Four
I hadn’t forgotten my plan of going to the auction¹.
There was three weeks to go. I’d had two more trips to the Continent,one to France and the other to Germany. It was when I was in Hamburgthat things came to a crisis. For one thing I took a violent dislike to theman and his wife I was driving. They represented everything I dislikedmost. They were rude, inconsiderate, unpleasant to look at, and I supposethey developed in me a feeling of being unable to stand this life of syco-phancy any longer. I was careful, mind you. I thought I couldn’t standthem another day but I didn’t tell them so. No good running yourself inbad with the firm that employs you. So I telephoned up their hotel, said Iwas ill and I wired London saying the same thing. I said I might be inquarantine and it would be advisable if they sent out a driver to replaceme. Nobody could blame me for that. They wouldn’t care enough aboutme to make further inquiries² and they’d merely think that I was too fever-ish to send them any more news. Later, I’d turn up in London again, spin-ning them a yarn³ of how ill I’d been! But I didn’t think I should do that. Iwas fed up with the driving racket.
That rebellion of mine was an important turning-point in my life. Be-cause of that and of other things, I turned up at the auction rooms on theappointed date.
“Unless sold before by private treaty” had been pasted across the ori-ginal board. But it was still there, so it hadn’t been sold by private treaty. Iwas so excited I hardly knew what I was doing.
As I say, I had never been to a public auction of property before. I wasimbued with the idea that it would be exciting but it wasn’t exciting. Notin the least. It was one of the most moribund⁴ performances I have ever at-tended. It took place in a semi-gloomy atmosphere and there were onlyabout six or seven people there. The auctioneer was quite different fromthose auctioneers that I had seen presiding at furniture sales or things ofthat kind; men with facetious⁵ voices and very hearty⁶ and full of jokes. Thisone, in a dead and alive voice, praised the property and described theacreage and a few things like that and then he went halfheartedly into thebidding. Somebody made a bid of ?5,000. The auctioneer gave a tiredsmile rather as one who hears a joke that isn’t really funny. He made afew remarks and there were a few more bids. They were mostly countrytypes

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