The fame which came to me through that gallant rescue was a little
embarrassing. I was a marked man. Did I walk through the village,
heads emerged from windows, and eyes followed me out of sight. Did I
sit on the beach, groups formed behind me and watched in silent
admiration. I was the man of the moment.
"If we'd wanted an advertisement for the farm," said Ukridge on one of
these occasions, "we couldn't have had a better one than you, Garny,
my boy. You have brought us three distinct orders for eggs during the
last week. And I'll tell you what it is, we need all the orders we
can get that'll bring us in ready money. The farm is in a critical
condition, Marmaduke. The coffers are low, decidedly low. And I'll
tell you another thing. I'm getting precious tired of living on
nothing but chicken and eggs. So's Millie, though she doesn't say so."
"So am I," I said, "and I don't feel like imitating your wife's proud
reserve. I never want to see a chicken again except alive."
For the last week monotony had been the keynote of our commissariat.
We had cold chicken and eggs for breakfast, boiled chicken and eggs
for lunch, and roast chicken and eggs for dinner. Meals became a
nuisance, and Mrs. Beale complained bitterly that we did not give her
a chance. She was a cook who would have graced an alderman's house,
and served up noble dinners for gourmets, and here she was in this
remote corner of the world ringing the changes on boiled chicken and
roast chicken and boiled eggs and poached eggs. Mr. Whistler, set to
paint signboards for public houses, might have felt the same restless
discontent. As for her husband, the hired retainer, he took life as
tranquilly as ever, and seemed to regard the whole thing as the most
exhilarating farce he had ever been in. I think he looked on Ukridge
as an amiable lunatic, and was content to rough it a little in order
to enjoy the privilege of observing his movements. He made no
complaints of the food. When a man has supported life for a number of
years on incessant army beef, the monotony of daily chicken and eggs
scarcely strikes him.
"The fact is," said Ukridge, "these tradesmen round here seem to be a
sordid, suspicious lot. They clamor for money."
He mentioned a few examples. Vickers, the butcher, had been the first
to strike, with the remark that he would like to see the color of Mr.
Ukridge's money before supplying further joints. Dawlish, the grocer,
had expressed almost exactly similar sentiments two days later, and
the ranks of these passive resisters had been receiving fresh recruits
ever since. To a man the tradesmen of Lyme Regis seemed as deficient
in simple faith as they were in Norman blood.
"Can't you pay some of them a little on account?" I suggested. "It
would set them going again."
"My dear old man," said Ukridge impressively, "we need every penny of
ready money we can raise for the farm. The place simply eats money.
That infernal roop let us in for I don't know what."
That insidious epidemic had indeed proved costly. We had painted the
throats of the chickens with the best turpentine--at least, Ukridge
and Beale had--but in spite of their efforts dozens had died, and we
had been obliged to sink much more money than was pleasant in
restocking the run.
"No," said Ukridge, summing up, "these men must wait. We can't help
their troubles. Why, good gracious, it isn't as if they'd been waiting
for the money long. We've not been down here much over a month. I
never heard such a scandalous thing. 'Pon my word, I've a good mind to
go round and have a straight talk with one or two of them. I come and
settle down here, and stimulate trade, and give them large orders, and
they worry me with bills when they know I'm up to my eyes in work,
looking after the fowls. One can't attend to everything. This business
is just now at its most crucial point. It would be fatal to pay any
attention to anything else with things as they are. These scoundrels
will get paid all in good time."
It is a peculiarity of situations of this kind that the ideas of
debtor and creditor as to what constitutes good time never coincide.
I am afraid that, despite the urgent need for strict attention to
business, I was inclined to neglect my duties about this time. I had
got into the habit of wandering off, either to the links, where I
generally found the professor and sometimes Phyllis, or on long walks
by myself. There was one particular walk, along the Ware cliff,
through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever set eyes on,
which more than any other suited my mood. I would work my way through
the woods till I came to a small clearing on the very edge of the
cliff. There I would sit by the hour. Somehow I found that my ideas
flowed more readily in that spot than in any other. My novel was
taking shape. It was to be called, by the way, if it ever won through
to the goal of a title, "The Brown-haired Girl."
I had not been inside the professor's grounds since the occasion when
I had gone in through the boxwood hedge. But on the afternoon
following my financial conversation with Ukridge I made my way thither
after a toilet which, from its length, should have produced better
results than it did.
Not for four whole days had I caught so much as a glimpse of Phyllis.
I had been to the links three times, and had met the professor twice,
but on both occasions she had been absent. I had not had the courage
to ask after her. I had an absurd idea that my voice or my manner
would betray me in some way.
The professor was not at home. Nor was Mr. Chase. Nor was Miss Norah
Derrick, the lady I had met on the beach with the professor. Miss
Phyllis, said the maid, was in the garden.
I went into the garden. She was sitting under the cedar by the tennis
lawn, reading. She looked up as I approached.
To walk any distance under observation is one of the most trying
things I know. I advanced in bad order, hoping that my hands did not
really look as big as they felt. The same remark applied to my feet.
In emergencies of this kind a diffident man could very well dispense
with extremities. I should have liked to be wheeled up in a bath
chair.
