They went to the Agent, not because they could afford to take a house, but just for curiosity, just to say they'd been, just to supply Ranny with that information that he craved for, now that the pa.s.sion of the house hunt was upon him.

"No good going," said Violet. "The rent will be something awful--why, that pillar alone--"

And Ranny, too, said he was afraid the rent wouldn't be any joke.

But that was precisely what the rent was--a joke. A joke so good that Ranny took for granted it couldn't possibly be true. Ranny chaffed the Agent; he told him he was trying to get at him; he said you didn't find houses with bathrooms and gardens back and front, going for thirteen s.h.i.+llings a week, not in this country.

And the Agent, who was very busy and preoccupied with making notes in a large notebook at his table, mumbled all among his notes that that was right. Of course you didn't find 'em unless you knew where to look for 'em. And that was not because a good 'ouse couldn't be made to pay for thirteen s.h.i.+llings a week, if there was capital and enterprise at the back of the Company that built 'em. This here Estate was the only estate in England--or anywhere--where you could pick up a house, a house built in an up-to-date style with all the modern improvements, for thirteen s.h.i.+llings a week.

And Ranny with a fine shrewdness posed him. "Yes, but what about rates and taxes?"

They were included.

And as the Agent said it calmly, casually almost, making notes in his notebook all the time, Ranny conceived a ridiculous suspicion. He fixed him with a stare that brought him up out of his notebook.

"Included? _What's_ included?"

"District rate," said the Agent, "poor rate, water rate, the whole bag of tricks for thirteen s.h.i.+llings."

That took Ranny's breath away. As for Violet, she said instantly that they must have the house.

"Of course you must 'ave it," said the Agent. He might have been an indulgent father. "Why not? Only thirteen s.h.i.+llings. And I can make you better terms than that."

It was then that he produced the Prospectus.

By this time, as if stirred by Violet's beauty, he had thrown off the mask of indifference; he was eager and alert.

They spent twenty minutes over that Prospectus, from which it appeared that the profit of the Estate Company, otherwise obscure, came from what the Agent called the "ramifications" of the scheme, from the miles and miles of houses they could afford to build. Whereas Ranny's profit was patent, it came in on the spot, and it would come in sooner, of course, if he could afford to purchase outright.

"For how much?"

"Two hundred and fifty."

But there Ranny put his foot down. He said with decision that it couldn't be done, an answer for which the Agent seemed prepared.

Well, then--he could give him better terms again. Could he rise to twenty-five?

Ranny deliberated and thought he could.

Well, then--only twenty-five down, and the balance weekly.

The balance? It sounded formidable, but it worked out at exactly tenpence a week less than the rent asked for (twelve and twopence instead of thirteen s.h.i.+llings), and in twenty years' time--and he'd be a young man still then--the house would be his, Ranny's, as surely as if he had purchased it outright for two hundred and fifty pounds.

It was astounding. Such a scheme could only have been dreamed of in the Paradise of Little Clerks.

And yet--and yet--it was impossible.

Ranny said he didn't want to be saddled with a house. How did he know whether he'd want that particular house in twenty years' time?

Then he could let or sell, the Agent said. It was an investment for his money. It was property. Property that was going up and up. Even supposing--what was laughable--that he failed to sell--he would be paying for his property--paying for house and land--less weekly than if he rented it. Ordinarily you paid your rent out of income or investments. He would be investing every time he paid his rent. People made these difficulties because they hadn't grasped our system--or for other reasons. Maybe (the Agent fired at him a glance of divination) he was calculating the expense of furnis.h.i.+ng?

He was.

Nothing simpler. Why--you furnished on the hire-purchase system.

"Not much," said Ranny. He knew all about the hire-purchase system.

So he backed out of it. He backed out of his Paradise, out of his dream.

But to save his face he said he would think it over and let the Agent know on Monday.

And the Agent smiled. He said he could take his time. There was no hurry. The house wouldn't run away. And he gave Ranny a copy of the Prospectus with a beautiful picture of the house on it.

All the way home Violet reproached him. It was a shame, she said, that he couldn't afford the furniture. There was nothing in the world she wanted so much as that beautiful little house. She hung on his arm and pleaded. Would he ever be able to afford the furniture? And Ranny said he thought he could afford it in two years. Meanwhile the house wouldn't run away. It would wait two years.

And as if it had been waiting for him, motionless, from all eternity, the house, with its allurements and solicitations, caught him before six o'clock on the evening of that very day.

Ranny's mother, as if she had known what the house was after, played into its hands. Attracted by the Prospectus and the picture, she walked over to Southfields directly after tea. She looked at the house and fell in love with it at first sight. It had taken her no time to grasp the system. You couldn't get a house like that in Wandsworth, not for fifty or fifty-five, not counting rates and taxes. It was a sin, she said, to throw away the chance. As for furnis.h.i.+ng, she had seen to that. In fact, Ranny without knowing it had seen to it himself. For the last five years he had kept his father's books, conceiving that herein he was fulfilling an essentially unproductive filial duty. And all the time his mother, with a fine sense of justice, had been putting by for him the remuneration that he should have had. Out of his seven years' weekly payments for board and lodging she had saved no less than a hundred pounds. Thus she had removed the one insurmountable obstacle from Ranny's path.

