Love Among the Chickens Read online

  A REUNION

  VI

  The day was Thursday, the date July the twenty-second. We had beenchicken farmers for a whole week, and things were beginning to settledown to a certain extent. The coops were finished. They were notmasterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in deepthought, as who should say: "Now what in the world have we struckhere?" But they were coops, within the meaning of the act, and weinduced the hens to become tenants. The hardest work had been thefixing of the wire netting. This was the department of the hired manand myself. Beale and I worked ourselves into a fever in the sun,while the senior partner of the firm sat in the house, writing outplans and ideas and scribbling down his accounts (which must have beencomplicated) on gilt-edged correspondence cards. From time to time heabused 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 avast supply of necessary and unnecessary articles--all on credit. Somehe got from the village, others from neighboring towns. He has a waywith him, like Father O'Flynn, and the tradesmen behaved beautifully.The things began to pour in from all sides--suits, groceries (of thevery best), a piano, a gramophone, and pictures of all kinds. He wasnot one of those men who want but little here below. He wanted a greatdeal, and of a superior quality. If a tradesman suggested that a smallcheck on account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordidfellows of the village did, he became pathetic.

  "Confound it, sir," he would say with tears in his voice, laying ahand on the man's shoulder in an elder brotherly way, "it's a triflehard when a gentleman comes to settle here, that you should dun himfor things before he has settled the preliminary expenses about hishouse."

  This sounded well, and suggested the disbursement of huge sums forrent. The fact that the house had been lent him rent free was keptwith some care in the background. Having weakened the man with pathos,he would strike a sterner note. "A little more of this," he would goon, "and I'll close my account. As it is, I think I will remove mypatronage to a firm which will treat me civilly. Why, sir, I've neverheard anything like it in all my experience." Upon which the manwould knuckle under and go away forgiven, with a large order for moregoods.

  Once, when Ukridge and I were alone, I ventured to expostulate. Highfinance was always beyond my mental grasp. "Pay?" he exclaimed, "ofcourse we shall pay. You don't seem to realize the possibilities ofthis business. Garny, my boy, we are on to a big thing. The moneyisn't coming in yet. We must give it time. But soon we shall beturning over hundreds every week. I am in touch with Whiteley's andHarrod's and all the big places. Perfectly simple business matter.Here I am, I said, with a large chicken farm with all the modernimprovements. You want eggs, I said. I supply them. I will let youhave 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, butwe mustn't sneer at small prices at first."

  The upshot of it was that the firms mentioned supplied us with aquantity of goods, agreeing to receive phantom eggs in exchange. Thissatisfied Ukridge. He had a faith in the laying powers of his henswhich would have flattered those birds if they could have known of it.It might also have stimulated their efforts in that direction, whichup to date were feeble. This, however, I attributed to the fact thatthe majority of our fowls--perhaps through some sinister practicaljoke on the part of the manager who had the manners of a marquis--werecocks. It vexed Ukridge. "Here we are," he said complainingly, "livingwell and drinking well, in a newly furnished house, having to keep aservant and maintain our position in life, with expenses mounting andnot a penny coming in. It's absurd. We've got hundreds of hens (mostof them cocks, it's true, but I forgot they didn't lay), and gettingnot even enough eggs for our own table. We must make some morearrangements. Come on in and let us think the thing out."

  But this speech was the outcome of a rare moment of pessimism. In hisbrighter 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 theneighborhood. The interest of the natives was aroused at first by thefact that nearly all of them received informal visits from our fowls,which had strayed. Small boys would arrive in platoons, each bearinghis 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 coomover and fetch 'em?"

  However, after the hired retainer and I had completed our work withthe wire netting, desertions became less frequent. People poured infrom 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 pinkshirt without a collar, and very dirty flannel trousers, lecturing tothe intelligent natives on the breeding of fowls. They used to go awaywith the dazed air of men who have heard strange matters, and Ukridge,unexhausted, would turn to interview the next batch. I fancy we gaveLyme Regis something to think about. Ukridge must have been in thenature of a staggerer to the rustic mind.

