Love Among the Chickens u-1

by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

  We made it so. I drove off from the first tee. It was a splendid drive. I should not say so if there were any one else to say so for me. Modesty would forbid. But, as there is no one, I must repeat the statement. It was one of the best drives of my experience. The ball flashed through the air, took the bunker with a dozen feet to spare, and rolled on to the green. I had felt all along that I should be in form. Unless my opponent was equally above himself, he was a lost man. I could toy with him.

  The excellence of my drive had not been without its effect on the professor. I could see that he was not confident. He addressed his ball more strangely and at greater length than any one I had ever seen. He waggled his club over it as if he were going to perform a conjuring trick. Then he struck, and topped it.

  The ball rolled two yards.

  He looked at it in silence. Then he looked at me—also in silence.

  I was gazing seawards.

  When I looked round he was getting to work with a brassey.

  This time he hit the bunker, and rolled back. He repeated this manoeuvre twice.

  “Hard luck!” I murmured sympathetically on the third occasion, thereby going as near to being slain with a niblick as it has ever been my lot to go. Your true golfer is easily roused in times of misfortune; and there was a red gleam in the eye of the professor turned to me.

  “I shall pick my ball up,” he growled.

  We walked on in silence to the second tee. He did the second hole in four, which was good. I did it in three, which—unfortunately for him—was better.

  I won the third hole.

  I won the fourth hole.

  I won the fifth hole.

  I glanced at my opponent out of the corner of my eyes. The man was suffering. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

  His play had become wilder and wilder at each hole in arithmetical progression. If he had been a plough he could hardly have turned up more soil. The imagination recoiled from the thought of what he could be doing in another half-hour if he deteriorated at his present speed.

  A feeling of calm and content stole over me. I was not sorry for him. All the viciousness of my nature was uppermost in me. Once, when he missed the ball clean at the fifth tee, his eye met mine, and we stood staring at each other for a full half-minute without moving. I believe, if I had smiled then, he would have attacked me without hesitation. There is a type of golfer who really almost ceases to be human under stress of the wild agony of a series of foozles.

  The sixth hole involves the player in a somewhat tricky piece of cross-country work, owing to the fact that there is a nasty ditch to be negotiated some fifty yards from the green. It is a beast of a ditch, which, if you are out of luck, just catches your second shot. “All hope abandon ye who enter here” might be written on a notice board over it.

  The professor entered there. The unhappy man sent his second, as nice and clean a brassey shot as he had made all day, into its very jaws. And then madness seized him. A merciful local rule, framed by kindly men who have been in that ditch themselves, enacts that in such a case the player may take his ball and throw it over his shoulder, losing a stroke. But once, so the legend runs, a scratch man who found himself trapped, scorning to avail himself of this rule at the expense of its accompanying penalty, wrought so shrewdly with his niblick that he not only got out but actually laid his ball dead: and now optimists sometimes imitate his gallantry, though no one yet has been able to imitate his success.

  The professor decided to take a chance: and he failed miserably. As I was on the green with my third, and, unless I putted extremely poorly, was morally certain to be down in five, which is bogey for the hole, there was not much practical use in his continuing to struggle. But he did in a spirit of pure vindictiveness, as if he were trying to take it out of the ball. It was a grisly sight to see him, head and shoulders above the ditch, hewing at his obstinate colonel. It was a similar spectacle that once induced a lay spectator of a golf match to observe that he considered hockey a silly game.

  “/Sixteen!/” said the professor between his teeth. Then he picked up his ball.

  I won the seventh hole.

  I won the eighth hole.

  The ninth we halved, for in the black depths of my soul I had formed a plan of fiendish subtlety. I intended to allow him to win—with extreme labour—eight holes in succession.

  Then, when hope was once more strong in him, I would win the last, and he would go mad.

  I watched him carefully as we trudged on. Emotions chased one another across his face. When he won the tenth hole he merely refrained from oaths. When he won the eleventh a sort of sullen pleasure showed in his face. It was at the thirteenth that I detected the first dawning of hope. From then onward it grew.

  When, with a sequence of shocking shots, he took the seventeenth hole in seven, he was in a parlous condition. His run of success had engendered within him a desire for conversation. He wanted, as it were, to flap his wings and crow. I could see Dignity wrestling with Talkativeness. I gave him the lead.

  “You have got your form now,” I said.

  Talkativeness had it. Dignity retired hurt. Speech came from him in a rush. When he brought off an excellent drive from the eighteenth tee, he seemed to forget everything.

  “Me dear boy,”—he began; and stopped abruptly in some confusion. Silence once more brooded over us as we played ourselves up the fairway and on to the green.

  He was on the green in four. I reached it in three. His sixth stroke took him out.

  I putted carefully to the very mouth of the hole.

  I walked up to my ball and paused. I looked at the professor. He looked at me.

  “Go on,” he said hoarsely.

  Suddenly a wave of compassion flooded over me. What right had I to torture the man like this?

  “Professor,” I said.

  “Go on,” he repeated.

  “That looks a simple shot,” I said, eyeing him steadily, “but I might miss it.”

  He started.

  “And then you would win the Championship.”

  He dabbed at his forehead with a wet ball of a handkerchief.

  “It would be very pleasant for you after getting so near it the last two years.”

  “Go on,” he said for the third time. But there was a note of hesitation in his voice.

  “Sudden joy,” I said, “would almost certainly make me miss it.”

  We looked at each other. He had the golf fever in his eyes.

  “If,” I said slowly, lifting my putter, “you were to give your consent to my marriage with Phyllis—”

  He looked from me to the ball, from the ball to me, and back to the ball. It was very, very near the hole.

  “Why not?” I said.

  He looked up, and burst into a roar of laughter.

