VI
When Nutley came again, a fortnight after the funeral, to his surprise he met Chase in the park with Thane, the greyhound, at his heels.
“Good gracious,” he said, “I thought you were in Wolverhampton?”
“So I was. I thought I’d come back to see how things were going on. I arrived two days ago.”
“But I saw Fortune last week, and he never mentioned your coming,” pursued Mr. Nutley, mystified.
“No, I daresay he didn’t; in point of fact, he knew nothing about it until I turned up here.”
“What, you didn’t let the servants know?”
“No, I didn’t,” Chase entered suddenly upon a definite dislike of Mr. Nutley. He felt a relief as soon as he had realized it; he felt more settled and definite in his mind, cleared of the cobwebs of a vague uneasiness. Nutley was too inquisitorial, too managing altogether. Blackboys was his own to come to, if he chose. Still his own—for another month.
“What on earth have you got there?” said Nutley peering at a crumpled bunch that Chase carried in his hand.
“Butcher-boys,” replied Chase.
“They’re wild orchids,” said Mr. Nutley, after peering a little closer. “Why do you call them butcher-boys?”
“That’s what the children call them,” mumbled Chase, “I don’t know them by any other name. Ugly things, anyhow,” he added, flinging them violently away.
“Soft, soft,” said Nutley to himself, tapping his forehead as he walked on alone.
He proceeded towards the house. Queer of Chase, to come back like that, without a word to anyone. What about that business of his in Wolverhampton? He seemed to be less anxious about that now. As though he couldn’t leave matters to Nutley and Farebrother, Solicitors and Estate Agents, without slipping back to see to things himself! Spying, no less. Queer, sly, silent fellow, mooning about the park, carrying wild orchids. “Butcher-boys,” he had called them. What children had he been consorting with, to learn that country name? There had been an odd look in his eye, too, when Nutley had come upon him, as though he were vexedat being seen, and would have liked to slink off in the opposite direction. Queer, too, that he should have made no reference to the approaching sale. He might at least have asked whether the estate office had received any private applications. But Nutley had already noticed that he took very little interest in the subject of the sale. An unsatisfactory employer, except in so far as he never interfered; it was unsatisfactory never to know whether one’s employer approved of what was being done or not.
And under his irritability was another grievance: the suspicion that Chase was a dark horse. The solicitor had always marked down Blackboys as a ripe plum to fall into his hands when old Miss Chase died—obstinate, opinionated, old Phillida Chase. He had never considered the heir at all. It was almost as though he looked upon himself as the heir—the impatient heir, hostile and vindictive towards the coveted inheritance.
Nutley reached the house, where, his hand upon the latch of the little wooden gate, he was checked by a padlock within the hasp. He was irritated, and shook the latch roughly. He thought that the quiet house, safe behind its gate and its sleeping moat, smiled andmocked him. Then, more sensibly, he pulled the bell beside the gate, and waited till the tinkle inside the house brought Fortune hurrying to open.
“What’s this affair, eh, Fortune?” said Nutley with false good-humour, pointing to the padlock.
“The padlock, sir? That’s there by Mr. Chase’s orders,” replied Fortune demurely.
“Mr. Chase’s orders?” repeated Mr. Nutley, not believing his own ears.
“Mr. Chase has been very much annoyed, sir, by motoring parties coming to look over the house, and making free of the place.”
“But they may have been intending purchasers!” Mr. Nutley almost shrieked, touched upon the raw.
“Yes, sir, they all had orders to view. All except one party, that is, that came yesterday. Mr. Chase turnedthemaway, sir.”
“Turned them away?”
“Yes, sir. They came in a big car. Mr. Chase talked to them himself, through the gate. He had the key in his pocket. No, sir, he wouldn’t unlock it. He said that if they wanted to buy the house they would have the opportunity of doing so at the auction. Yes,sir, they seemed considerably annoyed. They said they had come from London on purpose. They said they should have thought that if anyone had a house to sell, he would have been only too glad to show parties over it, order or no order. They said, especially if the house was so unsaleable, two hours by train from London and not up to date in any way. Mr. Chase said, very curt-like, that if they wanted an up-to-date house, Blackboys was not likely to suit them. He just lifted his cap, and wished them good-evening, and came back by himself into the house, with the key still in his pocket, and the car drove away. Very insolent sort of people they were, sir, I must say.”
Fortune delivered himself of this recital in a tone that was a strange compound of respect, reticence, and a secret relish. During its telling he had followed Mr. Nutley’s attentive progress into the house, until they arrived in the panelled library where the coral-coloured tulips reared themselves so luminously against the sobriety of the books and of the oak. Mr. Nutley noticed them, because it was easier to pass a comment on a bowl of flowers than upon Chase’s inexplicable behaviour.
“Yes, sir, very pretty; Mr. Chase puts them there,” said Fortune, with the satisfaction of one who adds a final touch to a suggestive sketch.
“Shouldn’t have thought he’d ever looked at a flower in his life,” muttered Nutley.
He deposited his bag on the table, and turned to the butler.
“Quite between you and me, Fortune, what you tell me surprises me very much—about the visiting parties, I mean. And the padlock. Um—the padlock. I always thought Mr. Chase veryquiet; but you don’t, do you, think himsoft?”
Fortune knew that Nutley enjoyed saying that. He remembered how he had caught Chase, the day before, studying bumbledories on the low garden wall; but he withheld the bumbledories from Mr. Nutley.
“It wouldn’t be unnatural, sir,” he submitted, “if Mr. Chase had a feeling about Blackboys being in the market?”
“Feeling? pooh!” said Mr. Nutley. He said “Pooh!” again to reassure himself, because he knew that Fortune, stupid, sentimental, and shrewd, had hit the nail on the head. “He’d never set eyes on Blackboys until three weeks ago. Besides, what couldhe do with the place except put it in the market? Tell me that? Absurd!”