  It was now, as I have said, Thursday, the twenty-second of July, amemorable date to me. A glorious, sunny morning, of the kind whichNature provides occasionally, in an ebullition of benevolence. It isat times such as this that we dream our dreams and compose ourmasterpieces.

  And a masterpiece I was, indeed, making. The new novel was growingnobly. Striking scenes and freshets of scintillating dialogue rushedthrough my mind. I had neglected my writing for the past week in favorof the tending of fowls, but I was making up for lost time now.Another uninterrupted quarter of an hour, and I firmly believe Ishould have completed the framework of a novel that would have placedme with the great, in that select band whose members have no Christiannames. 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, searchingconversation between my heroine and my hero, and was about to proceed,flushed with great thoughts, to further triumphs, when a distant shoutbrought me to earth.

  "Stop her! Catch her! Garnet!"

  I was in the paddock at the time. Coming toward me at her best pacewas a small hen. Behind the hen was Bob, doing, as usual, the thingthat he ought not to have done. Behind Bob--some way behind--wasUkridge. It was his shout that I had heard.

  "After her, Garny, old horse!" he repeated. "A valuable bird. Must notbe lost."

  When not in a catalepsy of literary composition, I am essentially theman of action. I laid aside my novel for future reference, and, aftera 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, pantingbut fit for anything; lastly, myself, determined, but mistrustful ofmy powers of pedestrianism. In the distance Ukridge gesticulated andshouted advice.

  After the first field Bob gave up the chase, and sauntered off toscratch at a rabbit hole. He seemed to think that he had done all thatcould be expected of him in setting the thing going. His air suggestedthat he knew the affair was in competent hands, and relied on me to dothe 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 wasovermatched. Neither in speed nor in staying power was I its equal.But I pounded along doggedly. Whenever I find myself fairly started onany business I am reluctant to give it up. I began to set anextravagant value on the capture of the small hen. All the abstractdesire for fame which had filled my mind five minutes before wasconcentrated now on that one feat. In a calmer moment I might haverealized that one bird more or less would not make a great deal ofdifference to the fortunes of the chicken farm, but now my power oflogical reasoning had left me. All our fortunes seemed to me to centerin the hen, now half a field in front of me.

  We had been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point wecrossed the road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painfulcondition which occurs when one
has lost one's first wind and has notyet 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 Ido not know, but it slowed down to a walk, and even began to peck in atentative manner at the grass. This assumption on its part that thechase was at an end irritated me. I felt that I should not be worthyof the name of Englishman if I allowed myself to be treated as acipher by a mere bird. It should realize yet that it was no lightmatter to be pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Maneuvers ofArthur," etc.

  A judicious increase of pace brought me within a yard or two of myquarry. But it darted from me with a startled exclamation and movedoff rapidly up the hill. I followed, distressed. The pace was provingtoo much for me. The sun blazed down. It seemed to concentrate itsrays on my back, to the exclusion of the surrounding scenery, in muchthe same way as the moon behaves to the heroine of a melodrama. Astudent of the drama has put it on record that he has seen the moonfollow the heroine round the stage, and go off with her (left). Thesun was just as attentive to me.

  We were on level ground now. The hen had again slowed to a walk, and Iwas capable of no better pace. Very gradually I closed in on it. Therewas a high boxwood hedge in front of us. Just as I came close enoughto stake my all on a single grab, the hen dived into this andstruggled through in the mysterious way in which birds do get throughhedges.

  I was in the middle of the obstacle, very hot, tired, and dirty, whenfrom the other side I heard a sudden shout of "Mark over! Bird to theright!" and the next moment I found myself emerging, with a black faceand tottering knees, on to the gravel path of a private garden.

  Beyond the path was a croquet lawn, on which I perceived, as through aglass darkly, three figures. The mist cleared from my eyes and Irecognized 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 somemiracle of adroitness he had captured the hen, and was holding it,protesting, in a workman-like manner behind the wings.