VI

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 in the world have we struck

here?" But they were coops, within the meaning of the act, and we

induced the 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. Beale and I worked ourselves into a fever in the sun,

while the senior partner of the firm sat in the house, writing out

plans and ideas and scribbling down his accounts (which must have been

complicated) on gilt-edged correspondence cards. From time to time he

abused his creditors, who were numerous.

Ukridge's financial methods were always puzzling to the ordinary mind.

We had hardly been at the farm a day before he began to order in a

vast supply of necessary and unnecessary articles--all on credit. Some

he got from the village, others from neighboring towns. He has a way

with him, like Father O'Flynn, and the tradesmen behaved beautifully.

The things began to pour in from all sides--suits, groceries (of the

very best), a piano, a gramophone, and pictures of all kinds. He was

not one of those men who want but little here below. He wanted a great

deal, and of a superior quality. If a tradesman suggested that a small

check on account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid

fellows of the village did, he became pathetic.

"Confound it, sir," he would say with tears in his voice, laying a

hand on the man's shoulder in an elder brotherly way, "it's a trifle

hard when a gentleman comes to settle here, that you should dun him

for things before he has settled the preliminary expenses about his

house."

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. As it is, I think I will remove my

patronage to a firm which will treat me civilly. Why, sir, I've never

heard anything like it in all my experience." Upon which the man

would knuckle under and go away forgiven, with a large order for more

goods.

Once, when Ukridge and I were alone, I ventured to expostulate. High

finance was always beyond my mental grasp. "Pay?" he exclaimed, "of

course we shall pay. You don't seem to realize the possibilities of

this business. Garny, my boy, we are on to a big thing. The money

isn't coming in yet. We must give it time. But soon we shall be

turning over hundreds every week. I am in touch with Whiteley's and

Harrod's and all the big places. Perfectly simple business matter.

Here I am, I said, with a large chicken farm with all the modern

improvements. You want eggs, 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, their terms did not come up to my scheduled prices, I admit, but

we mustn't sneer at small prices at first."

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 powers of his hens

which would have flattered those birds if they could have known of it.

It might also have stimulated their efforts in that direction, which

up to date were feeble. This, however, I attributed to the fact that

the majority of our fowls--perhaps through some sinister practical

joke on the part of the manager who had the manners of a marquis--were

cocks. It vexed Ukridge. "Here we are," he said complainingly, "living

well and drinking well, in a newly furnished house, having to keep a

servant and maintain our position in life, with expenses mounting and

not a penny coming in. It's absurd. We've got hundreds of hens (most

of them cocks, it's true, but I forgot they didn't lay), and getting

not even enough eggs for our own table. We must make some more

arrangements. Come on in and let us think the thing out."

But this speech was the outcome of a rare moment of pessimism. In his

brighter moods he continued to express unbounded faith in the hens,

and was willing to leave the thing to time.

Meanwhile, we were creating quite a small sensation in the

neighborhood. The interest of the natives was aroused at first by the

fact that nearly all of them received informal visits from our fowls,

which had strayed. Small boys would arrive in platoons, each bearing

his quota of stragglers. "Be these your 'ens, zur?" was the formula.

"If they be, we've got twenty-fower mower in our yard. Could 'ee coom

over and fetch 'em?"

However, after the hired retainer and I had completed our work with

the wire netting, desertions became less frequent. People poured in

from villages for miles around to look at the up-to-date chicken farm.

It was a pleasing and instructive spectacle to see Ukridge, in a pink

shirt without a collar, and very dirty flannel trousers, lecturing to

the intelligent natives on the breeding of fowls. They used to go away

with the dazed air of men who have heard strange matters, and Ukridge,

unexhausted, would turn to interview the next batch. I fancy we gave

Lyme Regis something to think about. Ukridge must have been in the

nature of a staggerer to the rustic mind.

