"Let's see exactly how we stand," I said. "My point is that I
particularly wish to go on living down here for at least another
fortnight. Of course, my position is simple. I am Mr. Ukridge's guest.
I shall go on living as I have been doing up to the present. He asked
me down here to help him look after the fowls, so I shall go on
looking after them. I shall want a chicken a day, I suppose, or
perhaps two, for my meals, and there the thing ends, as far I am
concerned. Complications set in when we come to consider you and Mrs.
Beale. I suppose you won't care to stop on after this?"
The hired retainer scratched his chin and glanced out of the window.
The moon was up and the garden looked cool and mysterious in the dim
light.
"It's a pretty place, Mr. Garnet, sir," he said.
"It is," I said, "but about other considerations? There's the matter
of wages. Are yours in arrears?"
"Yes, sir. A month."
"And Mrs. Beale's the same, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir. A month."
"H'm. Well, it seems to me, Beale, you can't lose anything by stopping
on."
"I can't be paid any less than I have been, sir," he agreed.
"Exactly. And, as you say, it's a pretty place. You might just as well
stop on and help me in the fowl run. What do you think?"
"Very well, sir."
"And Mrs. Beale will do the same?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's excellent. You're a hero, Beale. I sha'n't forget you. There's
a check coming to me from a magazine in another week for a short
story. When it arrives I'll look into that matter of back wages. Tell
Mrs. Beale I'm much obliged to her, will you?"
"Yes, sir."
Having concluded that delicate business, I strolled out into the
garden with Bob. It was abominable of Ukridge to desert me in this
way. Even if I had not been his friend, it would have been bad. The
fact that we had known each other for years made it doubly
discreditable. He might at least have warned me and given me the
option of leaving the sinking ship with him.
But, I reflected, I ought not to be surprised. His whole career, as
long as I had known him, had been dotted with little eccentricities of
a type which an unfeeling world generally stigmatizes as shady. They
were small things, it was true; but they ought to have warned me. We
are most of us wise after the event. When the wind has blown we
generally discover a multitude of straws which should have shown us
which way it was blowing.
Once, I remembered, in our school-master days, when guineas, though
regular, were few, he had had occasion to increase his wardrobe. If I
recollect rightly, he thought he had a chance of a good position in
the tutoring line, and only needed good clothes to make it his. He
took four pounds of his salary in advance--he was in the habit of
doing this; he never had any of his salary left by the end of term, it
having vanished in advance loans beforehand. With this he was to buy
two suits, a hat, new boots, and collars. When it came to making the
purchases, he found, what he had overlooked previously in his
optimistic way, that four pounds did not go very far. At the time, I
remember, I thought his method of grappling with the situation
humorous. He bought a hat for three and sixpence, and got the suits
and the boots on the installment system, paying a small sum in
advance, as earnest of more to come. He then pawned one suit to pay
the first few installments, and finally departed, to be known no more.
His address he had given, with a false name, at an empty house, and
when the tailor arrived with the minions of the law, all he found was
an annoyed caretaker and a pile of letters written by himself,
containing his bill in its various stages of evolution.
Or again. There was a bicycle and photograph shop near the school. He
blew into this one day and his roving eye fell on a tandem bicycle. He
did not want a tandem bicycle, but that influenced him not at all. He
ordered it, provisionally. He also ordered an enlarging camera, a
Kodak, and a magic lantern. The order was booked and the goods were to
be delivered when he had made up his mind concerning them. After a
week the shopman sent round to ask if there were any further
particulars which Mr. Ukridge would like to learn before definitely
ordering them. Mr. Ukridge sent word back that he was considering the
matter, and that in the meantime would he be so good as to let him
have that little clockwork man in his window, which walked when wound
up? Having got this, and not paid for it, Ukridge thought that he had
done handsomely by the bicycle and photograph man, and that things
were square between them. The latter met him a few days afterwards and
expostulated plaintively. Ukridge explained. "My good man," he said,
"you know, I really think we need say no more about the matter.
Really, you've come out of it very well. Now, look here, which would
you rather be owed for? A clockwork man, which is broken, and you can
have it back, or a tandem bicycle, an enlarging camera, a Kodak, and
a magic lantern? What?" His reasoning was too subtle for the
uneducated mind. The man retired, puzzled and unpaid, and Ukridge kept
the clockwork toy.
A remarkable financier, Ukridge. I sometimes think that he would have
done well in the city.
I did not go to bed till late that night. There was something so
peaceful in the silence that brooded over everything that I stayed on,
enjoying it. Perhaps it struck me as all the more peaceful because I
could not help thinking of the troublous times that were to come.
Already I seemed to hear the horrid roar of a herd of infuriated
creditors. I seemed to see fierce brawlings and sackings in progress
in this very garden.
"It will be a coarse, brutal spectacle, Robert," I said.
Bob uttered a little whine, as if he, too, were endowed with powers of
prophecy.