Speculation of the House-Agent
from Purley. Suburbs and things on the London border may be, in most cases, commonplace and comfortable. But if ever by any chance they really are empty solitudes they are to the human spirit more desolate and dehumanized than any Yorkshire moors or Highland hills, because the suddenness with which the traveller drops into that silence has something about it as of evil elf-land. It seems to be one of the ragged suburbs of the cosmos half forgotten by God—such a place was Buxton Common, near Purley.
There was certainly a sort of gray futility in the landscape itself. But it was enormously increased by the sense of gray futility in our expedition. The tracts of drab turf looked useless, the occasional wind-stricken trees looked useless, but we, the human beings, more useless than the hopeless turf or the idle trees. We were maniacs akin to the foolish landscape, for we were come to chase the wild-goose which has led men and left men in bogs from the beginning. We were three dazed men under the
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