It was now, as I have said, Thursday, the twenty-second of July, a

memorable date to me. A glorious, sunny morning, of the kind which

Nature provides occasionally, in an ebullition of benevolence. It is

at times such as this that we dream our dreams and compose our

masterpieces.

And a masterpiece I was, indeed, making. The new novel was growing

nobly. Striking scenes and freshets of scintillating dialogue rushed

through my mind. I had neglected my writing for the past week in favor

of the tending of fowls, but I was making up for lost time now.

Another uninterrupted quarter of an hour, and I firmly believe I

should have completed the framework of a novel that would have placed

me with the great, in that select band whose members have no Christian

names. Another quarter of an hour and posterity would have known me as

"Garnet."

But it was not to be. I had just framed the most poignant, searching

conversation between my heroine and my hero, and was about to proceed,

flushed with great thoughts, to further triumphs, when a distant shout

brought me to earth.

"Stop her! Catch her! Garnet!"

I was in the paddock at the time. Coming toward me at her best pace

was a small hen. Behind the hen was Bob, doing, as usual, the thing

that he ought not to have done. Behind Bob--some way behind--was

Ukridge. It was his shout that I had heard.

"After her, Garny, old horse!" he repeated. "A valuable bird. Must not

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, after

a fruitless lunge at the hen as it passed, joined Bob in the chase.

We passed out of the paddock in the following order: First, the hen,

as fresh as paint, and good for a five-mile spin; next, Bob, panting

but fit for anything; lastly, myself, determined, but mistrustful of

my powers of pedestrianism. In the distance Ukridge gesticulated and

shouted advice.

After the first field Bob gave up the chase, and sauntered off to

scratch at a rabbit hole. He seemed to think that he had done all that

could be expected of him in setting the thing going. His air suggested

that he knew the affair was in competent hands, and relied on me to do

the right thing.

The exertions of the past few days had left me in very fair condition,

but I could not help feeling that in competition with the hen I was

overmatched. Neither in speed nor in staying power was I its equal.

But I pounded along doggedly. Whenever I find myself fairly started on

any business I am reluctant to give it up. I began to set an

extravagant value on the capture of the small hen. All the abstract

desire for fame which had filled my mind five minutes before was

concentrated now on that one feat. In a calmer moment I might have

realized that one bird more or less would not make a great deal of

difference to the fortunes of the chicken farm, but now my power of

logical reasoning had left me. All our fortunes seemed to me to center

in the hen, now half a field in front of me.

We had been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point we

crossed the 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 the hen, too, was beginning to feel the effects of its run I

do not know, but it slowed down to a walk, and even began to peck in a

tentative manner at the grass. This assumption on its part that the

chase was at an end irritated me. I felt that I should not be worthy

of the name of Englishman if I allowed myself to be treated as a

cipher by a mere bird. It should realize yet that it was no light

matter to be pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Maneuvers of

Arthur," etc.

A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of my

quarry. But it darted from me with a startled exclamation and moved

off rapidly up the hill. I followed, distressed. The pace was proving

too much for me. The sun blazed down. It seemed to concentrate its

rays on my back, to the exclusion of the surrounding scenery, in much

the same way as the moon behaves to the heroine of a melodrama. A

student of the drama has put it on record that he has seen the moon

follow the heroine round the stage, and go off with her (left). The

sun was just as attentive to me.

We were on level ground now. The hen had again slowed to a walk, and I

was capable of no better pace. Very gradually I closed in on it. There

was a high boxwood hedge in front of us. Just as I came close enough

to stake my all on a single grab, the hen dived into this and

struggled through in the mysterious way in which birds do get through

hedges.

I was in the middle of the obstacle, 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 to the gravel path of a private garden.

Beyond the path was a croquet lawn, on which I perceived, as through a

glass darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes and I

recognized two of the trio.

One was my Irish fellow-traveler, the other was his daughter.

The third member of the party was a man, a stranger to me. By some

miracle of adroitness he had captured the hen, and was holding it,

protesting, in a workman-like manner behind the wings.