He was sorting papers out of his black bag. Their neat stiffness gave him the reassuring sense of being here among matters which he competently understood. This was his province. He would have said, had he been asked a day earlier, that it was Chase’s province too. Now he was not so sure.
“Sentimentality!” he snorted. It was his most damning criticism.
Chase’s pipe was lying on the table beside the tulips; he picked it up and regarded it with a mixture of reproach and indignation. It reposed mutely in his hand.
“Ridiculous!” said Nutley, dashing it down again as though that settled the matter.
“The people round here have taken to him wonderful,” put in Fortune.
Nutley looked sharply at him; he stood by the table, demure, grizzled, and perfectly respectful.
“Why, has he been round talking to the people?”
“A good deal, sir, among the tenants like. Wonderful how he gets on with them, for a city-bred man. I don’t hold with city-breeding,myself. Will you be staying to luncheon, sir?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Nutley, preoccupied and profoundly suspicious.
Suspicious of Chase, though he couldn’t justify his suspicion. Tested even by the severity of the solicitor’s standards, Chase’s behaviour and conversation during luncheon were irreproachable. No sooner had he entered the house than he began briskly talking of business. Yet Nutley continued to eye him as one who beneath reasonable words and a bland demeanour nourishes a secret and a joke; a silent and deeply-buried understanding. He talked sedately enough, keeping to the subject even with a certain rigour—acreage, rents, building possibilities; an intelligent interest. Still, Nutley could have sworn there was irony in it. Irony from Chase? Weedy, irritable little man, Chase. Not to-day, though; not irritable to-day. In a good temper. (Ironical?) Playing the host, sitting at the head of the refectory-table while Nutley sat at the side. Naturally. Very cordial, very open-handedwith the port. Quite at home in the dining-room, ordering his dog to a corner; and in the library too, with his pipes and tobacco strewn about. How long ago was it, since Nutley was warning him not to slip on the polished boards?
Then a stroll round the garden, Chase with crumbs in his pocket for the peacocks. When they saw him, two or three hopped majestically down from the parapet, and came stalking towards him. Accustomed to crumbs evidently. “You haven’t had them destroyed, then?” said Nutley, eyeing them with mistrust and disapproval, and Chase laughed without answering. Up the centre walk of the garden, and back by the herbaceous borders along the walls: lilac, wistaria, patches of tulips, colonies of iris. All the while Chase never deviated from the topic of selling. He pointed out the house, folded in the hollow down the gentle slope of the garden. “Not bad, for those who like it. Thirty thousand for the house, I think you said?” “Then why the devil,” Nutley wanted to say, but refrained from saying, “do you turn away people who come in a big car?” They strolled down the slope, Chase breaking from the lilac bushes an armfulof the heavy plumes. He seemed to do it with an unknowing gesture, as though he couldn’t keep his hands off flowers, and then to be embarrassed on discovering in his arms the wealth that he had gathered. It was as though he had kept an adequate guard over his tongue while allowing his gestures to escape him. He took Nutley round to the entrance, where the station cab was waiting, and unlocked the gate with the key he carried in his pocket.
“You go back to Wolverhampton to-morrow?” said Mr. Nutley, preparing to depart.
“That’s it,” replied Chase. Did he look sly, or didn’t he?
“All the arrangements will be made by the end of next week,” said Nutley severely.
“That’s splendid!” replied Chase.
Nutley, as he was driven away, had a last glimpse of him, leaning still against the gatepost, vaguely holding the lilac.
Chase didn’t go back to Wolverhampton. He knew that it was his duty to go, but he stayed on at Blackboys. Not only that, buthe sent no letter or telegram in explanation of his continued absence. He simply stayed where he was, callous, and supremely happy. By no logic could he have justified his behaviour; by no effort of the imagination could he, a fortnight earlier, have conceived such behaviour as proceeding from his well-ordered creeds. He stayed on, through the early summer days that throughout all their hours preserved the clarity of dawn. Like a child strayed into the realms of delight, he was stupefied by the enchantment of sun and shadow. He remained for hours gazing in a silly beatitude at the large patches of sunlight that lay on the grass, at the depths of the shadows that melted into the profundity of the woods. In the mornings he woke early, and leaning at the open window gave himself over to the dews, to the young glinting sunshine, and to the birds. What a babble of birds! He couldn’t distinguish their notes—only to the cuckoo, the wood-pigeon, and the distant crow of a cock could he put a name. The fluffy tits, blue and yellow, hopping among the apple-branches, were to him as nameless as they were lovely. He knew, theoretically, that the birds did sing when day was breaking; the marvellousthing was, not that they should be singing, but that he, Chase, should be awake and in the country to hear them sing. No one knew that he was awake, and he had all a shy man’s pleasure in seclusion. No one knew what he was doing; no one was spying on him; he was quite free and unobserved in this clean-washed, untenanted, waking world. Down in the woods only the small animals and the birds were stirring. There was the rustle of a mouse under dead leaves. It was too early for even the farm-people to be about. Chase and the natural citizens between them had it all their own way. (Nutley wore a black coat and carried a black shiny bag, but Nutley knew nothing of the dawn.) Then he clothed himself, and, passing out of the house unperceived with Thane, since there was no one to perceive them, wandered in the sparkling fields. There was by now no angle from which he was not familiar with the house, whether he considered the dreamy roofs from the crest of the hill or the huddle of the murrey-coloured buildings from across the distance of the surrounding pastures. No thread of smoke rose slim and wavering from a chimney but he could trace it down to its hearthstone. No window glittered but hecould name the room it lit. Nor was there any tenderness of light whose change he had not observed, whether of the morning, cool and fluty; or of the richer evening, profound and venerable, that sank upon the ruby brick-work, the glaucous moat, and the breasts of the peacocks in the garden; or of the ethereal moonlight, a secret that he kept, inviolate almost from himself, in the shyest recesses of his soul.
