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 the
furniture 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, impotently watching 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 their familiar 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 typewritten letter, 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.