Books: The Haunted Bookshop
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Christopher Morley >> The Haunted Bookshop
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"Well, we're up against some terribly complicated problems.
My only consolation is that I think the bookseller can play
as useful a part as any man in rebuilding the world's sanity.
When I was fretting over what I could do to help things along,
I came across two lines in my favourite poet that encouraged me.
Good old George Herbert says:
A grain of glory mixed with humblenesse
Cures both a fever and lethargicknesse.
"Certainly running a second-hand bookstore is a pretty humble calling,
but I've mixed a grain of glory with it, in my own imagination
at any rate. You see, books contain the thoughts and dreams
of men, their hopes and strivings and all their immortal parts.
It's in books that most of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is.
I never realized the greatness of the human spirit, the indomitable
grandeur of man's mind, until I read Milton's Areopagitica.
To read that great outburst of splendid anger ennobles the meanest
of us simply because we belong to the same species of animal
as Milton. Books are the immortality of the race, the father
and mother of most that is worth while cherishing in our hearts.
To spread good books about, to sow them on fertile minds,
to propagate understanding and a carefulness of life and beauty,
isn't that high enough mission for a man? The bookseller is the real
Mr. Valiant-For-Truth.
"Here's my War-alcove," he went on. "I've stacked up here most
of the really good books the War has brought out. If humanity has
sense enough to take these books to heart, it will never get itself
into this mess again. Printer's ink has been running a race against
gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way,
because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second,
while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book.
But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can
keep on exploding for centuries. There's Hardy's Dynasts for example.
When you read that book you can feel it blowing up your mind.
It leaves you gasping, ill, nauseated--oh, it's not pleasant
to feel some really pure intellect filtered into one's brain!
It hurts! There's enough T. N. T. in that book to blast war from
the face of the globe. But there's a slow fuse attached to it.
It hasn't really exploded yet. Maybe it won't for another fifty years.
"In regard to the War, think what books have accomplished.
What was the first thing all the governments started to do--
publish books! Blue Books, Yellow Books, White Books, Red Books--
everything but Black Books, which would have been appropriate in Berlin.
They knew that guns and troops were helpless unless they could get
the books on their side, too. Books did as much as anything else
to bring America into the war. Some German books helped to wipe
the Kaiser off his throne--I Accuse, and Dr. Muehlon's magnificent
outburst The Vandal of Europe, and Lichnowsky's private memorandum,
that shook Germany to her foundations, simply because he told the truth.
Here's that book Men in War, written I believe by a Hungarian officer,
with its noble dedication "To Friend and Foe." Here are some of
the French books--books in which the clear, passionate intellect
of that race, with its savage irony, burns like a flame.
Romain Rolland's Au-Dessus de la Melee, written in exile in Switzerland;
Barbusse's terrible Le Feu; Duhamel's bitter Civilization;
Bourget's strangely fascinating novel The Meaning of Death.
And the noble books that have come out of England: A Student in Arms;
The Tree of Heaven; Why Men Fight, by Bertrand Russell--I'm hoping
he'll write one on Why Men Are Imprisoned: you know he was locked
up for his sentiments! And here's one of the most moving of all--
The Letters of Arthur Heath, a gentle, sensitive young Oxford tutor
who was killed on the Western front. You ought to read that book.
It shows the entire lack of hatred on the part of the English.
Heath and his friends, the night before they enlisted, sat up singing
the German music they had loved, as a kind of farewell to the old,
friendly joyous life. Yes, that's the kind of thing War does--
wipes out spirits like Arthur Heath. Please read it.
Then you'll have to read Philip Gibbs, and Lowes Dickinson
and all the young poets. Of course you've read Wells already.
Everybody has."
"How about the Americans?" said Titania. "Haven't they written
anything about the war that's worth while?"
"Here's one that I found a lot of meat in, streaked with
philosophical gristle," said Roger, relighting his pipe.
He pulled out a copy of Professor Latimer's Progress.
"There was one passage that I remember marking--let's see now,
what was it?--Yes, here!
"It is true that, if you made a poll of newspaper editors,
you might find a great many who think that war is evil.
But if you were to take a census among pastors of fashionable
metropolitan churches--"
"That's a bullseye hit! The church has done for itself with most
thinking men. . . . There's another good passage in Professor Latimer,
where he points out the philosophical value of dishwashing.
Some of Latimer's talk is so much in common with my ideas that I've
been rather hoping he'd drop in here some day. I'd like to meet him.
