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“Oh, this is too much!” said Chloe.
“Go back a few steps,” I said, for my blood was up now, and, besides, the door did not feel very firm.
“Broad shoulders are useful sometimes,” she said, when the door had given way to the pressure of mine, and we found ourselves standing in the great, dark kitchen, where the thin, dusty shafts of yellow sunlight shot through the shutter-cracks.
We had down those shutters, and looked out through the dingy windows on the moat.
“Oh, Len, what a place!” she said, and kissed me again. “Just look at the roasting-jack, and the rack for guns, and the hooks in the roof to hang hams and things—and, oh—there's a great bacon-rack. It is too beautiful!”
We explored the pantry and the servants' hall, the little bedrooms above, and then along the flagged passage to the great hall, tiled with white and red marble, with the oak staircase winding up out of it.
We explored the living-rooms that led from it, and before we had climbed the first flight of stairs to the great drawing-room, my wife was breathless with enthusiasm. She kissed me in every room—“for luck,” as she explained—and when at last even the great attics held nothing concealed from us, I calculated that I had received twenty-nine kisses.
“It ought to let for a good bit,” I said, thoughtfully, when at last I had replaced all the shutters, and had persuaded her to come out and let me bang the big door after us.
“It'll want some doing up, won't it?” said Chloe. “That's a very dangerous hole in the staircase. Come, let's go round the garden.”
We went. The old garden had always been beautiful to me, even in the days when I used secretly to eat gooseberries there, and plums, and peaches in an unripe state; and it was beautiful now, even as I remembered it, only now its trees and bushes were incredibly grown—moss-cushioned its paths. Its fountains were dry and weed grown, and its sun-dial was covered with briony and woody nightshade. I put aside the green trails to show Chloe the motto, Horas numero nisi serenas (“I chronicle only the sunny hours”).
She leaned her elbows on the top of the sundial, and looked at me.
“There now, you see,” she said. “We must live here! We simply must. Only sunny hours!”
“My dear, it's madness. We can't live here. We can let it for two hundred pounds a year.”
“I don't care if we could let it for two thousand,” said she.
“And our furniture would about fill the servants' hall and the kitchen.”
“Then we'll live in the servants' hall and the kitchen.”
“And we could never keep up the garden. It would take three men all their time.”
“It wouldn't. And I'd get up at three in the morning and weed.”
“But you promised to be reasonable.”
“I am; it's you who aren't; and if I did I don't care. It's what I've wanted all my life. Oh, Len, you must.”
“If you're so keen on the place we might live in one of the cottages.” There were four on the estate.
“I hate the cottages. Poky little things.”
“They're bigger than the Bandbox,” I said.
“I hate the Bandbox,” she said, mutinously. Then I laughed.
“After that heresy,” I said, “I shall take you home. My darling lunatic, come away. The Red House has turned your brain.”
Chloe mounted in silence, and in silence we rode away. In the village I stopped at the plumber's—he is also a builder and a house agent, and though it was Saturday, he was, after all, at home—and rather hurriedly told him to try and let the Red House.
Chloe said nothing, but stood beside me pale with the strain of her inward protest.
We rode on.
“How could you?” she said, presently. “When shall we ever have such a chance again? That glorious green garden, and the orchard, all pinky and white, and the drawing-room—it must be forty feet long—and the cottages, and the still-room, and the dear, darling, little apple-room. The whole place is like a picture out of Silas Marner. I'm sure that long, low room where you have to go down two steps was called the white parlor. It's like all the houses I've ever dreamed of. And after I've kissed you in every room for luck, too, and everything! Oh, Len, you don't really love me, or you'd let me live there!”
“You certainly put a great strain on my love, madam,” I said, “when you cry for the moon in this disgraceful manner on the king's high-road. Cheer up! Perhaps you'll feel saner in the morning. If not, we'll send for the doctor.”
“Well, you'll never let it,” she said, riding faster and faster in her indignation. “That's one comfort! If you do, I shall never believe in anything again. It's the most beautiful place in the world—and it's ours—our very own. You'll see; no one will dare to take it.”
What spells she worked I don't know, nor how she worked them. But, curiously enough, no one did take the house. City gentleman after city gentleman approached and retreated after a parley, that always ended in suggestions for repairs to the tune of from four to five hundred pounds. At first each new applicant was to me an object of interest, and to Chloe an object of jealous detestation. But as time wore on, and each new candidate told the same unflattering tale of the shocking state of repairs at the Red House, the hour came when at the accustomed formula I merely smiled. But Chloe laughed, a laugh of triumph and delight.
We used to ride over there every day to see if the house was let, and it never was; and more and more flowers came out in the garden—old, small sweet tulips and forget-me-nots and hearts-ease, and the roses were in tiny bud.
And never for a day did Chloe cease to cry for the moon.
The 27th of May is her birthday. It is also the anniversary of the day on which I first met her. So that when, on that day, she held her hand up to look at her new turquoises, and said, “It is a lovely ring, and you're a dear, reckless, extravagant millionaire, and I love you; but oh, Len, I wish you'd give me the Red House instead”—I could hold out no longer.
“Very well,” I said, “you shall have the moon, since you won't give up crying for it. But don't blame me if you find it's only green cheese, after all.”
“Oh, you darling!” she cried. “But I knew all the time you would—if I only kept on—”
“This revelation of your methods of government—” I began, with proper severity.
But she stopped my mouth quite irresistibly.
“Now, don't growl when I'm so happy,” she said. “We shall never have any horrid rent to pay again. We are just being economical, that's all. We can't afford to keep a great house eating its head off in the stable; and, anyway, we sha'n't dun ourselves for repairs.”
“There will be rates,” I said.
“And roses,” said she.
“And the expense of moving.”
“And the economy of moving.”
“And we can't afford a gardener.”
“And we don't want one.”
“And we've got no furniture.”
“Yes, we have; a whole Bandbox full.”
“And there's a ghost.”
“We sha'n't see it—”
“And if you do?”
“I'll train it to run on errands and clean the windows.”
“No servant will stay with us.”
“They