Part 4

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, panting but fit for anything; lastly, myself, determined, but mistrustful of my powers of pedestrianism. In the distance Ukridge gesticulated and shouted advice.

After the first field Bob gave up the chase, and sauntered off to scratch at a rabbit hole. He seemed to think that he had done all that could be expected of him in setting the thing going. His air suggested that he knew the affair was in competent hands, and relied on me to do the 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 was overmatched. Neither in speed nor in staying power was I its equal. But I pounded along doggedly. Whenever I find myself fairly started on any business I am reluctant to give it up. I began to set an extravagant value on the capture of the small hen. All the abstract desire for fame which had filled my mind five minutes before was concentrated now on that one feat. In a calmer moment I might have realized that one bird more or less would not make a great deal of difference to the fortunes of the chicken farm, but now my power of logical reasoning had left me. All our fortunes seemed to me to center in the hen, now half a field in front of me.

We had been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point we crossed the road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not yet 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 I do not know, but it slowed down to a walk, and even began to peck in a tentative manner at the grass. This assumption on its part that the chase was at an end irritated me. I felt that I should not be worthy of the name of Englishman if I allowed myself to be treated as a cipher by a mere bird. It should realize yet that it was no light matter to be pursued by J. Garnet, author of "The Maneuvers of Arthur," etc.

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

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

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

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

THE ENTENTE CORDIALE

VII

It has been well observed that there are moments and moments. The present, as far as I was concerned, belonged to the more painful variety.

Even to my exhausted mind it was plain that there was need here for explanations. An Irishman's croquet lawn is his castle, and strangers cannot plunge on to it unannounced through hedges without being prepared to give reasons.

Unfortunately, speech was beyond me. I could have done many things at that moment. I could have emptied a water butt, lain down and gone to sleep, or melted ice with a touch of the finger. But I could not speak. The conversation was opened by the other man, in whose soothing hand the hen now lay, apparently resigned to its fate.

"Come right in," he said pleasantly. "Don't knock. Your bird, I think?"

I stood there panting. I must have presented a quaint appearance. My hair was full of twigs and other foreign substances. My face was moist and grimy. My mouth hung open. I wanted to sit down. My legs felt as if they had ceased to belong to me.

"I must apologize--" I began, and ended the sentence with gasps.

Conversation languished. The elderly gentleman looked at me with what seemed to me indignant surprise. His daughter looked through me. The man regarded me with a friendly smile, as if I were some old crony dropped in unexpectedly.

"I'm afraid--" I said, and stopped again.

"Hard work, big-game hunting in this weather," said the man. "Take a long breath."

I took several and felt better.

"I must apologize for this intrusion," I said successfully. "Unwarrantable" would have rounded off the sentence nicely, but instinct told me not to risk it. It would have been mere bravado to have attempted unnecessary words of five syllables at that juncture.

I paused.

"Say on," said the man with the hen encouragingly, "I'm a human being just like yourself."

"The fact is," I said, "I didn't--didn't know there was a private garden beyond the hedge. If you will give me my hen--"

"It's hard to say good-by," said the man, stroking the bird's head with the first finger of his disengaged hand. "She and I are just beginning to know and appreciate each other. However, if it must be--"

He extended the hand which held the bird, and at this point a hitch occurred. He did his part of the business--the letting go. It was in my department--the taking hold--that the thing was bungled. The hen slipped from my grasp like an eel, stood for a moment overcome by the surprise of being at liberty once more, then fled and intrenched itself in some bushes at the farther end of the lawn.

There are times when the most resolute man feels that he can battle no longer with fate; when everything seems against him and the only course left is a dignified retreat. But there is one thing essential to a dignified retreat. One must know the way out. It was that fact which kept me standing there, looking more foolish than anyone has ever looked since the world began. I could hardly ask to be conducted off the premises like the honored guest. Nor would it do to retire by the way I had come. If I could have leaped the hedge with a single bound, that would have made a sufficiently dashing and debonair exit. But the hedge was high, and I was incapable at the moment of achieving a debonair leap over a footstool.

The man saved the situation. He seemed to possess that magnetic power over his fellows which marks the born leader. Under his command we became an organized army. The common object, the pursuit of the hen, made us friends. In the first minute of the proceedings the Irishman was addressing me as "me dear boy," and the other man, who had introduced himself rapidly as Tom Chase, lieutenant in his Majesty's navy, was shouting directions to me by name. I have never assisted at any ceremony at which formality was so completely dispensed with. The ice was not merely broken, it was shivered into a million fragments.

"Go in and drive her out, Garnet," shouted Mr. Chase. "In my direction, if you can. Look out on the left, Phyllis."

