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_ In the summer of that year the occurrence of a white rash of
posters on hoardings and on certain houses and shops, was
symptomatic of organic change in the town. The posters were
iterations of a mysterious announcement and summons, which began
with the august words: "By Order of the Trustees of the late
William Clews Mericarp, Esq." Mericarp had been a considerable
owner of property in Bursley. After a prolonged residence at
Southport, he had died, at the age of eighty-two, leaving his
property behind. For sixty years he had been a name, not a figure;
and the news of his death, which was assuredly an event, incited
the burgesses to gossip, for they had come to regard him as one of
the invisible immortals. Constance was shocked, though she had
never seen Mericarp. ("Everybody dies nowadays!" she thought.) He
owned the Baines-Povey shop, and also Mr. Critchlow's shop.
Constance knew not how often her father and, later, her husband,
had renewed the lease of those premises that were now hers; but
from her earliest recollections rose a vague memory of her father
talking to her mother about 'Mericarp's rent,' which was and
always had been a hundred a year. Mericarp had earned the
reputation of being 'a good landlord.' Constance said sadly: "We
shall never have another as good!" When a lawyer's clerk called
and asked her to permit the exhibition of a poster in each of her
shop-windows, she had misgivings for the future; she was worried;
she decided that she would determine the lease next year, so as to
be on the safe side; but immediately afterwards she decided that
she could decide nothing.
The posters continued: "To be sold by auction, at the Tiger Hotel
at six-thirty for seven o'clock precisely." What six-thirty had to
do with seven o'clock precisely no one knew. Then, after stating
the name and credentials of the auctioneer, the posters at length
arrived at the objects to be sold: "All those freehold messuages
and shops and copyhold tenements namely." Houses were never sold
by auction in Bursley. At moments of auction burgesses were
reminded that the erections they lived in were not houses, as they
had falsely supposed, but messuages. Having got as far as 'namely'
the posters ruled a line and began afresh: "Lot I. All that
extensive and commodious shop and messuage with the offices and
appurtenances thereto belonging situate and being No. 4 St. Luke's
Square in the parish of Bursley in the County of Stafford and at
present in the occupation of Mrs. Constance Povey widow under a
lease expiring in September 1889." Thus clearly asserting that all
Constance's shop was for sale, its whole entirety, and not a
fraction or slice of it merely, the posters proceeded: "Lot 2. All
that extensive and commodious shop and messuage with the offices
and appurtenances thereto belonging situate and being No. 3 St.
Luke's Square in the parish of Bursley in the County of Stafford
and at present in the occupation of Charles Critchlow chemist
under an agreement for a yearly tenancy." The catalogue ran to
fourteen lots. The posters, lest any one should foolishly imagine
that a non-legal intellect could have achieved such explicit and
comprehensive clarity of statement, were signed by a powerful firm
of solicitors in Hanbridge. Happily in the Five Towns there were
no metaphysicians; otherwise the firm might have been expected to
explain, in the 'further particulars and conditions' which the
posters promised, how even a messuage could 'be' the thing at
which it was 'situate.'
Within a few hours of the outbreak of the rash, Mr. Critchlow
abruptly presented himself before Constance at the millinery
counter; he was waving a poster.
"Well!" he exclaimed grimly. "What next, eh?"
"Yes, indeed!" Constance responded.
"Are ye thinking o' buying?" he asked. All the assistants,
including Miss Insull, were in hearing, but he ignored their
presence.
"Buying!" repeated Constance. "Not me! I've got quite enough house
property as it is."
Like all owners of real property, she usually adopted towards her
possessions an attitude implying that she would be willing to pay
somebody to take them from her.
"Shall you?" she added, with Mr. Critchlow's own brusqueness.
"Me! Buy property in St. Luke's Square!" Mr. Critchlow sneered.
And then left the shop as suddenly as he had entered it.
The sneer at St. Luke's Square was his characteristic expression
of an opinion which had been slowly forming for some years. The
Square was no longer what it had been, though individual
businesses might be as good as ever. For nearly twelve months two
shops had been to let in it. And once, bankruptcy had stained its
annals. The tradesmen had naturally searched for a cause in every
direction save the right one, the obvious one; and naturally they
had found a cause. According to the tradesmen, the cause was 'this
football.' The Bursley Football Club had recently swollen into a
genuine rival of the ancient supremacy of the celebrated Knype
Club. It had transformed itself into a limited company, and rented
a ground up the Moorthorne Road, and built a grand stand. The
Bursley F.C. had 'tied' with the Knype F.C. on the Knype ground--a
prodigious achievement, an achievement which occupied a column of
the Athletic News one Monday morning! But were the tradesmen
civically proud of this glory? No! They said that 'this football'
drew people out of the town on Saturday afternoons, to the
complete abolition of shopping. They said also that people thought
of nothing but 'this football;' and, nearly in the same breath,
that only roughs and good-for-nothings could possibly be
interested in such a barbarous game. And they spoke of gate-money,
gambling, and professionalism, and the end of all true sport in
England. In brief, something new had come to the front and was
submitting to the ordeal of the curse.
The sale of the Mericarp estate had a particular interest for
respectable stake-in-the-town persons. It would indicate to what
extent, if at all, 'this football' was ruining Bursley. Constance
mentioned to Cyril that she fancied she might like to go to the
sale, and as it was dated for one of Cyril's off-nights Cyril said
that he fancied he might like to go too. So they went together;
Samuel used to attend property sales, but he had never taken his
wife to one. Constance and Cyril arrived at the Tiger shortly
after seven o'clock, and were directed to a room furnished and
arranged as for a small public meeting of philanthropists. A few
gentlemen were already present, but not the instigating trustees,
solicitors, and auctioneers. It appeared that 'six-thirty for
seven o'clock precisely' meant seven-fifteen. 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."
The auctioneer sat down and sipped at leisure, chatting with his
clerk and the solicitor and the solicitor's clerk.
When he rose it was as a conqueror. "Gentlemen, fifteen hundred is
bid. Now, Mr. Critchlow."
Mr. Critchlow shook his head. The auctioneer threw a courteous
glance at Constance, who avoided it.
After many adjurations, he reluctantly raised his hammer,
pretended to let it fall, and saved it several times.
And then Mr. Critchlow said: "And fifty."
"Fifteen hundred and fifty is bid," the auctioneer informed the
company, electrifying the waiter once more. And when he had sipped
he said, with feigned sadness: "Come, gentlemen, you surely don't
mean to let this magnificent lot go for fifteen hundred and fifty
pounds?"
But they did mean that.
The hammer fell, and the auctioneer's clerk and the solicitor's
clerk took Mr. Critchlow aside and wrote with him.
Nobody was surprised when Mr. Critchlow bought Lot No. 2, his own
shop.
Constance whispered then to Cyril that she wished to leave. They
left, with unnatural precautions, but instantly regained their
natural demeanour in the dark street.
"Well, I never! Well, I never!" she murmured outside, astonished
and disturbed.
She hated the prospect of Mr. Critchlow as a landlord. And yet she
could not persuade herself to leave the place, in spite of
decisions.
The sale demonstrated that football had not entirely undermined
the commercial basis of society in Bursley; only two Lots had to
be withdrawn. _
Read next: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER VII - BRICKS AND MORTAR: PART II
Read previous: BOOK II CONSTANCE: CHAPTER VI - THE WIDOW: PART III
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