The Haunted Bookshop · Chapter 3 (1/2)

III

Titania Arrives

The first pipe after breakfast is a rite of some importance to seasoned smokers, and Roger applied the flame to the bowl as he stood at the bottom of the stairs. He blew a great gush of strong blue reek that eddied behind him as he ran up the flight, his mind eagerly meditating the congenial task of arranging the little spare room for the coming employee. Then, at the top of the steps, he found that his pipe had already gone out. “What with filling my pipe and emptying it, lighting it and relighting it,” he thought, “I don’t seem to get much time for the serious concerns of life. Come to think of it, smoking, soiling dishes and washing them, talking and listening to other people talk, take up most of life anyway.”

This theory rather pleased him, so he ran downstairs again to tell it to Mrs. Mifflin.

“Go along and get that room fixed up,” she said, “and don’t try to palm off any bogus doctrines on me so early in the morning. Housewives have no time for philosophy after breakfast.”

Roger thoroughly enjoyed himself in the task of preparing the guest room for the new assistant. It was a small chamber at the back of the second storey, opening on to a narrow passage that connected through a door with the gallery of the bookshop. Two small windows commanded a view of the modest roofs of that quarter of Brooklyn, roofs that conceal so many brave hearts, so many baby carriages, so many cups of bad coffee, and so many cartons of the Chapman prunes.

“By the way,” he called downstairs, “better have some of the prunes for supper tonight, just as a compliment to Miss Chapman.”

Mrs. Mifflin preserved a humorous silence.

Over these noncommittal summits the bright eye of the bookseller, as he tacked up the freshly ironed muslin curtains Mrs. Mifflin had allotted, could discern a glimpse of the bay and the leviathan ferries that link Staten Island with civilization. “Just a touch of romance in the outlook,” he thought to himself. “It will suffice to keep a blasée young girl aware of the excitements of existence.”

The room, as might be expected in a house presided over by Helen Mifflin, was in perfect order to receive any occupant, but Roger had volunteered to psychologize it in such a fashion as (he thought) would convey favourable influences to the misguided young spirit that was to be its tenant. Incurable idealist, he had taken quite gravely his responsibility as landlord and employer of Mr. Chapman’s daughter. No chambered nautilus was to have better opportunity to expand the tender mansions of its soul.

Beside the bed was a bookshelf with a reading lamp. The problem Roger was discussing was what books and pictures might be the best preachers to this congregation of one. To Mrs. Mifflin’s secret amusement he had taken down the picture of Sir Galahad which he had once hung there, because (as he had said) if Sir Galahad were living today he would be a bookseller. “We don’t want her feasting her imagination on young Galahads,” he had remarked at breakfast. “That way lies premature matrimony. What I want to do is put up in her room one or two good prints representing actual men who were so delightful in their day that all the young men she is likely to see now will seem tepid and prehensile. Thus she will become disgusted with the present generation of youths and there will be some chance of her really putting her mind on the book business.”

Accordingly he had spent some time in going through a bin where he kept photos and drawings of authors that the publishers’ “publicity men” were always showering upon him. After some thought he discarded promising engravings of Harold Bell Wright and Stephen Leacock, and chose pictures of Shelley, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Robert Burns. Then, after further meditation, he decided that neither Shelley nor Burns would quite do for a young girl’s room, and set them aside in favour of a portrait of Samuel Butler. To these he added a framed text that he was very fond of and had hung over his own desk. He had once clipped it from a copy of Life and found much pleasure in it. It runs thus:

I give humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend’s bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend’s friends, now returns to me in reasonably good condition.

I give humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ashtray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff.

When I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was resigned to the bitterness of the long parting: I never thought to look upon its pages again.

But now that my book is come back to me, I rejoice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honour: for this my book was lent, and is returned again.

Presently, therefore, I may return some of the books that I myself have borrowed.

“There!” he thought. “That will convey to her the first element of book morality.”

These decorations having been displayed on the walls, he bethought himself of the books that should stand on the bedside shelf.

This is a question that admits of the utmost nicety of discussion. Some authorities hold that the proper books for a guest room are of a soporific quality that will induce swift and painless repose. This school advises The Wealth of Nations, Rome Under the Caesars, The Statesman’s Year Book, certain novels of Henry James, and The Letters of Queen Victoria (in three volumes). It is plausibly contended that books of this kind cannot be read (late at night) for more than a few minutes at a time, and that they afford useful scraps of information.