For at the centre of all was always the house, that mothered the farms and accepted the homage of the garden. The house was at the heart of all things; the cycle of husbandry might revolve—tillage to growth, and growth to harvest—more necessary, more permanent, perhaps, more urgent; but like a woman gracious, humorous, and dominant, the house remained quiet at the centre. To part the house and the lands, or to consider them as separate, would be no less than parting the soul and the body. The house was the soul; did contain and guard the soul as in a casket; the lands were England, Saxon as they could be, and if the house were at the heart of the land, then the soul of the house must indeed be at the heart and root of England, and, once arrived at thesoul of the house, you might fairly claim to have pierced to the soul of England. Grave, gentle, encrusted with tradition, embossed with legend, simple and proud, ample and maternal. Not sensational. Not arresting. There was nothing about the house or the country to startle; it was, rather, a charm that enticed, insidious as a track through a wood, or a path lying across fields and curving away from sight over the skyline, leading the unwary wanderer deeper and deeper into the bosom of the country.
He knew the sharp smell of cut grass, and the wash of the dew round his ankles. He knew the honing of a scythe, the clang of a forge and the roaring of its bellows, the rasp of a saw cutting through wood and the resinous scent of the sawdust. He knew the tap of a woodpecker on a tree-trunk, and the midday murmur, most amorous, most sleepy, of the pigeons among the beeches. He knew the contented buzz of a bee as it closed down upon a flower, and the bitter shrill of the grasshopper along the hedgerows. He knew the squirt of milk jetting into the pails, and the drowsy stir in the byres. He knew the marvellous brilliance of a petal in the sun, its fibrous transparency, like the cornelian-colouredtransparency of a woman’s fingers held over a strong light. He associated these sights, and the infinitesimal small sounds composing the recurrent melody, with the meals prepared for him, the salads and cold chicken, the draughts of cider, and abundance of fresh humble fruit, until it seemed to him that all senses were gratified severally and harmoniously, as well out in the open as in the cool dusk within the house.
He liked to rap with his stick upon the door of a farm-house, and to be admitted with a “Why! Mr. Chase!” by a smiling woman into the passage, smelling of recent soap and water on the tiles; to be ushered into the sitting-room, hideous, pretentious, and strangely meaningless, furnished always with the cottage-piano, the Turkey carpet, and the plant in a bright gilt basket-pot. The light in these rooms always struck Chase as being particularly unmerciful. But he learnt that he must sit patient, while the farmer was summoned, and the rest of the household too, and sherry in a decanter and a couple of glasses were produced from a sideboard, at whatever hour Chase’s visit might chance to fall, be it even at eight in the morning, which it very often was. That lustyhospitality permitted no refusal of the sherry, though Chase might have preferred, instead of the burning stuff, a glass of fresh milk after his walk across the dews. He must sit and sip the sherry, responding to the social efforts of the farmer’s wife and daughters (the latter always coy, always would be up to date), while the farmer was content to leave this indoor portion of the entertainment to his womenfolk, contributing nothing himself but “Another glass, Mr. Chase?” or the offer of a cigar, and the creak of his leather gaiters as he trod across the room. But presently, Chase knew, when the conversation became really impossibly stilted, he might without incivility suggest that he mustn’t keep the farmer any longer from his daily business, and, after shaking hands all round with the ladies, might take his cap and follow his host out into the yard, where men pitchforked the sodden litter out into the midden in the centre of the yard, and the slow cattle lurched one behind the other from the sheds, turning themselves unprompted in the familiar direction. Here, Chase might be certain he would not be embarrassed by having undue notice taken of him. The farmer here was a greater man than he.Chase liked to follow round meekly, and the more he was neglected the better he was pleased. Then he and the farmer together would tramp across the acres, silent for the most part, but inwardly contented, although when the farmer broke the silence it was only to grunt out some phrase of complaint, either at the poverty of that year’s yield, or the dearth or abundance of rabbits, or to remark, kicking at a clod of loam, “Soggy! soggy! the land’s not yet forgotten the rains we had in February,” thus endowing the land with a personality actual and rancorous, more definite to Chase than the personalities of the yeomen, whom he could distinguish apart by their appearance perhaps, but certainly not by their opinions, their preoccupations, or their gestures. They were natural features rather than men—trees or boles, endowed with speech and movement indeed, but preserving the same unity, the same hodden unwieldiness, that was integral with the landscape. There was one old hedger in particular who, maundering over his business of lop and top, or grubbing among the ditches, had grown as gnarled and horny as an ancient root, and was scarcely distinguishable till you came right upon him, whenhis little brown dog flew out from the hedge and barked; and there was another chubby old man, a dealer in fruit, who drove about the country, a long ladder swaying out of the back of his cart. This old man was intimate with every orchard of the country-side, whether apple, cherry, damson, or plum, and could tell you the harvest gathered in bushel measures for any year within his memory; but although all fruits came within his province, the apples had his especial affection, and he never referred to them save by the personal pronouns, “Ah, Winter Queening,” he would say, “she’s a grand bearer,” or “King of the Pippins, he’s a fine fellow,” and for Chase, whom he had taken under his protection, he would always produce some choice specimen from his pocket with a confidential air, although, as he never failed to observe, “May wasn’t the time for apples.” Let Mr. Chase only wait till the autumn—he would show him what a Ribston or a Blenheim ought to be; “But I shan’t be here in the autumn, Caleb,” Chase would say, and the old man would jerk his head sagely and reply as he whipped up the pony, “Trees with old roots isn’t so easily thrown over,” and in the parable that he only halfunderstood Chase found an obscure comfort.
These were his lane-made friendships. He knew the man who cut withes by the brook; he knew the gang and the six great shining horses that dragged away the chained and fallen trees upon an enormous wain; he knew the boys who went after moorhen’s eggs; he knew the kingfisher that was always ambushed somewhere near the bridge; he knew the cheery woman who had an idiot child, and a husband accursed of bees. “Bees? no, my husband couldn’t never go near bees. He squashed up too many of them when he was a lad, and bees never forget. Squashed ’em up,so, in his hand. Just temper. Now if three bees stung him together he’d die. Oh, surely, Mr. Chase, sir. We went down into Sussex once, on a holiday, and the bees there knew him at once and were after him. Wonderful thing it is, the sense beasts have got. And memory! Beasts never forget, beasts don’t.”
