Books: Love Among the Chickens
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P. G. Wodehouse >> Love Among the Chickens
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"You will be good enough to look on our acquaintance as closed. I have
no wish to associate with persons of your stamp. If we should happen
to meet, you will be good enough to treat me as a total stranger, as I
shall treat you. And, if I may be allowed to give you a word of
advice, I should recommend you in future, when you wish to exercise
your humour, to do so in some less practical manner than by bribing
boatmen to upset your--(/friends/ crossed out thickly, and
/acquaintances/ substituted.) If you require further enlightenment in
this matter, the enclosed letter may be of service to you."
With which he remained mine faithfully, Patrick Derrick.
The enclosed letter was from one Jane Muspratt. It was bright and
interesting.
"DEAR SIR,--My Harry, Mr. Hawk, sas to me how it was him upsetting the
boat and you, not because he is not steady in a boat which he is no
man more so in Combe Regis, but because one of the gentlemen what
keeps chikkens up the hill, the little one, Mr. Garnick his name is,
says to him, Hawk, I'll give you a sovrin to upset Mr. Derick in your
boat, and my Harry being esily led was took in and did, but he's sory
now and wishes he hadn't, and he sas he'll niver do a prackticle joke
again for anyone even for a banknote.--Yours obedly.,
JANE MUSPRATT."
Oh, woman, woman!
At the bottom of everything! History is full of tragedies caused by
the lethal sex. Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman. Who let
Samson in so atrociously? Woman again. Why did Bill Bailey leave home?
Once more, because of a woman. And here was I, Jerry Garnet, harmless,
well-meaning writer of minor novels, going through the same old mill.
I cursed Jane Muspratt. What chance had I with Phyllis now? Could I
hope to win over the professor again? I cursed Jane Muspratt for the
second time.
My thoughts wandered to Mr. Harry Hawk. The villain! The scoundrel!
What business had he to betray me? . . . Well, I could settle with
him. The man who lays a hand upon a woman, save in the way of
kindness, is justly disliked by Society; so the woman Muspratt,
culpable as she was, was safe from me. But what of the man Hawk? There
no such considerations swayed me. I would interview the man Hawk. I
would give him the most hectic ten minutes of his career. I would say
things to him the recollection of which would make him start up
shrieking in his bed in the small hours of the night. I would arise,
and be a man, and slay him; take him grossly, full of bread, with all
his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May, at gaming, swearing, or about
some act that had no relish of salvation in it.
The Demon!
My life--ruined. My future--grey and black. My heart--shattered. And
why? Because of the scoundrel, Hawk.
Phyllis would meet me in the village, on the Cob, on the links, and
pass by as if I were the Invisible Man. And why? Because of the
reptile, Hawk. The worm, Hawk. The dastard and varlet, Hawk.
I crammed my hat on, and hurried out of the house towards the village.
CHAPTER XVI
A CHANCE MEETING
I roamed the place in search of the varlet for the space of half-an-
hour, and, after having drawn all his familiar haunts, found him at
length leaning over the sea-wall near the church, gazing thoughtfully
into the waters below.
I confronted him.
"Well," I said, "you're a beauty, aren't you?"
He eyed me owlishly. Even at this early hour, I was grieved to see, he
showed signs of having looked on the bitter while it was brown. His
eyes were filmy, and his manner aggressively solemn.
"Beauty?" he echoed.
"What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Say f'self."
It was plain that he was engaged in pulling his faculties together by
some laborious process known only to himself. At present my words
conveyed no meaning to him. He was trying to identify me. He had seen
me before somewhere, he was certain, but he could not say where, or
who I was.
"I want to know," I said, "what induced you to be such an abject idiot
as to let our arrangement get known?"
I spoke quietly. I was not going to waste the choicer flowers of
speech on a man who was incapable of understanding them. Later on,
when he had awakened to a sense of his position, I would begin really
to talk to him.
He continued to stare at me. Then a sudden flash of intelligence lit
up his features.
"Mr. Garnick," he said at last.
"From ch--chicken farm," he continued, with the triumphant air of a
cross-examining King's counsel who has at last got on the track.
"Yes," I said.
"Up top the hill," he proceeded, clinchingly. He stretched out a huge
hand.
"How you?" he inquired with a friendly grin.
