V. Sackville-West

“ He looked about now, for the first time since he had come into the room, and discovered Nutley leaning against the auctioneer’s high chair, then he discovered the young man who must certainly be the Brazilian in question, and all the dread which had been hitherto, so to speak, staved off, now smote him with its imminence as his eyes lighted on the unfamiliar, insouciant face.
The new owner, lounging there, insufferable, graceful, waiting without impatience, so insultingly unperturbed! Cool as a cucumber, that young man, accustomed to find life full of a persevering amiability. ”

“ She left the dining-room, where Bertie fumbled and tried to detain her; she passed through the shop, and, moving like a sleep-walker, unlocked and undid the many fastenings of the door. Outside in the street stood a group of men, carrying lanterns; the snow sparkled on the ground; the narrow street was like an illustration of old-fashioned Christmas. She stood holding the door open. She recognized many of her fellow-tradesmen; she heard their words, “Your well-known charity, Miss Protheroe ... never turn away an appeal unanswered.... Christmas-time ... trust we don’t intrude ...” ”

“ How impressed he would be, after luncheon, when she took him out! He would expect her to know about the garden; the garden had always been her speciality; but he should find that she wasn’t a docile ignoramus about the farm, a mere writer of cheques to Lynes’ dictation. She beamed at him again, hugging her satisfaction to herself. She was glad that she had not been born a man, to work for work’s own cold, ungrateful sake, but a woman, to work for the warm appreciation in a fellow-being’s eyes.
And Henry was charming her, as she had expected to be charmed. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But he was exalted far beyond shyness or false shame. He never noticed the excited flutter all over the room, or the extraordinary agitation of Nutley, who was saying “He’s mad! he’s mad!” while frantically trying to attract the auctioneer’s attention. Chase was oblivious to all this. He stood, feeling himself inspired by some divine breath, the room a blur before him, and a current of power, quite indomitable, surging through his veins. Infatuation. Genius. They must be like this. ”

“ Chase made a movement to rise; he wanted to fly the room, to escape an ordeal that appalled his soul, but his shyness held him down: he could not create a sensation before so many people. Enraged as he was by the absurd weakness that caught him thus, and prevented him from saving himself while there was still time, he yet submitted, pinned to his chair, enduring such misery as made all his previous grief sink to the level of mere discomfort. ”

“ So the house must have drowsed, evening after evening, before Chase ever came near it, with the only difference that from one of those doors had emerged an old lady dressed in black silk, leaning on a stick, an arbitrary old lady, who had slowly descended the polished stairs, carefully placing the rubber ferule of her stick from step to step, and helping herself on the banisters with the other hand, instead of the alien clerk from Wolverhampton, who hesitated to go downstairs to dinner because he feared there would be a servant in the room to wait upon him. ”

“ They had even moments of curiosity, when they ferreted among the hotch-potch of things they found stuffed away in the cupboards and drawers, and under the bed; and speculated marvelling on the queerness of Alice’s existence among these things: forty years of masquerade! But for the most part they sat gloomy, or wandered aimlessly about the room, dwelling in their own minds upon their several apprehensions. Bertie’s wife said, “It’s all so vague—only hints, so to speak,” and a background of shadows leapt into being. ”

“ Chase sat with his fingers knotted together between his knees. Perhaps a score of people in that room knew him by sight; to the others he was an onlooker; to the ones who knew him, an owner hoping for a good price. They must know he was poor—the park fence was lichen-covered and broken down in many places; the road up to the house was overgrown with weeds. Poor—obliged to sell; the place, for all its beauty, betrayed its poverty. Only the farmers looked prosperous. ”

“ Backed up by her family, she would have felt herself backed up by the whole of the English middle-class, cushioned, solid in the consciousness of its homogeneity and resources, an enormous family of Jennings, swarming in every town and with its place of assembly in every town-hall, inimical to the exotic, mistrustful of the new, tenacious of the conventions that were as cement to its masonry; a class sagacious and shrewd, nicely knowing safety from danger, and knowing, above all, its own mind, since nothing was ever admitted to that mind to which it could not immediately affix a label. ”

