Love Among the Chickens (New York: 1909)/Chapter 7
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.