So Big Edna Ferber (most romantic novels txt) 📖

where one dollar often represented the profits on a whole load of market truck brought to the city.

Crash! went the potato masher. “Fifty cents I’m bid. Who’ll make it seventy-five? Who’ll make it seventy-five?”

“Sixty!” Johannes Ambuul, a widower, his age more than the sum of his bid.

“Seventy!” Gerrit Pon.

Adam Ooms whispered it⁠—hissed it. “S-s-s-seventy. Ladies and gents, I wouldn’t repeat out loud sucha figger. I would be ashamed. Look at this basket, gents, and then you can say⁠ ⁠… s-s-seventy!”

“Seventy-five!” the cautious Ambuul.

Scarlet, flooding her face, belied the widow’s outward air of composure. Pervus DeJong, standing beside Selina, viewed the proceedings with an air of detachment. High Prairie was looking at him expectantly, openly. The widow bit her red lip, tossed her head. Pervus DeJong returned the auctioneer’s meaning smirk with the mild gaze of a disinterested outsider. High Prairie, Low Prairie, and New Haarlem sat tense, like an audience at a play. Here, indeed, was drama being enacted in a community whose thrills were all too rare.

“Gents!” Adam Ooms’s voice took on a tearful note⁠—the tone of one who is more hurt than angry. “Gents!” Slowly, with infinite reverence, he lifted one corner of the damask cloth that concealed the hamper’s contents⁠—lifted it and peered within as at a treasure. At what he saw there he started back dramatically, at once rapturous, despairing, amazed. He rolled his eyes. He smacked his lips. He rubbed his stomach. The sort of dumb show that, since the days of the Greek drama, has been used to denote gastronomic delight.

“Eighty!” was wrenched suddenly from Goris Von Vuuren, the nineteen-year-old fat and gluttonous son of a prosperous New Haarlem farmer.

Adam Ooms rubbed brisk palms together. “Now then! A dollar! A dollar! It’s an insult to this basket to make it less than a dollar.” He lifted the cover again, sniffed, appeared overcome. “Gents, if it wasn’t for Mrs. Ooms sitting there I’d make it a dollar myself and a bargain. A dollar! Am I bid a dollar!” He leaned far forward over his improvised pulpit. “Did I hear you say a dollar, Pervus DeJong?” DeJong stared, immovable, unabashed. His very indifference was contagious. The widow’s bountiful basket seemed to shrink before one’s eyes. “Eighty-eighty-eighty-eighty⁠—gents! I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to whisper a secret.” His lean face was veined with craftiness. “Gents. Listen. It isn’t chicken in this beautiful basket. It isn’t chicken. It’s”⁠—a dramatic pause⁠—“it’s roast duck!” He swayed back, mopped his brow with his red handkerchief, held one hand high in the air. His last card.

“Eighty-five!” groaned the fat Goris Von Vuuren.

“Eighty-five! Eighty-five! Eightyfiveeightyfiveeightyfive eighty-five! Gents! Gen-tle-men! Eighty-five once! Eighty-five⁠—twice!” [Crash!] “Gone to Goris Von Vuuren for eighty-five.”

A sigh went up from the assemblage; a sigh that was the wind before the storm. There followed a tornado of talk. It crackled and thundered. The rich Widow Paarlenberg would have to eat her supper with Von Vuuren’s boy, the great thick Goris. And there in the doorway, talking to teacher as if they had known each other for years, was Pervus DeJong with his money in his pocket. It was as good as a play.

Adam Ooms was angry. His lean, fox-like face became pinched with spite. He prided himself on his antics as auctioneer; and his chef d’œuvre had brought a meagre eighty-five cents, besides doubtless winning him the enmity of that profitable store customer, the Widow Paarlenberg. Goris Von Vuuren came forward to claim his prize amidst shouting, clapping, laughter. The great hamper was handed down to him; an ample, rich-looking burden, its handle folded comfortably over its round stomach, its white cover so glistening with starch and ironing that it gave back the light from the big lamp above the auctioneer’s stand. As Goris Von Vuuren lifted it his great shoulders actually sagged. Its contents promised satiety even to such a feeder as he. A grin, half sheepish, half triumphant, creased his plump pink face.

Adam Ooms scuffled about among the many baskets at his feet. His nostrils looked pinched and his skinny hands shook a little as he searched for one small object.

When he stood upright once more he was smiling. His little eyes gleamed. His wooden sceptre pounded for silence. High in one hand, balanced daintily on his finger tips, he held Selina’s little white shoe box, with its red ribbon binding it, and the plume of evergreen stuck in the ribbon. Affecting great solicitude he brought it down then to read the name written on it; held it aloft again, smirking.

He said nothing. Grinning, he held it high. He turned his body at the waist from side to side, so that all might see. The eyes of those before him still held a mental picture of the huge hamper, food-packed, that had just been handed down. The contrast was too absurd, too cruel. A ripple of laughter swept the room; rose; swelled to a roar. Adam Ooms drew his mouth down solemnly. His little finger elegantly crooked, he pendulumed the box to right and left. He swerved his beady eyes from side to side. He waited with a nice sense of the dramatic until the laughter had reached its height, then held up a hand for silence. A great scraping “Ahem!” as he cleared his throat threatened to send the crowd off again.

“Ladies⁠—and gents! Here’s a dainty little tidbit. Here’s something not only for the inner man, but a feast for the eye. Well, boys, if the last lot was too much for you this lot ought to be just about right. If the food ain’t quite enough for you, you can tie the ribbon in the lady’s hair and put the posy in your buttonhole and there you are. There you are! What’s more, the lady herself goes with it. You don’t get a country girl with this here box, gents. A city girl, you can tell by looking at it, just. And who is she? Who did up this dainty little box just big enough for two?”