Chapter 3

But this time an unforeseen interruption prevented the maneuver from being the success it had been before. Garnet had turned the handle, and was just about to pull the door open, while Ukridge, looking like some modern and dilapidated version of Discobolus, stood beside him with his jug poised, when a hoarse voice spoke from the window.

"Stand still!" said the voice, "or I'll corpse you."

Garnet dropped the handle, Ukridge dropped the jug, Mrs. Ukridge screamed.

At the window, with a double-barreled gun in his hands, stood a short, square, red-headed man. The muzzle of his gun, which rested on the sill, was pointing in a straight line at the third button of Garnet's waistcoat. With a distant recollection of the Deadwood Dick literature of his childhood, Garnet flung both hands above his head.

Ukridge emitted a roar like that of a hungry lion.

"Beale!" he shouted. "You scoundrelly, unprincipled blackguard! What are you doing with that gun? Why were you out? What have you been doing? Why did you shout like that? Look what you've made me do."

He pointed to the floor. Broken crockery, spreading water, his own shoes--exceedingly old tennis shoes--well soaked, attested the fact that damage had been done.

"Lor'! Mr. Ukridge, sir, is that you?" said the red-headed man calmly. "I thought you was burglars."

A sharp bark from the other side of the kitchen door, followed by a renewal of the scratching, drew Mr. Beale's attention to his faithful hound.

"That's Bob," he said.

"I don't know what you call the brute," said Ukridge. "Come in and tie him up."

"'Ow am I to get in, Mr. Ukridge, sir?"

"Come in through the window, and mind what you're doing with that gun. After you've finished with the dog, I should like a brief chat with you, if you can spare the time and have no other engagements."

Mr. Beale, having carefully deposited his gun against the wall of the kitchen, and dropped a pair of very limp rabbits with a thud to the floor, proceeded to climb through the window. This operation performed, he stood on one side while the besieged garrison passed out by the same road.

"You will find me in the garden, Beale," said Ukridge. "I have one or two little things to say to you."

Mr. Beale grinned affably.

The cool air of the garden was grateful after the warmth of the kitchen. It was a pretty garden, or would have been, if it had not been so neglected. Garnet seemed to see himself sitting in a deck chair on the lawn, looking through the leaves of the trees at the harbor below. It was a spot, he felt, in which it would be an easy and pleasant task to shape the plot of his novel. He was glad he had come. About now, outside his lodgings in town, a particularly lethal barrel organ would be striking up the latest revolting air with which the halls had inflicted London.

"Here you are, Beale," said Ukridge, as the red-headed man approached. "Now, then, what have you to say?"

The hired man looked thoughtful for a while, then observed that it was a fine evening. Garnet felt that he was begging the question. He was a strong, healthy man, and should have scorned to beg.

"Fine evening?" shouted Ukridge. "What--on--earth has that got to do with it? I want to know why you and Mrs. Beale were both out when we arrived?"

"The missus went to Axminster, Mr. Ukridge, sir."

"She had no right to go to Axminster. I don't pay her large sums to go to Axminster. You knew I was coming this evening."

"No, Mr. Ukridge, sir."

"You didn't!"

"No, Mr. Ukridge, sir."

"Beale," said Ukridge with studied calm, "one of us two is a fool."

"I noticed that, sir."

"Let us sift this matter to the bottom. You got my letter?"

"No, Mr. Ukridge, sir."

"My letter saying that I should arrive to-night. You did not get it?"

"No, sir."

"Now look here, Beale," said Ukridge, "I am certain that that letter was posted. I remember placing it in my pocket for that purpose. It is not there now. See. These are all the contents of my--well, I'm hanged!"

He stood looking at the envelope he had produced from his breast pocket. Mr. Beale coughed.

"Beale," said Ukridge, "you--er--there seems to have been a mistake."

"Yes, sir."

"You are not so much to blame as I thought."

"No, sir."

"Anyhow," said Ukridge, in inspired tones, "I'll go and slay that infernal dog. Where's your gun, Beale?"

But better counsels prevailed, and the proceedings closed with a cold but pleasant little dinner, at which the spared mongrel came out unexpectedly strong with brainy and diverting tricks.

BUCKLING TO

V

Sunshine, streaming into his bedroom through the open window, woke Garnet next day as distant clocks were striking eight. It was a lovely morning, cool and fresh. The grass of the lawn, wet with dew, sparkled in the sun. A thrush, who knew all about early birds and their perquisites, was filling in the time before the arrival of the worm with a song or two as he sat in the bushes. In the ivy a colony of sparrows were opening the day well with a little brisk fighting. On the gravel in front of the house lay the mongrel Bob, blinking lazily.

