Chapter 16 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 atlength leaning over the sea-wall near the church, gazing thoughtfullyinto 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, heshowed signs of having looked on the bitter while it was brown. Hiseyes 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 bysome laborious process known only to himself. At present my wordsconveyed no meaning to him. He was trying to identify me. He had seenme before somewhere, he was certain, but he could not say where, orwho I was.

　　"I want to know," I said, "what induced you to be such an abject idiotas to let our arrangement get known?"I spoke quietly. I was not going to waste the choicer flowers ofspeech on a man who was incapable of understanding them. Later on,when he had awakened to a sense of his position, I would begin reallyto talk to him.

　　He continued to stare at me. Then a sudden flash of intelligence litup his features.

　　"Mr. Garnick," he said at last.

　　"From ch--chicken farm," he continued, with the triumphant air of across-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 hugehand.

　　"How you?" he inquired with a friendly grin.

　　"I want to know," I said distinctly, "what you've got to say foryourself after letting our affair with the professor become publicproperty?"He paused awhile in thought.

　　"Dear sir," he said at last, as if he were dictating a letter, "dearsir, I owe you--ex--exp----"He waved his hand, as who should say, "It's a stiff job, but I'm goingto 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 thisol' bufflehead into watter,' you said, 'an' gormed if I don't give 'eea 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 intowatter, and I got the poond note.""Yes, you took care of that. All this is quite true, but it's besidethe point. We are not disputing about what happened. What I want toknow--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 hisplace I should have acted as he had done. It was Fate's fault, andFate's alone.

　　It appeared that he had not come well out of the matter of theaccident. 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 theopposite result for him. He had upset his boat and would have drownedhis passenger, said public opinion, if the young hero from London--myself--had not plunged in, and at the risk of his life brought theprofessor ashore. Consequently, he was despised by all as aninefficient boatman. He became a laughing-stock. The local wags madelaborious jests when he passed. They offered him fabulous sums to taketheir worst enemies out for a row with him. They wanted to know whenhe was going to school to learn his business. In fact, they behaved aswags do and always have done at all times all the world over.

　　Now, all this, it seemed, Mr. Hawk would have borne cheerfully andpatiently for my sake, or, at any rate for the sake of the crisp poundnote 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,' shesaid, 'yeou'm a girt fule, an' I don't marry noone as is ain't to betrusted in a boat by hisself, and what has jokes made about him bythat Tom Leigh!' ""I punched Tom Leigh," observed Mr. Hawk parenthetically. " 'So,' shesaid 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 thenatural result of making him confess in self-defence; and she hadwritten 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 insilence, "so she said me, 'Hawk,' she said--like that--'you're a girtfule----' ""That's all right," I replied. "I quite understand. As I say, it'ssimply Fate. Good-bye." And I left him.

　　As I was going back, I met the professor and Phyllis. They passed mewithout a look.

　　I wandered on in quite a fervour of self-pity. I was in one of thosemoods when life suddenly seems to become irksome, when the futurestretches black and grey in front of one. I should have liked to havefaded almost imperceptibly from the world, like Mr. Bardell, even if,as in his case, it had involved being knocked on the head with a pintpot in a public-house cellar.

　　In such a mood it is imperative that one should seek distraction. Theshining example of Mr. Harry Hawk did not lure me. Taking to drinkwould be a nuisance. Work was what I wanted. I would toil like a navvyall day among the fowls, separating them when they fought, gatheringin the eggs when they laid, chasing them across country when they gotaway, and even, if necessity arose, painting their throats withturpentine when they were stricken with roop. Then, after dinner, whenthe lamps were lit, and Mrs. Ukridge nursed Edwin and sewed, andUkridge smoked cigars and incited the gramophone to murder "MumblingMose," I would steal away to my bedroom and write--and write--and/write/. And go on writing till my fingers were numb and my eyesrefused to do their duty. And, when time had passed, I might come tofeel that it was all for the best. A man must go through the firebefore he can write his masterpiece. We learn in suffering what weteach in song. What we lose on the swings we make up on theroundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the Man, might become a depressed, hopelesswreck, with the iron planted immovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet,the Author, should turn out such a novel of gloom, that strong criticswould weep, and the public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorwaybecame a shambles.

　　Thus might I some day feel that all this anguish was really ablessing--effectively disguised.

　　* * * * *But I doubted it.

　　* * * * *We were none of us very cheerful now at the farm. Even Ukridge'sspirit was a little daunted by the bills which poured in by everypost. It was as if the tradesmen of the neighbourhood had formed aleague, and were working in concert. Or it may have been due tothought-waves. Little accounts came not in single spies but inbattalions. The popular demand for the sight of the colour of hismoney grew daily. Every morning at breakfast he would give us freshbulletins of the state of mind of each of our creditors, and thrill uswith the announcement that Whiteley's were getting cross, and Harrod'sjumpy or that the bearings of Dawlish, the grocer, were becomingoverheated. We lived in a continual atmosphere of worry. Chicken andnothing but chicken at meals, and chicken and nothing but chickenbetween meals had frayed our nerves. An air of defeat hung over theplace. We were a beaten side, and we realised it. We had been playingan uphill game for nearly two months, and the strain was beginning totell. Ukridge became uncannily silent. Mrs. Ukridge, though she didnot understand, I fancy, the details of the matter, was worriedbecause Ukridge was. Mrs. Beale had long since been turned into asoured cynic by the lack of chances vouchsafed her for the exercise ofher art. And as for me, I have never since spent so profoundlymiserably a week. I was not even permitted the anodyne of work. Thereseemed 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 atregular intervals. And every day one or more of their number wouldvanish into the kitchen, Mrs. Beale would serve up the corpse in somecunning disguise, and we would try to delude ourselves into the ideathat it was something altogether different.

　　There was one solitary gleam of variety in our menu. An editor sent mea cheque for a set of verses. We cashed that cheque and trooped roundthe 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, andmany other noble things, and had a perfect banquet. Mrs. Beale, withthe scenario of a smile on her face, the first that she had worn inthese days of stress, brought in the joint, and uncovered it with anair.

　　"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 anoccasion 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--Itried 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 hadseveral other social defects, but that was his profession. That wasthe thing he did really well.

　　It was on one of the many occasions on which I had sat in my room, penin hand, through the whole of a lovely afternoon, with no betterresult than a slight headache, that I bethought me of that littleparadise on the Ware Cliff, hung over the sea and backed by greenwoods. I had not been there for some time, owing principally to anentirely erroneous idea that I could do more solid work sitting in astraight hard chair at a table than lying on soft turf with the seawind in my eyes.

　　But now the desire to visit that little clearing again drove me frommy room. In the drawing-room below the gramophone was dealing brassilywith "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 windAnd 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 Icould omit that. The sun and the wind were what I needed.

　　I took the upper road. In certain moods I preferred it to the pathalong the cliff. I walked fast. The exercise was soothing.

　　To reach my favourite clearing I had to take to the fields on theleft, and strike down hill in the direction of the sea. I hurried downthe narrow path.

　　I broke into the clearing at a jog trot, and stood panting. And at thesame moment, looking cool and beautiful in her white dress, Phyllisentered in from the other side. Phyllis--without the professor.