  “You young devil,” said he, smiting his thigh, “you young devil, you’ve beaten me.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, “you have beaten me.”

  * * *

  I left the professor at the Club House and raced back to the farm. I wanted to pour my joys into a sympathetic ear. Ukridge, I knew, would offer that same sympathetic ear. A good fellow, Ukridge. Always interested in what you had to tell him; never bored.

  “Ukridge!” I shouted.

  No answer.

  I flung open the dining-room door. Nobody.

  I went into the drawing-room. It was empty. I drew the garden, and his bedroom. He was not in either.

  “He must have gone for a stroll,” I said.

  I rang the bell.

  The Hired Retainer appeared, calm and imperturbable as ever.

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, where is Mr. Ukridge, Beale?”

  “Mr. Ukridge, sir,” said the Hired Retainer nonchalantly, “has gone.”

  “Gone!”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Ukridge and Mrs. Ukridge went away together by the three o’clock train.”

  Chapter 21.

  The Calm Before the Storm

&nbs
p; “Beale,” I said, “are you drunk?”

  “Wish I was, sir,” said the Hired Man.

  “Then what on earth do you mean? Gone? Where have they gone to?”

  “Don’t know, sir. London, I expect.”

  “London? Why?”

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  “When did they go? Oh, you told me that. Didn’t they say why they were going?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Didn’t you ask! When you saw them packing up and going to the station, didn’t you do anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “I didn’t see them, sir. I only found out as they’d gone after they’d been and went, sir. Walking down by the Net and Mackerel, met one of them coastguards. ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘so you’re moving?’ ‘Who’s a-moving?’ I says to him. ‘Well,’ he says to me, ‘I seen your Mr. Ukridge and his missus get into the three o’clock train for Axminster. I thought as you was all a-moving.’ ‘Ho,’ I says, ‘Ho,’ wondering, and I goes on. When I gets back, I asks the missus did she see them packing their boxes, and she says, No, she says, they didn’t pack no boxes as she knowed of. And blowed if they had, Mr. Garnet, sir.”

  “What! They didn’t pack!”

  “No, sir.”

  We looked at one another.

  “Beale,” I said.

  “Sir?”

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’ve bolted.”

  “So I says to the missus, sir. It struck me right off, in a manner of speaking.”

  “This is awful,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  His face betrayed no emotion, but he was one of those men whose expression never varies. It’s a way they have in the Army.

  “This wants thinking out, Beale,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’d better ask Mrs. Beale to give me some dinner, and then I’ll think it over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I was in an unpleasant position. Ukridge by his defection had left me in charge of the farm. I could dissolve the concern, I supposed, if I wished, and return to London, but I particularly desired to remain in Combe Regis. To complete the victory I had won on the links, it was necessary for me to continue as I had begun. I was in the position of a general who has conquered a hostile country, and is obliged to soothe the feelings of the conquered people before his labours can be considered at an end. I had rushed the professor. It must now be my aim to keep him from regretting that he had been rushed. I must, therefore, stick to my post with the tenacity of an able-bodied leech. There would be trouble. Of that I was certain. As soon as the news got about that Ukridge had gone, the deluge would begin. His creditors would abandon their passive tactics, and take active steps. There was a chance that aggressive measures would be confined to the enemy at our gates, the tradesmen of Combe Regis. But the probability was that the news would spread, and the injured merchants of Dorchester and Axminster rush to the scene of hostilities.

  I summoned Beale after dinner and held a council of war. It was no time for airy persiflage. I said, “Beale, we’re in the cart.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mr. Ukridge going away like this has left me in a most unpleasant position. I would like to talk it over with you. I daresay you know that we—that Mr. Ukridge owes a considerable amount of money round about here to tradesmen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, when they find out that he has—er—”

  “Shot the moon, sir,” suggested the Hired Retainer helpfully.

  “Gone up to town,” I amended. “When they find out that he has gone up to town, they are likely to come bothering us a good deal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I fancy that we shall have them all round here to-morrow. News of this sort always spreads quickly. The point is, then, what are we to do?”

  He propounded no scheme, but stood in an easy attitude of attention, waiting for me to continue.

  I continued.

  “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. 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 bin, 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 shan’t forget you. There’s a cheque 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 lit my pipe, and strolled out into the garden with Bob. I cursed Ukridge as I walked. It was abominable of him 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 stigmatises 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 can generally discover a multitude of straws which should have shown us which way it was blowing.

  Once, I remembered, in our schoolmaster 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 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 instalment system, paying a small sum in advance, as earnest of more to come. He then pawned one suit to pay for the first few instalments, 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 his 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 went 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 back word 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’re 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.

  Chapter 22.

  The Storm Breaks

  Rather to my surprise, the next morning passed off uneventfully. Our knocker advertised no dun. Our lawn remained untrodden by hob-nailed boots. By lunch-time I had come to the conclusion that the expected Trouble would not occur that day, and I felt that I might well leave my post for the afternoon, while I went to the professor’s to pay my respects. The professor was out when I arrived. Phyllis was in, and it was not till the evening that I started for the farm again.

  As I approached, the sound of voices smote my ears.

  I stopped. I could hear Beale speaking. Then came the rich notes of Vickers, the butcher. Then Beale again. Then Dawlish the grocer. Then a chorus.

  The storm had burst, and in my absence.

  I blushed for myself. I was in command, and I had deserted the fort in time of need. What must the faithful Hired Man be thinking of me? Probably he placed me, as he had placed Ukridge, in the ragged ranks of those who have Shot the Moon.

  Fortunately, having just come from the professor’s I was in the costume which of all my wardrobe was most calculated to impress. To a casual observer I should probably suggest wealth and respectability. I stopped for a moment to cool myself, for, as is my habit when pleased with life, I had been walking fast; then opened the gate and strode in, trying to look as opulent as possible.