Love Among the Chickens (New York: 1909)/Chapter 14
XIV
THE fact is," said Ukridge, "if things go on as they are now, old horse, we shall be in the cart. This business wants bucking up. We don't seem to be making headway. What we want is time. If only these scoundrels of tradesmen would leave us alone for a spell, we might get things going properly. But we're hampered and worried and rattled all the time. Aren't we, Millie?"
"Yes, dear."
"You don't let me see the financial side of the thing," I said, "except at intervals. I didn't know we were in such a bad way. The fowls look fit enough, and Edwin hasn't had one for a week."
"Edwin knows as well as possible when he's done wrong, Mr. Garnet," said Mrs. Ukridge. "He was so sorry after he had killed those other two."
"Yes," said Ukridge. "I saw to that."
"As far as I can see," I continued, "we're going strong. Chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a shade monotonous, but look at the business we're doing. We sold a whole heap of eggs last week."
"It's not enough, Garny, my boy. We sell a dozen eggs where we ought to be selling a hundred, carting them off in trucks for the London market. Harrod's and Whiteley's and the rest of them are beginning to get on their hind legs, and talk. That's what they're doing. You see, Marmaduke, there's no denying it—we did touch them for a lot of things on account, and they agreed to take it out in eggs. They seem to be getting tired of waiting."
"Their last letter was quite pathetic," said Mrs. Ukridge.
I had a vision of an eggless London. I seemed to see homes rendered desolate and lives embittered by the slump, and millionaires bidding against one another for the few specimens Ukridge had actually managed to dispatch to Brompton and Bayswater.
"I told them in my last letter but three," continued Ukridge complainingly, "that I proposed to let them have the eggs on the Times installment system, and they said I was frivolous. They said that to send thirteen eggs as payment for goods supplied to the value of twenty-five pounds one shilling and sixpence was mere trifling. Trifling! when those thirteen eggs were absolutely all we had over that week after Mrs. Beale had taken what she wanted for the kitchen. I tell you what it is, old boy, that woman literally eats eggs."
"The habit is not confined to her," I said.
"What I mean to say is, she seems to bathe in them."
An impressive picture to one who knew Mrs. Beale.
"She says she needs so many for puddings, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge. "I spoke to her about it yesterday. And, of course, we often have omelets."
"She can't make omelets without breakings eggs," I urged.
"She can't make them without breaking us," said Ukridge. "One or two more omelets and we're done for. Another thing," he continued, "that incubator thing won't work. I don't know what's wrong with it."
"Perhaps it's your dodge of letting down the temperature."
I had touched upon a tender point.
"My dear fellow," he said earnestly, "there's nothing the matter with my figures. It's a mathematical certainty. What's the good of mathematics if not to help you work out that sort of thing? No, there's something wrong with the machine itself, and I shall probably make a complaint to the people I got it from. Where did we get the incubator, Millie?"
"Harrod's, I think, dear. Yes, it was Harrod's. It came down with the first lot of things from there."
"Then," said Ukridge, banging the table with his fist, while his glasses flashed triumph, "we've got 'em! Write and answer that letter of theirs to-night, Millie. Sit on them."
"Yes, dear."
"And tell 'em that we'd have sent 'em their confounded eggs weeks ago if only their rotten, twopenny-ha'penny incubator had worked with any approach to decency."
"Or words to that effect," I suggested.
"Add in a postscript that I consider that the manufacturer of the thing ought to rent a padded cell at Earlswood, and that they are scoundrels for palming off a groggy machine of that sort on me. I'll teach them!"
"Yes, dear."
"The ceremony of opening the morning's letters at Harrod's ought to be full of interest and excitement to-morrow," I said.
This dashing counter stroke served to relieve Ukridge's pessimistic mood. He seldom looked on the dark side of things for long at a time. He began now to speak hopefully of the future. He planned out ingenious, if somewhat impracticable, improvements in the farm. Our fowls were to multiply so rapidly and consistently that within a short space of time Dorsetshire would be paved with them. Our eggs were to increase in size till they broke records, and got three-line notices in the "Items of Interest" column of the Daily Mail. Briefly, each hen was to become a happy combination of rabbit and ostrich.
"There is certainly a good time coming," I said. "May it be soon. Meanwhile, there remain the local tradesmen. What of them?"
Ukridge relapsed once more into pessimism.
"They are the worst of the lot," he said. "I don't mind about the London men so much. They only write. And a letter or two hurts nobody. But when it comes to butchers and bakers and grocers and fishmongers and fruiterers, and what not, coming up to one's house and dunning one in one's own garden—well, it's a little hard, what?"
