Mrs. Ukridge left the room with a sob. Ukridge sprang at the letter.
“If that demon doesn’t stop writing her infernal letters and upsetting Millie, I shall strangle her with my bare hands, regardless of her age and sex.” He turned over the pages of the letter till he came to the passage which had caused the trouble. “Well, upon my Sam! Listen to this, Garny, old horse. ‘You tell me nothing regarding the success of this chicken farm of yours, and I confess that I find your silence ominous. You know my opinion of your husband. He is perfectly helpless in any matter requiring the exercise of a little common-sense and business capability.’ “ He stared at me, amazed. “I like that! ‘Pon my soul, that is really rich! I could have believed almost anything of that blighted female, but I did think she had a reasonable amount of intelligence. Why, you know that it’s just in matters requiring common-sense and business capability that I come out really strong.”
“Of course, old man,” I replied dutifully. “The woman’s a fool.”
“That’s what she calls me two lines further on. No wonder Millie was upset. Why can’t these cats leave people alone?”
“Oh, woman, woman!” I threw in helpfully.
“Always interfering—”
“Rotten!”
“And backbiting—”
“Awful!”
“I shan’t stand it.”
“I shouldn’t!”
“Look here! On the next page she calls me a gaby!”
“It’s time you took a strong line.”
“And in the very next sentence refers to me as a perfect guffin. What’s a guffin, Garny, old boy?”
I considered the point.
“Broadly speaking, I should say, one who guffs.”
“I believe it’s actionable.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
Ukridge rushed to the door.
“Millie!”
He slammed the door, and I heard him dashing upstairs.
I turned to my letters. One was from Lickford, with a Cornish postmark. I glanced through it and laid it aside for a more exhaustive perusal.
The other was in a strange handwriting. I looked at the signature. “Patrick Derrick.” This was queer. What had the professor to say to me?
The next moment my heart seemed to spring to my throat.
“Sir,” the letter began.
A pleasant cheery opening!
Then it got off the mark, so to speak, like lightning. There was no sparring for an opening, no dignified parade of set phrases, leading up to the main point. It was the letter of a man who was almost too furious to write. It gave me the impression that, if he had not written it, he would have been obliged to have taken some very violent form of exercise by way of relief to his soul.
“You will be good enough to look on our acquaintance as closed. I have no wish to associate with persons of your stamp. If we should happen to meet, you will be good enough to treat me as a total stranger, as I shall treat you. And, if I may be allowed to give you a word of advice, I should recommend you in future, when you wish to exercise your humour, to do so in some less practical manner than by bribing boatmen to upset your—(/friends/ crossed out thickly, and /acquaintances/ substituted.) If you require further enlightenment in this matter, the enclosed letter may be of service to you.”
With which he remained mine faithfully, Patrick Derrick.
The enclosed letter was from one Jane Muspratt. It was bright and interesting.
DEAR SIR,
My Harry, Mr. Hawk, sas to me how it was him upsetting the boat and you, not because he is not steady in a boat which he is no man more so in Combe Regis, but because one of the gentlemen what keeps chikkens up the hill, the little one, Mr. Garnick his name is, says to him, Hawk, I’ll give you a sovrin to upset Mr. Derick in your boat, and my Harry being esily led was took in and did, but he’s sory now and wishes he hadn’t, and he sas he’ll niver do a prackticle joke again for anyone even for a banknote.
Yours obedly,
Oh, woman, woman!
At the bottom of everything! History is full of tragedies caused by the lethal sex. Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman. Who let Samson in so atrociously? Woman again. Why did Bill Bailey leave home? Once more, because of a woman. And here was I, Jerry Garnet, harmless, well-meaning writer of minor novels, going through the same old mill.
I cursed Jane Muspratt. What chance had I with Phyllis now? Could I hope to win over the professor again? I cursed Jane Muspratt for the second time.
My thoughts wandered to Mr. Harry Hawk. The villain! The scoundrel! What business had he to betray me? … Well, I could settle with him. The man who lays a hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is justly disliked by Society; so the woman Muspratt, culpable as she was, was safe from me. But what of the man Hawk? There no such considerations swayed me. I would interview the man Hawk. I would give him the most hectic ten minutes of his career. I would say things to him the recollection of which would make him start up shrieking in his bed in the small hours of the night. I would arise, and be a man, and slay him; take him grossly, full of bread, with all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May, at gaming, swearing, or about some act that had no relish of salvation in it.
The Demon!
My life—ruined. My future—grey and black. My heart—shattered. And why? Because of the scoundrel, Hawk.
Phyllis would meet me in the village, on the Cob, on the links, and pass by as if I were the Invisible Man. And why? Because of the reptile, Hawk. The worm, Hawk. The dastard and varlet, Hawk.
I crammed my hat on, and hurried out of the house towards the village.
Chapter 16.
A Chance Meeting
I roamed the place in search of the varlet for the space of half-an– hour, and, after having drawn all his familiar haunts, found him at length leaning over the sea-wall near the church, gazing thoughtfully into the waters below.
I confronted him.
“Well,” I said, “you’re a beauty, aren’t you?”
He eyed me owlishly. Even at this early hour, I was grieved to see, he showed signs of having looked on the bitter while it was brown. His eyes were filmy, and his manner aggressively solemn.
“Beauty?” he echoed.
“What have you got to say for yourself?”
“Say f’self.”
It was plain that he was engaged in pulling his faculties together by some laborious process known only to himself. At present my words conveyed no meaning to him. He was trying to identify me. He had seen me before somewhere, he was certain, but he could not say where, or who I was.
“I want to know,” I said, “what induced you to be such an abject idiot as to let our arrangement get known?”
I spoke quietly. I was not going to waste the choicer flowers of speech on a man who was incapable of understanding them. Later on, when he had awakened to a sense of his position, I would begin really to talk to him.
He continued to stare at me. Then a sudden flash of intelligence lit up his features.
“Mr. Garnick,” he said at last.
“From ch– chicken farm,” he continued, with the triumphant air of a cross-examining King’s counsel who has at last got on the track.
“Yes,” I said.
“Up top the hill,” he proceeded, clinchingly. He stretched out a huge hand.
“How you?” he inquired with a friendly grin.
“I want to know,” I said distinctly, “what you’ve got to say for yourself after letting our affair with the professor become public property?”
He paused awhile in thought.
“Dear sir,” he said at last, as if he were dictating a letter, “dear sir, I owe you—ex—exp—”
He waved his hand, as who should say, “It’s a stiff job, but I’m going to do it.”
“Explashion,” he said.
“You do,” said I grimly. “I should like to hear it.”