Even in that disturbing moment I could not help noticing his use of the Christian name. It seemed to me sinister. I did not like the idea of dashing young lieutenants in the royal navy calling a girl Phyllis whose eyes had haunted me for just over a week--since, in fact, I had first seen them. Nevertheless, I crawled into the bushes and dislodged the hen. She emerged at the spot where Mr. Chase was waiting with his coat off, and was promptly enveloped in that garment and captured.

"The essence of strategy," observed Mr. Chase approvingly, "is surprise. A devilish neat piece of work."

I thanked him. He deprecated the thanks. He had, he said, only done his duty, as a man is bound to do. He then introduced me to the elderly Irishman, who was, it seemed, a professor--of what I do not know--at Dublin University. By name, Derrick. He informed me that he always spent the summer at Lyme Regis.

"I was surprised to see you at Lyme Regis," I said. "When you got out at Yeovil, I thought I had seen the last of you."

I think I am gifted beyond other men as regards the unfortunate turning of sentences.

"I meant," I added speedily, "I was afraid I had."

"Ah, of course," he said, "you were in our carriage coming down. I was confident I had seen you before. I never forget a face."

"It would be a kindness," said Mr. Chase, "if you would forget Garnet's as now exhibited. You'll excuse the personality, but you seem to have collected a good deal of the professor's property coming through that hedge."

"I was wondering," I said with gratitude. "A wash--if I might?"

"Of course, me boy, of course," said the professor. "Tom, take Mr. Garnet off to your room, and then we'll have some lunch. You'll stay to lunch, Mr. Garnet?"

I thanked him for his kindness and went off with my friend, the lieutenant, to the house. We imprisoned the hen in the stables, to its profound indignation, gave directions for lunch to be served to it, and made our way to Mr. Chase's room.

"So you've met the professor before?" he said, hospitably laying out a change of raiment for me--we were fortunately much of a height and build.

"I have never spoken to him," I said. "We traveled down together in a very full carriage, and I saw him next day on the beach."

"He's a dear old boy, if you rub him the right way."

"Yes?" I said.

"But--I'm telling you this for your good and guidance--he can cut up rough. And when he does, he goes off like a four point seven. I think, if I were you--you don't mind my saying this?--I think, if I were you, I should _not_ mention Mr. Tim Healy at lunch."

I promised that I would try to resist the temptation.

"And if you _could_ manage not to discuss home rule--"

"I will make an effort."

"On any other topic he will be delighted to hear your views. Chatty remarks on bimetallism would meet with his earnest attention. A lecture on what to do with the cold mutton would be welcomed. But not Ireland, if you don't mind. Shall we go down?"

We got to know one another very well at lunch.

"Do you hunt hens," asked Mr. Chase, who was mixing the salad--he was one of those men who seem to do everything a shade better than anyone else, "for amusement or by your doctor's orders?"

"Neither," I said, "and particularly not for amusement. The fact is I have been lured down here by a friend of mine who has started a chicken farm--"

I was interrupted. All three of them burst into laughter. Mr. Chase in his emotion allowed the vinegar to trickle on to the cloth, missing the salad bowl by a clear two inches.

"You don't mean to tell us," he said, "that you really come from the one and only chicken farm?"

I could not deny it.

"Why, you're the man we've all been praying to meet for days past. Haven't we, professor?"

"You're right, Tom," chuckled Mr. Derrick.

"We want to know all about it, Mr. Garnet," said Phyllis Derrick.

"Do you know," continued Mr. Chase, "that you are the talk of the town? Everybody is discussing you. Your methods are quite new and original, aren't they?"

"Probably," I replied. "Ukridge knows nothing about fowls. I know less. He considers it an advantage. He said our minds ought to be unbiased by any previous experience."

"Ukridge!" said the professor. "That was the name old Dawlish, the grocer, said. I never forget a name. He is the gentleman who lectures on the breeding of poultry, is he not? You do not?"

I hastened to disclaim any such feat.

"His lectures are very popular," said Phyllis with a little splutter of mirth.

"He enjoys them," I said.

"Look here, Garnet," said Mr. Chase, "I hope you won't consider all these questions impertinent, but you've no notion of the thrilling interest we all take--at a distance--in your farm. We have been talking of nothing else for a week. I have dreamed of it three nights running. Is Mr. Ukridge doing this as a commercial speculation, or is he an eccentric millionaire?"

"He's not a millionaire. I believe he intends to be, though, before long, with the assistance of the fowls. But I hope you won't look on me as in any way responsible for the arrangements at the farm. I am merely a laborer. The brain work of the business lies in Ukridge's department."

"Tell me, Mr. Garnet," said Phyllis, "do you use an incubator?"

"Oh, yes, we have an incubator."

"I suppose you find it very useful?"

"I'm afraid we use it chiefly for drying our boots when they get wet," I said.

