Books: Love Among the Chickens
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P. G. Wodehouse >> Love Among the Chickens
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SCIENTIFIC GOLF
People are continually writing to the papers--or it may be one
solitary enthusiast who writes under a number of pseudonyms--on the
subject of sport, and the over-doing of the same by the modern young
man. I recall one letter in which "Efficiency" gave it as his opinion
that if the Young Man played less golf and did more drill, he would be
all the better for it. I propose to report my doings with the
professor on the links at some length, in order to refute this absurd
view. Everybody ought to play golf, and nobody can begin it too soon.
There ought not to be a single able-bodied infant in the British Isles
who has not foozled a drive. To take my case. Suppose I had employed
in drilling the hours I had spent in learning to handle my clubs. I
might have drilled before the professor by the week without softening
his heart. I might have ported arms and grounded arms and presented
arms, and generally behaved in the manner advocated by "Efficiency,"
and what would have been the result? Indifference on his part, or--and
if I overdid the thing--irritation. Whereas, by devoting a reasonable
portion of my youth to learning the intricacies of golf I was
enabled . . .
It happened in this way.
To me, as I stood with Ukridge in the fowl-run in 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 recognised him. He was Professor Derrick's gardener.
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 Combe 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 Club House at half-past
two. If this hour and day were unsuitable, would he kindly arrange
others. The bearer would wait.
The bearer did wait. He waited for half-an-hour, as I found it
impossible to shift him, not caring to use violence on a man well
stricken in years, without first plying him with drink. He absorbed
more of our diminishing cask of beer than we could conveniently spare,
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 Club House
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 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, my
old University chum, for I have matured a dark scheme. Don't run away.
You know you don't really want to go and look at that chicken. 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. All right, how was /I/
to know that you knew that without my telling you? Well, if you
understand so much about the game, you will appreciate my dark scheme.
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, and he's praying--
if he ever does pray--to the Gods of Golf that he may be allowed to
win, 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 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 towards 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 instead of his mashie at the tenth, all would have been
well; that, if he had putted more carefully on the seventh green, life
would not be drear and blank; that a more judicious manipulation of
his brassey 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 Club House, 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 any one 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 on to 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.
I could toy with him.
The excellence of my drive had not been without its effect on the
professor. I could see that he was not confident. He addressed his
ball more strangely and at greater length than any one I had ever
seen. He waggled his club over it as if he were going to perform a
conjuring trick. Then he struck, and topped it.
The ball rolled two yards.
He looked at it in silence. Then he looked at me--also in silence.
I was gazing seawards.
When I looked round he was getting to work with a brassey.
This time he hit the bunker, and rolled back. He repeated this
manoeuvre twice.
"Hard luck!" I murmured sympathetically on the third occasion, thereby
going as near to being slain with a niblick as it has ever been my lot
to go. Your true golfer is easily roused in times of misfortune; and
there was a red gleam in the eye of the professor turned to me.
"I shall pick my ball up," he growled.
We walked on in silence to the second tee. He did the second hole in
four, which was good. I did it in three, which--unfortunately for him
--was better.
I won the third hole.
I won the fourth hole.
I won the fifth hole.
I glanced at my opponent out of the corner of my eyes. The man was
suffering. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
His play had become wilder and wilder at each hole in arithmetical
progression. If he had been a plough he could hardly have turned up
more soil. The imagination recoiled from the thought of what he could
be doing in another half-hour if he deteriorated at his present speed.
A feeling of calm and content stole over me. I was not sorry for him.
All the viciousness of my nature was uppermost in me. Once, when he
missed the ball clean at the fifth tee, his eye met mine, and we stood
staring at each other for a full half-minute without moving. I
believe, if I had smiled then, he would have attacked me without
hesitation. There is a type of golfer who really almost ceases to be
human under stress of the wild agony of a series of foozles.
The sixth hole involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of
cross-country work, owing to the fact that there is a nasty ditch to
be negotiated some fifty yards from the green. It is a beast of a
ditch, which, if you are out of luck, just catches your second shot.
"All hope abandon ye who enter here" might be written on a notice
board over it.
The professor entered there. The unhappy man sent his second, as nice
and clean a brassey shot as he had made all day, into its very jaws.
And then madness seized him. A merciful local rule, framed by kindly
men who have been in that ditch themselves, enacts that in such a case
the player may take his ball and throw it over his shoulder, losing a
stroke. But once, so the legend runs, a scratch man who found himself
trapped, scorning to avail himself of this rule at the expense of its
accompanying penalty, wrought so shrewdly with his niblick that he not
only got out but actually laid his ball dead: and now optimists
sometimes imitate his gallantry, though no one yet has been able to
imitate his success.
The professor decided to take a chance: and he failed miserably. As I
was on the green with my third, and, unless I putted extremely poorly,
was morally certain to be down in five, which is bogey for the hole,
there was not much practical use in his continuing to struggle. But he
did in a spirit of pure vindictiveness, as if he were trying to take
it out of the ball. It was a grisly sight to see him, head and
shoulders above the ditch, hewing at his obstinate colonel. It was a
similar spectacle that once induced a lay spectator of a golf match to
observe that he considered hockey a silly game.
