regis together, I'll bet."

"Ukridge," I said, "you inspire me. You would inspire a caterpillar. I
will go to the professor--I was going anyhow--but now I shall go
aggressively, and bustle him. I will surprise a father's blessing out
of him, if I have to do it with a crowbar!"

I ASK PAPA

XIX

Reviewing the matter later, I see that I made a poor choice of time
and place. But at the moment this did not strike me. It is a simple
thing, I reflected, for a man to pass another by haughtily and without
recognition, when they meet on dry land; but when the said man, being
an indifferent swimmer, is accosted in the water and out of his depth,
the feat becomes a hard one.

When, therefore, having undressed on the Cob on the following morning,
I spied in the distance, as I was about to dive, the gray head of the
professor bobbing on the face of the waters, I did not hesitate. I
plunged in and swam rapidly toward him.

His face was turned in the opposite direction when I came up with him,
and it was soon evident that he had not observed my approach. For
when, treading water easily in his immediate rear, I wished him good
morning in my most conciliatory tones, he stood not upon the order of
his sinking, but went under like so much pig iron. I waited
courteously until he rose to the surface once more, when I repeated my
remark.

He expelled the last remnant of water from his mouth with a wrathful
splutter, and cleared his eyes with the back of his hand.

"The water is delightfully warm," I said.

"Oh, it's you!" said he, and I could not cheat myself into believing
that he spoke cordially.

"You are swimming splendidly this morning," I said, feeling that an
ounce of flattery is often worth a pound of rhetoric. "If," I added,
"you will allow me to say so."

"I will not," he snapped. "I--" Here a small wave, noticing that his
mouth was open, walked in. "I wish," he resumed warmly, "as I said in
me letter, to have nothing to do with you. I consider ye've behaved in
a manner that can only be described as abominable, and I will thank ye
to leave me alone."

"But, allow me--"

"I will not allow ye, sir. I will allow ye nothing. Is it not enough
to make me the laughingstock, the butt, sir, of this town, without
pursuing me in this manner when I wish to enjoy a quiet swim?"

His remarks, which I have placed on paper as if they were continuous
and uninterrupted, were punctuated in reality by a series of gasps and
puffings as he received and ejected the successors of the wave he had
swallowed at the beginning of our little chat. The art of conducting
bright conversation while in the water is not given to every swimmer.
This he seemed to realize, for, as if to close the interview, he
proceeded to make his way as quickly as he could toward the shore.
Using my best stroke, I shot beyond him and turned, treading water as
before.

"But, professor," I said, "one moment."

I was growing annoyed with the man. I could have ducked him but for
the reflection that my prospects of obtaining his consent to my
engagement with Phyllis would hardly have been enhanced thereby. No
more convincing proof of my devotion can be given than this, that I
did not seize that little man by the top of his head, thrust him under
water, and keep him there.

I restrained myself. I was suave. Soothing, even.

"But, professor," I said, "one moment."

"Not one," he spluttered. "Go away, sir. I will have nothing to say to
you."

"I shan't keep you a minute."

He had been trying all this while to pass me and escape to the shore,
but I kept always directly in front of him. He now gave up the attempt
and came to standstill.

"Well?" he said.

Without preamble I gave out the text of the address I was about to
deliver to him.

"I love your daughter Phyllis, Mr. Derrick. She loves me. In fact, we
are engaged," I said.

He went under as if he had been seized with cramp. It was a little
trying having to argue with a man, of whom one could not predict with
certainty that at any given moment he would not be under water. It
tended to spoil one's flow of eloquence. The best of arguments is
useless if the listener suddenly disappears in the middle of it.

However, I persevered.

"Mr. Derrick," I said, as his head emerged, "you are naturally
surprised."

"You--you--you--"

So far from cooling him, liberal doses of water seemed to make him
more heated.

"You impudent scoundrel!"

He said that--not I. What I said was more gentlemanly, more courteous,
on a higher plane altogether.

I said winningly: "Mr. Derrick, cannot we let bygones be bygones?"

From his expression I gathered that we could not.

I continued. I was under the unfortunate necessity of having to
condense my remarks. I was not able to let myself go as I could have
wished, for time was an important consideration. Erelong, swallowing
water at his present rate, the professor must inevitably become
waterlogged. It behooved me to be succinct.