Only that morning Ukridge's spare pair of tennis shoes had permanently spoiled the future of half-a-dozen eggs which were being hatched on the spot where the shoes happened to be placed. Ukridge had been quite annoyed.

"I came down here principally," I said, "in search of golf. I was told there were links, but up to the present my professional duties have monopolized me."

"Golf," said Professor Derrick. "Why, yes. We must have a round or two together. I am very fond of golf. I generally spend the summer down here improving my game."

I said I should be delighted.

* * * * *

There was croquet after lunch--a game at which I am a poor performer. Miss Derrick and I played the professor and Chase. Chase was a little better than myself; the professor, by dint of extreme earnestness and care, managed to play a fair game; and Phyllis was an expert.

"I was reading a book," said she, as we stood together watching the professor shaping at his ball at the other end of the lawn, "by an author of the same surname as you, Mr. Garnet. Is he a relation of yours?"

"I am afraid I am the person, Miss Derrick," I said.

"You wrote the book?"

"A man must live," I said apologetically.

"Then you must have--oh, nothing."

"I could not help it, I'm afraid. But your criticism was very kind."

"Did you know what I was going to say?"

"I guessed."

"It was lucky I liked it," she said with a smile.

"Lucky for me," I said.

"Why?"

"It will encourage me to write another book. So you see what you have to answer for. I hope it will not trouble your conscience."

At the other end of the lawn the professor was still patting the balls about, Chase the while advising him to allow for windage and elevation and other mysterious things.

"I should not have thought," she said, "that an author cared a bit for the opinion of an amateur."

"It all depends."

"On the author?"

"On the amateur."

It was my turn to play at this point. I missed--as usual.

"I didn't like your heroine, Mr. Garnet."

"That was the one crumpled rose leaf. I have been wondering why ever since. I tried to make her nice. Three of the critics liked her."

"Really?"

"And the modern reviewer is an intelligent young man. What is a 'creature,' Miss Derrick?"

"Pamela in your book is a creature," she replied unsatisfactorily, with the slightest tilt of the chin.

"My next heroine shall be a triumph," I said.

She should be a portrait, I resolved, from life.

Shortly after, the game came somehow to an end. I do not understand the intricacies of croquet. But Phyllis did something brilliant and remarkable with the balls, and we adjourned for tea, which had been made ready at the edge of the lawn while we played.

The sun was setting as I left to return to the farm, with the hen stored neatly in a basket in my hand. The air was deliciously cool and full of that strange quiet which follows soothingly on the skirts of a broiling midsummer afternoon. Far away--the sound seemed almost to come from another world--the tinkle of a sheep bell made itself heard, deepening the silence. Alone in a sky of the palest blue there twinkled a small bright star.

I addressed this star.

"She was certainly very nice to me," I said. "Very nice, indeed."

The star said nothing.

"On the other hand," I went on, "I don't like that naval man. He is a good chap, but he overdoes it."

The star winked sympathetically.

"He calls her Phyllis," I said.

"Charawk," said the hen satirically from her basket.

A LITTLE DINNER

VIII

"Edwin comes to-day," said Mrs. Ukridge.

"And the Derricks," said Ukridge, sawing at the bread in his energetic way. "Don't forget the Derricks, Millie."

"No, dear. Mrs. Beale is going to give us a very nice dinner. We talked it over yesterday."

"Who is Edwin?" I asked.

We were finishing breakfast on the second morning after my visit to the Derricks. I had related my adventures to the staff of the farm on my return, laying stress on the merits of our neighbors and their interest in our doings, and the hired retainer had been sent off next morning with a note from Mrs. Ukridge, inviting them to look over the farm and stay to dinner.

"Edwin?" said Ukridge. "Beast of a cat."

"O Stanley!" said Mrs. Ukridge plaintively. "He's not. He's such a dear, Mr. Garnet. A beautiful, pure-bred Persian. He has taken prizes."

"He's always taking something--generally food. That's why he didn't come down with us."

"A great, horrid _beast_ of a dog bit him, Mr. Garnet." Mrs. Ukridge's eyes became round and shining. "And poor Edwin had to go to a cats' hospital."

"And I hope," said Ukridge, "the experience will do him good. Sneaked a dog's bone, Garnet, under his very nose, if you please. Naturally, the dog lodged a protest."

"I'm so afraid that he will be frightened of Bob. He will be very timid, and Bob's so exceedingly boisterous. Isn't he, Mr. Garnet?"

I owned that Bob's manner was not that of a Vere de Vere.

"That's all right," said Ukridge; "Bob won't hurt him, unless he tries to steal his bone. In that case we will have Edwin made into a rug."

"Stanley doesn't like Edwin," said Mrs. Ukridge plaintively.

* * * * *

Edwin arrived early in the afternoon, and was shut into the kitchen. He struck me as a handsome cat, but nervous. He had an excited eye.

