A COUNCIL OF WAR
"The fact is," said Ukridge, "if things go on as they are now, my lad,
we shall be in the cart. This business wants bucking up. We don't seem
to be making headway. Why it is, I don't know, but we are _not_ making
headway. Of course, what we want is time. If only these scoundrels of
tradesmen would leave us alone for a spell we could get things going
properly. But we're hampered and rattled and worried all the time.
Aren't we, Millie?"
"Yes, dear."
"You don't let me see the financial side of the thing enough," I
complained. "Why don't you keep me thoroughly posted? I didn't know we
were in such a bad way. The fowls look fit enough, and Edwin hasn't had
one for a week."
"Edwin knows as well as possible when he's done wrong, Mr. Garnet,"
said Mrs. Ukridge. "He was so sorry after he had killed those other
two."
"Yes," said Ukridge, "I saw to that."
"As far as I can see," I continued, "we're going strong. Chicken for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a shade monotonous, perhaps, but look
at the business we're doing. We sold a whole heap of eggs last week."
"But not enough, Garny old man. We aren't making our presence felt.
England isn't ringing with our name. We sell a dozen eggs where we
ought to be selling them by the hundred, carting them off in trucks for
the London market and congesting the traffic. Harrod's and Whiteley's
and the rest of them are beginning to get on their hind legs and talk.
That's what they're doing. Devilish unpleasant they're making
themselves. You see, laddie, there's no denying it--we _did_ touch them
for the deuce of a lot of things on account, and they agreed to take it
out in eggs. All they've done so far is to take it out in apologetic
letters from Millie. Now, I don't suppose there's a woman alive who can
write a better apologetic letter than her nibs, but, if you're
broad-minded and can face facts, you can't help seeing that the
juiciest apologetic letter is not an egg. I meant to say, look at it
from their point of view. Harrod--or Whiteley--comes into his store in
the morning, rubbing his hands expectantly. 'Well,' he says, 'how many
eggs from Combe Regis to-day?' And instead of leading him off to a
corner piled up with bursting crates, they show him a four-page letter
telling him it'll all come right in the future. I've never run a store
myself, but I should think that would jar a chap. Anyhow, the blighters
seem to be getting tired of waiting."
"The last letter from Harrod's was quite pathetic," said Mrs. Ukridge
sadly.
I had a vision of an eggless London. I seemed to see homes rendered
desolate and lives embittered by the slump, and millionaires bidding
against one another for the few rare specimens which Ukridge had
actually managed to despatch to Brompton and Bayswater.
Ukridge, having induced himself to be broad-minded for five minutes,
now began to slip back to his own personal point of view and became
once more the man with a grievance. His fleeting sympathy with the
wrongs of Mr. Harrod and Mr. Whiteley disappeared.
"What it all amounts to," he said complainingly, "is that they're
infernally unreasonable. I've done everything possible to meet them.
Nothing could have been more manly and straightforward than my
attitude. I told them in my last letter but three that I proposed to
let them have the eggs on the _Times_ instalment system, and they said
I was frivolous. They said that to send thirteen eggs as payment for
goods supplied to the value of 25 pounds 1s. 8 1/2 d. was mere
trifling. Trifling, I'll trouble you! That's the spirit in which they
meet my suggestions. It was Harrod who did that. I've never met Harrod
personally, but I'd like to, just to ask him if that's his idea of
cementing amiable business relations. He knows just as well as anyone
else that without credit commerce has no elasticity. It's an elementary
rule. I'll bet he'd have been sick if chappies had refused to let him
have tick when he was starting his store. Do you suppose Harrod, when
he started in business, paid cash down on the nail for everything? Not
a bit of it. He went about taking people by the coat-button and asking
them to be good chaps and wait till Wednesday week. Trifling! Why,
those thirteen eggs were absolutely all we had over after Mrs. Beale
had taken what she wanted for the kitchen. As a matter of fact, if it's
anybody's fault, it's Mrs. Beale's. That woman literally eats eggs."
"The habit is not confined to her," I said.
"Well, what I mean to say is, she seems to bathe in them."
"She says she needs so many for puddings, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge. "I
spoke to her about it yesterday. And of course, we often have
omelettes."
"She can't make omelettes without breaking eggs," I urged.
