The day was Thursday, the date July the twenty-second. We had beenchicken-farmers for a whole week, and things were beginning to settledown to a certain extent. The coops were finished. They were notmasterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in deepthought, as who should say, "Now what?" but they were coops within themeaning of the Act, and we induced hens to become tenants.
The hardest work had been the fixing of the wire-netting. This was thedepartment of the Hired Man and myself, Ukridge holding himselfproudly aloof. While Beale and I worked ourselves to a fever in thesun, the senior partner of the firm sat on a deck-chair in the shade,offering not unkindly criticism and advice and from time to timeabusing his creditors, who were numerous. For we had hardly been inresidence a day before he began to order in a vast supply of necessaryand unnecessary things, all on credit. Some he got from the village,others from neighbouring towns. Axminster he laid heavily undercontribution. He even went as far afield as Dorchester. He had apersuasive way with him, and the tradesmen seemed to treat him like afavourite son. The things began to pour in from all sides,--groceries,whisky, a piano, a gramophone, pictures. Also cigars in greatprofusion. He was not one of those men who want but little here below.
As regards the financial side of these transactions, his method wassimple and masterly. If a tradesman suggested that a small cheque onaccount would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid fellows did, hebecame pathetic.
"Confound it, sir," he would say with tears in his voice, laying ahand on the man's shoulders in a wounded way, "it's a trifle hard,when a gentleman comes to settle in your neighbourhood, that youshould dun him for money before he has got the preliminary expensesabout the house off his back." This sounded well, and suggested thedisbursement of huge sums for rent. The fact that the house had beenlent him rent free was kept with some care in the background. Havingweakened the man with pathos, he would strike a sterner note. "Alittle 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!" Uponwhich the man would apologise, and go away, forgiven, with a largeorder for more goods.
By these statesmanlike methods he had certainly made the place verycomfortable. I suppose we all realised that the things would have tobe paid for some day, but the thought did not worry us.
"Pay?" bellowed Ukridge on the only occasion when I ventured to bringup the unpleasant topic, "of course we shall pay. Why not? I don'tlike to see this faint-hearted spirit in you, old horse. The moneyisn't coming in yet, I admit, but we must give it time. Soon we shallbe turning over hundreds a week, hundreds! I'm in touch with all thebig places,--Whiteley's, Harrod's, all the nibs. Here I am, I said tothem, with a large chicken farm with all the modern improvements. Youwant eggs, old horses, I said: I supply them. I will let you have somany 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. Itstands to reason, laddie. Have you ever seen a man, woman, or childwho wasn't eating an egg or just going to eat an egg or just comingaway from eating an egg? I tell you, the good old egg is thefoundation of daily life. Stop the first man you meet in the streetand ask him which he'd sooner lose, his egg or his wife, and see whathe 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 aquantity of goods, agreeing to receive phantom eggs in exchange. Thissatisfied Ukridge. He had a faith in the laying power of his henswhich would have flattered them if they could have known it. It mightalso have stimulated their efforts in that direction, which up to datewere feeble.
It was now, as I have said, Thursday, the twenty-second of July,--aglorious, sunny morning, of the kind which Providence sendsoccasionally, simply in order to allow the honest smoker to take hisafter-breakfast pipe under ideal conditions. These are the pipes towhich a man looks back in after years with a feeling of wistfulreverence, pipes smoked in perfect tranquillity, mind and body alikeat rest. It is over pipes like these that we dream our dreams, andfashion our masterpieces.
My pipe was behaving like the ideal pipe; and, as I strolledspaciously about the lawn, my novel was growing nobly. I had neglectedmy literary work for the past week, owing to the insistent claims ofthe fowls. I am not one of those men whose minds work in placidindependence of the conditions of life. But I was making up for losttime now. With each blue cloud that left my lips and hung in the stillair above me, striking scenes and freshets of sparkling dialoguerushed through my brain. Another uninterrupted half hour, and I haveno doubt that I should have completed the framework of a novel whichwould have placed me in that select band of authors who have nochristian names. Another half hour, and posterity would have known meas "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. Comingtowards me at her best pace was a small hen. I recognised herimmediately. It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird whichUkridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to hiswife's nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevisthen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a birdwhich ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands whichfed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg. Behind this fowlran 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 sourceof inconvenience. From the first, he had seemed to regard the laying-in of our stock purely in the nature of a tribute to his sportingtastes. He had a fixed idea that he was a hunting dog and that,recognising this, we had very decently provided him with the materialfor the chase.
Behind Bob came Ukridge. But a glance was enough to tell me that hewas 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 mehis 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 theman of action. I laid aside my novel for future reference, and wepassed out of the paddock in the following order. First, AuntElizabeth, as fresh as paint, going well. Next, Bob, panting andobviously 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 hewas, gave it up, and sauntered off to scratch at a rabbit-hole with aninsufferable air of suggesting that that was what he had come out forall the time. I continued to pound along doggedly. I was grimlyresolute. I had caught Aunt Elizabeth's eye as she passed me, and thecontempt in it had cut me to the quick. This bird despised me. I amnot a violent or a quick-tempered man, but I have my self-respect. Iwill not be sneered at by hens. All the abstract desire for Fame whichhad filled my mind five minutes before was concentrated now on thetask of capturing this supercilious bird.
We had been travelling down hill all this time, but at this point wecrossed a road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painfulcondition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has notyet 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 herrun, or whether she did it out of the pure effrontery of her warpedand 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. Herbehaviour infuriated me. I felt that I was being treated as a cipher.
I vowed that this bird should realise yet, even if, as seemedprobable, I burst in the process, that it was no light matter to bepursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Manoeuvres of Arthur," etc., aman of whose work so capable a judge as the Peebles /Advertiser/ hadsaid "Shows promise."A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of myquarry. But Aunt Elizabeth, apparently distrait, had the situationwell in hand. She darted from me with an amused chuckle, and moved offrapidly again up the hill.
I followed, but there was that within me that told me I had shot mybolt. The sun blazed down, concentrating its rays on my back to theexclusion of the surrounding scenery. It seemed to follow me aboutlike a limelight.
We had reached level ground. Aunt Elizabeth had again slowed to awalk, 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 cameclose enough once more to stake my all on a single grab, AuntElizabeth, with another of her sardonic chuckles, dived in head-foremost and struggled through in the mysterious way in which birds doget through hedges. The sound of her faint spinster-like snigger cameto me as I stood panting, and roused me like a bugle. The next momentI too had plunged into the hedge.
I was in the middle of it, very hot, tired, and dirty, when from theother 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 andtottering knees on the gravel path of a private garden. Beyond thepath was a croquet lawn, and on this lawn I perceived, as through aglass darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes, and Irecognised two of them.
One was the middle-aged Irishman who had travelled down with us in thetrain. The other was his blue-eyed daughter.
The third member of the party was a man, a stranger to me. By somemiracle of adroitness he had captured Aunt Elizabeth, and was holdingher in spite of her protests in a workmanlike manner behind the wings.
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