The Derricks followed two hours later. Mr. Chase was not of the party.

"Tom had to go to London," explained the professor, "or he would have been delighted to come. It was a disappointment to the boy, for he wanted to see the farm."

"He must come some other time," said Ukridge. "We invite inspection. Look here," he broke off suddenly--we were nearing the fowl run now, Mrs. Ukridge walking in front with Phyllis Derrick--"were you ever at Bristol?"

"Never, sir," said the professor.

"Because I knew just such another fat little buffer there a few years ago. Gay old bird, he was. He--"

"This is the fowl run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in color. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is apt to electrify the stranger.

"You will notice the able way--ha, ha!--in which the wire netting is arranged," I continued feverishly. "Took some doing, that. By Jove! yes. It was hot work. Nice lot of fowls, aren't they? Rather a mixed lot, of course. Ha, ha! That's the dealer's fault, though. We are getting quite a number of eggs now. Hens wouldn't lay at first. Couldn't make them."

I babbled on till from the corner of my eye I saw the flush fade from the professor's face and his back gradually relax its pokerlike attitude. The situation was saved for the moment, but there was no knowing what further excesses Ukridge might indulge in. I managed to draw him aside as we went through the fowl run, and expostulated.

"For goodness' sake, be careful," I whispered. "You've no notion how touchy the professor is."

"But _I_ said nothing," he replied, amazed.

"Hang it, you know, nobody likes to be called a fat little buffer to his face."

"What else could I call him? Nobody minds a little thing like that. We can't be stilted and formal. It's ever so much more friendly to relax and be chummy."

Here we rejoined the others, and I was left with a leaden foreboding of grewsome things in store. I knew what manner of man Ukridge was when he relaxed and became chummy. Friendships of years' standing had failed to survive the test.

For the time being, however, all went well. In his rôle of lecturer he offended no one, and Phyllis and her father behaved admirably. They received the strangest theories without a twitch of the mouth.

"Ah," the professor would say, "now, is that really so? Very interesting, indeed."

Only once, when Ukridge was describing some more than usually original device for the furthering of the interests of his fowls, did a slight spasm disturb Phyllis's look of attentive reverence.

"And you have really had no previous experience in chicken farming?" she said.

"None," said Ukridge, beaming through his glasses, "not an atom. But I can turn my hand to anything, you know. Things seem to come naturally to me, somehow."

"I see," said Phyllis.

It was while matters were progressing with such beautiful smoothness that I observed the square form of the hired retainer approaching us. Somehow--I cannot say why--I had a feeling that he came with bad news. Perhaps it was his air of quiet satisfaction which struck me as ominous.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Ukridge, sir."

Ukridge was in the middle of a very eloquent excursus on the feeding of fowls. The interruption annoyed him.

"Well, Beale," he said, "what is it?"

"That there cat, sir, what came to-day."

"O Beale," cried Mrs. Ukridge in agitation, "_what_ has happened?"

"Having something to say to the missus--"

"What has happened? O Beale, don't say that Edwin has been hurt? Where is he? Oh, _poor_ Edwin!"

"Having something to say to the missus--"

"If Bob has bitten him, I hope he had his nose _well_ scratched," said Mrs. Ukridge vindictively.

"Having something to say to the missus," resumed the hired retainer tranquilly, "I went into the kitchen ten minutes back. The cat was sitting on the mat."

Beale's narrative style closely resembled that of a certain book I had read in my infancy. I wish I could remember its title. It was a well-written book.

"Yes, Beale, yes?" said Mrs. Ukridge. "Oh, do go on!"

"'Halloo, puss,' I says to him, 'and 'ow are you, sir?' 'Be careful,' says the missus. ''E's that timid,' she says, 'you wouldn't believe,' she says. ''E's only just settled down, as you may say,' she says. 'Ho, don't you fret,' I says to her, ''im and me we understands each other. 'Im and me,' I says, 'is old friends. 'E's me dear old pal, Corporal Banks, of the Skrimshankers.' She grinned at that, ma'am, Corporal Banks being a man we'd 'ad many a 'earty laugh at in the old days. 'E was, in a manner of speaking, a joke between us."

"Oh, do--go--on, Beale! What has happened to Edwin?"

The hired retainer proceeded in calm, even tones.

"We was talking there, ma'am, when Bob, which had followed me unknown, trotted in. When the cat ketched sight of 'im sniffing about, there was such a spitting and swearing as you never 'eard, and blowed," said Mr. Beale amusedly, as if the recollection tickled him, "blowed if the old cat didn't give one jump and move in quick time up the chimley, where 'e now remains, paying no 'eed to the missus's attempts to get him down again."

Sensation, as they say in the reports.

"But he'll be cooked," cried Phyllis, open-eyed.

Ukridge uttered a roar of dismay.