It might have been better for Ranny if she hadn't. Because, on any scheme, on the lowest scale of expenditure, with the most dexterous manipulation of accounts, the house left him without a margin. But who would think of margins when he knew that he would grow steadily year by year into a landlord, the owner of house property, and _that_, if you would believe it, for less rent than if he didn't own it? So miraculous was the power of twenty-five pounds down.

As if he thought the house could, after all, run away from him, he bicycled to Southfields with a letter for the Agent, closing with his offer that very night.

And by a special appointment with the Agent, made as a concession to his peculiar circ.u.mstances, he and Violet went over before ten o'clock on Sunday morning to choose the house.

For after all they hadn't chosen it yet.

It was difficult to choose among the houses where all were exactly alike; but you could choose among the streets, for some were planted with young limes and some with plane trees, and one, Acacia Avenue, with acacias. Ransome liked the strange tufted acacias. "Puts me in mind of palm trees," he said. And finally his fancy and Violet's was taken by one house, Number Forty-seven Acacia Avenue, for it stood just opposite a young tree with a particularly luxuriant tuft. It was really as if the tree belonged to Number Forty-seven.

Then they discovered that, outwardly uniform, these little houses had a subtle variety within. All, or nearly all, had different wall papers. In Number Forty-seven there were pink roses in the front sitting-room and blue roses in the back, and, upstairs, quiet, graceful patterns of love knots or trellis work. The love knots, blue with little pink rosebuds, in the front room (_their_ room) caught them. They were agreed in favor of Number Forty-seven.

Then--it was on the following Sat.u.r.day--they quarreled. The Agent had written inquiring whether Mr. Ransome wished to give his residence a distinctive name. He didn't wish it. But Violet did. She wished to give his residence the distinctive and distinguished name of Granville. She said she couldn't abide a number, while Ranny said he couldn't stand a name. Especially a silly name like Granville. He said that if he lived in a house called Granville it would make him feel a silly a.s.s. And Violet said he was a silly a.s.s already to feel like that about it.

Then Violet cried. It was the first time he had seen her cry, and it distressed him horribly. He held out against his pity all Sat.u.r.day evening. But on Sunday morning, when he thought of Violet, he relented.

He said he'd changed his mind about that old family seat. Violet could call it what she liked.

She called it Granville.

The name, in large white letters, appeared presently in the fanlight above the door.

At Woolridge's, on Monday morning in his dinner-hour, Mr. Ransome of the counting-house strolled with great dignity and honor through seven distinct departments as a customer. He ear-marked, for a beginning, and subject always to the approval of a Lady, three distinct suites of furniture which he proposed, most certainly, to purchase outright. None of your hire-purchase systems for Mr. Ransome.

On Tuesday, accompanied by two ladies, he again appeared. Between two violent blushes, and with an air which would have been light and offhand if it could, Mr. Ransome presented to his friend, the foreman, his mother--and Miss Usher. And as if the foreman had not sufficiently divined her, Miss Usher's averted shoulders, burning cheeks, and lowered eyelids made it impossible for him to forget that she was the Lady whose approval was the ultimate condition of the deal.

After an immensity of time, in which Mr. Ransome's dinner hour was swallowed up and lost, Miss Usher decided finally on the suite in stained walnut, upholstered handsomely in plush, with a pattern which Ransome imagined to be Oriental, a pattern of indefinite design in a yellowish drab and heavy blue upon a ground of crimson. A splendid suite. The overmantle alone was worth the nineteen pounds nineteen s.h.i.+llings he paid for it.

The furnis.h.i.+ng of the chamber of the love knots was arranged for, decorously, between Mrs. Ransome and the foreman. Over every item, from the wardrobe in honey-colored maple picked out with black, to the china "set" with crimson reeds and warblers on it, Ranny's friend, the foreman, communed with Ranny's mother in an intimate aside; and Ranny's mother, in another aside of even more accentuated propriety, appealed to flaming cheeks and lowered eyelids and a mouth that gave an almost inarticulate a.s.sent. The eyelids refused to open on Ranny where he stood, turning his back on the women, while he shook dubiously the footrail of the iron double bedstead to test the joints; and the mouth refused to speak when Ranny was heard complaining that the bedstead was about three sizes too large for the room. Eyes and mouth recovered only downstairs among the carpets, where they again a.s.serted themselves by insisting on a Kidderminster with a slender pattern of blue on a drab ground; though Ranny's mother had advised the black and crimson. Ranny's mother contended almost with pa.s.sion that drab showed every stain. But Violet would have that carpet and no other.