The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley [best romance ebooks TXT] 📗

catch your death of cold,” said Helen over his shoulder. “Titania, you run and get your fur. Roger, go and find your cap. With your bald head, you ought to know better!”

When they returned to the front door, Titania’s blue eyes were sparkling above her soft tippet.

“I applaud your taste in furs,” said Roger. “That is just the colour of tobacco smoke.” He blew a whiff against it to prove the likeness. He felt very talkative, as most older men do when a young girl looks as delightfully listenable as Titania.

“What an adorable little place,” said Titania, looking round at the bookshop’s space of private pavement, which was sunk below the street level. “You could put tables out here and serve tea in summer time.”

“The first thing every morning,” continued Roger, “I set out the ten-cent stuff in these boxes. I take it in at night and stow it in these bins. When it rains, I shove out an awning, which is mighty good business. Someone is sure to take shelter, and spend the time in looking over the books. A really heavy shower is often worth fifty or sixty cents. Once a week I change my pavement stock. This week I’ve got mostly fiction out here. That’s the sort of thing that comes in in unlimited numbers. A good deal of it’s tripe, but it serves its purpose.”

“Aren’t they rather dirty?” said Titania doubtfully, looking at some little blue Rollo books, on which the siftings of generations had accumulated. “Would you mind if I dusted them off a bit?”

“It’s almost unheard of in the secondhand trade,” said Roger; “but it might make them look better.”

Titania ran inside, borrowed a duster from Helen, and began housecleaning the grimy boxes, while Roger chatted away in high spirits. Bock already noticing the new order of things, squatted on the doorstep with an air of being a party to the conversation. Morning pedestrians on Gissing Street passed by, wondering who the bookseller’s engaging assistant might be. “I wish I could find a maid like that,” thought a prosperous Brooklyn housewife on her way to market. “I must ring her up some day and find out how much she gets.”

Roger brought out armfuls of books while Titania dusted.

“One of the reasons I’m awfully glad you’ve come here to help me,” he said, “is that I’ll be able to get out more. I’ve been so tied down by the shop, I haven’t had a chance to scout round, buy up libraries, make bids on collections that are being sold, and all that sort of thing. My stock is running a bit low. If you just wait for what comes in, you don’t get much of the really good stuff.”

Titania was polishing a copy of The Late Mrs. Null. “It must be wonderful to have read so many books,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m not a very deep reader, but at any rate Dad has taught me a respect for good books. He gets so mad because when my friends come to the house, and he asks them what they’ve been reading, the only thing they seem to know about is Dere Mable.”

Roger chuckled. “I hope you don’t think I’m a mere highbrow,” he said. “As a customer said to me once, without meaning to be funny, ‘I like both the Iliad and the Argosy.’ The only thing I can’t stand is literature that is unfairly and intentionally flavoured with vanilla. Confectionery soon disgusts the palate, whether you find it in Marcus Aurelius or Doctor Crane. There’s an odd aspect of the matter that sometimes strikes me: Doc Crane’s remarks are just as true as Lord Bacon’s, so how is it that the Doctor puts me to sleep in a paragraph, while my Lord’s essays keep me awake all night?”

Titania, being unacquainted with these philosophers, pursued the characteristic feminine course of clinging to the subject on which she was informed. The undiscerning have called this habit of mind irrelevant, but wrongly. The feminine intellect leaps like a grasshopper; the masculine plods as the ant.

“I see there’s a new Mable book coming,” she said. “It’s called That’s Me All Over Mable, and the newsstand clerk at the Octagon says he expects to sell a thousand copies.”

“Well, there’s a meaning in that,” said Roger. “People have a craving to be amused, and I’m sure I don’t blame ’em. I’m afraid I haven’t read Dere Mable. If it’s really amusing, I’m glad they read it. I suspect it isn’t a very great book, because a Philadelphia schoolgirl has written a reply to it called Dere Bill, which is said to be as good as the original. Now you can hardly imagine a Philadelphia flapper writing an effective companion to Bacon’s Essays. But never mind, if the stuff’s amusing, it has its place. The human yearning for innocent pastime is a pathetic thing, come to think about it. It shows what a desperately grim thing life has become. One of the most significant things I know is that breathless, expectant, adoring hush that falls over a theatre at a Saturday matinee, when the house goes dark and the footlights set the bottom of the curtain in a glow, and the latecomers tank over your feet climbing into their seats⁠—”

“Isn’t it an adorable moment!” cried Titania.

“Yes, it is,” said Roger; “but it makes me sad to see what tosh is handed out to that eager, expectant audience, most of the time. There they all are, ready to be thrilled, eager to be worked upon, deliberately putting themselves into that glorious, rare, receptive mood when they are clay in the artist’s hand⁠—and Lord! what miserable substitutes for joy and sorrow are put over on them! Day after day I see people streaming into theatres and movies, and I know that more than half the time they are on a blind quest, thinking they are satisfied when in truth they are fed on paltry husks. And