All people living in the country are liable to be asked if they do not
know of "some nice little place that would just suit us." "For
week-ends, chiefly"--the inquirer usually adds. "A kind of
_pied-à-terre_, you know"--the inquirer always adds.
Cautious, self-protective people answer no. Foolish, gregarious people
actually try to help.
Addressing that large and growing class, the _pied-à-terre_ hunters, not
as a potential neighbour, but as a mere counsellor and very platonic
friend, I would say that I have recently discovered two ways of
acquiring country places, both of which, although no doubt neither is
infallible, have from time to time succeeded.
It was at the end of a fruitless day on the same quest that I hit upon
the first. After tramping many miles in vain, I was fortunate in getting
a fly at the village inn to drive me to the nearest station. I don't
say I had seen nothing I liked, but nothing that was empty. As a matter
of fact, I had seen one very charming place, but every window had a
curtain in it and the chimneys were sending up their confounded smoke.
In other words, it was, to use one of the most offensive words in the
language, occupied. Hence I was in a bad temper. None the less, when a
little man in black suddenly appeared before me and begged to be allowed
to share my cab (and its fare), I agreed. He began to talk at once, and
having disposed of the weather and other topics on which one can be
strictly and politely neutral, he said that his business took him a good
deal into unfamiliar places.
Being aware that he wished it, I asked him what his business was.
"I'm an unsettler," he said.
"An unsettler?"
"Yes. It's not a profession that we talk much about, because the very
essence of it is secrecy, but it's genuine enough, and there are not a
few of us. Of course, we do other things as well, such as insurance
agency, but unsettling pays best."
"Tell me about it," I said.
"Well," he explained, "it's like this. Say you are thinking of moving
and you want another house. You can't find an empty one that you like,
of course. No one can. But you differ from other persons in being
unwilling to make a compromise. You will either wait till you find one
that you do like, or you will go without. Meanwhile you see plenty of
occupied houses that you like, just as every one else does. But you
differ from other persons in being unwilling to believe that you can't
have what you want. Do you follow me?"
Naturally I followed him minutely, because he was describing my own
case.
"Very well, then," he continued. "This makes the unsettler's
opportunity. You return to the agent and tell him that the only house
you liked is (say) a white one at East Windles.
"'It was not one on your list,' you say; 'in fact, it was occupied. It
is the house on the left, in its own grounds, just as you enter the
village. There is a good lawn, and a wonderful clipped yew hedge.'
"'Oh yes,' says the agent, 'I know it: it used to be the Rectory.'
"'Who lives there?' you ask.
"'An old lady named Burgess,' says the agent--'Miss Burgess.'
"'Would she leave?' you ask.
"'I should very much doubt it,' says the agent, 'but I could, of course,
sound her.'
"'I'll give you twenty-five pounds,' you say, 'if you can induce her to
quit.' And off you go.
"It is then that the unsettler comes in. The agent sends for me and
tells me the story; and I get to work. The old lady has got to be
dislodged. Now what is it that old ladies most dislike? I ask myself. It
depends, of course; but on general principles a scare about the water is
safe, and a rumour of ghosts is safe. The water-scare upsets the
mistress, the ghost-scare upsets the maids; and when one can't get
maids, the country becomes a bore. As it is, she had the greatest
difficulty in keeping them, because there's no cinema near.
"Very well, then. Having decided on my line of action, I begin to spread
reports--very cautiously, of course, but with careful calculation, and
naturally never appearing myself; and gradually, bit by bit, Miss
Burgess takes a dislike to the place. Not always, of course. Some
tenants are most unreasonable. But sooner or later most of them fall to
the bait, and you get the house. That's my profession."
"Well," I said, "I think it's a blackguard one."
"Oh, sir!" he replied. "Live and let live."
"It's funny, all the same," I added, "that I should have run across you,
because I've been looking for a house for some time, and the only one I
liked was occupied."
He pulled out a pocket-book. "Yes?" he said, moistening his pencil.
But that is enough of him.
So much for my first way, which, as I happen to know, has succeeded, at
any rate once. Now for the other, which is less material. In fact, some
people might call it supernatural.
I was telling a lady about my friend the unsettler and his methods; but
she did not seem to be in the least impressed.
"All very well," she said; "but there's a more efficient and more
respectable way than that. And," she added, with a significant glance at
her husband and not without triumph, "I happen to know."
She sat at the dinner-table in the old farm-house--"modernized," as the
agents have it, "yet redolent of old-world charm." By modernized they
mean that the rightful occupiers--the simple agriculturists--had gone
for ever, and well-to-do artistic Londoners had made certain changes to
fit it for a week-end retreat. In other words, it had become a
_pied-à-terre_. Where the country folk for whom all these and smaller
cottages were built now live, who shall say? Probably in mean streets;
anyway, not here. The exterior remains often the same, but inside,
instead of the plain furniture of the peasantry, one finds wicker
arm-chairs and sofa-chairs, all the right books and weekly papers, and
cigarettes.
This particular farm-house was charming. An ingle-nook, Heal furniture,
old-pattern cretonnes and chintzes, an etching or two, a Japanese print
or two, a reproduction of a John, the poems of Mr. Masefield and Rupert
Brooke, a French novel, the _New Statesman_, and where once had been a
gun-rack a Della Robbia Madonna.
"It's delightful," I said; adding, as one always does: "How _did_ you
get to hear of it?"
"Hearing of it wasn't difficult," she said, "because we'd known about it
for years. The trouble was to get it."
"It wasn't empty, then?" I replied.
"No. There was a Mr. Broom here. We asked him if he wanted to go, and he
said No. We made him an offer, and he refused. He was most
unreasonable." (It was the same word that the unsettler had used.)