"She can't make them without breaking us, dammit," said Ukridge. "One
or two more omelettes, and we're done for. No fortune on earth could
stand it. We mustn't have any more omelettes, Millie. We must
economise. Millions of people get on all right without omelettes. I
suppose there are families where, if you suddenly produced an omelette,
the whole strength of the company would get up and cheer, led by
father. Cancel the omelettes, old girl, from now onward."
"Yes, dear. But--"
"Well?"
"I don't _think_ Mrs. Beale would like that very much, dear. She has
been complaining a good deal about chicken at every meal. She says that
the omelettes are the only things that give her a chance. She says
there are always possibilities in an omelette."
"In short," I said, "what you propose to do is deliberately to remove
from this excellent lady's life the one remaining element of poetry.
You mustn't do it. Give Mrs. Beale her omelettes, and let's hope for a
larger supply of eggs."
"Another thing," said Ukridge. "It isn't only that there's a shortage
of eggs. That wouldn't matter so much if only we kept hatching out
fresh squads of chickens. I'm not saying the hens aren't doing their
best. I take off my hat to the hens. As nice a hard-working lot as I
ever want to meet, full of vigour and earnestness. It's that damned
incubator that's letting us down all the time. The rotten thing won't
work. _I_ don't know what's the matter with it. The long and the short
of it is that it simply declines to incubate."
"Perhaps it's your dodge of letting down the temperature. You remember,
you were telling me? I forget the details."
"My dear old boy," he said earnestly, "there's nothing wrong with my
figures. It's a mathematical certainty. What's the good of mathematics
if not to help you work out that sort of thing? No, there's something
deuced wrong with the machine itself, and I shall probably make a
complaint to the people I got it from. Where did we get the incubator,
old girl?"
"Harrod's, I think, dear,--yes, it was Harrod's. It came down with the
first lot of things."
"Then," said Ukridge, banging the table with his fist, while his
glasses flashed triumph, "we've got 'em. The Lord has delivered
Harrod's into our hand. Write and answer that letter of theirs
to-night, Millie. Sit on them."
"Yes, dear."
"Tell 'em that we'd have sent them their confounded eggs long ago, if
only their rotten, twopenny-ha'penny incubator had worked with any
approach to decency." He paused. "Or would you be sarcastic, Garny, old
horse? No, better put it so that they'll understand. Say that I
consider that the manufacturer of the thing ought to be in Colney
Hatch--if he isn't there already--and that they are scoundrels for
palming off a groggy machine of that sort on me."
"The ceremony of opening the morning's letters at Harrod's ought to be
full of interest and excitement to-morrow," I said.
This dashing counter-stroke seemed to relieve Ukridge. His pessimism
vanished. He seldom looked on the dark side of things for long at a
time. He began now to speak hopefully of the future. He planned out
ingenious improvements. Our fowls were to multiply so rapidly and
consistently that within a short space of time Dorsetshire would be
paved with them. Our eggs were to increase in size till they broke
records and got three-line notices in the "Items of Interest" column in
the _Daily Mail_. Briefly, each hen was to become a happy combination
of rabbit and ostrich.
"There is certainly a good time coming," I said. "May it be soon.
Meanwhile, what of the local tradesmen?"
Ukridge relapsed once more into gloom.
"They are the worst of the lot. I don't mind the London people so much.
They only write, and a letter or two hurts nobody. But when it comes to
butchers and bakers and grocers and fishmongers and fruiterers and what
not coming up to one's house and dunning one in one's own garden,--well
it's a little hard, what?"
"Oh, then those fellows I found you talking to yesterday were duns? I
thought they were farmers, come to hear your views on the rearing of
poultry."
"Which were they? Little chap with black whiskers and long, thin man
with beard? That was Dawlish, the grocer, and Curtis, the fishmonger.
The others had gone before you came."
It may be wondered why, before things came to such a crisis, I had not
placed my balance at the bank at the disposal of the senior partner for
use on behalf of the farm. The fact was that my balance was at the
moment small. I have not yet in the course of this narrative gone into
my pecuniary position, but I may state here that it was an inconvenient
one. It was big with possibilities, but of ready cash there was but a
meagre supply. My parents had been poor. But I had a wealthy uncle.
