Books: Love Among the Chickens
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P. G. Wodehouse >> Love Among the Chickens
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"I've seen worse, sir."
He continued his examination.
"But not many," he added. Beale's passion for the truth had made him
unpopular in three regiments.
"They aren't so bad," I said, "but I'm glad I'm not a fowl."
"So you ought to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up
that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves."
In spite of earnest labour the housing arrangements of the fowls were
still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the
evening's work are preserved in a letter which I wrote that night to
my friend Lickford.
" . . . Have you ever played a game called Pigs in Clover? We have
just finished a merry bout of it, with hens instead of marbles, which
has lasted for an hour and a half. We are all dead tired, except the
Hired Man, who seems to be made of india-rubber. He has just gone for
a stroll on the beach. Wants some exercise, I suppose. Personally, I
feel as if I should never move again. You have no conception of the
difficulty of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having
no proper place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them in
the cube sugar-boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just
occurred to me that they ought to have had perches to roost on. It
didn't strike me before. I shan't mention it to Ukridge, or that
indomitable man will start making some, and drag me into it, too.
After all, a hen can rough it for one night, and if I did a stroke
more work I should collapse.
"My idea was to do the thing on the slow but sure principle. That is
to say, take each bird singly and carry it to bed. It would have taken
some time, but there would have been no confusion. But you can imagine
that that sort of thing would not appeal to Stanley Featherstonehaugh!
He likes his manoeuvres to be on a large, dashing, Napoleonic scale.
He said, 'Open the yard gate and let the blighters come out into the
open; then sail in and drive them in mass formation through the back
door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but there was one fatal
flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens scattering. We opened the
gate, and out they all came like an audience coming out of a theatre.
Then we closed in on them to bring off the big drive. For about thirty
seconds it looked as if we might do it. Then Bob, the Hired Man's dog,
an animal who likes to be in whatever's going on, rushed out of the
house into the middle of them, barking. There was a perfect stampede,
and Heaven only knows where some of those fowls are now. There was one
in particular, a large yellow bird, which, I should imagine, is
nearing London by this time. The last I saw of it, it was navigating
at the rate of knots in that direction, with Bob after it, barking his
hardest. The fowl was showing a rare turn of speed and gaining
rapidly. Presently Bob came back, panting, having evidently given the
thing up. We, in the meantime, were chasing the rest of the birds all
over the garden. The affair had now resolved itself into the course of
action I had suggested originally, except that instead of collecting
them quietly and at our leisure, we had to run miles for each one we
captured. After a time we introduced some sort of system into it. Mrs.
Ukridge stood at the door. We chased the hens and brought them in.
Then, as we put each through into the basement, she shut the door on
it. We also arranged Ukridge's sugar-box coops in a row, and when we
caught a fowl we put it in the coop and stuck a board in front of it.
By these strenuous means we gathered in about two-thirds of the lot.
The rest are all over England. A few may be still in Dorsetshire, but
I should not like to bet on it.
"So you see things are being managed on the up-to-date chicken farm on
good, sound Ukridge principles. It is only the beginning. I look with
confidence for further interesting events. I believe if Ukridge kept
white mice he would manage to get feverish excitement out of it. He is
at present lying on the sofa, smoking one of his infernal brand of
cigars, drinking whisky and soda, and complaining with some bitterness
because the whisky isn't as good as some he once tasted in Belfast.
From the basement I can hear faintly the murmur of innumerable fowls."
CHAPTER VI
Mr. GARNET'S NARRATIVE--
HAS TO DO WITH A REUNION
The day was Thursday, the date July the twenty-second. We had been
chicken-farmers for a whole week, and things were beginning to settle
down to a certain extent. The coops were finished. They were not
masterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in deep
thought, as who should say, "Now what?" but they were coops within the
meaning of the Act, and we induced hens to become tenants.
The hardest work had been the fixing of the wire-netting. This was the
department of the Hired Man and myself, Ukridge holding himself
proudly aloof. While Beale and I worked ourselves to a fever in the
sun, the senior partner of the firm sat on a deck-chair in the shade,
offering not unkindly criticism and advice and from time to time
abusing his creditors, who were numerous. For we had hardly been in
residence a day before he began to order in a vast supply of necessary
and unnecessary things, all on credit. Some he got from the village,
others from neighbouring towns. Axminster he laid heavily under
contribution. He even went as far afield as Dorchester. He had a
persuasive way with him, and the tradesmen seemed to treat him like a
favourite son. The things began to pour in from all sides,--groceries,
whisky, a piano, a gramophone, pictures. Also cigars in great
profusion. He was not one of those men who want but little here below.