"I want to know," I said distinctly, "what you've got to say for
yourself after letting our affair with the professor become public
property?"
He paused awhile in thought.
"Dear sir," he said at last, as if he were dictating a letter, "dear
sir, I owe you--ex--exp----"
He waved his hand, as who should say, "It's a stiff job, but I'm going
to do it."
"Explashion," he said.
"You do," said I grimly. "I should like to hear it."
"Dear sir, listen me."
"Go on then."
"You came me. You said 'Hawk, Hawk, ol' fren', listen me. You tip this
ol' bufflehead into watter,' you said, 'an' gormed if I don't give 'ee
a poond note.' That's what you said me. Isn't that what you said me?"
I did not deny it.
" 'Ve' well,' I said you. 'Right,' I said. I tipped the ol' soul into
watter, and I got the poond note."
"Yes, you took care of that. All this is quite true, but it's beside
the point. We are not disputing about what happened. What I want to
know--for the third time--is what made you let the cat out of the bag?
Why couldn't you keep quiet about it?"
He waved his hand.
"Dear sir," he replied, "this way. Listen me."
It was a tragic story that he unfolded. My wrath ebbed as I listened.
After all the fellow was not so greatly to blame. I felt that in his
place I should have acted as he had done. It was Fate's fault, and
Fate's alone.
It appeared that he had not come well out of the matter of the
accident. I had not looked at it hitherto from his point of view.
While the rescue had left me the popular hero, it had had quite the
opposite result for him. He had upset his boat and would have drowned
his passenger, said public opinion, if the young hero from London--
myself--had not plunged in, and at the risk of his life brought the
professor ashore. Consequently, he was despised by all as an
inefficient boatman. He became a laughing-stock. The local wags made
laborious jests when he passed. They offered him fabulous sums to take
their worst enemies out for a row with him. They wanted to know when
he was going to school to learn his business. In fact, they behaved as
wags do and always have done at all times all the world over.
Now, all this, it seemed, Mr. Hawk would have borne cheerfully and
patiently for my sake, or, at any rate for the sake of the crisp pound
note I had given him. But a fresh factor appeared in the problem,
complicating it grievously. To wit, Miss Jane Muspratt.
"She said to me," explained Mr. Hawk with pathos, " 'Harry 'Awk,' she
said, 'yeou'm a girt fule, an' I don't marry noone as is ain't to be
trusted in a boat by hisself, and what has jokes made about him by
that Tom Leigh!' "
"I punched Tom Leigh," observed Mr. Hawk parenthetically. " 'So,' she
said me, 'you can go away, an' I don't want to see yeou again!' "
This heartless conduct on the part of Miss Muspratt had had the
natural result of making him confess in self-defence; and she had
written to the professor the same night.
I forgave Mr. Hawk. I think he was hardly sober enough to understand,
for he betrayed no emotion. "It is Fate, Hawk," I said, "simply Fate.
There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,
and it's no good grumbling."
"Yiss," said Mr. Hawk, after chewing this sentiment for a while in
silence, "so she said me, 'Hawk,' she said--like that--'you're a girt
fule----' "
"That's all right," I replied. "I quite understand. As I say, it's
simply Fate. Good-bye." And I left him.
As I was going back, I met the professor and Phyllis. They passed me
without a look.
I wandered on in quite a fervour of self-pity. I was in one of those
moods when life suddenly seems to become irksome, when the future
stretches black and grey in front of one. I should have liked to have
faded almost imperceptibly from the world, like Mr. Bardell, even if,
as in his case, it had involved being knocked on the head with a pint
pot in a public-house cellar.
In such a mood it is imperative that one should seek distraction. The
shining example of Mr. Harry Hawk did not lure me. Taking to drink
would be a nuisance. Work was what I wanted. I would toil like a navvy
all day among the fowls, separating them when they fought, gathering
in the eggs when they laid, chasing them across country when they got
away, and even, if necessity arose, painting their throats with
turpentine when they were stricken with roop. Then, after dinner, when
the lamps were lit, and Mrs. Ukridge nursed Edwin and sewed, and
Ukridge smoked cigars and incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling
Mose," I would steal away to my bedroom and write--and write--and
/write/. And go on writing till my fingers were numb and my eyes
refused to do their duty. And, when time had passed, I might come to
feel that it was all for the best. A man must go through the fire
before he can write his masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we
teach in song. What we lose on the swings we make up on the
roundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the Man, might become a depressed, hopeless
wreck, with the iron planted immovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet,
the Author, should turn out such a novel of gloom, that strong critics
would weep, and the public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorway
became a shambles.
