Constance took a Windsor chair in the corner nearest the door, and motioned Cyril to the next chair; they dared not speak; they moved on tiptoe; Cyril inadvertently dragged his chair along the floor, and produced a scrunching sound; he blushed, as though he had desecrated a church, and his mother made a gesture of horror.
The remainder of the company glanced at the corner, apparently pained by this negligence.
Some of them greeted Constance, but self- consciously, with a sort of shamed air; it might have been that they had all nefariously gathered together there for the committing of a crime.
Fortunately Constance's widowhood had already lost its touching novelty, so that the greetings, if self- conscious, were at any rate given without unendurable commiseration and did not cause awkwardness.
When the official world arrived, fussy, bustling, bearing documents and a hammer, the general feeling of guilty shame was intensified.
Useless for the auctioneer to try to dissipate the gloom by means of bright gestures and quick, cheerful remarks to his supporters!
Cyril had an idea that the meeting would open with a hymn, until the apparition of a tapster with wine showed him his error.
The auctioneer very particularly enjoined the tapster to see to it that no one lacked for his thirst, and the tapster became self-consciously energetic.
He began by choosing Constance for service.
In refusing wine, she blushed; then the fellow offered a glass to Cyril, who went scarlet, and mumbled
'No' with a lump in his throat; when the tapster's back was turned, he smiled sheepishly at his mother.
The majority of the company accepted and sipped.
The auctioneer sipped and loudly smacked, and said:
"Ah!"
Mr. Critchlow came in.
And the auctioneer said again:
"Ah!
I'm always glad when the tenants come.
That's always a good sign."
He glanced round for approval of this sentiment.
But everybody seemed too stiff to move.
Even the auctioneer was self-conscious.
"Waiter!
Offer wine to Mr. Critchlow!" he exclaimed bullyingly, as if saying:
"Man! what on earth are you thinking of, to neglect Mr. Critchlow?"
"Yes, sir; yes, sir," said the waiter, who was dispensing wine as fast as a waiter can.
The auction commenced.
Seizing the hammer, the auctioneer gave a short biography of William Clews Mericarp, and, this pious duty accomplished, called upon a solicitor to read the conditions of sale.
The solicitor complied and made a distressing exhibition of self-consciousness.
The conditions of sale were very lengthy, and apparently composed in a foreign tongue; and the audience listened to this elocution with a stoical pretence of breathless interest.
Then the auctioneer put up all that extensive and commodious messuage and shop situate and being No. 4, St. Luke's Square.
Constance and Cyril moved their limbs surreptitiously, as though being at last found out.
The auctioneer referred to John Baines and to Samuel Povey, with a sense of personal loss, and then expressed his pleasure in the presence of 'the ladies;' he meant Constance, who once more had to blush.
"Now, gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "what do you say for these famous premises?
I think I do not exaggerate when I use the word 'famous.'"
Some one said a thousand pounds, in the terrorized voice of a delinquent.
"A thousand pounds," repeated the auctioneer, paused, sipped, and smacked.
"Guineas," said another voice self-accused of iniquity.
"A thousand and fifty," said the auctioneer.
Then there was a long interval, an interval that tightened the nerves of the assembly.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen," the auctioneer adjured.
The first voice said sulkily:
"Eleven hundred."
And thus the bids rose to fifteen hundred, lifted bit by bit, as it were, by the magnetic force of the auctioneer's personality.
The man was now standing up, in domination.
He bent down to the solicitor's head; they whispered together.
"Gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "I am happy to inform you that the sale is now open."
His tone translated better than words his calm professional beatitude.
Suddenly in a voice of wrath he hissed at the waiter: "Waiter, why don't you serve these gentlemen?"
"Yes, sir; yes, sir."