As regards the financial side of these transactions, his method was
simple and masterly. If a tradesman suggested that a small cheque on
account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid fellows did, he
became pathetic.
"Confound it, sir," he would say with tears in his voice, laying a
hand on the man's shoulders in a wounded way, "it's a trifle hard,
when a gentleman comes to settle in your neighbourhood, that you
should dun him for money before he has got the preliminary expenses
about the house off his back." This sounded well, and suggested the
disbursement of huge sums for rent. The fact that the house had been
lent him rent free was kept with some care in the background. Having
weakened the man with pathos, he would strike a sterner note. "A
little more of this," he would go on, "and I'll close my account. Why,
damme, in all my experience I've never heard anything like it!" Upon
which the man would apologise, and go away, forgiven, with a large
order for more goods.
By these statesmanlike methods he had certainly made the place very
comfortable. I suppose we all realised that the things would have to
be paid for some day, but the thought did not worry us.
"Pay?" bellowed Ukridge on the only occasion when I ventured to bring
up the unpleasant topic, "of course we shall pay. Why not? I don't
like to see this faint-hearted spirit in you, old horse. The money
isn't coming in yet, I admit, but we must give it time. Soon we shall
be turning over hundreds a week, hundreds! I'm in touch with all the
big places,--Whiteley's, Harrod's, all the nibs. Here I am, I said to
them, with a large chicken farm with all the modern improvements. You
want eggs, old horses, I said: I supply them. I will let you have so
many hundred eggs a week, I said; what will you give for them? Well,
I'll admit their terms did not come up to my expectations altogether,
but we must not sneer at small prices at first.
"When we get a connection, we shall be able to name our terms. It
stands to reason, laddie. Have you ever seen a man, woman, or child
who wasn't eating an egg or just going to eat an egg or just coming
away from eating an egg? I tell you, the good old egg is the
foundation of daily life. Stop the first man you meet in the street
and ask him which he'd sooner lose, his egg or his wife, and see what
he says! We're on to a good thing, Garny, my boy. Pass the whisky!"
The upshot of it was that the firms mentioned supplied us with a
quantity of goods, agreeing to receive phantom eggs in exchange. This
satisfied Ukridge. He had a faith in the laying power of his hens
which would have flattered them if they could have known it. It might
also have stimulated their efforts in that direction, which up to date
were feeble.
It was now, as I have said, Thursday, the twenty-second of July,--a
glorious, sunny morning, of the kind which Providence sends
occasionally, simply in order to allow the honest smoker to take his
after-breakfast pipe under ideal conditions. These are the pipes to
which a man looks back in after years with a feeling of wistful
reverence, pipes smoked in perfect tranquillity, mind and body alike
at rest. It is over pipes like these that we dream our dreams, and
fashion our masterpieces.
My pipe was behaving like the ideal pipe; and, as I strolled
spaciously about the lawn, my novel was growing nobly. I had neglected
my literary work for the past week, owing to the insistent claims of
the fowls. I am not one of those men whose minds work in placid
independence of the conditions of life. But I was making up for lost
time now. With each blue cloud that left my lips and hung in the still
air above me, striking scenes and freshets of sparkling dialogue
rushed through my brain. Another uninterrupted half hour, and I have
no doubt that I should have completed the framework of a novel which
would have placed me in that select band of authors who have no
christian names. Another half hour, and posterity would have known me
as "Garnet."
But it was not to be.
"Stop her! Catch her, Garny, old horse!"
I had wandered into the paddock at the moment. I looked up. Coming
towards me at her best pace was a small hen. I recognised her
immediately. It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird which
Ukridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to his
wife's nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevist
hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird
which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which
fed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg. Behind this fowl
ran Bob, doing, as usual, the thing that he ought not to have done.