Uncles are notoriously careless of the comfort of their nephews. Mine
was no exception. He had views. He was a great believer in matrimony,
as, having married three wives--not simultaneously--he had every right
to be. He was also of opinion that the less money the young bachelor
possessed, the better. The consequence was that he announced his
intention of giving me a handsome allowance from the day that I
married, but not an instant before. Till that glad day I would have to
shift for myself. And I am bound to admit that--for an uncle--it was a
remarkably sensible idea. I am also of the opinion that it is greatly
to my credit, and a proof of my pure and unmercenary nature, that I did
not instantly put myself up to be raffled for, or rush out into the
streets and propose marriage to the first lady I met. But I was making
quite enough with my pen to support myself, and, be it never so humble,
there is something pleasant in a bachelor existence, or so I had
thought until very recently.
I had thus no great stake in Ukridge's chicken farm. I had contributed
a modest five pounds to the preliminary expenses, and another five
after the roop incident. But further I could not go with safety. When
his income is dependent on the whims of editors and publishers, the
prudent man keeps something up his sleeve against a sudden slump in his
particular wares. I did not wish to have to make a hurried choice
between matrimony and the workhouse.
Having exhausted the subject of finance--or, rather, when I began to
feel that it was exhausting me--I took my clubs, and strolled up the
hill to the links to play off a match with a sportsman from the
village. I had entered some days previously for a competition for a
trophy (I quote the printed notice) presented by a local supporter of
the game, in which up to the present I was getting on nicely. I had
survived two rounds, and expected to beat my present opponent, which
would bring me into the semi-final. Unless I had bad luck, I felt that
I ought to get into the final, and win it. As far as I could gather
from watching the play of my rivals, the professor was the best of
them, and I was convinced that I should have no difficulty with him.
But he had the most extraordinary luck at golf, though he never
admitted it. He also exercised quite an uncanny influence on his
opponent. I have seen men put completely off their stroke by his good
fortune.
I disposed of my man without difficulty. We parted a little coldly. He
had decapitated his brassy on the occasion of his striking Dorsetshire
instead of his ball, and he was slow in recovering from the complex
emotions which such an episode induces.
In the club-house I met the professor, whose demeanour was a welcome
contrast to that of my late opponent. The professor had just routed his
opponent, and so won through to the semi-final. He was warm, but
jubilant.
I congratulated him, and left the place.
Phyllis was waiting outside. She often went round the course with him.
"Good afternoon," I said. "Have you been round with the professor?"
"Yes. We must have been in front of you. Father won his match."
"So he was telling me. I was very glad to hear it."
"Did you win, Mr. Garnet?"
"Yes. Pretty easily. My opponent had bad luck all through. Bunkers
seemed to have a magnetic attraction for him."
"So you and father are both in the semi-final? I hope you will play
very badly."
"Thank you," I said.
"Yes, it does sound rude, doesn't it? But father has set his heart on
winning this year. Do you know that he has played in the final round
two years running now?"
"Really?"
"Both times he was beaten by the same man."
"Who was that? Mr. Derrick plays a much better game than anybody I have
seen on these links."
"It was nobody who is here now. It was a Colonel Jervis. He has not
come to Combe Regis this year. That's why father is hopeful."
"Logically," I said, "he ought to be certain to win."
"Yes; but, you see, you were not playing last year, Mr. Garnet."
"Oh, the professor can make rings round me," I said.
"What did you go round in to-day?"
"We were playing match-play, and only did the first dozen holes; but my
average round is somewhere in the late eighties."
"The best father has ever done is ninety, and that was only once. So
you see, Mr. Garnet, there's going to be another tragedy this year."
"You make me feel a perfect brute. But it's more than likely, you must
remember, that I shall fail miserably if I ever do play your father in
the final. There are days when I play golf as badly as I play tennis.
You'll hardly believe me."
She smiled reminiscently.
"Tom is much too good at tennis. His service is perfectly dreadful."
"It's a little terrifying on first acquaintance."
"But you're better at golf than at tennis, Mr. Garnet. I wish you were
not."
"This is special pleading," I said. "It isn't fair to appeal to my
better feelings, Miss Derrick."
"I didn't know golfers had any where golf was concerned. Do you really
have your off-days?"
"Nearly always. There are days when I slice with my driver as if it
were a bread-knife."
"Really?"
"And when I couldn't putt to hit a haystack."
"Then I hope it will be on one of those days that you play father."
"I hope so, too," I said.
"You hope so?"
"Yes."
"But don't you want to win?"
"I should prefer to please you."
"Really, how very unselfish of you, Mr. Garnet," she replied, with a
laugh. "I had no idea that such chivalry existed. I thought a golfer
would sacrifice anything to win a game."
"Most things."
"And trample on the feelings of anybody."
"Not everybody," I said.
At this point the professor joined us.