Another branch of opinion recommends for bedtime reading short stories, volumes of pithy anecdote, swift and sparkling stuff that may keep one awake for a space, yet will advantage all the sweeter slumber in the end. Even ghost stories and harrowing matter are maintained seasonable by these pundits. This class of reading comprises O. Henry, Bret Harte, Leonard Merrick, Ambrose Bierce, W. W. Jacobs, Daudet, de Maupassant, and possibly even On a Slow Train Through Arkansas, that grievous classic of the railway bookstalls whereof its author, Mr. Thomas W. Jackson, has said “It will sell forever, and a thousand years afterward.” To this might be added another of Mr. Jackson’s onslaughts on the human intelligence, I’m from Texas, You Can’t Steer Me, whereof is said (by the author) “It is like a hard-boiled egg, you can’t beat it.” There are other of Mr. Jackson’s books, whose titles escape memory, whereof he has said “They are a dynamite for sorrow.” Nothing used to annoy Mifflin more than to have someone come in and ask for copies of these works. His brother-in-law, Andrew McGill, the writer, once gave him for Christmas (just to annoy him) a copy of On a Slow Train Through Arkansas sumptuously bound and gilded in what is known to the trade as “dove-coloured ooze.” Roger retorted by sending Andrew (for his next birthday) two volumes of Brann the Iconoclast bound in what Robert Cortes Holliday calls “embossed toad skin.” But that is apart from the story.

To the consideration of what to put on Miss Titania’s bookshelf Roger devoted the delighted hours of the morning. Several times Helen called him to come down and attend to the shop, but he was sitting on the floor, unaware of numbed shins, poring over the volumes he had carted upstairs for a final culling. “It will be a great privilege,” he said to himself, “to have a young mind to experiment with. Now my wife, delightful creature though she is, was⁠—well, distinctly mature when I had the good fortune to meet her; I have never been able properly to supervise her mental processes. But this Chapman girl will come to us wholly unlettered. Her father said she had been to a fashionable school: that surely is a guarantee that the delicate tendrils of her mind have never begun to sprout. I will test her (without her knowing it) by the books I put here for her. By noting which of them she responds to, I will know how to proceed. It might be worth while to shut up the shop one day a week in order to give her some brief talks on literature. Delightful! Let me see, a little series of talks on the development of the English novel, beginning with Tom Jones⁠—hum, that would hardly do! Well, I have always longed to be a teacher, this looks like a chance to begin. We might invite some of the neighbours to send in their children once a week, and start a little school. Causeries du lundi, in fact! Who knows I may yet be the Sainte Beuve of Brooklyn.”

Across his mind flashed a vision of newspaper clippings⁠—“This remarkable student of letters, who hides his brilliant parts under the unassuming existence of a secondhand bookseller, is now recognized as the⁠—”

“Roger!” called Mrs. Mifflin from downstairs: “Front! someone wants to know if you keep back numbers of Foamy Stories.”

After he had thrown out the intruder, Roger returned to his meditation. “This selection,” he mused, “is of course only tentative. It is to act as a preliminary test, to see what sort of thing interests her. First of all, her name naturally suggests Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. It’s a remarkable name, Titania Chapman: there must be great virtue in prunes! Let’s begin with a volume of Christopher Marlowe. Then Keats, I guess: every young person ought to shiver over St. Agnes’ Eve on a bright cold winter evening. Over Bemerton’s, certainly, because it’s a bookshop story. Eugene Field’s Tribune Primer to try out her sense of humour. And Archy, by all means, for the same reason. I’ll go down and get the Archy scrapbook.”

It should be explained that Roger was a keen admirer of Don Marquis, the humourist of the New York Evening Sun. Mr. Marquis once lived in Brooklyn, and the bookseller was never tired of saying that he was the most eminent author who had graced the borough since the days of Walt Whitman. Archy, the imaginary cockroach whom Mr. Marquis uses as a vehicle for so much excellent fun, was a constant delight to Roger, and he had kept a scrapbook of all Archy’s clippings. This bulky tome he now brought out from the grotto by his desk where his particular treasures were kept. He ran his eye over it, and Mrs. Mifflin heard him utter shrill screams of laughter.

“What on earth is it?” she asked.

