"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 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.
"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 cooks would. The rest of the house was what I should describe as present-day mixed style. The last tenant but one had thrown out a bathroom in corrugated iron."
"Then there was a house in Berkshire that I took your mother to see, with a trout stream running through the grounds. I imagined myself going out after lunch, catching trout for dinner; inviting swagger friends down to 'my little place in Berkshire' for a few days' trout-fishing. There is a man I once knew who is now a baronet. He used to be keen on fishing. I thought maybe I'd get him. It would have looked well in the Literary Gossip column: 'Among the other distinguished guests'―you know the sort of thing. I had the paragraph already in my mind. The wonder is I didn't buy a rod."
"Wasn't there any trout stream?" questioned Robin.
"There was a stream," I answered; "if anything, too much stream. The stream was the first thing your mother noticed. She noticed it a quarter of an hour before we came to it―before we knew it was the stream. We drove back to the town, and she bought a smelling-bottle, the larger size.
"It gave your mother a headache, that stream, and made me mad. The agent's office was opposite the station. I allowed myself half an hour on my way back to tell him what I thought of him, and then I missed the train. I could have got it in if he had let me talk all the time, but he would interrupt. He said it was the people at the paper-mill―that he had spoken to them about it more than once; he seemed to think sympathy was all I wanted. He assured me, on his word as a house-agent, that it had once been a trout stream. The fact was historical. Isaac Walton had fished there―that was prior to the paper-mill. He thought a collection of trout, male and female, might be bought and placed in it; preference being given to some hardy breed of trout, accustomed to roughing it. I told him I wasn't looking for a place where I could play at being Noah; and left him, as I explained to him, with the intention of going straight to my solicitors and instituting proceedings against him for talking like a fool; and he put on his hat and went across to his solicitors to commence proceedings against me for libel.
"I suppose that, with myself, he thought better of it in the end. But I'm tired of having my life turned into one perpetual first of April. This house that I have bought is not my heart's desire, but about it there are possibilities. We will put in lattice windows, and fuss-up the chimneys. Maybe we will let in a tablet over the front-door, with a date―always looks welclass="underline" it is a picturesque figure, the old-fashioned five. By the time we have done with it―for all practical purposes―it will be a Tudor manor-house. I have always wanted an old Tudor manor-house. There is no reason, so far as I can see, why there should not be stories connected with this house. Why should not we have a room in which Somebody once slept? We won't have Queen Elizabeth. I'm tired of Queen Elizabeth. Besides, I don't believe she'd have been nice. Why not Queen Anne? A quiet, gentle old lady, from all accounts, who would not have given trouble. Or, better still, Shakespeare. He was constantly to and fro between London and Stratford. It would not have been so very much out of his way. 'The room where Shakespeare slept!' Why, it's a new idea. Nobody ever seems to have thought of Shakespeare. There is the four-post bedstead. Your mother never liked it. She will insist, it harbours things. We might hang the wall with scenes from his plays, and have a bust of the old gentleman himself over the door. If I'm left alone and not worried, I'll probably end by believing that he really did sleep there."