As for American poets, get wise to Edwin Robinson----"
There is no knowing how long the bookseller's monologue might
have continued, but at this moment Helen appeared from the kitchen.
"Good gracious, Roger!" she exclaimed, "I've heard your voice
piping away for I don't know how long. What are you doing,
giving the poor child a Chautauqua lecture? You must want
to frighten her out of the book business."
Roger looked a little sheepish. "My dear," he said, "I was only laying
down a few of the principles underlying the art of bookselling----"
"It was very interesting, honestly it was," said Titania brightly.
Mrs. Mifflin, in a blue check apron and with plump arms floury to
the elbow, gave her a wink--or as near a wink as a woman ever achieves
(ask the man who owns one).
"Whenever Mr. Mifflin feels very low in his mind about the business,"
she said, "he falls back on those highly idealized sentiments.
He knows that next to being a parson, he's got into the worst line
there is, and he tries bravely to conceal it from himself."
"I think it's too bad to give me away before Miss Titania,"
said Roger, smiling, so Titania saw this was merely a family joke.
"Really truly," she protested, "I'm having a lovely time.
I've been learning all about Professor Latimer who wrote The Handle
of Europe, and all sorts of things. I've been afraid every minute
that some customer would come in and interrupt us."
"No fear of that," said Helen. "They're scarce in the early morning."
She went back to her kitchen.
"Well, Miss Titania," resumed Roger. "You see what I'm driving at.
I want to give people an entirely new idea about bookshops.
The grain of glory that I hope will cure both my fever and my lethargicness
is my conception of the bookstore as a power-house, a radiating place
for truth and beauty. I insist books are not absolutely dead things:
they are as lively as those fabulous dragons' teeth, and being sown up
and down, may chance to spring up armed men. How about Bernhardi?
Some of my Corn Cob friends tell me books are just merchandise.
Pshaw!"
"I haven't read much of Bernard Shaw" said Titania.
"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out?
They follow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem.
They know their quarry! Look at that book The Education of Henry Adams!
Just watch the way it's hounding out thinking people this winter.
And The Four Horsemen--you can see it racing in the veins
of the reading people. It's one of the uncanniest things I know
to watch a real book on its career--it follows you and follows
you and drives you into a corner and MAKES you read it.
There's a queer old book that's been chasing me for years:
The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esq., it's called.
I've tried to escape it, but every now and then it sticks up
its head somewhere. It'll get me some day, and I'll be compelled
to read it. Ten Thousand a Year trailed me the same way until
I surrendered. Words can't describe the cunning of some books.
You'll think you've shaken them off your trail, and then one day
some innocent-looking customer will pop in and begin to talk,
and you'll know he's an unconscious agent of book-destiny. There's
an old sea-captain who drops in here now and then. He's simply
the novels of Captain Marryat put into flesh. He has me under a kind
of spell; I know I shall have to read Peter Simple before I die,
just because the old fellow loves it so. That's why I call this
place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I
haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me.
There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read
it."
"I know what you mean," said Titania. "I haven't read much Bernard Shaw,
but I feel I shall have to. He meets me at every turn, bullying me.
And I know lots of people who are simply terrorized by H. G. Wells.
Every time one of his books comes out, and that's pretty often,
they're in a perfect panic until they've read it."
Roger chuckled. "Some have even been stampeded into subscribing
to the New Republic for that very purpose."
"But speaking of the Haunted Bookshop, what's your special interest
in that Oliver Cromwell book?"
"Oh, I'm glad you mentioned it," said Roger. "I must put it back
in its place on the shelf." He ran back to the den to get it,
and just then the bell clanged at the door. A customer came in,
and the one-sided gossip was over for the time being.
Chapter VII
Aubrey Takes Lodgings
I am sensible that Mr. Aubrey Gilbert is by no means ideal as the leading
juvenile of our piece. The time still demands some explanation why
the leading juvenile wears no gold chevrons on his left sleeve.
As a matter of fact, our young servant of the Grey-Matter Agency
had been declined by a recruiting station and a draft board
on account of flat feet; although I must protest that their
flatness detracts not at all from his outward bearing nor from
his physical capacity in the ordinary concerns of amiable youth.
When the army "turned him down flat," as he put it, he had entered
the service of the Committee on Public Information, and had
carried on mysterious activities in their behalf for over a year,
up to the time when the armistice was signed by the United Press.
Owing to a small error of judgment on his part, now completely forgotten,
but due to the regrettable delay of the German envoys to synchronize
with over-exuberant press correspondents, the last three days
of the war had been carried on without his active assistance.