And always there was the reference to the sale, and the regrets, that were never impertinent and never ruffled so much as the fringes of Chase’s pride. The women were readier with these regrets than the men; they started off with unthinking sympathy,while the men shuffled and coughed, and traced with their toe the pattern of the carpet, but presently, when alone with Chase, took advantage of the women’s prerogative in breaking the ice, to revive the subject; and always Chase, to get himself out of a conversation which he felt to be fraught with awkwardness—the awkwardness of reserved men trespassing upon the grounds of secret and personal feeling—would parry with his piteous jest of being himself under notice to quit.
When the inventory men came, Chase suffered. They came with bags, ledgers, pencils; they were brisk and efficient, and Chase fled them from room to room. They soon put him down as oddly peevish, not knowing that they had committed the extreme offence of disturbing his dear privacy. In their eyes, after all, they were there as his employees, carrying out his orders. The foreman even went out of his way to be appreciative, “Nice lot of stuff you have there, sir,” he said to Chase, when his glance first travelled over the dim velvets and gilt of thefurniture in the Long Gallery; “should do well under the hammer.” Chase stood beside him, seeing the upholstered depths of velvets and damasks, like ripe fruits, heavily fringed and tasselled; the plasterwork of the diapered ceiling; the fairy-tale background of the tapestry, and the reflections of the cloudy mirrors. Into this room also he had put bowls of flowers, not knowing that the inventory men were coming so soon. “Nice lot of stuff you have here, sir,” said the foreman.
Chase remembered how often, representing his insurance company, he had run a casual and assessing eye over other people’s possessions.
The inventory men worked methodically through the house. Ground floor, staircase, landing, passage, first floor. Everything was ticketed and checked. Chase miserably avoided their hearty communicativeness. He skulked in the sitting-room downstairs, or, when he was driven out of that, took his cap and walked away from the house that surrounded him now with the grief of a wistful reproach. He knew that he would be well-advised to leave, yet he delayed from day to day; he suffered, but he stayed on, impotentlywatching the humbling and the desecration of the house. Then he took to going amongst the men when they were at their work, “What might be the value of a thing like this?” he would ask, tapping picture, cabinet, or chair with a contemptuous finger; and, when told, he would express surprise that anyone could be fool enough to pay such a price for an object so unserviceable, worm-eaten, or insecure. He would stand by, derisively sucking the top of his cane, while clerk and foreman checked and inscribed. Sometimes he would pick up some object just entered, a blue porcelain bowl, or whatever it might be, turn it over between his hands, examine it, and set it back on the window ledge with a shrug of the shoulders. There were no flowers in the rooms now, nor did he leave his pipes and tobacco littering the tables, but kept them hidden away in a drawer. There had been places, intimate to him, where he had grown accustomed to put his things, knowing he would find them there on his return; but he now broke himself of this weakness with a wrench. It hurt, and he was grim about it. In the evenings he sat solitary in a stiff room, without the companionship of those familiar things in theirfamiliar niches. Towards Fortune his manner changed, and he appeared to take a pleasure in speaking callously, even harshly, of the forthcoming sale; but the old servant saw through him. When people came now to visit the house, he took them over every corner of it himself, deploring its lack of convenience, pointing out the easy remedy, and vaunting the advantage of its architectural perfection, “Quoted in every book on the subject,” he would say, “a perfect specimen of domestic Elizabethan” (this phrase he had picked up from an article in an architectural journal), “complete in every detail, down to the window-fastenings; you wouldn’t find another like it, in the length and breadth of England.” The people to whom he said these things looked at him curiously; he spoke in a shrill, eager voice, and they thought he must be very anxious to sell. “Hard-up, no doubt,” they said as they went away. Others said, “He probably belongs to a distant branch of the family, and doesn’t care.”
X
After the inventory men, the dealers. Cigars, paunches, check-waistcoats, signet-rings. Insolent plump hands thumbing the velvets; shiny lips pushed out in disparagement, while small eyes twinkled with concupiscence. Chase grew to know them well. Yet he taught himself to banter even with the dealers, to pretend his excessive boredom with the whole uncongenial business. He advertised his contempt for the possessions that circumstances had thrust on him; they could and should, he let it be understood, affect him solely through their marketable value. The house itself—he quoted Nutley, to the dealers not to the people who came to view—“Small rooms, dark passages, no bath-rooms, no electric light.” He said these things often and loudly, and laughed after he had said them as though he had uttered a witticism. The dealers laughed with him, politely, but they thought him a little wild, and from time to time cast at him a glance of slight surprise.
All this while he sent no letter to Wolverhampton.
He got one letter from his office, a typewrittenletter, considerate and long-suffering, addressed to P. Chase, Esq., at the foot (he was accustomed to seeing himself referred to as “our Mr. Chase” by his firm—anyhow they hadn’t ferreted out the Peregrine), suggesting that, although they quite understood that private affairs of importance were detaining him, he might perhaps for their guidance indicate an approximate date for his return. He reflected vaguely that they were treating him very decently; and dropped the letter into the wastepaper basket.
He saw, however, that he would soon have to go. He clung on, but the sale was imminent; red and black posters appeared on all the cottages; and larger, redder, and blacker posters announced the sale, “By order of Peregrine Chase, Esq.,” of “the unique collection of antique furniture, tapestries, pictures, and contents of the mansion,” and in types of varying size detailed these contents, so that Chase could see, flaunting upon walls, trees, and gate-posts, when he wandered out, the soulless dates and the auctioneer’s bombastthat advertised for others the quality of his possessions.
