Love Among the Chickens<br />A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm, P. G. Wodehouse [i love reading books .txt] 📗
- Author: P. G. Wodehouse
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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[134] 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[135] 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.[136]
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.
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.
[137]
I ENLIST A MINION'S SERVICES
t 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[138] 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 depres[139]sion. 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 Uk[140]ridge. They were incidents, annoying, but in no way affecting the prosperity of the farm.
Things were not going very well on our model chicken 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 [141]things down here, and these men have the impertinence to bother me about their wretched business!"
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[142] 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[143] 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 blasé 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.[144]
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."[145]
"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.[146] 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, sug[147]gestive, 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
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