I said it was a lovely afternoon; after which there was a lull in the
conversation. I was filled with a horrid fear that I was boring her. I
had probably arrived at the very moment when she was most interested
in her book. She must, I thought, even now be regarding me as a
nuisance, and was probably rehearsing bitter things to say to the
servant for not having had the sense to explain that she was out.
"I--er--called in the hope of seeing Professor Derrick," I said.
"You would find him on the links," she replied. It seemed to me that
she spoke wistfully.
"Oh, it--it doesn't matter," I said. "It wasn't anything important."
This was true. If the professor had appeared then and there, I should
have found it difficult to think of anything to say to him which would
have accounted for my anxiety to see him.
We paused again.
"How are the chickens, Mr. Garnet?" said she.
The situation was saved. Conversationally, I am like a clockwork toy.
I have to be set going. On the affairs of the farm I could speak
fluently. I sketched for her the progress we had made since her visit.
I was humorous concerning roop, epigrammatic on the subject of the
hired retainer and Edwin.
"Then the cat did come down from the chimney?" said Phyllis.
We both laughed, and--I can answer for myself--felt the better for it.
"He came down next day," I said, "and made an excellent lunch off one
of our best fowls. He also killed another, and only just escaped death
himself at the hands of Ukridge."
"Mr. Ukridge doesn't like him, does he?"
"If he does, he dissembles his love. Edwin is Mrs. Ukridge's pet. He
is the only subject on which they disagree. Edwin is certainly in the
way on a chicken farm. He has got over his fear of Bob, and is now
perfectly lawless. We have to keep a constant eye on him."
"And have you had any success with the incubator? I love incubators. I
have always wanted to have one of my own, but we have never kept
fowls."
"The incubator has not done all that it should have done," I said.
"Ukridge looks after it, and I fancy his methods are not the right
methods. I don't know if I have got the figures absolutely correct,
but Ukridge reasons on these lines. He says you are supposed to keep
the temperature up to a hundred and five degrees. I think he said a
hundred and five. Then the eggs are supposed to hatch out in a week or
so. He argues that you may just as well keep the temperature at
seventy-two, and wait a fortnight for your chickens. I am certain
there's a fallacy in the system somewhere, because we never seem to
get as far as the chickens. But Ukridge says his theory is
mathematically sound and he sticks to it."
"Are you quite sure that the way you are doing it is the best way to
manage a chicken farm?"
"I should very much doubt it. I am a child in these matters. I had
only seen a chicken in its wild state once or twice before we came
down here. I had never dreamed of being an active assistant on a real
farm. The whole thing began like Mr. George Ade's fable of the author.
An author--myself--was sitting at his desk trying to turn out
something that could be converted into breakfast food, when a friend
came in and sat down on the table and told him to go right on and not
mind him."
"Did Mr. Ukridge do that?"
"Very nearly that. He called at my rooms one beautiful morning when I
was feeling desperately tired of London and overworked and dying for a
holiday, and suggested that I should come to Lyme Regis with him and
help him farm chickens. I have not regretted it."
"It is a lovely place, isn't it?"
"The loveliest I have ever seen. How charming your garden is."
"Shall we go and look at it? You have not seen the whole of it."
As she rose I saw her book, which she had laid face downward on the
grass beside her. It was that same much-enduring copy of "The
Maneuvers of Arthur." I was thrilled. This patient perseverance must
surely mean something.
She saw me looking at it.
"Did you draw Pamela from anybody?" she asked suddenly.
I was glad now that I had not done so. The wretched Pamela, once my
pride, was for some reason unpopular with the only critic about whose
opinion I cared, and had fallen accordingly from her pedestal.
As we wandered down the gravel paths she gave me her opinion of the
book. In the main it was appreciative. I shall always associate the
scent of yellow lubin with the higher criticism.
"Of course I don't know anything about writing books," she said.
"Yes?" My tone implied, or I hoped it did, that she was an expert on
books, and that if she was not it didn't matter.
"But I don't think you do your heroines well. I have got 'The
Outsider'--"
(My other novel. Bastable & Kirby, six shillings. Satirical. All about
society, of which I know less than I know about chicken farming.
Slated by _Times_ and _Spectator_. Well received by the _Pelican_.)
"--and," continued Phyllis, "Lady Maud is exactly the same as Pamela
in 'The Maneuvers of Arthur.' I thought you must have drawn both
characters from some one you knew."
"No," I said; "no."
"I am so glad," said Phyllis.
And then neither of us seemed to have anything to say.
My knees began to tremble. I realized that the moment had arrived when
my fate must be put to the touch, and I feared that the moment was
premature. We cannot arrange these things to suit ourselves. I knew
that the time was not yet ripe, but the magic scent of the yellow
lubin was too much for me.
"Miss Derrick--" I said hoarsely.
Phyllis was looking with more intentness than the attractions of the
flower justified at a rose she held in her hand. The bees hummed in
the lubin.
"Miss Derrick--" I said, and stopped again.
"I say, you people," said a cheerful voice, "tea is ready. Halloo,
Garnet, how are you? That medal arrived yet from the humane society?"
I spun round. Mr. Tom Chase was standing at the end of the path. I
grinned a sickly grin.
"Well, Tom," said Phyllis.
And there was, I thought, just the faintest trace of annoyance in her
voice.
"I've been bathing," said Mr. Chase.
"Oh," I replied. "And I wish," I added, "that you'd drowned yourself."
But I added it silently to myself.