An illustrated booklet was likewise published. Nutley gave him a copy. “This quite unique sixteenth century residence”; “the original panelling and plasterwork”; “the moat and contemporary outbuildings”; “the old-world garden”—Chase fluttered over the pages, and rage seized him by the throat. “Nicely got up, don’t you think?” Nutley said complacently.
Chase took the booklet away with him, up into the gallery. He always liked the gallery, because it was long, low, deserted, and so glowingly ornate; and more peaceful than any of the other rooms in the whole peaceful house. When he went there with the booklet in his hand that evening, he sat quite still for a time while the hush that his entrance had disturbed settled down again upon the room and its motionless occupant. A latticed rectangle of deep gold lay across the boards, the last sunlight of the day. Chase turned over the leaves of the book. “The Oak Parlour, an apartment 20 ft. by 25 ft., partially panelled in linen-fold in a state of the finest preservation,” was that his library? it couldn’t be, so accurate, soprecise? Why, the room was living! through the windows one saw up the garden, and saw the peacocks perched on the low wall, one heard their cry as they flew up into the cedars for the night; and in the evening, in that room, the fir-cones crackled on the hearth, the dry wood kindled, and the room began to smell ever so slightly of the clean, acrid wood-smoke that never quite left it, but remained clinging even when the next day the windows were open and the warm breeze fanned into the room. He had known all that about it, although he hadn’t known it was twenty foot by twenty-five. He hadn’t known that the panelling against which he had been accustomed to set his bowl of coral tulips was called linen-fold.
He was an ignorant fellow; he hadn’t known; he didn’t know anything even now; the sooner he went back to Wolverhampton the better.
He turned over another page of the booklet. “The Great Staircase and Armorial Window, (cir. 1584) with coats-of-arms of the families of Chase, Dacre, Medlicott, and Cullinbroke,”—the window whose gaudiness always seemed to attract a peacock to parade in rivalry on the outer ledge, like the first day he had cometo Blackboys; but why had they given everything such high-sounding names? the “Great Staircase,” for instance; it was never called that, but only “the staircase,” nor was it particularly great, only wide and polished and leisurely. He supposed Nutley was responsible, or was it Farebrother? Farebrother who was so kindly, and might have wanted to salve Chase’s feelings by appealing to his vanity through the splendour of his property?
What a fool he was; of course, neither Nutley nor Farebrother gave a thought to his feelings, but only to the expediency of selling the house.
He turned the pages further. “The Long Gallery,”—here, at least, they had not tried to improve upon the usual name—“a spacious apartment running the whole length of the upper floor, 100 ft. by 30 ft. wide, sumptuously ornamented in the Italian style of the sixteenth century, with mullioned heraldic windows, overmantel of sculptured marble, rich plastered ceiling,” here he raised his eyes and let them stray down the length of the gallery; the rectangle of sunlight had grown deeper and more luminous; the blocks of shadow in the corners had spread, the velvetchairs against the tapestry had merged and become yet more fruity; they were like split figs, like plums, like ripe mulberries; the colour of the room was as luxuriant as the spilling out of a cornucopia.
Chase became aware that Fortune was standing beside him.
“Mr. Nutley asked me to tell you, sir, that he couldn’t wait any longer, but that he’ll be here again to-morrow.”
Chase blushed and stammered, as he always did when someone took him by surprise, and as he more particularly did when that someone happened to be one of his own servants. Then he saw tears standing in the old butler’s eyes. He thought angrily to himself that the man was as soft-hearted as an old woman.
“Seen this little book, Fortune?” he inquired, holding it out towards him.
“Oh, sir!” exclaimed the butler, turning aside.
“Well, what’s the matter? what’s the matter?” said Chase, in his most irritable tone.
He got up and moved away. He went out into the garden, troubled and disquieted by the excessive tumult in his soul. He gazeddown upon the mellow roofs and chimneys, veiled in a haze of blue smoke; upon all the beauty that had given him peace and content; but far from deriving comfort now he felt himself provoked by a fresh anguish, impotent and yet rebellious, a weak fury, an irresolute insubordination. Schemes, that his practical sense told him were fantastically futile, kept dashing across his mind. He would tell Fortune to shut the door in everybody’s face, more especially Nutley’s. He would destroy the bridge across the moat. He would sulk inside his house, admitting no one; he and his house, alone, allied against rapacity. Fortune and the few other servants might desert him if they chose; he would cook for himself, he would dust, he would think it an honour to dust; and suddenly the contrast between the picture of himself with a duster in his hand, and of himself striking at the bridge with a pickaxe, caused him to laugh out loud, a laugh bitter and tormented, that could never have issued from his throat in the Wolverhampton days. He wished that he were back in those days, again the conscientious drudge, earning enough to keep himself in decent lodgings (not among brocades and fringes, or plumedand canopied beds! not in the midst of this midsummer loveliness, that laid hands more gentle and more detaining than the hands of any woman about his heart! not this old dignity that touched his pride!), and he stared down upon the roofs of the house lying cupped in its hollow, resentful of the vision that had thus opened out as though by treachery at a turning of his drab existence, yet unable to sustain a truly resentful or angry thought, by reason of the tenderness that melted him, and the mute plea of his inheritance, that, scorning any device more theatrical, quietly relied upon its simple beauty as its only mediator.
Mr. Nutley was considerably relieved when he heard that Chase had gone back to Wolverhampton. From being negligible, Chase had lately become a slightly inconvenient presence at Blackboys; not that he ever criticized or interfered with the arrangements that Nutley made, but Nutley felt vaguely that he watched everything and registered internal comments; yes, although not a very sensitive chap, perhaps—he hadn’t timefor that—Nutley had become aware that very little eluded Chase’s observation. It was odd, and rather annoying, that in spite of his taciturnity and his shy manner, Chase should so contrive to make himself felt. Any of the people on the estate, who had spoken with him more than once or twice, had a liking and a respect for him. Perhaps, Nutley consoled himself, it was thanks to tradition quite as much as to Chase’s personality, and he permitted himself a little outburst against the tradition he hated, envied, and scorned.
