Of all the astonished people in that room, perhaps not the least
astonished was the auctioneer. He had never seen Chase before, and
naturally thought that he had to deal with an entirely new candidate. He
adjusted his glasses to stare at the solitary figure upright among the
rows of seated people, standing with a trembling hand still
outstretched. He had just time to notice with concern that Chase was
deathly pale, his face carved and hollowed, before habit reasserted
itself, and he checked the “gone!” that had almost left his lips, to
resume his chronicle of the bidding with “Thirty-one thousand
guineas ... any advance on thirty-one thousand guineas?” and cocked his
eye at the Brazilian.
The Brazilian, equally surprised, had never before seen Chase either.
What was this fierce little man, who had shot up out of the ground so
turbulently to dispute his prize? He had not supposed that it would be
necessary to go beyond the thirty thousand; nevertheless he was prepared
to do so, and to make his determination clear he continued with the
bidding himself instead of leaving it to his solicitor. “And five
hundred,” he said.
“Thirty-five thousand,” said Chase.
The sensation he would have created by escaping from the room half an
hour earlier was nothing to the sensation he was creating now. 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. This certainty.
This unmistakable purpose. This sudden clearing away of all irrelevant
preoccupations. Vistas opened down into all the obscurities that had
always shadowed and confused his brain: the secret was to find oneself,
to know what one really wanted, what one really cared for, and to go for
it straight. Wolverhampton? moonshine! He was no longer pale, nor did he
keep his eyes shamefully bent upon the ground; he was flushed,
embattled; his nostrils dilated and working.
But everyone else thought him crazy, people sober watching the
vaingloriousness of a man drunk. Even the auctioneer allowed an
expression of surprise to cross his face, and varied his formula by
saying suavely, “Did I understand you to say thirty-five thousand, sir?
Thirty-five thousand guineas are bid.”
Drunk. As a man drunk. Everything appeared smothered to his senses;
intense, yet remote. His head light and swimming. Everything at a great
distance. The crowd around him, stirring, murmurous, but meaningless.
The auctioneer, perched up there, a diminutive figure, miles away.
Voices, muffled but enormously significant, conveying threats, conveying
combat. All leagued against him. This was battle; all the faces were
hostile. Or so he imagined. He was glad of it. Fighting for his house?
no, no! more, far more than that: fighting for the thing he loved.
Fighting to shield from rape the thing he loved. Fighting alone; come to
his senses in the very nick of time. Even at this moment, when he needed
every wit he had ever had at his command, he found time for a deep
inward thankfulness that the illumination had not come too late or
altogether passed him by. In the nick of time it had come, and he had
recognized it; recognized it for what it was, and seized hold of it, and
now, triumphantly, drunkenly, was holding his own in the face of all
this dismay and opposition. Moreover, they could not defeat him. Bidding
in these outrageous sums that need never be paid over, he was possessed
of an inexhaustible fortune. Undefeatable—what confidence that gave him!
The more hands turned against him the better. He challenged everybody;
he hardly knew what he was saying, only that he leapt up in thousands,
and that in spite of their astonishment and fury they were powerless
against him: there was nothing criminal or even illegal in his buying-in
his own house if he wanted to.
And then the end, that came before he knew that it was imminent; the
collapse of the Brazilian, whose expression had at last changed from
deliberate indifference to real bad temper; the voice of the auctioneer,
suavely asking for his name and his address; and his own voice, giving
his name as though for the first time in his life he were not ashamed of
it. And then Nutley, struggling across the room to him, snarling and
yapping at him like a little enraged cur, quite vague and deprived of
significance, but withal noisy, tiresome, and briefly perplexing; a
Nutley disproportionately enraged, furiously gesticulating, spluttering
at him, “Are you going to play this damned fool game with the rest of
the sale?” and his answer—he supposed he had given an answer, because of
the announcement from the auctioneer’s desk, which hushed the noisy room
into sudden silence, “I have to inform you, gentlemen, that Lot 16, and
the succeeding lots, which include the contents of the mansion, also the
surrounding park, have been bought in, and that the sale is therefore at
an end.”
And, in the midst of his bewilderment, the sensation of having his hand
sought for and wrung, while he gazed down into Mr. Farebrother’s old
rosy face and heard him say, half inarticulate with emotion, “I’m so
glad, Mr. Chase, I congratulate you, I’m so glad, I’m so _glad_.”