"I have loved your daughter," I said rapidly, "ever since I first saw
her. I learned last night that she loved me. But she will not marry me
without your consent. Stretch your arms out straight from the
shoulders and fill your lungs well, and you can't sink. So I have come
this morning to ask for your consent. I know we have not been on the
best of terms lately."

"You--"

"For Heaven's sake, don't try to talk. Your one chance of remaining on
the surface is to keep your lungs well filled. The fault," I said
generously, "was mine. But when you have heard my explanation, I am
sure you will forgive me. There, I told you so."

He reappeared some few feet to the left. I swam up and resumed:

"When you left us so abruptly after our little dinner party, you put
me in a very awkward position. I was desperately in love with your
daughter, and as long as you were in the frame of mind in which you
left, I could not hope to find an opportunity of telling her so. You
see what a fix I was in, don't you? I thought for hours and hours, to
try and find some means of bringing about a reconciliation. You
wouldn't believe how hard I thought. At last, seeing you fishing one
morning when I was on the Cob, it struck me all of a sudden that the
very best way would be to arrange a little boating accident. I was
confident that I could rescue you all right."

"You young blackguard!"

He managed to slip past me, and made for the shore again.

"Strike out--but hear me," I said, swimming by his side. "Look at the
thing from the standpoint of a philosopher. The fact that the rescue
was arranged oughtn't really to influence you in the least. You didn't
know it at the time, therefore relatively it was not, and you were
genuinely saved from a watery grave."

I felt that I was becoming a shade too metaphysical, but I could not
help it. What I wanted to point out was that I had certainly pulled
him out of the water, and that the fact that I had caused him to be
pushed in had nothing to do with the case. Either a man is a gallant
rescuer or he is not a gallant rescuer. There is no middle course. I
had saved his life, for he would have drowned if he had been left to
himself, and was consequently entitled to his gratitude. And that was
all that there was to be said about it.

These things I endeavored to make plain to him as we swam along. But
whether it was that the salt water he had swallowed dulled his
intelligence or that my power of stating a case neatly was to seek,
the fact remains that he reached the beach an unconvinced man.

We faced one another, dripping.

"Then may I consider," I said, "that your objections are removed? We
have your consent?"

He stamped angrily, and his bare foot came down on a small but
singularly sharp pebble. With a brief exclamation he seized the foot
with one hand and hopped. While hopping, he delivered his ultimatum.
Probably this is the only instance on record of a father adopting this
attitude in dismissing a suitor.

"You may not," he said. "You may not consider any such thing. My
objections were never more--absolute. You detain me in the water till
I am blue, sir, blue with cold, in order to listen to the most
preposterous and impudent nonsense I ever heard."

This was unjust. If he had heard me attentively from the first and
avoided interruptions and not behaved like a submarine, we should
have got through our little business in half the time. We might both
have been dry and clothed by now.

I endeavored to point this out to him.

"Don't talk to me, sir," he roared, hobbling off across the beach to
his dressing tent. "I will not listen to you. I will have nothing to
do with you. I consider you impudent, sir."

"I am sure it was unintentional, Mr. Derrick."

"Isch!" he said--being the first occasion and the last on which I ever
heard that remarkable word proceed from the mouth of man.

And he vanished into his tent, while I, wading in once more, swam back
to the Cob and put on my clothes.

And so home, as Pepys would have said, to breakfast, feeling
depressed.

SCIENTIFIC GOLF

XX

As I stood with Ukridge in the fowl run on the morning following my
maritime conversation with the professor, regarding a hen that had
posed before us, obviously with a view to inspection, there appeared a
man carrying an envelope.

Ukridge, who by this time saw, as Calverley almost said, "under every
hat a dun," and imagined that no envelope could contain anything but a
small account, softly and silently vanished away, leaving me to
interview the enemy.

"Mr. Garnet, sir?" said the foe.

I recognized him. He was Professor Derrick's gardener. What did this
portend? Had the merits of my pleadings come home to the professor
when he thought them over, and was there a father's blessing inclosed
in the envelope which was being held out to me?

I opened the envelope. No, father's blessings were absent. The letter
was in the third person. Professor Derrick begged to inform Mr. Garnet
that, by defeating Mr. Saul Potter, he had qualified for the final
round of the Lyme Regis Golf Tournament, in which, he understood, Mr.
Garnet was to be his opponent. If it would be convenient for Mr.
Garnet to play off the match on the present afternoon, Professor
Derrick would be obliged if he would be at the clubhouse at half-past
two. If this hour and day were unsuitable, would he kindly arrange
others. The bearer would wait.