The gleam of the sea through the trees turned Garnet's thoughts to bathing. He dressed quickly and went out. Bob rose to meet him, waving an absurdly long tail. The hatchet was definitely buried now. That little matter of the jug of water was forgotten.

"Well, Bob," said Garnet, "coming down to watch me bathe?"

Bob uttered a bark of approval and ran before him to the gate.

A walk of five minutes brought Garnet to the sleepy little town. He passed through the narrow street, and turned on to the beach, walking in the direction of the cob, that combination of pier and breakwater which the misadventures of one of Jane Austen's young misses have made known to the outside public.

The tide was high, and Garnet, leaving his clothes to the care of Bob, dived into twelve feet of clear, cold water. As he swam he compared it with the morning tub of town, and felt that he had done well to come with Ukridge to this pleasant spot. But he could not rely on unbroken calm during the whole of his visit. He did not know a great deal about chicken farming, but he was certain that Ukridge knew less. There would be some strenuous moments before that farm became a profitable commercial speculation. At the thought of Ukridge toiling on a hot afternoon to manage an undisciplined mob of fowls, and becoming more and more heated and voluble in the struggle, he laughed and promptly swallowed a generous mouthful of salt water. There are few things which depress the swimmer more than an involuntary draught of water. Garnet turned and swam back to Bob and the clothes.

As he strolled back along the beach he came upon a small, elderly gentleman toweling his head in a vigorous manner. Hearing Garnet's footsteps, he suspended this operation for a moment and peered out at him from beneath a turban of towel.

It was the elderly Irishman of the journey, the father of the blue-eyed Phyllis. Then they had come on to Lyme Regis after all. Garnet stopped, with some idea of going back and speaking to him; but realizing that they were perfect strangers, he postponed this action and followed Bob up the hill. In a small place like Lyme Regis it would surely not be difficult to find somebody who would introduce them. He cursed the custom which made such a thing necessary. In a properly constituted country everybody would know everybody else without fuss or trouble.

He found Ukridge, in his shirt sleeves and minus a collar, assailing a large ham. Mrs. Ukridge, looking younger and more childlike than ever in brown holland, smiled at him over the teapot.

"Here he is!" shouted Ukridge, catching sight of him. "Where have you been, old horse? I went to your room, but you weren't there. Bathing? Hope it's made you feel fit for work, because we've got to buckle to this morning."

"The fowls have arrived, Mr. Garnet," said Mrs. Ukridge, opening her eyes till she looked like an astonished kitten. "_Such_ a lot of them! They're making such a noise!"

And to support her statement there floated through the window a cackling, which, for volume and variety of key, beat anything that Garnet had ever heard. Judging from the noise, it seemed as if England had been drained of fowls and the entire tribe of them dumped into the yard of the Ukridge's farm.

"There seems to have been no stint," he said, sitting down. "Did you order a million or only nine hundred thousand?"

"Good many, aren't there?" said Ukridge complacently. "But that's what we want. No good starting on a small scale. The more you have, the bigger the profits."

"What sort have you got mostly?"

"Oh, all sorts. Bless you, people don't mind what breed a fowl is, so long as it _is_ a fowl. These dealer chaps were so infernally particular. 'Any Dorkings?' they said. 'All right,' I said, 'bring on your Dorkings.' 'Or perhaps you want a few Minorcas?' 'Very well,' I said, 'show Minorcas.' They were going on--they'd have gone on for hours, but I stopped 'em. 'Look here, Maximilian,' I said to the manager Johnny--decent old chap, with the manners of a marquis--'look here,' I said, 'life is short, and we're neither of us as young as we used to be. Don't let us waste the golden hours playing guessing games. I want fowls. You sell fowls. So give me some of all sorts.' And he has, by Jove! There must be one of every breed ever invented."

"Where are you going to put them?"

"That spot we chose by the paddock. That's the place. Plenty of mud for them to scratch about in, and they can go into the field when they want to, and pick up worms, or whatever they feed on. We must rig them up some sort of a shanty, I suppose, this morning. We'll go and tell 'em to send up some wire netting and stuff from the town."

"Then we shall want hencoops. We shall have to make those."

"Of course. So we shall. Millie, didn't I tell you that old Garnet was the man to think of things! I forgot the coops. We can't buy some, I suppose? On tick?"

