They and I Read online

  "Can I have a room to myself?" asked Veronica.

  Veronica was sitting on the floor, staring into the fire, her chin supported by her hand. Veronica, in those rare moments when she is resting from her troubles, wears a holy, far-away expression apt to mislead the stranger. Governesses, new to her, have their doubts whether on these occasions they are justified in dragging her back to discuss mere dates and tables. Poets who are friends of mine, coming unexpectedly upon Veronica standing by the window, gazing upward at the evening star, have thought it was a vision, until they got closer and found that she was sucking peppermints.

  "I should so like to have a room all to myself," added Veronica.

  "It would be a room!" commented Robin.

  "It wouldn't have your hairpins sticking up all over the bed, anyhow," murmured Veronica dreamily.

  "I like that!" said Robin; "why―"

  "You're harder than I am," said Veronica.

  "I should wish you to have a room, Veronica," I said. "My fear is that in place of one untidy bedroom in the house―a room that makes me shudder every time I see it through the open door; and the door, in spite of all I can say, generally is wide open―"

  "I'm not untidy," said Robin, "not really. I know where everything is in the dark―if people would only leave them alone."

  "You are. You're about the most untidy girl I know," said Dick.

  "I'm not," said Robin; "you don't see other girls' rooms. Look at yours at Cambridge. Malooney told us you'd had a fire, and we all believed him at first."

  "When a man's working―" said Dick.

  "He must have an orderly place to work in," suggested Robin.

  Dick sighed. "It's never any good talking to you," said Dick. "You don't even see your own faults."

  "I can," said Robin; "I see them more than anyone. All I claim is justice."

  "Show me, Veronica," I said, "that you are worthy to possess a room. At present you appear to regard the whole house as your room. I find your gaiters on the croquet lawn. A portion of your costume―an article that anyone possessed of the true feelings of a lady would desire to keep hidden from the world―is discovered waving from the staircase window."

  "I put it out to be mended," explained Veronica.

  "You opened the door and flung it out. I told you of it at the time," said Robin. "You do the same with your boots."

  "You are too high-spirited for your size," explained Dick to her. "Try to be less dashing."

  "I could also wish, Veronica," I continued, "that you shed your back comb less easily, or at least that you knew when you had shed it. As for your gloves―well, hunting your gloves has come to be our leading winter sport."

  "People look in such funny places for them," said Veronica.

  "Granted. But be just, Veronica," I pleaded. "Admit that it is in funny places we occasionally find them. When looking for your things one learns, Veronica, never to despair. So long as there remains a corner unexplored inside or outside the house, within the half-mile radius, hope need not be abandoned."

  Veronica was still gazing dreamily into the fire.

  "I suppose," said Veronica, "it's reditty."

  "It's what?" I said.

  "She means heredity," suggested Dick―"cheeky young beggar! I wonder you let her talk to you the way she does."

  "Besides," added Robin, "as I am always explaining to you, Pa is a literary man. With him it is part of his temperament."

  "It's hard on us children," said Veronica.

  We were all agreed―with the exception of Veronica―that it was time Veronica went to bed. As chairman I took it upon myself to closure the debate.

  CHAPTER II

  "Do you mean, Governor, that you have actually bought the house?" demanded Dick, "or are we only talking about it?"

  "This time, Dick," I answered, "I have done it."

  Dick looked serious. "Is it what you wanted?" he asked.

  "No, Dick," I replied, "it is not what I wanted. I wanted an old-fashioned, picturesque, rambling sort of a place, all gables and ivy and oriel windows."

  "You are mixing things up," Dick interrupted, "gables and oriel windows don't go together."

  "I beg your pardon, Dick," I corrected him, "in the house I wanted, they do. It is the style of house you find in the Christmas number. I have never seen it anywhere else, but I took a fancy to it from the first. It is not too far from the church, and it lights up well at night. 'One of these days,' I used to say to myself when a boy, 'I'll be a clever man and live in a house just like that.' It was my dream."

  "And what is this place like?" demanded Robin, "this place you have bought."

  "The agent," I explained, "claims for it that it is capable of improvement. I asked him to what school of architecture he would say it belonged; he said he thought that it must have been a local school, and pointed out―what seems to be the truth―that nowadays they do not build such houses."

  "Near to the river?" demanded Dick.

  "Well, by the road," I answered, "I daresay it may be a couple of miles."

  "And by the shortest way?" questioned Dick.

  "That is the shortest way," I explained; "there's a prettier way through the woods, but that is about three miles and a half."