“ Farebrother with his weak sentimentality, or Nutley, who was so astute, so bent upon getting Blackboys brilliantly into the market, and whose grudging respect for old Miss Chase, beneath his impatience of the tyranny she had imposed upon him, was so readily divined.
Chase stood looking at the bowl of tulips; it seemed to him that he spent his days for ever looking at something, and deriving from it that new, quiet satisfaction. He was revolving in his mind a phrase of Mr. Farebrother’s, to the effect that he ought to go the rounds and call upon his tenants. ”

“ Webb leant across his desk to take the name and address of the purchaser.
Jakes began making his way out of the room. He had the shameful air of one who has failed before all men in the single audacity of his lifetime. For him, Lot 4 had been the lot that must rivet everyone’s attention; it had been not an episode but the apex. Chase saw him slink out, burdened by disgrace. It would be several hours before he regained the spirit to put the bagginhook through the flowers. ”

“ The room began to take sides, most preferring the straight forward vulgarity of the jolly American to the outlandishness of the young man, which baffled and put them ill at their ease. (Nutley found time to think that the youth of the neighbourhood would need some time before it recovered from the influence of that young man, even if he were to pass away with the day.) Those who had the habit of sale-rooms thought Chase lucky in having two men, both keen, against one another to run up a high price. They bent forward with their elbows on their knees and their chins in their hands, to listen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Any man brighter-hearted and more optimistic might have rejoiced in this enforced expedition as a holiday, but Chase was neither optimistic nor bright-hearted. He took life with a dreary and rather petulant seriousness, and, full of resentment against this whole unprofitable errand, was dwelling now upon the probable, the almost certain, inefficiencies of his subordinates in Wolverhampton, because he had in him an old-maidish trait that could not endure the thought of other people interfering with his business or his possessions. ”

“ As you know, ladies and gentlemen—as, in fact, this monograph, which you have all had in your hands, will have told you if you did not know it before—we have in Blackboys one of the most perfect examples of the Elizabethan manor-house in England. I don’t think I need take up your time and my own by enlarging upon that, or by pointing out the historical and artistic value of the property about to be disposed of; I can safely leave the ancient building, and the monograph so ably prepared by my friend Mr. Nutley, to speak for themselves. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Chase sat on the edge of his chair, twisting his fingers together and keeping his eyes fixed on Jakes. So the man was trying to save his garden!—and the flowers, through whose roots he said he would put a bagginhook sooner than let them pass to a stranger. Where did he imagine he could get the money? poor fool. The fat man was after the cottage for some commercial enterprise. What had the auctioneer suggested?—a tea-room? That was it, without a doubt—a tea-room! A painted sign-board hanging out to attract motorists; little tin tables in the garden, perhaps, on summer evenings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You see, we are trying to save you all the time we possibly can. What about the old lady? do you want anyone sent in to sit with her?”
“I really don’t know,” said Chase, “what’s usually done? you know more about these things than I do.”
“Oh, as to that, I should think I ought to!” Nutley replied with a little self-satisfied smirk. “Perhaps you won’t believe me, but most weeks I’m in a house with a corpse. There are usually relatives, of course, but in this case if you wanted anyone sent in to sit with the old lady, we should have to send a servant. Shall I call Fortune?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chase; that is to say, Colonel Stanforth, who was on the spot at the moment of the regrettable event, communicated with us and with you simultaneously. We should like to welcome you, with all the sobriety required by the cloud which must hang over this occasion, to the estate which has been in the possession of your family for the past five hundred years. We should like to express our infinite regret at the embarrassments under which the estate will be found to labour. ”

“ Henry she was conscious of a fugitive relief.
“Then I needn’t feel selfish about keeping you here,” she said, “and it will be a nice rest for you after your journey and all the business you had to do in London. Now if you have quite finished, we might go out? It gets dark so quickly.” They went out; already the fresh beauty of the day was passing, it was colder, and there was more grey and less gold between the trees. “Let us go up to the top of the garden,” said Mrs. Martin, who felt she could not bear to keep the secret of the three hundred acres to herself a moment longer. ”

“ She was thinking, as she cut sheaves from the coreopsis and, more sparingly, from the snapdragons, that the autumn border was really the finest sight of 210the year, and that she was glad Henry should be coming now, and at no other time.
In the house, where she had everything conveniently arranged in the garden-room—a sink, taps, cloths for wiping the glasses, and a cupboard full of flower vases—she proceeded leisurely to do the flowers. No one had ever known Mrs. Martin be anything but leisurely; she always had plenty to occupy her time, but she was never hurried or ruffled. ”