"Cheaper to make them. Suppose we get a lot of boxes. Soap boxes are as good as any. It won't take long to knock up a few coops."

Ukridge thumped the table with enthusiasm.

"Garny, old horse, you're a marvel. You think of everything. We'll buckle to right away. What a noise those fowls are making. I suppose they don't feel at home in the yard. Wait till they see the A1 residential mansions we're going to put up for them. Finished breakfast? Then let's go out. Come along, Millie."

The red-headed Beale, discovered leaning in an attitude of thought on the yard gate, and observing the feathered mob below, was roused from his reflections and dispatched to the town for the wire and soap boxes. Ukridge, taking his place at the gate, gazed at the fowls with the affectionate eye of a proprietor.

"Well, they have certainly taken you at your word," said Garnet, "as far as variety is concerned."

The man with the manners of a marquis seemed to have been at great pains to send a really representative supply of fowls. There were blue ones, black ones, white, gray, yellow, brown, big, little, Dorkings, Minorcas, Cochin Chinas, Bantams, Orpingtons, Wyandottes, and a host more. It was an imposing spectacle.

The hired man returned toward the end of the morning, preceded by a cart containing the necessary wire and boxes, and Ukridge, whose enthusiasm brooked no delay, started immediately the task of fashioning the coops, while Garnet, assisted by Beale, draped the wire netting about the chosen spot next to the paddock. There were little unpleasantnesses--once a roar of anguish told that Ukridge's hammer had found the wrong billet, and on another occasion Garnet's flannel trousers suffered on the wire--but the work proceeded steadily. By the middle of the afternoon things were in a sufficiently advanced state to suggest to Ukridge the advisability of a halt for refreshments.

"That's the way to do it," said he. "At this rate we shall have the place in A1 condition before bedtime. What do you think of those for coops, Beale?"

The hired man examined them gravely.

"I've seen worse, sir."

He continued his examination.

"But not many," he added. Beale's passion for truth had made him unpopular in three regiments.

"They aren't so bad," said Garnet, "but I'm glad I'm not a fowl."

"So you ought to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves."

In spite of earnest labor, the housing arrangements of the fowls were still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the evening's work are preserved in a letter which Garnet wrote that night to his friend Lickford.

* * * * *

"... Have you ever played a game called 'Pigs in Clover'? We have just finished a bout of it (with hens instead of marbles) which has lasted for an hour and a half. We are all dead tired except the hired man, who seems to be made of India rubber. He has just gone for a stroll to the beach. Wants some exercise, I suppose. Personally, I feel as if I should never move again. I have run faster and farther than I have done since I was at school. You have no conception of the difficulty of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having no proper place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them inside soap boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just occurred to me that they ought to have had perches to roost on. It didn't strike me before. I shall not mention it to Ukridge, or that indomitable man will start making some, and drag me into it, too. After all, a hen can rough it for one night, and if I did a stroke more work I should collapse. My idea was to do the thing on the slow but sure principle. That is to say, take each bird singly and carry it to bed. It would have taken some time, but there would have been no confusion. But you can imagine that that sort of thing would not appeal to Ukridge. There is a touch of the Napoleon about him. He likes his maneuvers to be daring and on a large scale. He said: 'Open the yard gate and let the fowls come out into the open, then sail in and drive them in a mass through the back door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but there was one fatal flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens scattering. We opened the gate, and out they all came like an audience coming out of a theater. Then we closed in on them to bring off the big drive. For about three seconds it looked as if we might do it. Then Bob, the hired man's dog, an animal who likes to be in whatever's going on, rushed out of the house into the middle of them, barking. There was a perfect stampede, and Heaven only knows where some of those fowls are now. There was one in particular, a large yellow bird, which, I should imagine, is nearing London by this time. The last I saw of it, it was navigating at the rate of knots, so to speak, in that direction, with Bob after it barking his hardest. Presently Bob came back, panting, having evidently given up the job. We, in the meantime, were chasing the rest of the birds all over the garden. The thing had now resolved itself into the course of action I had suggested originally, except that instead of collecting them quietly and at our leisure, we had to run miles for each one we captured. After a time we introduced some sort of system into it. Mrs. Ukridge (fancy him married; did you know?) stood at the door. We chased the hens and brought them in. Then as we put each through into the basement, she shut the door on it. We also arranged Ukridge's soap-box coops in a row, and when we caught a fowl we put it into the coop and stuck a board in front of it. By these strenuous means we gathered in about two thirds of the lot. The rest are all over England. A few may be in Dorsetshire, but I should not like to bet on it.