Now that Chase had gone back to Wolverhampton, Nutley arrived more aggressively at Blackboys, rang the bell louder, made more demands on Fortune, and bustled everybody about the place.
The first time he came there in the owner’s absence the dog met him in the hall, stretching himself as though just awakened from sleep, coming forward with his nails clicking on the boards.
“He misses his master,” said Fortune compassionately.
Nutley thought, with discomfort, that the whole place missed Chase. There were traces of him everywhere—the obverse of his handwritingon the pad of blotting-paper in the library, his stick in the hall, and some of his clothes in a pile on the bed in his bedroom.
“Yes, Mr. Chase left a good many of his things behind,” said Fortune when consulted.
“When does he think he’s coming back?—the sale takes place next week,” grumbled Nutley.
It was nearly midsummer; the heat-haze wickered above the ground, and the garden was tumultuous with butterflies and flowers.
“It seems a pity to think of Mr. Chase missing all this fine weather,” Fortune remarked.
Nutley had no affection whatever for Fortune; he possessed the knack of making remarks to which he could not reasonably take exception, but which contrived slightly to irritate him.
“I daresay he’s getting the fine weather where he is,” he replied curtly.
“Ah, but in towns it isn’t the same thing; when he’s got his own garden here, and all,” said Fortune, not yielding to Nutley, who merely shrugged, and started talking about the sale in a sharp voice.
He was in his element, Chase once dismissed from his mind. He came up to Blackboysnearly every day, quite unnecessarily, giving every detail his attention, fawning upon anyone who seemed a likely purchaser for the house, gossiping with the dealers who now came in large numbers, and accepting their cigars with a “Well, I don’t mind if I do—bit of a strain, you know, all this—the responsibility, and so on.” He had the acquisitiveness of a magpie, for scraps of sale-room gossip. Dealers ticking off items in their catalogues, men in green baize aprons shifting furniture, the front door standing permanently open to all comers, were all a source of real gratification to him; while in the number of motors that waited under the shade of the trees he took a personal pride. He rubbed his hands with pleasure over the coming and going, and at the crunch of fresh wheels on the gravel. Chase’s ridiculous little padlock on the wooden gate—there wasn’t much trace of that now! Front door and back door were open, the summer breeze wandering gently between them and winnowing the shreds of straw that trailed about the hall, and in the passage beyond; and anyone who had finished inspecting the house might pass into the garden by the back door, to stroll up thecentral walk, till Nutley, looking out of an upper floor window, taking upon himself the whole credit, and full of a complacent satisfaction, thought that the place had the appearance of a garden party.
A country sale! It was one that would set two counties talking, one that would attract all the biggest swells from London (Wertheimer, Durlacher, Duveen, Partridge, they had all been already, taking notes), such a collection didn’t often come under the hammer—no, by jove, it didn’t! and Nutley, reading for the fiftieth time the name “Nutley, Farebrother and Co., Estate Agents and Solicitors,” at the foot of the poster, reflected how that name would gain in fame and lustre by the association. Not that Farebrother, not that Co., had been allowed many fingers in the pie; he, Nutley, had done it all; it washisshow,hisewe-lamb; he would have snapped the head off anyone who had dared to claim a share, or scorned them with a single glance.
He wondered to whom the house itself would ultimately fall. He had received several offers for it, but none of them had reached the reserve figure of thirty thousand. The dealers, of course, would make a ring for thefurniture, the tapestries, and the pictures, and would doubtless resell them to its new owner of the house at an outrageous profit. Nutley had his eye on a Brazilian as a very probable purchaser; not only had he called at the estate office himself for all possible particulars, but on a second occasion he had brought his son and his daughter with him, exotic birds brilliantly descending upon the country solicitor’s office. They had come in a white Rolls-Royce, which had immediately compelled Nutley’s disapproving respect; it had a negro chauffeur on the box, the silver statuette of a nymph with streaming hair on the bonnet, and a spray of orchids in a silver and crystal vase inside. The Brazilian himself was an unpretentious cattle magnate, with a quick, clipped manner, and a wrinkled face the colour of a coffee-bean; he might be the purveyor of dollars, but he wasn’t the showy one; the ostentation of the family had passed into the children. These were in their early twenties, spoilt and fretful; the tyrants of their widowed father, who listened to all their remarks with an indulgent smile. Nutley, who had never in the whole of his life seen anything like them, tried to make himself believe that he couldn’tdecide which was the more offensive, but, secretly, he was much impressed. “Plenty of bounce, anyway,” he reflected, observing the son, his pearl-grey suit over admirably waisted stays, his black hair swept back from his brow, and shining like the flanks of a wet seal, his lean hands weighted with fat platinum rings, his walk that slightly swayed, as though the syncopated rhythm of the plantations had passed for ever into his blood; and, observing him, the strangest shadow of envy passed across the shabby little solicitor in the presence of such lackadaisical youth.... The daughter, more languid and more subtly insolent, so plump that she seemed everywhere cushioned: her tiny hands had no knuckles, but only dimples, and everything about her was round, from the single pearls on her fingers to the toecaps of her patent leather shoes. Clearly the father had offered Blackboys to the pair as an additional toy. They were as taken with it as their deliberately unenthusiastic manner would permit them to betray; and Nutley guessed that sufficient sulks on the part of the daughter would quickly induce the widower to increase his offer of twenty-five thousand by the necessary five. Up to thepresent he had held firm, a business convention which Nutley was ready tacitly to accept. He had reported the visit to Chase, but Chase (the unaccountable) hadn’t taken much interest. Since then he had seen the brother and sister several times wandering over the house and garden, and this he took to be a promising sign. The father he hadn’t seen again, but that didn’t distress him: the insolent pair were the ones who counted.
