Why is it, I wonder, that stories of Retribution calling at the wrong
address strike us as funny instead of pathetic? I myself had been
amused by them many a time. In a book which I had just read, a shop
woman, being vexed with an omnibus conductor, had thrown a
superannuated orange at him. It had found its billet not on him, but
on a perfectly inoffensive spectator. The missile, we are told, "'it a
young copper full in the hyeball." I had enjoyed this when I read it,
but now that fate had arranged a precisely similar situation, with
myself in the rôle of the young copper, the fun of the thing appealed
to me not at all.
It was Ukridge who was to blame for the professor's regrettable
explosion and departure, and he ought by all laws of justice to have
suffered for it. As it was, I was the only person materially affected.
It did not matter to Ukridge. He did not care twopence one way or the
other. If the professor were friendly, he was willing to talk to him
by the hour on any subject, pleasant or unpleasant. If, on the other
hand, he wished to have nothing more to do with us, it did not worry
him. He was content to let him go. Ukridge was a self-sufficing
person.
But to me it was a serious matter. More than serious. If I have done
my work as historian with any adequate degree of skill, the reader
should have gathered by this time the state of my feelings.
My love had grown with the days. Mr. J. Holt Schooling, or somebody
else with a taste for juggling with figures, might write a very
readable page or so of statistics in connection with the growth of
love in the heart of a man. In some cases it is, I believe, slow. In
my own I can only say that Jack's beanstalk was a backward plant in
comparison. It is true that we had not seen a great deal of one
another, and that, when we had met, our interviews had been brief and
our conversation conventional; but it is the intervals between the
meetings that do the real damage. Absence, as the poet neatly remarks,
makes the heart grow fonder. And now, thanks to Ukridge's amazing
idiocy, a barrier had been thrust between us. As if the business of
fishing for a girl's heart were not sufficiently difficult and
delicate without the addition of needless obstacles! It was terrible
to have to reëstablish myself in the good graces of the professor
before I could so much as begin to dream of Phyllis.
Ukridge gave me no balm.
"Well, after all," he said, when I pointed out to him quietly but
plainly my opinion of his tactlessness, "what does it matter? There
are other people in the world besides the old buffer. And we haven't
time to waste making friends, as a matter of fact. The farm ought to
keep us busy. I've noticed, Garny, old boy, that you haven't seemed
such a whale for work lately as you might be. You must buckle to, old
horse. We are at a critical stage. On our work now depends the success
of the speculation. Look at those cocks. They're always fighting.
Fling a stone at them. What's the matter with you? Can't get the novel
off your chest, what? You take my tip, and give your mind a rest.
Nothing like manual labor for clearing the brain. All the doctors say
so. Those coops ought to be painted to-day or to-morrow. Mind you, I
think old Derrick would be all right if one persevered--"
"And didn't call him a fat old buffer, and contradict everything he
said and spoil all his stories by breaking in with chestnuts of your
own in the middle," I interrupted with bitterness.
"Oh, rot, old boy! He didn't mind being called a fat old buffer. You
keep harping on that. A man likes one to be chatty with him. What was
the matter with old Derrick was a touch of liver. You should have
stopped him taking that cheese. I say, old man, just fling another
stone at those cocks, will you? They'll eat one another."
I had hoped, fearing the while that there was not much chance of such
a thing happening, that the professor might get over his feeling of
injury during the night, and be as friendly as ever next day. But he
was evidently a man who had no objection whatever to letting the sun
go down upon his wrath, for, when I met him on the beach the
following morning, he cut me in the most uncompromising fashion.
Phyllis was with him at the time, and also another girl who was, I
supposed from the strong likeness between them, her sister. She had
the same soft mass of brown hair. But to me she appeared almost
commonplace in comparison.
It is never pleasant to be cut dead. It produces the same sort of
feeling as is experienced when one treads on nothing where one
imagined a stair to be. In the present instance the pang was mitigated
to a certain extent--not largely--by the fact that Phyllis looked at
me. She did not move her head, and I could not have declared
positively that she moved her eyes; but nevertheless she certainly
looked at me. It was something. She seemed to say that duty compelled
her to follow her father's lead, and that the act must not be taken as
evidence of any personal animus.
That, at least, was how I read off the message.
Two days later I met Mr. Chase in the village.
"Halloo! so you're back," I said.
"You've discovered my secret," said he. "Will you have a cigar or a
cocoanut?"
There was a pause.
"Trouble, I hear, while I was away," he said.