Is it a real English cottage?” we asked the agent suspiciously, “or is
it one that has been hastily aged to rent to Americans?”
It was the real thing: he vouched for it. It was right in the middle
of England. The children could walk for miles in any direction without
falling off the edge of England and getting wet.
“See here!” I said. “How many blocks from Scotland is it?”
“Blocks from Scotland?” He didn't understand.
“Yes,” I said, “blocks from Scotland.” I explained. My wife and I had
been trying to get a real English accent. That was one of the things we
had come to England for. We wanted to take it back with us and use it
in Brooklyn, and we didn't want to get too near Scotland and get any
Scottish dialect mixed up with it. It seemed that the cottage was quite
a piece from Scotland. There was a castle not far away--the fifteenth
castle on the right side as you go into England. When there wasn't any
wind you didn't get a raw sea breeze or hear the ocean vessels whistle.
“Is it overgrown with ivy,” asked Marian, my wife.
Yes, it was ivy-covered. You could scarcely see it for ivy--ivy that was
pulling the wall down, ivy as deep-rooted as the hereditary idea.
“Are the drains bad?” I asked.
They were. There would be no trouble on that score. What plumbing there
was, was leaky. The roof leaked.
There was neither gas nor electricity, nor hot and cold water, nor
anything else.
“I suppose the place is rather damp?” I said to the agent. “Is it chilly
most of the time? Are the flues defective? Are the floors uneven? Is the
place thoroughly uncomfortable and unsanitary and unhabitable in every
particular?”
Yes, it had all these advantages. I was about to sign the lease when my
wife plucked me by the sleeve in her impulsive American way. “Is there a
bathroom?” she asked.
“My dear Mrs. Minever,” said the agent with dignity, “there is not. I
can assure you that there are no conveniences of any kind. It is a real
English cottage.”
I took the place. It was evening of the third day after we took
possession that I discovered that we had been taken in. All the other
Americans in that part of England were sitting out in front of their
cottages trying to look as if they were accustomed to them, and we--my
wife and Uncle Bainbridge and I--were sitting in front of ours trying to
act as English as we knew how, when a voice hailed me.
“You are Americans, aren't you, sir?” said the voice.
The voice was anyhow; so we shamefacedly confessed.
“I thought you looked like it,” said the voice, and its owner came
wavering toward us through the twilight.
“What makes you think we look like it?” I said, a trifle annoyed; for
it had been my delusion that we had got ourselves to looking quite
English--English enough, at least, so that no one could tell us in the
faint light.
“Our clothes don't fit us, do they?” asked my wife nervously.
“They can't fit us,” said I; “they were made in London.”
I spoke rather sharply, I suppose. And as I was speaking, a most
astonishing thing happened--the person I had been speaking to suddenly
disappeared. He was, and then he was not! I sprang up, and I could tell
from my wife's exclamation that she was startled, too. As for Uncle
Bainbridge, he seldom gives way to emotion not directly connected with
his meals or his money.
“Here, you!” I called out loudly, looking about me.
The figure came waveringly into view again.
“Where did you go to?” I demanded. “What do you mean by acting like
that? Who are you, anyhow?”
“Please, sir,” said the wavery person, “don't speak so crosslike. It
always makes me vanish. I can't help it, sir.”
He continued timidly:
“I heard a new American family had moved here and I dropped by to ask
you, sir, do you need a ghost?”
“A ghost! Are you----”
“Yes, sir,” with a deprecating smile. “Only an American ghost; but one
who would appreciate a situation all the more, sir, for that reason. I
don't mind telling you that there's a feeling against us American ghosts
here in England, and I've been out of a place for some time. Maybe you
have noticed a similar feeling toward Americans? I'm sure, sir, you must
have noticed a discrimination, and----”
“Don't say 'sir' all the time,” I told him.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he rejoined: “but it's a habit. I've tried very hard
to fit myself to English ways and it's got to be second nature, sir. My
voice I can't change; but my class--I was a barber in America, sir--my
class I have learned. And,” he repeated rather vacantly, “I just dropped
by to see if you wanted a ghost. Being fellow Americans, you know, I
thought----” His voice trailed off into humble silence, and he stood
twisting a shadowy hat round and round in his fingers.
“See here!” I said. “Should we have a ghost?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but how much rent do you pay?” I told him.
He answered politely but with decision, “Then, sir, in all fairness, you
are entitled to a ghost with the place. It gives a certain tone, sir.”
“Why weren't we given one, then?” I asked
“Well----” he said, and paused. If a ghost can blush with embarrassment,
he blushed. “You see,” he went on, making it as easy for me as he could,
“English ghosts mostly object to haunting Americans, just as American
ghosts find it difficult to get places in English houses and cottages.
You see, sir, we are----”
He halted lamely, and then finished, “We're so _American_ somehow, sir.”
“But we've been cheated!” I said.
“Yes, sir,” said the American ghost, “regularly _had_” He said it in
quite an English manner, and I complimented him on his achievement. He
smiled with a child's delight.
“Would I do?” he urged again, with a kind of timid insistence.
My sympathies were with him. “You don't mind children?” I said. “We have
two.”
“No,” he replied; “leastways, if they aren't very rough, I am not much
frightened of them.”
“I guess,” I began, “that----” I was about to say that he would do, when
my wife interrupted me.
“We do not want a ghost at all,” she said firmly.
“But, my dear----”
She raised her eyebrows at me, and I was silent. After looking from
one to the other of us wistfully for a moment, the applicant turned and
drifted away, vanishing dejectedly when he reached the gate.
“You heard what he said, Henry?” said my wife as he disappeared. “It is
lucky that you have me by you! Do you want to saddle yourself with an
American ghost? For my part, I will have an English ghost or none!”