It may be wondered why, before things came to such a crisis, I had not placed my balance at the bank at the disposal of the senior partner for use on behalf of the firm. The fact was that my balance was at the moment small. I have not yet in the course of this narrative gone into my pecuniary position, but I may state here that it was an inconvenient one. It was big with possibilities, but of ready cash there was but a meager supply. My parents had been poor, but I had a wealthy uncle. Uncles are notoriously careless of the comfort of their nephews. Mine was no exception. He had views. He was a great believer in matrimony, as, having married three wives—not, I should add, simultaneously—he had every right to be. He was also of opinion that the less money the young bachelor possessed, the better. The consequence was that he announced his intention of giving me a handsome allowance from the day that I married, but not an instant before. Till that glad day I would have to shift for myself. And I am bound to admit that—for an uncle—it was a remarkably sensible idea. I am also of opinion that it is greatly to my credit, and a proof of my pure and unmercenary nature, that I did not instantly put myself up to be raffled for, or rush out into the streets and propose marriage to the first lady I met. I was making enough with my pen to support myself, and, be it ever so humble, there is something pleasant in a bachelor existence, or so I had thought until very recently.
I had thus no great stake in Ukridge's chicken farm. I had contributed a modest five pounds to the preliminary expenses, and another five pounds after the roop incident. But further I could not go with safety. When his income is dependent on the whims of editors and publishers, the prudent man keeps something up his sleeve against a sudden slump in his particular wares. I did not wish to have to make a hurried choice between matrimony and the workhouse.
Having exhausted the subject of finance—or, rather, when I began to feel that it was exhausting me—I took my clubs and strolled up the hill to the links to play off a match with a sportsman from the village. I had entered some days previously a competition for a trophy (I quote the printed notice) presented by a local supporter of the game, in which up to the present I was getting on nicely. I had survived two rounds, and expected to beat my present opponent, which would bring me into the semi-final. Unless I had bad luck, I felt that I ought to get into the final, and win it. As far as I could gather from watching the play of my rivals, the professor was the best of them, and I was convinced that I should have no difficulty with him. But he had the most extraordinary luck at golf, though he never admitted it. He also exercised quite an uncanny influence on his opponent. I have seen men put completely off their stroke by his good fortune.
I disposed of my man without difficulty. We parted a little coldly. He decapitated his brassy on the occasion of his striking Dorsetshire instead of his ball, and he was slow in recovering from the complex emotions which such an episode induces.
In the clubhouse I met the professor, whose demeanor was a welcome contrast to that of my late antagonist. The professor had just routed his opponent, and so won through to the semi-final. He was warm but jubilant.
I congratulated him, and left the place.
Phyllis was waiting outside. She often went round the course with him.
"Good afternoon," I said. "Have you been round with the professor?"
"Yes. We must have been in front of you. Father won his match."
"So he was telling me. I was very glad to hear it."
"Did you win, Mr. Garnet?"
"Yes. Pretty easily. My opponent had bad luck all through. Bunkers seemed to have a magnetic attraction for him."
"So you and father are both in the semi-final? I hope you will play very badly."
"Thank you, Miss Derrick," I said.
"Yes, it does sound rude, doesn't it? But father has set his heart on winning this year. Do you know that he has played in the final round two years running now?"
"Really?"
"Both times he was beaten by the same man."
"Who was that? Mr. Derrick plays a much better game than anybody I have seen on these links."
"It was nobody who is here now. It was a Colonel Jervis. He has not come to Lyme Regis this year. That is why father is hopeful."
"Logically," I said, "he ought to be certain to win."
"Yes; but, you see, you were not playing last year, Mr. Garnet."
"Oh, the professor can make rings round me," I said.
"What did you go round in to-day?"
"We were playing match play, and only did the first dozen holes; but my average round is somewhere in the late eighties."
"The best father has ever done is ninety, and that was only once. So you see, Mr. Garnet, there's going to be another tragedy this year."
"You make me feel a perfect brute. But it's more than likely, you must remember, that I shall fail miserably if I ever do play your father in the final. There are days when I play golf very badly."
Phyllis smiled. "Do you really have your off days?"
"Nearly always. There are days when I slice with my driver as if it were a bread knife."
"Really?"
"And when I couldn't putt to hit a haystack."
"Then I hope it will be on one of those days that you play father."
"I hope so, too," I said.
"You hope so?"
"Yes."
"But don't you want to win?"
"I should prefer to please you."
Mr. Lewis Waller could not have said it better.
"Really, how very unselfish of you, Mr. Garnet," she replied with a laugh. "I had no idea that such chivalry existed. I thought a golfer would sacrifice anything to win a game."
"Most things."
"And trample on the feelings of anybody."
"Not everybody," I said.
At this point the professor joined us.