Only two days remained. Chase had sent for his clothes, and had enclosed a note for Nutley in his letter to Fortune: “Press of business” prevented him from returning to Blackboys, but he was content to leave everything in Nutley’s hands, etc. Polite enough. Nutley read the note, standing in the gallery which had been cleared in preparation for the sale. (It was, he thought, a stroke of genius to hold the sale in the house itself—to display the furniture in its own surroundings, instead of in the dreary frame of an auction room. That would make very little difference to the dealers, of course, who knew the intrinsic value; but from the straybuyers, the amateurs who would be after the less important things, it might mean anything up to an extra 25 per cent.). He was alone in the gallery, for it was not yet ten o’clock, and he maliciously wondered what Chase’s feelings would be if he could see the room now, the baize-covered tables on trestle legs, the auctioneer’s desk and high chair, the rows of cane chairs arranged as though in a theatre, the choicest pieces of furniture grouped behind cords at the further end of the room, like animals awaiting slaughter in a pen. The little solicitor was from time to time startled by the stab of malice that thought of Chase evoked; he was startled now. He clapped his hand over his mouth—to suppress an ejaculation, or a grin?—and glanced round the gallery. It was empty but for the lean dog, who sat with his tail curled like a whip-lash round his haunches, and who might have come down out of the tapestry, gravely regarding Nutley. The lean dog, scenting disruption, had trailed about the house for days like a haunted soul, and Nutley had fallen into the habit of saying to him, with a jocularity oddly peppered by venom, “I’ll put you into the sale as an extra item, spindle-shanks.”
Dimly, it gratified him to insult Chase through Chase’s dog.
People began to filter in. They wandered about, looking at things and consulting their catalogues; Nutley, who examined them stealthily and with as much self-consciousness as if he had been the owner, discriminated nicely between thebona fidebuyers and those who came out of idle curiosity. (Chase had already recognized the mentality that seizes upon any pretext for penetrating into another man’s house; if as far as his bedroom, so much the better.) Nutley might as well have returned to his office since here there was no longer anything for him to do, but he lingered, with the satisfaction of an impresario. Could he but have stood at the front door, to receive the people as the cars rolled up at intervals! Hospitable and welcoming phrases came springing to his lips, and his hands spread themselves urbanely, the palms outwards. No sharpness in his manner! none of the chilblained acerbity that kept him always on the defensive! nothing but honey and suavity! “Walk in, walk in, ladies and gentlemen! No entrance fee inmypeep show. Twenty years I had to wait for the old woman to die; I fixed myeye on her when she was sixty, but she clung on till she was over eighty; then she went. It’s all in my hands now. Walk in, walk in, ladies and gentlemen; walk upstairs; the show’s going to begin.”
It was very warm. Really an exceptional summer. If the weather held for another two days, it would improve the attendance at the sale. London people would come (Nutley had the sudden idea of running a special). Even now, picnic parties were dotted about, under the trees beside their motors. No wonder that they were glad to exchange burning pavements against fresh grass for a day. Chase—Chase wouldn’t like the litter they left. Bits of paper, bottles and tins. He wouldn’t say anything; he never did; that was exactly what made him so disconcerting; but he would look, and his nose would curl. But Chase was safely away, while the picnics took place under his trees, and women in their light summer dresses strolled about in his garden and pointed with their parasols at his house. Nutley saw them from the windows. For the first time since he remembered the place, the parapet of the central walk was bare of peacocks; they had taken refuge indignantlyin the cedars, where they could be heard screeching. He remembered Chase, feeding them with bits of bread from his pocket. He remembered old Miss Chase, wagging her finger at him, and saying “Ah, Nutley” (she had always called him by his surname, like a man), “you want to deprive an old maid of her children; it’s too bad of you!”
But the Chases were gone, both of them, and no Chases remained, but those who stared sadly from their frames, where they stood propped against the wall ready to be carried into the sale room.
June the twenty-first. The day of the sale. Midsummer day. Nutley’s day. He arrived early at the house, and met at the door Colonel Stanforth, who had walked across the park, and who considered the solicitor’s umbrella with amusement. “Afraid it will rain, Nutley? Look at that blue sky, not a cloud, not even a white one.” They entered the house together, Stanforth rubicund and large, Nutley noticeably spare in the black coat that enveloped him like a sheath. “Might be an undertaker’s mute,” Stanforthcommented inwardly. “Isn’t Farebrother coming up to-day?” he asked aloud. “Oh, yes, I daresay he’ll look in later,” Nutley answered, implying as clearly as possible by his tone that it was not of the slightest importance whether his partner looked in or not.
“Well, there aren’t many people about yet,” said Stanforth, rubbing his hands vigorously together. “What about your Brazilians, eh? Are they going to put in an appearance? Chase, I hear, is still in Wolverhampton.”
“Yes,” answered Nutley, “we shan’t see much ofhim.”
“Of course, there was no necessity for him to come, but it’s odd of him to take so little interest, don’t you think? Odd, I mean, as he seemed to like staying in the place, and to have got on so remarkably well with all the people around. Not that I saw anything of him when he was here. An unneighbourly sort of fellow, I should think. But to hear some of the people talk about him, by Gad, I was quite sorry he couldn’t settle down here as squire.”
“As you say, there was no necessity for him to come to the sale,” said Nutley, frigidlyignoring the remainder of Stanforth’s remarks.
“No, but if I’d been he, I don’t think I could have kept away, all the same.”
Nutley went off, saying he had things to see to. On the landing he met the butler with Thane slouching disconsolately after him.
“You’ll see that that dog’s shut up, Fortune,” he snapped at him.