After the natural recuperation necessary on the 12th of November,
he had been re-absorbed by the Grey-Matter Advertising Agency,
with whom he had been connected for several years, and where his sound
and vivacious qualities were highly esteemed. It was in the course
of drumming up post-war business that he had swung so far out of his
ordinary orbit as to call on Roger Mifflin. Perhaps these explanations
should have been made earlier.
At any rate, Aubrey woke that Saturday morning, about the time Titania
began to dust the pavement-boxes, in no very world-conquering humour.
As it was a half-holiday, he felt no compunction in staying away from
the office. The landlady, a motherly soul, sent him up some coffee and
scrambled eggs, and insisted on having a doctor in to look at his damage.
Several stitches were taken, after which he had a nap. He woke up
at noon, feeling better, though his head still ached abominably.
Putting on a dressing gown, he sat down in his modest chamber, which was
furnished chiefly with a pipe-rack, ash trays, and a set of O. Henry,
and picked up one of his favourite volumes for a bit of solace.
We have hinted that Mr. Gilbert was not what is called "literary."
His reading was mostly of the newsstand sort, and Printer's Ink,
that naive journal of the publicity professions. His favourite
diversion was luncheon at the Advertising Club where he would pore,
fascinated, over displays of advertising booklets, posters,
and pamphlets with such titles as Tell Your Story in Bold-Face. He
was accustomed to remark that "the fellow who writes the Packard
ads has Ralph Waldo Emerson skinned three ways from the Jack."
Yet much must be forgiven this young man for his love of O. Henry.
He knew, what many other happy souls have found, that O. Henry
is one of those rare and gifted tellers of tales who can
be read at all times. No matter how weary, how depressed,
how shaken in morale, one can always find enjoyment in that master
romancer of the Cabarabian Nights. "Don't talk to me of Dickens'
Christmas Stories," Aubrey said to himself, recalling his adventure
in Brooklyn. "I'll bet O. Henry's Gift of the Magi beats anything
Dick ever laid pen to. What a shame he died without finishing
that Christmas story in Rolling Stones! I wish some boss writer
like Irvin Cobb or Edna Ferber would take a hand at finishing it.
If I were an editor I'd hire someone to wind up that yarn.
It's a crime to have a good story like that lying around half
written."
He was sitting in a soft wreath of cigarette smoke when his landlady
came in with the morning paper.
"Thought you might like to see the Times, Mr. Gilbert," she said.
"I knew you'd been too sick to go out and buy one. I see the President's
going to sail on Wednesday."
Aubrey threaded his way through the news with the practiced eye
of one who knows what interests him. Then, by force of habit,
he carefully scanned the advertising pages. A notice in the HELP
WANTED columns leaped out at him.
WANTED--For temporary employment at Hotel Octagon, 3 chefs,
5 experienced cooks, 20 waiters. Apply chef's office, 11 P.M. Tuesday.
"Hum," he thought. "I suppose, to take the place of those fellows
who are going to sail on the George Washington to cook for Mr. Wilson.
That's a grand ad for the Octagon, having their kitchen staff chosen
for the President's trip. Gee, I wonder why they don't play that up
in some real space? Maybe I can place some copy for them along
that line."
An idea suddenly occurred to him, and he went over to the chair
where he had thrown his overcoat the night before. From the pocket
he took out the cover of Carlyle's Cromwell, and looked at it carefully.
"I wonder what the jinx is on this book?" he thought. "It's a queer
thing the way that fellow trailed me last night--then my finding
this in the drug store, and getting that crack on the bean.
I wonder if that neighbourhood is a safe place for a girl to work in?"
He paced up and down the room, forgetting the pain in his head.
"Maybe I ought to tip the police off about this business," he thought.
"It looks wrong to me. But I have a hankering to work the thing out on
my own. I'd have a wonderful stand-in with old man Chapman if I saved
that girl from anything. . . . I've heard of gangs of kidnappers.
. . . No, I don't like the looks of things a little bit.
I think that bookseller is half cracked, anyway. He doesn't believe
in advertising! The idea of Chapman trusting his daughter in a place
like that----"
The thought of playing knight errant to something more personal
and romantic than an advertising account was irresistible.
"I'll slip over to Brooklyn as soon as it gets dark this evening,"
he said to himself. "I ought to be able to get a room somewhere along
that street, where I can watch that bookshop without being seen,
and find out what's haunting it. I've got that old .22 popgun
of mine that I used to use up at camp. I'll take it along.
