Question

Explain how the narrator got out of the tight corner that he was in.

Answer 1

When the author was perplexed beyond measure and was even ready to welcome a firing squad to bail him out of the current crisis, a divine chance presented itself to the narrator. The narrator had stupidly given an open bid to buy “big Daubigny” for 4050 guineas when he had only 63 pounds in his bank account. However hard he tried, he could not recall a name of an “uncle” or a friend who could extend him a loan to cover the price of the painting. To delay disgrace, he was standing at the end of the queue of the successful bidders. Like a providential intervention, a mediator from the starting bidder who was ready to take the same painting for 4000 guineas enquired the narrator in a husky cockney tone if he was the gentleman who had bought, “big Daubigny”. 

The narrator admitted it. To the narrator’s great relief, the mediator said the first bidder wanted to know if he would take 50 guineas for his interest. The author should have embraced him and wept for joy for bailing him out of a potential disgrace. But he made the best use of the opportunity exhibiting his guile, by asking him if that was the most he could offer. The mediator said that there was no harm in asking for some more. The narrator said he would take a hundred guineas. When the man left to find out the possibility both the author and his friend laughed.

But when the author saw the cheque for hundred guineas, he became serious. He said with joy and shock, “of all the luck! well, I’m hanged”. Thus the narrator had a narrow escape from a tight comer. One could even say that the narrator escaped by the skin of his teeth.

“Call it a narrow escape, maybe it’s your lucky day. ”