Thus might I some day feel that all this anguish was really a
blessing--effectively disguised.
* * * * *
But I doubted it.
* * * * *
We were none of us very cheerful now at the farm. Even Ukridge's
spirit was a little daunted by the bills which poured in by every
post. It was as if the tradesmen of the neighbourhood had formed a
league, and were working in concert. Or it may have been due to
thought-waves. Little accounts came not in single spies but in
battalions. The popular demand for the sight of the colour of his
money grew daily. Every morning at breakfast he would give us fresh
bulletins of the state of mind of each of our creditors, and thrill us
with the announcement that Whiteley's were getting cross, and Harrod's
jumpy or that the bearings of Dawlish, the grocer, were becoming
overheated. We lived in a continual atmosphere of worry. Chicken and
nothing but chicken at meals, and chicken and nothing but chicken
between meals had frayed our nerves. An air of defeat hung over the
place. We were a beaten side, and we realised it. We had been playing
an uphill game for nearly two months, and the strain was beginning to
tell. Ukridge became uncannily silent. Mrs. Ukridge, though she did
not understand, I fancy, the details of the matter, was worried
because Ukridge was. Mrs. Beale had long since been turned into a
soured cynic by the lack of chances vouchsafed her for the exercise of
her art. And as for me, I have never since spent so profoundly
miserably a week. I was not even permitted the anodyne of work. There
seemed to be nothing to do on the farm. The chickens were quite happy,
and only asked to be let alone and allowed to have their meals at
regular intervals. And every day one or more of their number would
vanish into the kitchen, Mrs. Beale would serve up the corpse in some
cunning disguise, and we would try to delude ourselves into the idea
that it was something altogether different.
There was one solitary gleam of variety in our menu. An editor sent me
a cheque for a set of verses. We cashed that cheque and trooped round
the town in a body, laying out the money. We bought a leg of mutton,
and a tongue and sardines, and pine-apple chunks, and potted meat, and
many other noble things, and had a perfect banquet. Mrs. Beale, with
the scenario of a smile on her face, the first that she had worn in
these days of stress, brought in the joint, and uncovered it with an
air.
"Thank God!" said Ukridge, as he began to carve.
It was the first time I had ever heard him say a grace, and if ever an
occasion merited such a deviation from habit, this occasion did.
After that we relapsed into routine again.
Deprived of physical labour, with the exception of golf and bathing--
trivial sports compared with work in the fowl-run at its hardest--I
tried to make up for it by working at my novel.
It refused to materialise.
The only progress I achieved was with my villain.
I drew him from the professor, and made him a blackmailer. He had
several other social defects, but that was his profession. That was
the thing he did really well.
It was on one of the many occasions on which I had sat in my room, pen
in hand, through the whole of a lovely afternoon, with no better
result than a slight headache, that I bethought me of that little
paradise on the Ware Cliff, hung over the sea and backed by green
woods. I had not been there for some time, owing principally to an
entirely erroneous idea that I could do more solid work sitting in a
straight hard chair at a table than lying on soft turf with the sea
wind in my eyes.
But now the desire to visit that little clearing again drove me from
my room. In the drawing-room below the gramophone was dealing brassily
with "Mister Blackman." Outside the sun was just thinking of setting.
The Ware Cliff was the best medicine for me. What does Kipling say?
"And soon you will find that the sun and the wind
And the Djinn of the Garden, too,
Have lightened the hump, Cameelious Hump,
The Hump that is black and blue."
His instructions include digging with a hoe and a shovel also, but I
could omit that. The sun and the wind were what I needed.
I took the upper road. In certain moods I preferred it to the path
along the cliff. I walked fast. The exercise was soothing.
To reach my favourite clearing I had to take to the fields on the
left, and strike down hill in the direction of the sea. I hurried down
the narrow path.
I broke into the clearing at a jog trot, and stood panting. And at the
same moment, looking cool and beautiful in her white dress, Phyllis
entered in from the other side. Phyllis--without the professor.