An air of suspense hung over everything. The sale was announced to begin at midday, because the London train arrived shortly after eleven, but before then the local attendance poured in, and many people drove up who had not previously been seen at the house, their business being with the lands or the farms: farmers in their gigs, tip-toeing awkwardly and apologetically on the polished boards of the hall while their horses were led away into the stable-yard, and there were many of the gentry too, who came in waggonettes or pony-traps. Nutley, watching and prying everywhere, observed the arrival of the latter with mixed feelings. On the one hand their presence increased the crush, but on the other hand he did not for a moment suppose they had come to buy. They came in families, shy and inclined to giggle and to herd together, squire and lady dressed almostsimilarly in tweed, and not differing much as to figure either, the sons very tall and slim, and slightly ashamed, the daughters rather taller and slimmer, in light muslins and large hats, all whispering together, half propitiatory, half on the defensive, and casting suspicious glances at everyone else. Amongst these groups Nutley discerned the young Brazilian, graceful as an antelope amongst cattle, and, going to the window, he saw the white Rolls-Royce silently manœuvring amongst the gigs and the waggonettes.
“Regular bean-feast, ain’t it?” said Stanforth’s voice behind him. “You ought to have had a merry-go-round and a gipsy booth, Nutley.”
Nutley uncovered his teeth in a nervously polite smile. He looked at his watch, and decided that it was time the London motors began to arrive. Also the train was due. Most of those who came by train would have to walk from the station; it wasn’t far across the village and down the avenue to the house. He could see the advance guard already, walking in batches of two and three. And there was Farebrother; silly old Farebrother, with his rosy face, and his big spectacles, and his woolly white curls underthe broad hat. Not long to wait now. The auctioneer’s men were at their posts; most of the chairs in the gallery were occupied, only the front rows being left empty owing to diffidence; the auctioneer himself, Mr. Webb, had arrived and stood talking to Colonel Stanforth, with an air of unconcern, on any topic other than the sale.
The farms and outlying portions were to be dealt with first, then the house and the contents of the house, then the park, and the building lots that had been carved out of the park and that were especially dear to Nutley. It would be a long sale, and probably an exciting one. He hoped there would be competition over the house. He knew that several agencies were after it, but thought that he would place his money on the Brazilian.
A continuous stir of movement and conversation filled the gallery. People came up to Nutley and asked him questions in whispers, and some of the big dealers nodded to him. Nearly all the men had their catalogues and pencils ready; some were reading the booklet. The Brazilian slipped into a prominent seat, accompanied by his solicitor. A quarter to twelve. The garden was desertednow, for everyone had crowded into the house. Five minutes to twelve. Mr. Webb climbed up into his high chair, adjusted his glasses, and began turning over some papers on the desk before him.
A message was brought to Nutley: Mr. Webb would be much obliged if he would remain at hand to answer any point that might be raised. Nutley was only too glad. He went and leant against the auctioneer’s chair, at the back, and from there surveyed the whole length of the room. Rows of expectant people. People leaning against the walls and in the doorways. The gaitered farmers. The gentry. The dealers. The clerks and small fry. The men in green baize aprons. Such a crowd as the gallery had never seen.
“Lot 1, gentlemen....”
The sharp rap of the auctioneer’s little ivory hammer, and the buzz in the room was stilled; throats were cleared, heads raised.
“Lot 1, gentlemen. Three cottages adjoining the station, with one acre of ground; coloured green on plan. What bids, gentlemen? Anyone start the bidding? Five hundred guineas? four hundred? Come, come, gentlemen, please,” admonishing them,“we have a great deal to get through. I ask your kind co-operation.”
Knocked down at seven hundred and fifty guineas. Nutley noted the sum in the margin of his catalogue. Webb was a capital auctioneer: he bustled folk, he chaffed them, he got them into a good temper, he made them laugh so that their purses laughed wide in company. He had a jolly round face, a twinkling eye, and a rose-bud in his buttonhole. Five hundred and fifty for the next lot, two cottages; so far, so good.
“Now, gentlemen, we come to something a little more interesting: the farm-house and lands known as Orchards. An excellent house, and a particularly fine brew of ale kept there, too, as I happen to know—though that doesn’t go with the house.” (The audience laughed; it appreciated that kind of pleasantry.) “What offers, gentlemen? Two hundred acres of fine pasture and arable, ten acres of shaw, twenty acres of first-class fruit-trees....” “That’s so, sir,” from Chase’s old apple-dealer friend at the back of the room, and heads were turned smilingly towards him. “There spoke the best authority in the county,” cried the auctioneer, catching on to this, “as nice a little propertyas you could wish. I’ve a good mind to start the bidding myself. Fifty guineas—I’ll put up fifty guineas. Who’ll go one better?” The audience laughed again; Mr. Webb had a great reputation as a wag. Nutley caught sight of Farebrother’s full-moon face at the back of the room, perfunctorily smiling.
The tenant began bidding for his own farm; he had been to Nutley to see whether a mortgage could be arranged, and Nutley knew the extent of his finances. The voice of the auctioneer followed the bidding monotonously up, “Two thousand guineas ... two thousand two hundred ... come, gentlemen, we’re wasting time ... two thousand five hundred....”
Knocked down to the farmer at three thousand five hundred guineas. A wink passed between Nutley and the purchaser: the place had not sold very well, but Nutley’s firm would get the commission on the mortgage.
Lot 4. Jakes’ cottage. Nutley remembered that Chase had once commented on Jakes’ garden, and he remembered also that old Miss Chase used to favour Jakes and his flowers; he supposed sarcastically that itwas hereditary among the Chases to favour Jakes. That same stab of malice came back to him, and this time it included Jakes: the man made himself ridiculous over his garden, carrying (as he boasted) soil and leaf-mould home for it for miles upon his back; that was all over now, and his cottage would first be sold as a building site and then pulled down.
He caught sight of Jakes, standing near a window, his every-day corduroy trousers tied as usual with string round the knees; he looked terribly embarrassed, and was swallowing hard; the Adam’s apple in his throat moved visibly above his collar. He stood twisting his cap between his hands. Nutley derisively watched him, saying to himself that the fellow might be on the point of making a speech. Surely he wasn’t going to bid! a working-man on perhaps forty shillings a week! Nutley was taken up and entertained by this idea, when a stir at the door distracted his attention; he glanced to see who the late-comer was, and perceived Chase.