I'd like to know more about Weintraub's drug store, too. I didn't
fancy the map of Herr Weintraub, not at all. To tell the truth, I had
no idea old man Carlyle would get mixed up in anything as interesting
as this."
He found a romantic exhilaration in packing a handbag.
Pyjamas, hairbrushes, toothbrush, toothpaste--("What an ad it
would be for the Chinese Paste people," he thought, "if they
knew I was taking a tube of their stuff on this adventure!")--
his .22 revolver, a small green box of cartridges of the size commonly
used for squirrel-shooting, a volume of O. Henry, a safety razor
and adjuncts, a pad of writing paper. . . . At least six nationally
advertised articles, he said to himself, enumerating his kit.
He locked his bag, dressed, and went downstairs for lunch.
After lunch he lay down for a rest, as his head was still very painful.
But he was not able to sleep. The thought of Titania Chapman's blue
eyes and gallant little figure came between him and slumber. He could
not shake off the conviction that some peril was hanging over her.
Again and again he looked at his watch, rebuking the lagging dusk.
At half-past four he set off for the subway. Half-way down
Thirty-third Street a thought struck him. He returned to his room,
got out a pair of opera glasses from his trunk, and put them in
his bag.
It was blue twilight when he reached Gissing Street.
The block between Wordsworth Avenue and Hazlitt Street is peculiar
in that on one side--the side where the Haunted Bookshop stands--
the old brownstone dwellings have mostly been replaced by small
shops of a bright, lively character. At the Wordsworth
Avenue corner, where the L swings round in a lofty roaring curve,
stands Weintraub's drug store; below it, on the western side,
a succession of shining windows beacon through the evening.
Delicatessen shops with their appetizing medley of cooked and pickled
meats, dried fruits, cheeses, and bright coloured jars of preserves;
small modistes with generously contoured wax busts of coiffured ladies;
lunch rooms with the day's menu typed and pasted on the outer pane;
a French rotisserie where chickens turn hissing on the spits before
a tall oven of rosy coals; florists, tobacconists, fruit-dealers, and
a Greek candy-shop with a long soda fountain shining with onyx
marble and coloured glass lamps and nickel tanks of hot chocolate;
a stationery shop, now stuffed for the holiday trade with
Christmas cards, toys, calendars, and those queer little suede-bound
volumes of Kipling, Service, Oscar Wilde, and Omar Khayyam that
appear every year toward Christmas time--such modest and cheerful
merchandising makes the western pavement of Gissing Street a jolly
place when the lights are lit. All the shops were decorated
for the Christmas trade; the Christmas issues of the magazines were
just out and brightened the newsstands with their glowing covers.
This section of Brooklyn has a tone and atmosphere peculiarly
French in some parts: one can quite imagine oneself in some
smaller Parisian boulevard frequented by the petit bourgeois.
Midway in this engaging and animated block stands the Haunted Bookshop.
Aubrey could see its windows lit, and the shelved masses of books within.
He felt a severe temptation to enter, but a certain bashfulness added
itself to his desire to act in secret. There was a privy exhilaration
in his plan of putting the bookshop under an unsuspected surveillance,
and he had the emotion of one walking on the frontiers of adventure.
So he kept on the opposite side of the street, which still maintains
an unbroken row of quiet brown fronts, save for the movie theatre
at the upper corner, opposite Weintraub's. Some of the basements
on this side are occupied now by small tailors, laundries,
and lace-curtain cleaners (lace curtains are still a fetish
in Brooklyn), but most of the houses are still merely dwellings.
Carrying his bag, Aubrey passed the bright halo of the movie theatre.
Posters announcing THE RETURN OF TARZAN showed a kind of third chapter
of Genesis scene with an Eve in a sports suit. ADDED ATTRACTION,
Mr. AND Mrs. SIDNEY DREW, he read.
A little way down the block he saw a sign VACANCIES in a parlour window.
The house was nearly opposite the bookshop, and he at once mounted
the tall steps to the front door and rang.
A fawn-tinted coloured girl, of the kind generally called "Addie,"
arrived presently. "Can I get a room here?" he asked. "I don't know,
you'd better see Miz' Schiller," she said, without rancour.
Adopting the customary compromise of untrained domestics, she did
not invite him inside, but departed, leaving the door open to show
that there was no ill will.
Aubrey stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.
In an immense mirror the pale cheese-coloured flutter of a gas jet
was remotely reflected. He noticed the Landseer engraving hung against
wallpaper designed in facsimile of large rectangles of gray stone,
and the usual telephone memorandum for the usual Mrs. J. F. Smith
(who abides in all lodging houses) tucked into the frame of
the mirror. Will Mrs. Smith please call Stockton 6771, it said.