CHAPTER XVII
OF A SENTIMENTAL NATURE
She was wearing a panama, and she carried a sketching-block and camp-
stool.
"Good evening," I said.
"Good evening," said she.
It is curious how different the same words can sound, when spoken by
different people. My "good evening" might have been that of a man with
a particularly guilty conscience caught in the act of doing something
more than usually ignoble. She spoke like a rather offended angel.
"It's a lovely evening," I went on pluckily.
"Very."
"The sunset!"
"Yes."
"Er--"
She raised a pair of blue eyes, devoid of all expression save a faint
suggestion of surprise, and gazed through me for a moment at some
object a couple of thousand miles away, and lowered them again,
leaving me with a vague feeling that there was something wrong with my
personal appearance.
Very calmly she moved to the edge of the cliff, arranged her camp-
stool, and sat down. Neither of us spoke a word. I watched her while
she filled a little mug with water from a little bottle, opened her
paint-box, selected a brush, and placed her sketching-block in
position.
She began to paint.
Now, by all the laws of good taste, I should before this have made a
dignified exit. It was plain that I was not to be regarded as an
essential ornament of this portion of the Ware Cliff. By now, if I had
been the Perfect Gentleman, I ought to have been a quarter of a mile
away.
But there is a definite limit to what a man can do. I remained.
The sinking sun flung a carpet of gold across the sea. Phyllis' hair
was tinged with it. Little waves tumbled lazily on the beach below.
Except for the song of a distant blackbird, running through its
repertoire before retiring for the night, everything was silent.
She sat there, dipping and painting and dipping again, with never a
word for me--standing patiently and humbly behind her.
"Miss Derrick," I said.
She half turned her head.
"Yes."
"Why won't you speak to me?" I said.
"I don't understand you."
"Why won't you speak to me?"
"I think you know, Mr. Garnet."
"It is because of that boat accident?"
"Accident!"
"Episode," I amended.
She went on painting in silence. From where I stood I could see her
profile. Her chin was tilted. Her expression was determined.
"Is it?" I said.
"Need we discuss it?"
"Not if you do not wish it."
I paused.
"But," I added, "I should have liked a chance to defend myself. . . .
What glorious sunsets there have been these last few days. I believe
we shall have this sort of weather for another month."
"I should not have thought that possible."
"The glass is going up," I said.
"I was not talking about the weather."
"It was dull of me to introduce such a worn-out topic."
"You said you could defend yourself."
"I said I should like the chance to do so."
"You have it."
"That's very kind of you. Thank you."
"Is there any reason for gratitude?"
"Every reason."
"Go on, Mr. Garnet. I can listen while I paint. But please sit down. I
don't like being talked to from a height."
I sat down on the grass in front of her, feeling as I did so that the
change of position in a manner clipped my wings. It is difficult to
speak movingly while sitting on the ground. Instinctively I avoided
eloquence. Standing up, I might have been pathetic and pleading.
Sitting down, I was compelled to be matter-of-fact.
"You remember, of course, the night you and Professor Derrick dined
with us? When I say dined, I use the word in a loose sense."
For a moment I thought she was going to smile. We were both thinking
of Edwin. But it was only for a moment, and then her face grew cold
once more, and the chin resumed its angle of determination.
"Yes," she said.
"You remember the unfortunate ending of the festivities?"
"Well?"
"If you recall that at all clearly, you will also remember that the
fault was not mine, but Ukridge's."
"Well?"
"It was his behaviour that annoyed Professor Derrick. The position,
then, was this, that I was to be cut off from the pleasantest
friendship I had ever formed----"
I stopped for a moment. She bent a little lower over her easel, but
remained silent.
"----Simply through the tactlessness of a prize idiot."
"I like Mr. Ukridge."
"I like him, too. But I can't pretend that he is anything but an idiot
at times."
"Well?"
"I naturally wished to mend matters. It occurred to me that an
excellent way would be by doing your father a service. It was seeing
him fishing that put the idea of a boat-accident into my head. I hoped
for a genuine boat-accident. But those things only happen when one
does not want them. So I determined to engineer one."
"You didn't think of the shock to my father."
"I did. It worried me very much."
"But you upset him all the same."
"Reluctantly."
She looked up, and our eyes met. I could detect no trace of
forgiveness in hers.
"You behaved abominably," she said.
