Amateur collectors come, on the lookout for lace fans or Japanese bronzes or Chinese ceramics or furniture or pictures or hangings or rugs or tapestries, or whatever it is that constitutes their favorite hobby. There are sure to be prominent actor folk and author folk in this category. Dealers are on hand, each as wise looking as a barnful of hoot-owls and talking the jargon of the craft.
Agents from rival auction houses are sometimes seen, ready, should the opportunity present itself, to snap up a bargain with intent to reauction it at their own houses at a profit. With the resident proprietor one of this gentry is about as popular as a bat in a boarding school, but since there is no law to bar him out and since it is in the line of business for him to be present, why present he generally is.
Rich women drive up in their town cars and shabby purveyors of antique wares from little clutter-hole shops on cross streets at the fringe of the East Side shamble in on their fiat arches. Then, too, there are the habitués of the auction room habit; women mostly, but some men too, unfortunate creatures who have fallen victim to an incurable vice and to whom the announcement in the papers of an unusual sale is lure sufficient to draw them hither whether or not they hope to buy anything; and finally there are representatives of a common class in any big city—individuals who go wherever free entertainment is provided and especially to spots where they are likely to see assembled notables of the stage or society or of high financial circles.
The auctioneer almost invariably is of a compounded and composite type that might be described as part matinée idol, part professional revivalist, part floor walker, part court jester and part jury pleader, with just a trace of a suggestion of the official manner of the well-to-do undertaker stirred into the mixture. By sight at least he knows all of his regular customers and is inclined with a special touch of respectful affection toward such of them as prefer on these occasions to be known by an initial rather than by name.
“And sold to Mr. B.,” he says with a gracious smile. Or—“Now then, Mrs. H., doesn't this bea-u-tiful varse mean anything to you?” he inquires deferentially when the bidding lags. “Did I hear you offer seven hundred and fifty, Colonel J.?” he asks in a tone of deep solicitude.
By long acquaintance with his regular clientèle, or perhaps by a sort of intuition which is not the least of his gifts, he is able to interpret into sums of currency a nod, a wink, a raised finger, a shrug or the lift of an eyebrow, at a distance of anywhere from ten to sixty feet.
In the face of disappointments manifolded a thousand times a month this man yet remains an unfailing optimist. Watching him in action one gets the impression that he reads none but glad books, goes to none save glad plays and when the weather is inclement shares the viewpoint of that sweet singer of the Sunny South who wrote to the effect that it is not raining rain to-day, it's raining daffodils, and then two lines further along corrects his botany to state that having been convinced of his error of a moment before he now wishes to take advantage of this opportunity to inform the public that it is not raining rain to-day, but on the contrary is raining roses down, or metrical words to that general tenor. He was a good poet, as poets go, but not the sort of person you would care to loan your best umbrella to.
In another noticeable regard our auctioneer friend betrays somewhat the same abrupt shiftings of temperamental manifestations that are reputed to have been shown by Ben Bolt's lady friend. I am speaking of the late lamented Sweet Alice, who—as will be recalled—would weep with delight when you gave her a smile, but trembled with fear at your frown. Apparently Alice couldn't help behaving in this curious way—one gathers that she must have been the village idiot, harmless enough but undoubtedly an annoying sort of person to have hanging round, weeping copiously whenever anybody else was cheerful, and perhaps immediately afterward trembling in a disconcerting sort of way. She must have spoiled many a pleasant party in her day, so probably it was just as well that the community saw fit to file her away in the old churchyard in the obscure corner mentioned more or less rhythmically in the disclosures recorded as having been made to Mr. Bolt upon the occasion of his return to his native shire after what presumably had been a considerable absence.
The poet chronicler, Mr. English, is a trifle vague on this point, but considering everything it is but fair to infer that Alice's funeral was practically by acclamation. Beyond question it must have been a relief to all concerned, including the family of deceased, to feel that a person so grievously afflicted mentally was at last permanently planted under a certain slab of stone rather loosely described in the conversation just referred to as granite so gray. One wishes Mr. English had been a trifle more exact in furnishing the particular details of this sad case. Still, I suppose it is hard for a poet to be technical and poetical at the same time. And though he failed to go into particulars I am quite sure that when asked if he didn't remember Alice, Mr. Bolt answered in the decided affirmative. It is a cinch he couldn't have forgotten her, the official half-wit and lightning-change artist of the county.
But whereas this unfortunate young woman's conduct may only be accounted for on the grounds of a total irresponsibility, there is method behind the same sharply contrasted shift of mood as displayed by the chief salesman of the auction room. He is thrilled—visibly and physically thrilled—at each rapidly recurring opportunity of presenting an article for disposal to the highest bidder; hardly can he control his emotions of joy at the prospect of offering this particular object to an audience of discriminating tastes and balanced judgment. But mark the change: How instantly, how completely does a devastating and poignant distress overcome him when his hearers perversely decline to enter into spirited competition for a thing so priceless! A sob rises in his throat, choking his utterance to a degree where it becomes impossible for him to speak more than three or four hundred words per minute; grief dims his eye; regret—not on his own account but for others—droops his shoulders. When it comes to showing distress he makes that poor feeble-minded Alice girl look like a beginner. Yet repeated shocks of this character fail to daunt the sunniness of his true nature. The harder his spirits are dashed down to earth the greater the resiliency and the buoyancy with which they bounce up again. The man has a soul of new rubber!