  "But we had decided it was to be near the river," said Robin.

  "We also decided," I replied, "that it was to be on sandy soil, with a south-west aspect. Only one thing in this house has a south-west aspect, and that's the back door. I asked the agent about the sand. He advised me, if I wanted it in any quantity, to get an estimate from the Railway Company. I wanted it on a hill. It is on a hill, with a bigger hill in front of it. I didn't want that other hill. I wanted an uninterrupted view of the southern half of England. I wanted to take people out on the step, and cram them with stories about our being able on clear days to see the Bristol Channel. They might not have believed me, but without that hill I could have stuck to it, and they could not have been certain―not dead certain―I was lying.

  "Personally, I should have liked a house where something had happened. I should have liked, myself, a blood-stain―not a fussy blood-stain, a neat unobtrusive blood-stain that would have been content, most of its time, to remain hidden under the mat, shown only occasionally as a treat to visitors. I had hopes even of a ghost. I don't mean one of those noisy ghosts that doesn't seem to know it is dead. A lady ghost would have been my fancy, a gentle ghost with quiet, pretty ways. This house―well, it is such a sensible-looking house, that is my chief objection to it. It has got an echo. If you go to the end of the garden and shout at it very loudly, it answers you back. This is the only bit of fun you can have with it. Even then it answers you in such a tone you feel it thinks the whole thing silly―is doing it merely to humour you. It is one of those houses that always seems to be thinking of its rates and taxes."

  "Any reason at all for your having bought it?" asked Dick.

  "Yes, Dick," I answered. "We are all of us tired of this suburb. We want to live in the country and be good. To live in the country with any comfort it is necessary to have a house there. This being admitted, it follows we must either build a house or buy one. I would rather not build a house. Talboys built himself a house. You know Talboys. When I first met him, before he started building, he was a cheerful soul with a kindly word for everyone. The builder assures him that in another twenty years, when the colour has had time to tone down, his house will be a picture. At present it makes him bilious, the mere sight of it. Year by year, they tell him, as the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from rheumatism, ague, and lumbago. He has a hedge round the garden; it is eighteen inches high. To keep the boys out he has put up barbed-wire fencing. But wire fencing affords no real privacy. When the Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is generally a crowd from the village watching them. There are trees in the garden; you know they are trees―there is a label tied to each one telling you what sort of tree it is. For the moment there is a similarity about them. Thirty years he
nce, Talboys estimates, they will afford him shade and comfort; but by that time he hopes to be dead. I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house."

  "But why this particular house?" urged Robin, "if, as you say, it is not the house you wanted."

  "Because, my dear girl," I answered, "it is less unlike the house I wanted than other houses I have seen. When we are young we make up our minds to try and get what we want; when we have arrived at years of discretion we decide to try and want what we can get. It saves time. During the last two years I have seen about sixty houses, and out of the lot there was only one that was really the house I wanted. Hitherto I have kept the story to myself. Even now, thinking about it irritates me. It was not an agent who told me of it. I met a man by chance in a railway carriage. He had a black eye. If ever I meet him again I'll give him another. He accounted for it by explaining that he had had trouble with a golf ball, and at the time I believed him. I mentioned to him in conversation I was looking for a house. He described this place to me, and it seemed to me hours before the train stopped at a station. When it did I got out and took the next train back. I did not even wait for lunch. I had my bicycle with me, and I went straight there. It was―well, it was the house I wanted. If it had vanished suddenly, and I had found myself in bed, the whole thing would have seemed more reasonable. The proprietor opened the door to me himself. He had the bearing of a retired military man. It was afterwards I learnt he was the proprietor.

  "I said, 'Good afternoon; if it is not troubling you, I would like to look over the house.' We were standing in the oak-panelled hall. I noticed the carved staircase about which the man in the train had told me, also the Tudor fireplaces. That is all I had time to notice. The next moment I was lying on my back in the middle of the gravel with the door shut. I looked up. I saw the old maniac's head sticking out of a little window. It was an evil face. He had a gun in his hand.

  "'I'm going to count twenty,' he said. 'If you are not the other side of the gate by then, I shoot.'

  "I ran over the figures myself on my way to the gate. I made it eighteen.

  "I had an hour to wait for the train. I talked the matter over with the station-master.

  "'Yes,' he said, 'there'll be trouble up there one of these days.'

  "I said, 'It seems to me to have begun.'

  "He said, 'It's the Indian sun. It gets into their heads. We have one or two in the neighbourhood. They are 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 shutt
ing 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 mediaeval 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.