"I played a risky game, and I lost. And I shall now take the
consequences. With luck I should have won. I did not have luck, and I
am not going to grumble about it. But I am grateful to you for letting
me explain. I should not have liked you to have gone on thinking that
I played practical jokes on my friends. That is all I have to say. I
think it was kind of you to listen. Good-bye, Miss Derrick."
I got up.
"Are you going?"
"Why not?"
"Please sit down again."
"But you wish to be alone----"
"Please sit down!"
There was a flush on the cheek turned towards me, and the chin was
tilted higher.
I sat down.
To westward the sky had changed to the hue of a bruised cherry. The
sun had sunk below the horizon, and the sea looked cold and leaden.
The blackbird had long since flown.
"I am glad you told me, Mr. Garnet."
She dipped her brush in the water.
"Because I don't like to think badly of--people."
She bent her head over her painting.
"Though I still think you behaved very wrongly. And I am afraid my
father will never forgive you for what you did."
Her father! As if he counted.
"But you do?" I said eagerly.
"I think you are less to blame than I thought you were at first."
"No more than that?"
"You can't expect to escape all consequences. You did a very stupid
thing."
"I was tempted."
The sky was a dull grey now. It was growing dusk. The grass on which I
sat was wet with dew.
I stood up.
"Isn't it getting a little dark for painting?" I said. "Are you sure
you won't catch cold? It's very damp."
"Perhaps it is. And it is late, too."
She shut her paint-box, and emptied the little mug on to the grass.
"May I carry your things?" I said.
I think she hesitated, but only for a moment.
I possessed myself of the camp-stool, and we started on our homeward
journey.
We were both silent. The spell of the quiet summer evening was on us.
" 'And all the air a solemn stillness holds,' " she said softly. "I
love this cliff, Mr. Garnet. It's the most soothing place in the
world."
"I found it so this evening."
She glanced at me quickly.
"You're not looking well," she said. "Are you sure you are not
overworking yourself?"
"No, it's not that."
Somehow we had stopped, as if by agreement, and were facing each
other. There was a look in her eyes I had never seen there before. The
twilight hung like a curtain between us and the world. We were alone
together in a world of our own.
"It is because I had offended you," I said.
She laughed a high, unnatural laugh.
"I have loved you ever since I first saw you," I said doggedly.
CHAPTER XVIII
UKRIDGE GIVES ME ADVICE
Hours after--or so it seemed to me--we reached the spot at which our
ways divided. We stopped, and I felt as if I had been suddenly cast
back into the workaday world from some distant and pleasanter planet.
I think Phyllis must have felt much the same sensation, for we both
became on the instant intensely practical and businesslike.
"But about your father," I said.
"That's the difficulty."
"He won't give us his consent?"
"I'm afraid he wouldn't dream of it."
"You can't persuade him?"
"I can in most things, but not in this. You see, even if nothing had
happened, he wouldn't like to lose me just yet, because of Norah."
"Norah?"
"My sister. She's going to be married in October. I wonder if we shall
ever be as happy as they will."
"Happy! They will be miserable compared with us. Not that I know who
the man is."
"Why, Tom of course. Do you mean to say you really didn't know?"
"Tom! Tom Chase?"
"Of course."
I gasped.
"Well, I'm hanged," I said. "When I think of the torments I've been
through because of that wretched man, and all for nothing, I don't
know what to say."
"Don't you like Tom?"
"Very much. I always did. But I was awfully jealous of him."
"You weren't! How silly of you."
"Of course I was. He was always about with you, and called you
Phyllis, and generally behaved as if you and he were the heroine and
hero of a musical comedy, so what else could I think? I heard you
singing duets after dinner once. I drew the worst conclusions."
"When was that? What were you doing there?"
"It was shortly after Ukridge had got on your father's nerves, and
nipped our acquaintance in the bud. I used to come every night to the
hedge opposite your drawing-room window, and brood there by the hour."
"Poor old boy!"
"Hoping to hear you sing. And when you did sing, and he joined in all
flat, I used to swear. You'll probably find most of the bark scorched
off the tree I leaned against."
"Poor old man! Still, it's all over now, isn't it?"
"And when I was doing my very best to show off before you at tennis,
you went away just as I got into form."
"I'm very sorry, but I couldn't know, could I? I though 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 are 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. Who ever 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."
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