The bearer did wait, and then trudged off with a note, beautifully
written in the third person, in which Mr. Garnet, after numerous
compliments and thanks, begged to inform Professor Derrick that he
would be at the clubhouse at the hour mentioned.

"And," I added--to myself, not in the note--"I will give him such a
licking that he'll brain himself with a cleek."

For I was not pleased with the professor. I was conscious of a
malicious joy at the prospect of snatching the prize from him. I knew
he had set his heart on winning the tournament this year. To be
runner-up two years in succession stimulates the desire for the first
place. It would be doubly bitter to him to be beaten by a newcomer,
after the absence of his rival, the colonel, had awakened hope in him.
And I knew I could do it. Even allowing for bad luck--and I am never a
very unlucky golfer--I could rely almost with certainty on crushing
the man.

"And I'll do it," I said to Bob, who had trotted up.

I often make Bob the recipient of my confidences. He listens
appreciatively and never interrupts. And he never has grievances of
his own. If there is one person I dislike, it is the man who tries to
air his grievances when I wish to air mine.

"Bob," I said, running his tail through my fingers, "listen to me. If
I am in form this afternoon, and I feel in my bones that I shall be, I
shall nurse the professor. I shall play with him. Do you understand
the principles of match play at golf, Robert? You score by holes, not
strokes. There are eighteen holes. I shall toy with the professor,
Bob. I shall let him get ahead, and then catch him up. I shall go
ahead myself, and let him catch me up. I shall race him neck and neck
till the very end. Then, when his hair has turned white with the
strain, and he's lost a couple of stone in weight, and his eyes are
starting out of his head, I shall go ahead and beat him by a hole.
_I'll_ teach him, Robert. He shall taste of my despair, and learn by
proof in some wild hour how much the wretched dare. And when it's all
over, and he's torn all his hair out and smashed all his clubs, I
shall go and commit suicide off the Cob. Because, you see, if I can't
marry Phyllis, I shan't have any use for life."

Bob wagged his tail cheerfully.

"I mean it," I said, rolling him on his back and punching him on the
chest till his breathing became stertorous. "You don't see the sense
of it, I know. But then you've got none of the finer feelings. You're
a jolly good dog, Robert, but you're a rank materialist. Bones and
cheese and potatoes with gravy over them make you happy. You don't
know what it is to be in love. You'd better get right side up now, or
you'll have apoplexy."

It has been my aim in the course of this narrative to extenuate
nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Like the gentleman who played
euchre with the heathen Chinee, I state but the facts. I do not,
therefore, slur over my scheme for disturbing the professor's peace of
mind. I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but
I have my off moments.

I felt ruthless toward the professor. I cannot plead ignorance of the
golfer's point of view as an excuse for my plottings. I knew that to
one whose soul is in the game, as the professor's was, the agony of
being just beaten in an important match exceeds in bitterness all
other agonies. I knew that if I scraped through by the smallest
possible margin, his appetite would be destroyed, his sleep o' nights
broken. He would wake from fitful slumber moaning that if he had only
used his iron at the tenth hole all would have been well; that if he
had aimed more carefully on the seventh green, life would not be drear
and blank; that a more judicious manipulation of his brassy
throughout might have given him something to live for. All these
things I knew.

And they did not touch me. I was adamant.

* * * * *

The professor was waiting for me at the clubhouse, and greeted me with
a cold and stately inclination of the head.

"Beautiful day for golf," I observed in my gay, chatty manner.

He bowed in silence.

"Very well," I thought. "Wait--just wait."

"Miss Derrick is well, I hope?" I added aloud.

That drew him. He started. His aspect became doubly forbidding.

"Miss Derrick is perfectly well, sir, I thank you."

"And you? No bad effect, I hope, from your dip yesterday?"

"Mr. Garnet, I came here for golf, not conversation," he said.

We made it so. I drove off from the first tee. It was a splendid
drive. I should not say so if there were anyone else to say so for me.
Modesty would forbid. But, as there is no one, I must repeat the
statement. It was one of the best drives of my experience. The ball
flashed through the air, took the bunker with a dozen feet to spare,
and rolled onto the green. I had felt all along that I should be in
form. Unless my opponent was equally above himself, he was a lost man.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11