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] 📗

"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 Mack[302]erel,' 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."[303]

"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[304] 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."[305]

"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[306] 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.[307]

"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 com[308]ing 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[309] 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[310] 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[311] 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 tan[312]dem 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.

[313]

ather 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[314] 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[315] 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[316] hand toward him with an indignant gesture, talking hard the while. It did not need a preternaturally keen observer to