“Only Archy,” he said, and began to read aloud⁠—

down in a wine vault underneath the city

two old men were sitting they were drinking booze

torn were their garments hair and beards were gritty

one had an overcoat but hardly any shoes

overhead the street cars through the streets were running

filled with happy people going home to christmas

in the adirondacks the hunters all were gunning

big ships were sailing down by the isthmus

in came a little tot for to kiss her granny

such a little totty she could scarcely tottle

saying kiss me grandpa kiss your little nanny

but the old man beaned her with a whisky bottle.

outside the snowflakes began for to flutter

far at sea the ships were sailing with the seamen

not another word did angel nanny utter

her grandsire chuckled and pledged the whisky demon

up spake the second man he was worn and weary

tears washed his face which otherwise was pasty

she loved her parents who commuted on the erie

brother im afraid you struck a trifle hasty

she came to see you all her pretty duds on

bringing christmas posies from her mothers garden

riding in the tunnel underneath the hudson

brother was it rum caused your heart to harden⁠—

“What on earth is there funny in that?” said Mrs. Mifflin. “Poor little lamb, I think it was terrible.”

“There’s more of it,” cried Roger, and opened his mouth to continue.

“No more, thank you,” said Helen. “There ought to be a fine for using the meter of Love in the Valley that way. I’m going out to market so if the bell rings you’ll have to answer it.”

Roger added the Archy scrapbook to Miss Titania’s shelf, and went on browsing over the volumes he had collected.

“The Nigger of the Narcissus,” he said to himself, “for even if she doesn’t read the story perhaps she’ll read the preface, which not marble nor the monuments of princes will outlive. Dickens’ Christmas Stories to introduce her to Mrs. Lirriper, the queen of landladies. Publishers tell me that Norfolk Street, Strand, is best known for the famous literary agent that has his office there, but I wonder how many of them know that that was where Mrs. Lirriper had her immortal lodgings? The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, just to give her a little intellectual jazz. The Wrong Box, because it’s the best farce in the language. Travels with a Donkey, to show her what good writing is like. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to give her a sense of pity for human woes⁠—wait a minute, though: that’s a pretty broad book for young ladies. I guess we’ll put it aside and see what else there is. Some of Mr. Mosher’s catalogues: fine! they’ll show her the true spirit of what one booklover calls biblio-bliss. Walking-Stick Papers⁠—yes, there are still good essayists running around. A bound file of Publishers’ Weekly to give her a smack of trade matters. Jo’s Boys in case she needs a little relaxation. The Lays of Ancient Rome and Austin Dobson to show her some good poetry. I wonder if they give them The Lays to read in school nowadays? I have a horrible fear they are brought up on the battle of Salamis and the brutal redcoats of ’76. And now we’ll be exceptionally subtle: we’ll stick in a Robert Chambers to see if she falls for it.”

He viewed the shelf with pride. “Not bad,” he said to himself. “I’ll just add this Leonard Merrick, Whispers About Women, to amuse her. I bet that title will start her guessing. Helen will say I ought to have included the Bible, but I’ll omit it on purpose, just to see whether the girl misses it.”

With typical male curiosity he pulled out the bureau drawers to see what disposition his wife had made of them, and was pleased to find a little muslin bag of lavender dispersing a quiet fragrance in each. “Very nice,” he remarked. “Very nice indeed! About the only thing missing is an ashtray. If Miss Titania is as modern as some of them, that’ll be the first thing she’ll call for. And maybe a copy of Ezra Pound’s poems. I do hope she’s not what Helen calls a bolshevixen.”

There was nothing bolshevik about a glittering limousine that drew up at the corner of Gissing and Swinburne streets early that afternoon. A chauffeur in green livery opened the door, lifted out a suitcase of beautiful brown leather, and gave a respectful hand to the vision that emerged from depths of lilac-coloured upholstery.

“Where do you want me to carry the bag, miss?”

“This is the bitter parting,” replied Miss Titania. “I don’t want you to know my address, Edwards. Some of my mad friends might worm it out of you, and I don’t want them coming down and bothering me. I am going to be very busy with literature. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

Edwards saluted with a grin⁠—he worshipped the original young heiress⁠—and returned to his wheel.

“There’s one thing I want you to do for me,” said Titania. “Call up my father and tell him I’m on the job.”

“Yes, miss,” said Edwards, who would have run the limousine into a government motor truck if she had ordered it.