A carpeted stair with a fine old mahogany balustrade rose into
the dimness. Aubrey, who was thoroughly familiar with lodgings,
knew instinctively that the fourth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth steps
would be creakers. A soft musk sweetened the warm, torpid air:
he divined that someone was toasting marshmallows over a gas jet.
He knew perfectly well that somewhere in the house would be
a placard over a bathtub with the legend: Please leave this tub
as you would wish to find it. Roger Mifflin would have said,
after studying the hall, that someone in the house was sure
to be reading the poems of Rabbi Tagore; but Aubrey was not
so caustic.
Mrs. Schiller came up the basement stairs, followed by a small pug dog.
She was warm and stout, with a tendency to burst just under the armpits.
She was friendly. The pug made merry over Aubrey's ankles.
"Stop it, Treasure!" said Mrs. Schiller.
"Can I get a room here?" asked Aubrey, with great politeness.
"Third floor front's the only thing I've got," she said.
"You don't smoke in bed, do you? The last young man I had burned
holes in three of my sheets----"
Aubrey reassured her.
"I don't give meals."
"That's all right," said Aubrey. "Suits me."
"Five dollars a week," she said.
"May I see it?"
Mrs. Schiller brightened the gas and led the way upstairs.
Treasure skipped up the treads beside her. The sight of the six
feet ascending together amused Aubrey. The fourth, ninth, tenth,
and fourteenth steps creaked, as he had guessed they would.
On the landing of the second storey a transom gushed orange light.
Mrs. Schiller was secretly pleased at not having to augment the gas
on that landing. Under the transom and behind a door Aubrey could
hear someone having a bath, with a great sloshing of water.
He wondered irreverently whether it was Mrs. J. F. Smith. At any rate
(he felt sure), it was some experienced habitue of lodgings, who knew
that about five-thirty in the afternoon is the best time for a bath--
before cooking supper and the homecoming ablutions of other tenants have
exhausted the hot water boiler.
They climbed one more flight. The room was small, occupying half
the third-floor frontage. A large window opened onto the street,
giving a plain view of the bookshop and the other houses across the way.
A wash-stand stood modestly inside a large cupboard. Over the mantel
was the familiar picture--usually, however, reserved for the fourth
floor back--of a young lady having her shoes shined by a ribald
small boy.
Aubrey was delighted. "This is fine," he said. "Here's a week
in advance."
Mrs. Schiller was almost disconcerted by the rapidity of the transaction.
She preferred to solemnize the reception of a new lodger by a little
more talk--remarks about the weather, the difficulty of getting "help,"
the young women guests who empty tea-leaves down wash-basin pipes,
and so on. All this sort of gossip, apparently aimless,
has a very real purpose: it enables the defenceless landlady
to size up the stranger who comes to prey upon her. She had
hardly had a good look at this gentleman, nor even knew his name,
and here he had paid a week's rent and was already installed.
Aubrey divined the cause of her hesitation, and gave her his
business card.
"All right, Mr. Gilbert," she said. "I'll send up the girl
with some clean towels and a latchkey."
Aubrey sat down in a rocking chair by the window, tucked the muslin
curtain to one side, and looked out upon the bright channel
of Gissing Street. He was full of the exhilaration that springs
from any change of abode, but his romantic satisfaction in being
so close to the adorable Titania was somewhat marred by a sense
of absurdity, which is feared by young men more than wounds and death.
He could see the lighted windows of the Haunted Bookshop quite plainly,
but he could not think of any adequate excuse for going over there.
And already he realized that to be near Miss Chapman was not at all
the consolation he had expected it would be. He had a powerful desire
to see her. He turned off the gas, lit his pipe, opened the window,
and focussed the opera glasses on the door of the bookshop.
It brought the place tantalizingly near. He could see the table at
the front of the shop, Roger's bulletin board under the electric light,
and one or two nondescript customers gleaning along the shelves.
Then something bounded violently under the third button of his shirt.
There she was! In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses
he could see Titania. Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked
blouse and brown skirt, there she was looking at a book.
He saw her put out one arm and caught the twinkle of her wrist-watch.
In the startling familiarity of the magnifying glass he could see
her bright, unconscious face, the merry profile of her cheek and chin.
. . . "The idea of that girl working in a second-hand bookstore!"
he exclaimed. "It's positive sacrilege! Old man Chapman must be
crazy."
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