The dear old home has been let to strangers. An interloper occupies the
messuage. A foreign master controls the demesne.
To-day especially, when as I write the air is balmy and the skies are blue,
it is agonising to feel that our own spring rhubarb is growing crimson only
to be toyed with by alien lips, and that the thrush on our pear-tree
bough----But no, I am wrong; the pear-tree bough is in the garden of No. 9;
it is only the trunk that stands in the garden of No. 10. That, by the way,
is an accident that frequently occurs to estate-owners. Consider critically
for a moment those well-known lines in which BROWNING says--
"Hark where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field,"
and then goes on to speak of "the wise thrush" on "the bent spray's edge"
as "singing his song twice over." It is pretty obvious that the reason the
poet assigns to this action on the bird's part is not the correct one.
Evidently the part of the tree on which it was sitting was on the other
side of the hedge in the next-door fellow's garden, and it was
conscientiously trying to allot one performance to each of the two rival
householders. But I seem to have wandered a little from the ancient home.
Come with me in imagination, reader, and let us have a look at it together.
The fourth house to the left in this winding road that fringes the common,
you see it standing there gazing a little wistfully, yet with a quiet air
of semi-detachment, out over the wide expanse of green. Half right and half
left are two monstrous blocks of red brick flats overlooking it with a
thousand envious eyes. The middle distance is dotted pleasantly with
hawthorn bushes and the pretty pieces of sandwich-paper that are always the
harbingers of London's Spring. Beyond these things, and far away to the
front, you may detect on clear days a white church-tower nestling like
Swiss milk amongst immemorial trees. And this view is mine--mine, like the
old home. If we linger for a moment in the road we shall probably see the
scornful face of the proud usurper at one of the windows calmly enjoying
this view of mine, all unconscious that I, the rightful owner, am standing
beneath. Does it not remind you of the films?--
"_Charles Carruthers_, an outcast from his ancestral halls, eyes mournfully
the scene of merry junketing within. _Charles Carruthers_--_blick!
blick!_"--and you see him eyeing mournfully outside--"_blick! blick!_"--and
you see the junketers eating his junket within.
On looking back in a calmer mood on the lines which I have just written, I
feel it possible that I may have let my emotions run away with me and
conveyed a slightly false impression. I may have suggested that the old
home has belonged to my family since Domesday Book or dear-knows-when or
some other historic date in our island story. That would not be strictly
true. As a matter of fact I have never lived in the house, nor have any of
my relations either. It has belonged to me, to be quite accurate, since
March 25th, 1920, and the interloper was interloping on a short lease when
I bought the long lease over his head. It is also true that by an awkward
and absurd convention I have to restore the old home to the ground landlord
in 1941. But who cares about what is going to happen in 1941? The Coalition
may have come to an end by that time, and the first Labour Government,
under Lord NORTHCLIFFE or Mr. JACK JONES, may be in power. Some bricklayer,
in a mood of artistic frenzy, may have designed the plan of a new brick and
had it passed by the Ministry of Housing. DEMPSEY may have met CARPENTIER.
No, the trouble is about the interloper. It appears that, having the
remainder of a lease to run, he can go on anteloping (you know what I mean)
for two years more if he likes. To do him justice he admits that the place
is mine and wants to leave it. He has no real love for the priceless old
spot. All that he asks is somewhere better to go to. So I am gladly doing
my best to help him. I send him notices of forty-roomed Tudor mansions,
which seem to abound in the market, mansions with timbered parks,
ornamental waters, Grecian temples, ha-has, gazebos, herds of graceful
bounding gazebos, and immediate possession. I do more than this. I send him
extravagant eulogies of lands across the seas, where the grapes grow
larger, the pear-trees blossom all the year round and separate thrushes
laid on to each estate never cease to sing. I suggest the advantages of the
mercantile marine and a life on the rolling main, of big game shooting,
polar exploration, and the residential attractions of Constantinople,
Berlin, Dublin and Vladivostok.
Concurrently with this I try hard to cultivate in him a certain distaste
for the dear old home. I walk up and down the road in front of it with a
pair of field-glasses, and, if I see that a little chip has fallen off
anywhere or the paint on the gate has been scratched, I call on him at
once.
"I happened to be passing the demesne," I say, "when I noticed a rather
serious item of dilapidation," or "A word with you about the messuage; it
looks a trifle off colour to-day. Have you had it blistered lately?" And
this worries him a good deal, because he is responsible for all repairs.
I do not fail to point out to my friends, either, that this is my
well-known family seat, and I persuade them from time to time to go and ask
for me at the door. "What, isn't he living here _yet_?" I get them to say,
with a well-feigned surprise. "It is his house, isn't it?" I frequently
have letters addressed to myself sent there, and every morning and
afternoon the nurse takes the children past it for a walk. The children are
well drilled.
"Look, Priscilla, that's our garden," says Richard in a high penetrating
treble; and
"There's a darlin' little buttercup. I want to go in," Priscilla replies.
All this quiet steady pressure is bound to have its due effect in time.
Gradually I think he will begin to feel that a shadow haunts the ancestral
halls (the front one, you know, and the back passage), that a footstep not
his own treads behind him on the stair, that the dear old home will never
be happy until it is occupied by its rightful lord.