"/Sixteen!/" said the professor between his teeth. Then he picked up
his ball.
I won the seventh hole.
I won the eighth hole.
The ninth we halved, for in the black depths of my soul I had formed a
plan of fiendish subtlety. I intended to allow him to win--with
extreme labour--eight holes in succession.
Then, when hope was once more strong in him, I would win the last, and
he would go mad.
I watched him carefully as we trudged on. Emotions chased one another
across his face. When he won the tenth hole he merely refrained from
oaths. When he won the eleventh a sort of sullen pleasure showed in
his face. It was at the thirteenth that I detected the first dawning
of hope. From then onward it grew.
When, with a sequence of shocking shots, he took the seventeenth hole
in seven, he was in a parlous condition. His run of success had
engendered within him a desire for conversation. He wanted, as it
were, to flap his wings and crow. I could see Dignity wrestling with
Talkativeness. I gave him the lead.
"You have got your form now," I said.
Talkativeness had it. Dignity retired hurt. Speech came from him in a
rush. When he brought off an excellent drive from the eighteenth tee,
he seemed to forget everything.
"Me dear boy,"--he began; and stopped abruptly in some confusion.
Silence once more brooded over us as we played ourselves up the
fairway and on to the green.
He was on the green in four. I reached it in three. His sixth stroke
took him out.
I putted carefully to the very mouth of the hole.
I walked up to my ball and paused. I looked at the professor. He
looked at me.
"Go on," he said hoarsely.
Suddenly a wave of compassion flooded over me. What right had I to
torture the man like this?
"Professor," I said.
"Go on," he repeated.
"That looks a simple shot," I said, eyeing him steadily, "but I might
miss it."
He started.
"And then you would win the Championship."
He dabbed at his forehead with a wet ball of a handkerchief.
"It would be very pleasant for you after getting so near it the last
two years."
"Go on," he said for the third time. But there was a note of
hesitation in his voice.
"Sudden joy," I said, "would almost certainly make me miss it."
We looked at each other. He had the golf fever in his eyes.
"If," I said slowly, lifting my putter, "you were to give your consent
to my marriage with Phyllis----"
He looked from me to the ball, from the ball to me, and back to the
ball. It was very, very near the hole.
"Why not?" I said.
He looked up, and burst into a roar of laughter.
"You young devil," said he, smiting his thigh, "you young devil,
you've beaten me."
"On the contrary," I said, "you have beaten me."
* * * * *
I left the professor at the Club House and raced back to the farm. I
wanted to pour my joys into a sympathetic ear. Ukridge, I knew, would
offer that same sympathetic ear. A good fellow, Ukridge. Always
interested in what you had to tell him; never bored.
"Ukridge!" I shouted.
No answer.
I flung open the dining-room door. Nobody.
I went into the drawing-room. It was empty. I drew the garden, and his
bedroom. He was not in either.
"He must have gone for a stroll," I said.
I rang the bell.
The Hired Retainer appeared, calm and imperturbable as ever.
"Sir?"
"Oh, where is Mr. Ukridge, Beale?"
"Mr. Ukridge, sir," said the Hired Retainer nonchalantly, "has gone."
"Gone!"
"Yes, sir. Mr. Ukridge and Mrs. Ukridge went away together by the
three o'clock train."
CHAPTER XXI
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
"Beale," I said, "are you drunk?"
"Wish I was, sir," said the Hired Man.
"Then what on earth do you mean? Gone? Where have they gone to?"
"Don't know, sir. London, I expect."
"London? Why?"
"Don't know, sir."
"When did they go? Oh, you told me that. Didn't they say why they were
going?"
"No, sir."
"Didn't you ask! When you saw them packing up and going to the
station, didn't you do anything?"
"No, sir."
"Why on earth not?"
"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 Mackerel, 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."
"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 over."
"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
Combe 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 labours can be
considered 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 an able-bodied leech.
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. There was
a chance that aggressive measures would be confined to the enemy at
our gates, the tradesmen of Combe 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 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."
"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 daresay you know
that we--that Mr. Ukridge owes a considerable amount of money round
about 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 amended. "When they find out 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 to-morrow. News of
this sort always spreads quickly. The point is, then, what are we to
do?"
He propounded no scheme, but stood in 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. 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.
"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 bin, 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 shan't forget you. There's
a cheque coming 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 lit my pipe, and strolled
out into the garden with Bob. I cursed Ukridge as I walked. It was
abominable of him 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 stigmatises as shady. They
were small things, it was true; but they ought to have warned me. We
are most of us wise after the event. When the wind has blown, we can
generally discover a multitude of straws which should have shown us
which way it was blowing.
Once, I remembered, in our schoolmaster 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 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
humorous. He bought a hat for three-and-sixpence, and got the suits
and the boots on the instalment system, paying a small sum in advance,
as earnest of more to come. He then pawned one suit to pay for the
first few instalments, 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 his 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
went 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 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 back word 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're 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 tandem 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.
CHAPTER XXII
THE STORM BREAKS
Rather to my surprise, the next morning passed off uneventfully. Our
knocker advertised no dun. Our lawn remained untrodden by hob-nailed
boots. 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 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 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 opened the gate and strode
in, trying to look as opulent as possible.
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