Bob's wrong-headedness in the matter of our hens was a constant source
of inconvenience. From the first, he had seemed to regard the laying-
in of our stock purely in the nature of a tribute to his sporting
tastes. He had a fixed idea that he was a hunting dog and that,
recognising this, we had very decently provided him with the material
for the chase.
Behind Bob came Ukridge. But a glance was enough to tell me that he
was a negligible factor in the pursuit. He was not built for speed.
Already the pace had proved too much for him, and he had appointed me
his deputy, with full powers to act.
"After her, Garny, old horse! Valuable bird! Mustn't be lost!"
When not in a catalepsy of literary composition, I am essentially the
man of action. I laid aside my novel for future reference, and we
passed out of the paddock in the following order. First, Aunt
Elizabeth, as fresh as paint, going well. Next, Bob, panting and
obviously doubtful of his powers of staying the distance. Lastly,
myself, determined, but wishing I were five years younger.
After the first field Bob, like the dilettante and unstable dog he
was, gave it up, and sauntered off to scratch at a rabbit-hole with an
insufferable air of suggesting that that was what he had come out for
all the time. I continued to pound along doggedly. I was grimly
resolute. I had caught Aunt Elizabeth's eye as she passed me, and the
contempt in it had cut me to the quick. This bird despised me. I am
not a violent or a quick-tempered man, but I have my self-respect. I
will not be sneered at by hens. All the abstract desire for Fame which
had filled my mind five minutes before was concentrated now on the
task of capturing this supercilious bird.
We had been travelling down hill all this time, but at this point we
crossed a road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful
condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not
yet got one's second. I was hotter than I had ever been in my life.
Whether Aunt Elizabeth, too, was beginning to feel the effects of her
run, or whether she did it out of the pure effrontery of her warped
and unpleasant nature, I do not know; but she now slowed down to walk,
and even began to peck in a tentative manner at the grass. Her
behaviour infuriated me. I felt that I was being treated as a cipher.
I vowed that this bird should realise yet, even if, as seemed
probable, I burst in the process, that it was no light matter to be
pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Manoeuvres of Arthur," etc., a
man of whose work so capable a judge as the Peebles /Advertiser/ had
said "Shows promise."
A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of my
quarry. But Aunt Elizabeth, apparently distrait, had the situation
well in hand. She darted from me with an amused chuckle, and moved off
rapidly again up the hill.
I followed, but there was that within me that told me I had shot my
bolt. The sun blazed down, concentrating its rays on my back to the
exclusion of the surrounding scenery. It seemed to follow me about
like a limelight.
We had reached level ground. Aunt Elizabeth had again slowed to a
walk, and I was capable of no better pace. Very gradually I closed in.
There was a high boxwood hedge in front of us; and, just as I came
close enough once more to stake my all on a single grab, Aunt
Elizabeth, with another of her sardonic chuckles, dived in head-
foremost and struggled through in the mysterious way in which birds do
get through hedges. The sound of her faint spinster-like snigger came
to me as I stood panting, and roused me like a bugle. The next moment
I too had plunged into the hedge.
I was in the middle of it, very hot, tired, and dirty, when from the
other side I heard a sudden shout of "Mark over! Bird to the right!"
and the next moment I found myself emerging with a black face and
tottering knees on the gravel path of a private garden. Beyond the
path was a croquet lawn, and on this lawn I perceived, as through a
glass darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes, and I
recognised two of them.
One was the middle-aged Irishman who had travelled down with us in the
train. The other was his blue-eyed daughter.
The third member of the party was a man, a stranger to me. By some
miracle of adroitness he had captured Aunt Elizabeth, and was holding
her in spite of her protests in a workmanlike manner behind the wings.
CHAPTER VII
THE ENTENTE CORDIALE IS SEALED
There are moments and moments. The present one belonged to the more
painful variety.
Even to my exhausted mind it was plain that there was a need here for
explanations. An Irishman's croquet-lawn is his castle, and strangers
cannot plunge in through hedges without inviting comment.
Unfortunately, speech was beyond me. I could have emptied a water-
butt, laid down and gone to sleep, or melted ice with a touch of the
finger, but I could not speak. The conversation was opened by the
other man, in whose restraining hand Aunt Elizabeth now lay, outwardly
resigned but inwardly, as I, who knew her haughty spirit, could guess,
boiling with baffled resentment. I could see her looking out of the
corner of her eye, trying to estimate the chances of getting in one
good hard peck with her aquiline beak.
