A SUSSEX AUCTION.

Year by year the centre of activities at Wetherby's farm
had narrowed until at last only twenty or thirty acres lay under
cultivation - the rest stretched untended in mute reproach, an envy
and an exasperation to the surrounding farmers. The change had
come however, and with it their opportunity. For the incoming
owner had taken over none of Wetherby's plant, though it was, as
everyone knew, modern and excellent of its kind. Reckless pur-
chasing had been a part of his weakness. He was the only man in
the neighbourhood for instance who possessed a slag-distributor,
and also the only one who never used such a thing. Generally it
was to be had on loan, and this kept it in repair - the only ad-
vantage Wetherby gleaned from the transaction. His fine thresher
too, fitted with the newest patterns of revolving drum, travelled
each autumn many miles round the country-side working for other
men. The bulk of his outfit was collected for auction in his lar-
gest field, the one which rolls down so charmingly from the oast-
house to its skirting of wood. All was good of its kind and prac-
tically new, but rust had collected wherever it could.

It was a famous sale - the best of the whole year, and for
an hour or more before it began the farmers were there. Their
poultry-keeping wives too, for there were chicken-coops and incuba-
tors to be sold, and husbands to be controlled from unwise invest-
ment. Besides, the occasion held quite special social possibili-
ties: daughters were there - strange, transitional, unprecedented

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young women, their sound beauty disguised by masses of millinery,
by the combined achievements of the village dressmaker and the
ready-made stores at the market town. The elders examine lot by
lot with eager anxiety. For even to the Sussex-bred farmer the
sale now so generally accompanying quarter-day is at once an
opportunity and a threat. It attracts him. It holds out to him
the promise of pure joy. It makes the economic mirage to float
before his eyes - the illusion that he is going to get something
for nothing; and yet even as he looks covetously round, his imagin-
ation inflamed in advance by the descriptive catalogue, he is daunted
by the memory of previous mistakes. And so at the outset caution
and moderation stand guard, even in the face of new swath-turners,
of horse-rakes and rib-rollers of the very best patterns.

As the time goes on the buyers pass about almost stealthily.
But in the end the spirit of gain is too strong. Even out here in the
Sussex meadow under the sweet autumn sky, with the Downs marking
the horizon and the sea in sight - the men go under to it, to-day
as ever. It rises up in them as they look round on each other and
measure their chances. The auctioneer arrives, a brisk "foreigner"
from a market town five miles off, accompanied by his clerk and a
man with only one eye carrying a large bottle of gin and a couple
of small spirit glasses.

A preliminary circulation of the gin finds acceptance with
all but two or three of the buyers and two members of the Society
of Friends - farming soberly in the neighbourhood in the fear of

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God - and for the next few hours the men compete. There is hardly a calm face to be seen. The spirit of acquisitiveness inflamed by gin broods in the still air over the whole field, drawing the group of human creatures from one "lot" to another across the yielding turf. The passage of the clouds across the wide sky, the pageant of the afternoon light, the flight of birds over the rolling meadow-land, the kindly grey downs in the distance are all unnoticed. Except perhaps by the girls who hover round the margin of the moving group. But they, too, are in bondage. Even those among them who are as yet detached enough to see and feel the beauty of the day, whose perceptions are as yet unentangled, undimmed, see only in proportion as the shadow of fate draws alluringly on, heightening and sharpening those glories before it blots them out.

The Quaker brothers are less involved, less easily stimulated, at once more detached and more observant than their fellows. It is clear that they have come with their purchases already thought out, their decisions taken, and the limit of their bidding fixed. Just occasionally they glance at their well-thumbed catalogue and speak together. They bid quietly in gentle tones.

Once it becomes obvious that they have set their choice on any object the bidding approaches as near to animation as the soil permits. But one has a moment of purelv human satisfaction when one of the brothers, after quietly naming his offer for an unused and specially ingenious form of chain-harrow, and by two

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advances upon his first-named price having made the bystanders,
newly refreshed by gin, specially ready to compete for the prize,
puts one stalwart gaitered leg upon it and bids doggedly. The
auctioneer smiles, delighted, drops for the time being his smart
banter and the portentous tone of his stimulating voice. The man
of peace has his desire, and the little crowd passes on into the
next field, and in a few moments is ringed eagerly round a trio
of beautiful Sussex heifers, their silky sides panting and their
wonderful scared eyes glancing round the circle.

"Who'll bid for Snowdrop and Dimple and Curly?" and the
auctioneer rattles off a string of well-worn jests.

The sale of the frightened beasts is a dreary and baffling
proceeding - the gin-flushed farmers, the brutalised faces of the
drovers and the subsidised tongue of the auctioneer are more stri-
kingly apparent than in the earlier transactions. The sale of
horses is little better, though there is a moment of relief when
the liveliest and most unmanageable of the lot is carried off by a
handsome gypsy, who suddenly appears on the scene chewing a straw
and jingling a little bag of coin. The horse goes off with him
docile and cheerful.

The sale is over. The successful buyers collect their
smaller spoil, leaving the unwieldy to be dealt with the next
day. Within half an hour all but a few stragglers have gone;
traps and farm-carts have bowled away, the sound of voices is gone,

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and for those strolling, chatting girls another opportunity has
passed by. To one or two perhaps it has been a day - the day of
the whole summer to be for ever remembered. The field is empty
at last; only the unshifted purchases remain, casting like the
untrimmed hedges and the poplars in the farther field ever longer
and deeper shadows upon the unmown grass. All is still. In the
distance a sheep-bell tinkles.