I summoned Beale after dinner and held a council of war. It was no time for airy persiflage. I said, “Beale, we’re in the cart.”
“Sir?”
“Mr. Ukridge going away like this has left me in a most unpleasant position. I would like to talk it over with you. I daresay you know that we–that Mr. Ukridge owes a considerable amount of money round about here to tradesmen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, when they find out that he has–er—-”
“Shot the moon, sir,” suggested the Hired Retainer helpfully.
“Gone up to town,” I amended. “When they find out that he has gone up to town, they are likely to come bothering us a good deal.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I fancy that we shall have them all round here to-morrow. News of this sort always spreads quickly. The point is, then, what are we to do?”
He propounded no scheme, but stood in an easy attitude of attention, waiting for me to continue.
I continued.
“Let’s see exactly how we stand,” I said. “My point is that I particularly wish to go on living down here for at least another fortnight. Of course, my position is simple. I am Mr. Ukridge’s guest. I shall go on living as I have been doing up to the present. He asked me down here to help him look after the fowls, so I shall go on looking after them. Complications set in when we come to consider you and Mrs. Beale. I suppose you won’t care to stop on after this?”
The Hired Retainer scratched his chin and glanced out of the window. The moon was up, and the garden looked cool and mysterious in the dim light.
“It’s a pretty place, Mr. Garnet, sir,” he said.
“It is,” I said, “but about other considerations? There’s the matter of wages. Are yours in arrears?”
“Yes, sir. A month.”
“And Mrs. Beale’s the same, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir. A month.”
“H’m. Well, it seems to me, Beale, you can’t lose anything by stopping on.”
“I can’t be paid any less than I have bin, sir,” he agreed.
“Exactly. And, as you say, it’s a pretty place. You might just as well stop on, and help me in the fowl-run. What do you think?”
“Very well, sir.”
“And Mrs. Beale will do the same?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s excellent. You’re a hero, Beale. I shan’t forget you. There’s a cheque coming to me from a magazine in another week for a short story. When it arrives, I’ll look into that matter of back wages. Tell Mrs. Beale I’m much obliged to her, will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Having concluded that delicate business, I lit my pipe, and strolled out into the garden with Bob. I cursed Ukridge as I walked. It was abominable of him to desert me in this way. Even if I had not been his friend, it would have been bad. The fact that we had known each other for years made it doubly discreditable. He might at least have warned me, and given me the option of leaving the sinking ship with him.
But, I reflected, I ought not to be surprised. His whole career, as long as I had known him, had been dotted with little eccentricities of a type which an unfeeling world generally stigmatises as shady. They were small things, it was true; but they ought to have warned me. We are most of us wise after the event. When the wind has blown, we can generally discover a multitude of straws which should have shown us which way it was blowing.
Once, I remembered, in our schoolmaster days, when guineas, though regular, were few, he had had occasion to increase his wardrobe. If I recollect rightly, he thought he had a chance of a good position in the tutoring line, and only needed good clothes to make it his. He took four pounds of his salary in advance,–he was in the habit of doing this: he never had any salary left by the end of term, it having vanished in advance loans beforehand. With this he was to buy two suits, a hat, new boots, and collars. When it came to making the purchases, he found, what he had overlooked previously in his optimistic way, that four pounds did not go very far. At the time, I remember, I thought his method of grappling with the situation humorous. He bought a hat for three-and-sixpence, and got the suits and the boots on the instalment system, paying a small sum in advance, as earnest of more to come. He then pawned one suit to pay for the first few instalments, and finally departed, to be known no more. His address he had given–with a false name–at an empty house, and when the tailor arrived with his minions of the law, all he found was an annoyed caretaker, and a pile of letters written by himself, containing his bill in its various stages of evolution.