"So you see things are being managed on the up-to-date chicken farm on good, sound, Ukridge principles. This is only the beginning. I look with confidence for further exciting events. I believe, if Ukridge kept white mice, he would manage to knock some feverish excitement out of it. He is at present lying on the sofa, smoking one of his infernal brand of cigars. From the basement I can hear faintly the murmur of innumerable fowls. We are a happy family; we are, we _are_, we ARE!

"P. S. Have you ever caught a fowl and carried it to roost? You take it under the wings, and the feel of it sets one's teeth on edge. It is a grisly experience. All the time you are carrying it, it makes faint protesting noises and struggles feebly to escape.

"P. P. S. You know the opinion of Pythagoras respecting fowls. That 'the soul of our granddam might haply inhabit a bird.' I hope that yellow hen which Bob chased into the purple night is not the grandmamma of any friend of mine."

A REUNION

VI

The day was Thursday, the date July the twenty-second. We had been chicken farmers for a whole week, and things were beginning to settle down to a certain extent. The coops were finished. They were not masterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in deep thought, as who should say: "Now what in the world have we struck here?" But they were coops, within the meaning of the act, and we induced the hens to become tenants. The hardest work had been the fixing of the wire netting. This was the department of the hired man and myself. Beale and I worked ourselves into a fever in the sun, while the senior partner of the firm sat in the house, writing out plans and ideas and scribbling down his accounts (which must have been complicated) on gilt-edged correspondence cards. From time to time he abused 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 a vast supply of necessary and unnecessary articles--all on credit. Some he got from the village, others from neighboring towns. He has a way with him, like Father O'Flynn, and the tradesmen behaved beautifully. The things began to pour in from all sides--suits, groceries (of the very best), a piano, a gramophone, and pictures of all kinds. He was not one of those men who want but little here below. He wanted a great deal, and of a superior quality. If a tradesman suggested that a small check on account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid fellows of the village did, he became pathetic.

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

This sounded well, and suggested the disbursement of huge sums for rent. The fact that the house had been lent him rent free was kept with some care in the background. Having weakened the man with pathos, he would strike a sterner note. "A little more of this," he would go on, "and I'll close my account. As it is, I think I will remove my patronage to a firm which will treat me civilly. Why, sir, I've never heard anything like it in all my experience." Upon which the man would knuckle under and go away forgiven, with a large order for more goods.

Once, when Ukridge and I were alone, I ventured to expostulate. High finance was always beyond my mental grasp. "Pay?" he exclaimed, "of course we shall pay. You don't seem to realize the possibilities of this business. Garny, my boy, we are on to a big thing. The money isn't coming in yet. We must give it time. But soon we shall be turning over hundreds every week. I am in touch with Whiteley's and Harrod's and all the big places. Perfectly simple business matter. Here I am, I said, with a large chicken farm with all the modern improvements. You want eggs, I said. I supply them. I will let you have 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, but we mustn't sneer at small prices at first."

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

But this speech was the outcome of a rare moment of pessimism. In his brighter 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 the neighborhood. The interest of the natives was aroused at first by the fact that nearly all of them received informal visits from our fowls, which had strayed. Small boys would arrive in platoons, each bearing his 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 coom over and fetch 'em?"

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

It was now, as I have said, Thursday, the twenty-second of July, a memorable date to me. A glorious, sunny morning, of the kind which Nature provides occasionally, in an ebullition of benevolence. It is at times such as this that we dream our dreams and compose our masterpieces.

And a masterpiece I was, indeed, making. The new novel was growing nobly. Striking scenes and freshets of scintillating dialogue rushed through my mind. I had neglected my writing for the past week in favor of the tending of fowls, but I was making up for lost time now. Another uninterrupted quarter of an hour, and I firmly believe I should have completed the framework of a novel that would have placed me with the great, in that select band whose members have no Christian names. 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, searching conversation between my heroine and my hero, and was about to proceed, flushed with great thoughts, to further triumphs, when a distant shout brought me to earth.

"Stop her! Catch her! Garnet!"

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

"After her, Garny, old horse!" he repeated. "A valuable bird. Must not be lost."

When not in a catalepsy of literary composition, I am essentially the man of action. I laid aside my novel for future reference, and, after a fruitless lunge at the hen as it passed, joined Bob in the chase.