A few days later I received the description of the house which the
agent had prepared for his clients. Being still interested in nothing
but the truth I was electrified.
"This very desirable residence," it began. No great harm in that.
"In heart of most beautiful county in England," it continued. Nothing
very serious to quarrel with there; tastes must always differ; but it
puts the place in a new light.
"Surrounded by pleasure-grounds." Here I was pulled up very short. My
little lawn with its evergreens, my desolate cabbage-stalks, my tiny
paddock--these to be so dignified! And where do the agents get their
phrases? Is there a Thesaurus of the trade, profession, calling,
industry or mystery? "Garden" is a good enough word for any man who
lives in his house and is satisfied, but a man who wants a house can
be lured to look at it only if it has pleasure-grounds: is that the
position? Does an agent in his own home refer to the garden in
that way? If his wife is named Maud does he sing, "Come into the
pleasure-grounds"?
"Surrounded," too. I was so careful to say that the paddock and so
forth were on one side and the road on the other.
I read on: "Situated in the old-world village of Blank." And I had
been scrupulous in stating that we were a mile distant--situated in
point of fact in a real village of our own, with church, post-office,
ancient landau and all the usual appurtenances. And "old world"! What
is "old world"? There must be some deadly fascination in the epithet,
for no agent can refrain from using it; but what does it mean? Do
American agents use it? It could have had no attraction for COLUMBUS.
Such however is the failure of our modernity that it is supposed to
be irresistible to-day. And "village!" The indignation of Blank on
finding itself called an "old world village" will be something fierce.
None the less, although I was amused and a little irritated, I must
confess to the dawnings of dubiety as to the perfect wisdom of leaving
such a little paradise. If it had all this allurement was I being
sensible to let others have it, and at a time when houses are so
scarce and everything is so costly? Had I not perhaps been wrong in my
estimate? Was not the sanguine agent the true judge?
I read on and realised that he was not. "One mile from Blank station."
Such a statement is one not of critical appraisement but of fact or
falsity. The accent in which he had said, "Yes, two and a-half miles
from the station," was distinct in my ear.
I read further. "Lighted by gas;" and again I recalled that
intelligent young fellow's bright "Yes, gas only in the garden-room."
What is one to do with these poets, these roseate optimists? And how
delightful to be one of them and refuse to see any but desirable
residences and gas where none is!
But it was the next trope that really shook me: "Well-stocked
kitchen-garden." Here I ceased to be amused and became genuinely
angry. The idea of calling that wilderness, that monument of neglect,
"well-stocked." I was furious.
That was a week ago. Yesterday I paid a flying visit to the country
to see how things were going and how many people had been to view the
place; and my fury increased when, after again and for the fiftieth
time pointing out to the gardener the lack of this and that vegetable,
he was more than normally smiling and silent and dense and impenitent.
"You say here," he said at last, pulling the description of the house
from his pocket and pointing to the words with a thumb as massive as
it is dingy and as dingy as it is massive--"you say here 'well-stocked
kitchen garden.'" _You!_
And now I understand better the phrases "agents for good" and "agents
for evil."
* * * * *
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MR. ----, WHO HAD NO IDEA, WHEN HE FLED
FROM LONDON TO ESCAPE AIR-RAIDS AND TOOK A THREE YEARS' LEASE NEAR
MAIDENHEAD, THAT THE WAR WOULD BE OVER SO SOON.]
* * * * *