I talked to her in a thoroughly reasonable way, and she presently promised that she also would be reasonable. She agreed that we must let the house. Also she insisted that as I had finished my work, we should go at once and look at it. I in my turn agreed. It was while I was lacing my boots that she said, sighing:
“Well, it is hard. But you say it's absolutely hideous—that's one comfort.”
Even then I might have put up an arm to ward off the blow fate was aiming at me, but my bootlace was in a hard knot, and I said nothing on any other subject.
In the hour when afternoon ends and evening begins, we set out to see the Red House. We rode our bicycles, of course. Poor as we were, we could yet command, on the hire system, machines which, at any rate, in their first youth, might have been the desire of princes. Once we had passed the dusty avenue of little villas (wherein our Bandbox, the corner house, squeezed in between two more portly brethren, is of all the most unworthy), and had done the three miles of respectable semi-detachedness which form on this side of town the outer fringe of London's loathly suburbs, our way lay through green lanes where hawthorns were budding in pink and pearl. And here I received a final note of warning.
“Oh, Len,” Chloe sighed, reining in her shining steed to gaze wistfully on the trim green of the scattered suburban pleasaunces, “if we could only live out here—away from the washing and the organ-grinders and the people next door! Oh—I know we can't—but I wish we could.”
“I wish so, too,” I said, briskly. It was merely a polite acquiescence in her aspiration, but it was noted. I, blind mole, noted nothing. The most explicit warnings pass us by unheeded; it is only after the doom stroke has fallen that we perceive the significance of portents.
We climbed the hill and passed through the long, sunny village street, clamorous now with bean-feasters and superior private pleasure parties in wagonettes drawn up in front of the “Spotted Dog” and “The Chequers” and the “Castle Hotel,” for was it not Saturday, and the village but a bare ten miles from Charing Cross? Then came the sharp turn to the left, the delicious downward rush through hawthorn-scented air, the black bar of shadow from the railway bridge, a red cottage, a red wall, tall chestnut-trees, pyramids of green fan-leaves and miraculous-scented flowers—a green gate.
“This is it,” I said, and Chloe brought down the brake in that reckless way of hers, and sprang to the ground. The sun-blistered, old, green gate swung long and wide on loud, red, rusty hinges as we led our beasts in. We left them under the biggest of the chestnut-trees, and walked up the wide, moss-grown drive to where the front door, fortified by heavy stone pillars, seemed to defy us, the besiegers.
“Is this really it?” asked Chloe, in a whisper. And well might she ask. The yellow brick on which in my talk I had laid so much stress was hidden almost—at any rate transformed, transfigured—by a net-work of great leaves and red buds; creepers covered it—all but. And at the side there were jasmine that in July nights would be starry and scented, and wistaria, purple-flowered and yellow-leaved over its thick, gnarled boughs, and ivy; and at the back, where the shaky green veranda is overhung by the perilous charm of the white balcony, Virginia-creepers and climbing roses grew in a thorny maze. The moat was there, girdling the old lawns—where once the Elizabethan manor stood—with a belt of silver, a sad swan and a leaky boat keeping each other company. Yellow laburnums trailed their long hair in the water, and sweet lilac-bushes swayed to look at their pretty plumes reflected in it. To right and left stretched the green tangled mysteries of the overgrown gardens.
We stepped back onto the bridge that crosses the moat, and looked up at the tall house. Before the ivy dressed it, it must have been very ugly. I suspect my uncle of having had that ivy clipped to its last leaf every spring; and he must have had the house scraped and “pointed” pretty often. How otherwise account for the yellow brick hideousness that glared at me through the mist of the years lying between me and my childhood?
The Red House is square, and very tall, but it has two large, low, long wings ending in four square brick turrets with pointed roofs. We stood and looked at it, and I said,
“You see it's much too big for us to live in—”
Chloe assented, feverishly: “Oh yes, of course, ever so much. But can't we get in?”
We couldn't, because I had forgotten to call at the plumber's in the village for the key.
“But I'll go back for it,” I said, “only—I didn't think of it—the shop's sure to be shut. It's Saturday, you know.”
“Then we won't waste time,” said Chloe, firmly. “Let's be burglars. Break a pane of glass, and let's get in by a window.”
Already she was stooping for a stone.
“Well—if you insist. But let's at least find a window without shutters.”
We went round the house and round the house, like the snow in the riddle; but every window had its eyelids down, as Chloe said.
“Stupid, sleepy thing,” she said, “we must wake it up. Can't you climb up to the balcony and get in there?”
“Shutters again,” I said. “My worthy uncle believed in them. Now I come to think of it, he had shutters to every window, and a patent fastening for each, and all different. But—”
I was looking at the thick, twisted stems of the ivy that clung to the wall of the low left wing.
“There used to be an apple-room with a window opening on the leads. In happier days—”
“Happier?”
“No—earlier! I have climbed up the ivy in my time. But I dare say the apple-room is locked. But I'll go and see, if you insist upon it.”
Chloe measured the height with her eyes, some ten feet.
“Very well,” she said, meekly. And I went up the ivy. It was as easy as going up a ladder; but I own that as I stepped onto the leads I did not expect to hear my wife's voice just below my feet, saying,
“Look out—you'll kick me.”
She had climbed up the ivy behind me. I said nothing till I had pulled her up to stand safely beside me, and then I fairly shook her.
“You wicked,” I said. “Suppose you had slipped? You might have broken that little, silly neck of yours.”
She laughed.
“My dear boy, I was climbing trees when you were in your cradle!”
As I was out of my cradle twenty-two years ago, and that was three years before she was even in hers, this insult called for no reply.
“Did you really think I should allow you to see an inch of even the apple-room without me?” she said. “Come on—oh!—how jolly the garden looks from here! Is this the window?”
It was. I broke one of the cobwebby panes, and opened the window, but, of course, it was barred.
“Idiot that I am—I remember now—I used to creep through. I've grown since then. It's no good. We must give it up.”
Chloe was looking at the bars. Suddenly she took her hat off.
“I'm not so very big,” she said. “You called me a shrimp only yesterday.”
The bottom of the window was level with the leads. She twisted her skirt round her ankles as she sat down, and pushed both feet between the bars.
“You can hold on to my arm if you like till I feel the floor. Oh, don't be silly. I must.”
She twisted herself like an eel through the bars.
“Right. Let go,” and the next moment she was laughing at me out of the dark window.
“Mind the stairs,” I said.—“Open the door at the top, and I can come in, too.”
She disappeared. The little door shook to her withdrawal of the rust-locked bolts. I bent my head and stepped