"Come right in," said the man pleasantly. "Don't knock."
I stood there, gasping. I was only too well aware that I presented a
quaint appearance. I had removed my hat before entering the hedge, and
my hair was full of twigs and other foreign substances. My face was
moist and grimy. My mouth hung open. My legs felt as if they had
ceased to belong to me.
"I must apol- . . ." I began, and ended the sentence with gulps.
The elderly gentleman looked at me with what seemed to be indignant
surprise. His daughter appeared to my guilty conscience to be looking
through me. Aunt Elizabeth sneered. The only friendly face was the
man's. He regarded me with a kindly smile, as if I were some old
friend who had dropped in unexpectedly.
"Take a long breath," he advised.
I took several, and felt better.
"I must apologise for this intrusion," I said successfully.
"Unwarrantable" would have rounded off the sentence neatly, but I
would not risk it. It would have been mere bravado to attempt
unnecessary words of five syllables. I took in more breath. "The fact
is, I did--didn't know there was a private garden beyond the hedge. If
you will give me my hen . . ."
I stopped. Aunt Elizabeth was looking away, as if endeavouring to
create an impression of having nothing to do with me. I am told by one
who knows that hens cannot raise their eyebrows, not having any; but I
am prepared to swear that at this moment Aunt Elizabeth raised hers. I
will go further. She sniffed.
"Here you are," said the man. "Though it's hard to say good-bye."
He held out the hen to me, and at this point a hitch occurred. He did
his part, the letting go, all right. It was in my department, the
taking hold, that the thing was bungled. Aunt Elizabeth slipped from
my grasp like an eel, stood for a moment eyeing me satirically with
her head on one side, then fled and entrenched herself in some bushes
at the end of the lawn.
There are times when the most resolute man feels that he can battle no
longer with fate; when everything seems against him and the only
course is a dignified retreat. But there is one thing essential to a
dignified retreat. You must know the way out. It was the lack of that
knowledge that kept me standing there, looking more foolish than
anyone has ever looked since the world began. I could not retire by
way of the hedge. If I could have leaped the hedge with a single
debonair bound, that would have been satisfactory. But the hedge was
high, and I did not feel capable at the moment of achieving a debonair
bound over a footstool.
The man saved the situation. He seemed to possess that magnetic power
over his fellows which marks the born leader. Under his command we
became an organised army. The common object, the pursuit of the
elusive Aunt Elizabeth, made us friends. In the first minute of the
proceedings the Irishman was addressing me as "me dear boy," and the
man, who had introduced himself as Mr. Chase--a lieutenant, I learned
later, in His Majesty's Navy--was shouting directions to me by name. I
have never assisted at any ceremony at which formality was so
completely dispensed with. The ice was not merely broken; it was
shivered into a million fragments.
"Go in and drive her out, Garnet," shouted Mr. Chase. "In my direction
if you can. Look out on the left, Phyllis."
Even in that disturbing moment I could not help noticing his use of
the Christian name. It seemed to me more than sinister. I did not like
the idea of dashing young lieutenants in the senior service calling a
girl Phyllis whose eyes had haunted me since I had first seen them.
Nevertheless, I crawled into the bushes and administered to Aunt
Elizabeth a prod in the lower ribs--if hens have lower ribs. The more
I study hens, the more things they seem able to get along without--
which abruptly disturbed her calm detachment. She shot out at the spot
where Mr. Chase was waiting with his coat off, and was promptly
enveloped in that garment and captured.
"The essence of strategy," observed Mr. Chase approvingly, "is
surprise. A neat piece of work!"
I thanked him. He deprecated my thanks. He had, he said, only done his
duty, as expected to by England. He then introduced me to the elderly
Irishman, who was, it seemed, a professor at Dublin University, by
name, Derrick. Whatever it was that he professed, it was something
that did not keep him for a great deal of his time at the University.
He informed me that he always spent his summers at Combe Regis.
"I was surprised to see you at Combe Regis," I said. "When you got out
at Yeovil, I thought I had seen the last of you."
I think I am gifted beyond other men as regards the unfortunate
turning of sentences.
"I meant," I added, "I was afraid I had."
