"I'm telling you now," declared the auctioneer, solemnly, "the gospel truth. I can't disclose names, but if you are inclined to doubt my word, I can show you a part of communications I have received from these two parties."
I was willing to believe his statement on this point.
"Very well, then! You will understand, Miss Weston, that there is a reserve rental set, and my duty is—we can't afford to be sentimental, you know, in our profession—my duty is to get as near to that as I possibly can. Now, on this slip of paper I am writing the figures of the highest bid that has been made up to the present." He threw the note across the table. I crossed out the sum, and wrote an increased amount. "Right you are!" he said. "Come back here the day after to-morrow, and I may have something further to tell you."
Looking back, I really cannot be sure how far I intended to go in the transaction. It was, I knew, impossible for me to realise some of my investments and put the money down even for one year's rent; certainly I could not make myself responsible for taking up a lease; I fancy the idea was to carry on the preliminaries to a certain stage, and then go to Mr. Hillier and urge him to take the matter over. Meanwhile, in order to save myself from the risk of being caught in a net, I told Millwood to say, supposing anyone called at the shop, that I had gone. Nothing more; just that. Perhaps one had better not discuss the fairness of the proceedings. I wanted to see my people back at their old home, and I did not intend to be too particular about the means.
The haggling went on. I had to go to the auctioneer's office more than half a dozen times. I climbed the hill from Chislehurst station and went under the water tower so often that I became tired of seeing the Bickley arms engraven there. Then old Captain Winterton took a turn for the worse, and his wife began to fail; I gave all spare time to the ground floor. To my question, Mrs. Winterton answered that they had no relatives. At times, both rallied slightly, and I was able to assure them they would not finish their innings until they scored a hundred.
"I would like to live on for a few years," confessed the old lady. "I want to see that dear baby boy grow up."
Few incidents occurred in the neighbourhood that were not in some way or other communicated to me; for some reason, the striking case of Corporal Bateman of Royal Hill remained, declining to be evicted from my thoughts. Bateman represented to me, for a period, a type of the British soldier, and behaviour of the British soldier where matters of the heart were concerned. My Quartermaster-Sergeant had not, in all probability, encountered or heard of Bateman, and he little knew how much his home prospects were affected by the deportment of the Corporal. (Now, it seems to me that no excuse can be found for the way in which I allowed it to influence me; at the time, no excuse appeared necessary.)
Corporal Bateman had been what Greenwich called half engaged to his cousin; the two quarrelled over his enlistment (the cousin thought he should have first mentioned it to her) and when he left for France his mother only saw him off. Mrs. Bateman was one of the few elderly people unable to read or write; the joke in Royal Hill was that, to conceal this defect, she pointedly and markedly bought each evening a newspaper, and seated on a wooden chair at her doorway, affected to peruse it carefully, with ejaculations such as,
"Gracious me, what a war this is to be sure!"