LITMIR.BIZ

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quiet enough till something happens.’

      “ ‘If I’d been two seconds longer,’ I said, ‘I believe he’d have done it.’

      “ ‘It’s a taking house,’ said the station-master; ‘not too big and not too little. It’s the sort of house people seem to be looking for.’

      “ ‘I don’t envy,’ I said, ‘the next person that finds it.’

      “ ‘He settled himself down here,’ said the station-master, ‘about ten years ago. Since then, if one person has offered to take the house off his hands, I suppose a thousand have. At first he would laugh at them good-temperedly—explain to them that his idea was to live there himself, in peace and quietness, till he died. Two out of every three of them would express their willingness to wait for that, and suggest some arrangement by which they might enter into possession, say, a week after the funeral. The last few months it has been worse than ever. I reckon you’re about the eighth that has been up there this week, and to-day only Thursday. There’s something to be said, you know, for the old man.’ ”

      “And did he,” asked Dick—“did he shoot the next party that came along?”

      “Don’t be so silly, Dick,” said Robin; “it’s a story. Tell us another, Pa.”

      “I don’t know what you mean, Robina, by a story,” I said. “If you mean to imply—”

      Robina said she didn’t; but I know quite well she did. Because I am an author, and have to tell stories for my living, people think I don’t know any truth. It is vexing enough to be doubted when one is exaggerating; to have sneers flung at one by one’s own kith and kin when one is struggling to confine oneself to bald, bare narrative—well, where is the inducement to be truthful? There are times when I almost say to myself that I will never tell the truth again.

      “As it happens,” I said, “the story is true, in many places. I pass over your indifference to the risk I ran; though a nice girl at the point where the gun was mentioned would have expressed alarm. Anyhow, at the end you might have said something more sympathetic than merely, ‘Tell us another.’ He did not shoot the next party that arrived, for the reason that the very next day his wife, alarmed at what had happened, went up to London and consulted an expert—none too soon, as it turned out. The poor old fellow died six months later in a private lunatic asylum; I had it from the station-master on passing through the junction again this spring. The house fell into the possession of his nephew, who is living in it now. He is a youngish man with a large family, and people have learnt that the place is not for sale. It seems to me rather a sad story. The Indian sun, as the station-master thinks, may have started the trouble; but the end was undoubtedly hastened by the annoyance to which the unfortunate gentleman had been subjected; and I myself might have been shot. The only thing that comforts me is thinking of that fool’s black eye—the fool that sent me there.”

      “And none of the other houses,” suggested Dick, “were any good at all?”

      “There were drawbacks, Dick,” I explained. “There was a house in Essex; it was one of the first your mother and I inspected. I nearly shed tears of joy when I read the advertisement. It had once been a priory. Queen Elizabeth had slept there on her way to Greenwich. A photograph of the house accompanied the advertisement. I should not have believed the thing had it been a picture. It was under twelve miles from Charing Cross. The owner, it was stated, was open to offers.”

      “All humbug, I suppose,” suggested Dick.

      “The advertisement, if anything,” I replied, “had under-estimated the attractiveness of that house. All I blame the advertisement for is that it did not mention other things. It did not mention, for instance, that since Queen Elizabeth’s time the neighbourhood had changed. It did not mention that the entrance was between a public-house one side of the gate and a fried-fish shop on the other; that the Great Eastern Railway-Company had established a goods depot at the bottom of the garden; that the drawing-room windows looked out on extensive chemical works, and the dining-room windows, which were round the corner, on a stonemason’s yard. The house itself was a dream.”

      “But what is the sense of it?” demanded Dick. “What do house agents think is the good of it? Do they think people likely to take a house after reading the advertisement without ever going to see it?”

      “I asked an agent once that very question,” I replied. “He said they did it first and foremost to keep up the spirits of the owner—the man who wanted to sell the house. He said that when a man was trying to part with a house he had to listen to so much abuse of it from people who came to see it that if somebody did not stick up for the house—say all that could be said for it, and gloss over its defects—he would end by becoming so ashamed of it he would want to give it away, or blow it up with dynamite. He said that reading the advertisement in the agent’s catalogue was the only thing that reconciled him to being the owner of the house. He said one client of his had been trying to sell his house for years—until one day in the office he read by chance the agent’s description of it. Upon which he went straight home, took down the board, and has lived there contentedly ever since. From that point of view there is reason in the system; but for the house-hunter it works badly.

      “One agent sent me a day’s journey to see a house standing in the middle of a brickfield, with a view of the Grand Junction Canal. I asked him where was the river he had mentioned. He explained it was the other side of the canal, but on a lower level; that was the only reason why from the house you couldn’t see it. I asked him for his picturesque scenery. He explained it was farther on, round the bend. He seemed to think me unreasonable, expecting to find everything I wanted just outside the front-door. He suggested my shutting out the brickfield—if I didn’t like the brickfield—with trees. He suggested the eucalyptus-tree. He said it was a rapid grower. He also told me that it yielded gum.

      “Another house I travelled down into Dorsetshire to see. It contained, according to the advertisement, ‘perhaps the most perfect specimen of Norman arch extant in Southern England.’ It was to be found mentioned in Dugdale, and dated from the thirteenth century. I don’t quite know what I expected. I argued to myself that there must have been ruffians of only moderate means even in those days. Here and there some robber baron who had struck a poor line of country would have had to be content with a homely little castle. A few such, hidden away in unfrequented districts, had escaped destruction. More civilised descendants had adapted them to later requirements. I had in my mind, before the train reached Dorchester, something between a miniature Tower of London and a mediæval edition of Ann Hathaway’s cottage at Stratford. I pictured dungeons and a drawbridge, perhaps a secret passage. Lamchick has a secret passage, leading from behind a sort of portrait in the dining-room to the back of the kitchen chimney. They use it for a linen closet. It seems to me a pity. Of course originally it went on farther. The vicar, who is a bit of an antiquarian, believes it comes out somewhere in the churchyard. I tell Lamchick he ought to have it opened up, but his wife doesn’t want it touched. She seems to think it just right as it is. I have always had a fancy for a secret passage. I decided I would have the drawbridge repaired and made practicable. Flanked on each side with flowers in tubs, it would have been a novel and picturesque approach.”

      “Was there a drawbridge?” asked Dick.

      “There was no drawbridge,” I explained. “The entrance to the house was through what the caretaker called the conservatory. It was not the sort of house that goes with a drawbridge.”

      “Then what about the Norman arches?” argued Dick.

      “Not arches,” I corrected him; “Arch. The Norman arch was downstairs in the kitchen. It was the kitchen, that had been built in the thirteenth century—and had not had much done to it since, apparently. Originally, I should say, it had been the torture chamber; it gave you that idea. I think your mother would have raised objections to the kitchen—anyhow, when she came to think of the cook. It would have been necessary to put it to the woman before engaging her:—

      “ ‘You don’t mind cooking in a dungeon in the dark, do you?’

      “Some

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