"Ah, of course," he said, "you were in our carriage coming down. I was
confident I had seen you before. I never forget a face."
"It would be a kindness," said Mr. Chase, "if you would forget
Garnet's as now exhibited. You seem to have collected a good deal of
the scenery coming through that hedge."
"I was wondering----" I said. "A wash--if I might----"
"Of course, me boy, of course," said the professor. "Tom, take Mr.
Garnet off to your room, and then we'll have lunch. You'll stay to
lunch, Mr. Garnet?"
I thanked him, commented on possible inconvenience to his
arrangements, was overruled, and went off with my friend the
lieutenant to the house. We imprisoned Aunt Elizabeth in the stables,
to her profound indignation, gave directions for lunch to be served to
her, and made our way to Mr. Chase's room.
"So you've met the professor before?" he said, hospitably laying out a
change of raiment for me--we were fortunately much of a height and
build.
"I have never spoken to him," I said. "We travelled down from London
in the same carriage."
"He's a dear old boy, if you rub him the right way. But--I'm telling
you this for your good and guidance; a man wants a chart in a strange
sea--he can cut up rough. And, when he does, he goes off like a four-
point-seven and the population for miles round climbs trees. I think,
if I were you, I shouldn't mention Sir Edward Carson at lunch."
I promised that I would try to avoid the temptation.
"In fact, you'd better keep off Ireland altogether. It's the safest
plan. Any other subject you like. Chatty remarks on Bimetallism would
meet with his earnest attention. A lecture on What to do with the Cold
Mutton would be welcomed. But not Ireland. Shall we do down?"
We got to know each other at lunch.
"Do you hunt hens," asked Tom Chase, who was mixing the salad--he was
one of those men who seemed to do everything a shade better than
anyone else--"for amusement or by your doctor's orders? Many doctors,
I believe, insist on it."
"Neither," I said, "and especially not for amusement. The fact is,
I've been lured down here by a friend of mine who has started a
chicken farm--"
I was interrupted. All three of them burst out laughing. Tom Chase
allowed the vinegar to trickle on to the cloth, missing the salad-bowl
by a clear two inches.
"You don't mean to tell us," he said, "that you really come from the
one and only chicken farm? Why, you're the man we've all been praying
to meet for days past. You're the talk of the town. If you can call
Combe Regis a town. Everybody is discussing you. Your methods are new
and original, aren't they?"
"Probably. Ukridge knows nothing about fowls. I know less. He
considers it an advantage. He says our minds ought to be unbiassed."
"Ukridge!" said the professor. "That was the name old Dawlish, the
grocer, said. I never forget a name. He is the gentleman who lectures
on the management of poultry? You do not?"
I hastened to disclaim any such feat. I had never really approved of
these infernal talks on the art of chicken-farming which Ukridge had
dropped into the habit of delivering when anybody visited our farm. I
admit that it was a pleasing spectacle to see my managing director in
a pink shirt without a collar and very dirty flannel trousers
lecturing the intelligent native; but I had a feeling that the thing
tended to expose our ignorance to men who had probably had to do with
fowls from their cradle up.
"His lectures are very popular," said Phyllis Derrick with a little
splutter of mirth.
"He enjoys them," I said.
"Look here, Garnet," said Tom Chase, "I hope you won't consider all
these questions impertinent, but you've no notion of the thrilling
interest we all take--at a distance--in your farm. We have been
talking of nothing else for a week. I have dreamed of it three nights
running. Is Mr. Ukridge doing this as a commercial speculation, or is
he an eccentric millionaire?"
"He's not a millionaire yet, but I believe he intends to be one
shortly, with the assistance of the fowls. But you mustn't look on me
as in any way responsible for the arrangements at the farm. I am
merely a labourer. The brainwork of the business lies in Ukridge's
department. As a matter of fact, I came down here principally in
search of golf."
"Golf?" said Professor Derrick, with the benevolent approval of the
enthusiast towards a brother. "I'm glad you play golf. We must have a
round together."
"As soon as ever my professional duties will permit," I said
gratefully.
* * * * *
There was croquet after lunch,--a game of which I am a poor performer.
Phyllis Derrick and I played the professor and Tom Chase. Chase was a
little better than myself; the professor, by dint of extreme
earnestness and care, managed to play a fair game; and Phyllis was an
expert.
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