A dark afternoon with summer thunder in the sky. The fan-shaped
skyscrapers spread a checkerboard of window lights through the gloom. It
rains. People seem to grow vaguely elate on the dark wet pavements. They
hurry along, their eyes saying to one another, "We have something in
common. We are all getting wet in the rain." The crowd is no longer quite
so enigmatic a stranger to itself. An errand boy from Market Street
advances with leaps through the downpour, a high chant on his lips, "It's
raining ... it's raining." The rain mutters and the pavements, like
darkened mirrors, grow alive with impressionistic cartoons of the city.
Inside the Washington Street book store of Covici-McGee the electric
lights gleam cozily. New books and old books--the high shelves stuffed
with books vanish in the ceiling shadows. On a rainy day the dusty army of
books peers coaxingly from the shelves. Old tales, old myths, old wars,
old dreams begin to chatter softly in the shadows--or it may be the
chatter of the rain on the pavement outside. The Great Philosophers
unbend, the Bearded Classics sigh, the Pontifical Critics of Life murmur
"ahem." Yes, even the forbidding works of Standard Authors grow lonely on
the high shelves on a rainy day. As for the rag-tag, ruffle-snuffle crowd
in motley--the bulged, spavined, sniffling crew of mountebanks,
troubadours, swashbucklers, bleary philosophers, phantasts and
adventurers--they set up a veritable witches' chorus. Or it may be the
rain again lashing against the streaming windows of the book store.
* * * * *
People come in out of the rain. A girl without an umbrella, her face wet.
Who? Perhaps a stenographer hunting a job and halted by the rain. And then
a matron with an old-fashioned knitted shopping bag. And a spinster with a
keen, kindly face. Others, too. They stand nervously idle, feeling that
they are taking up valuable space in an industrial establishment and
should perhaps make a purchase. So they permit their eyes to drift
politely toward the wares. And then the chatter of the books has them. Old
books, new books, live books, dead books--but they move carelessly away
and toward the bargain tables--"All Books 30 Cents." Broken down best
sellers here--pausing in their gavotte toward oblivion. The next step is
the junk man--$1 a hundred. Pembertons, Wrights, Farnols, Websters,
Johnstones, Porters, Wards and a hundred other names reminiscent more of a
page in the telephone book than a page out of a literary yesterday. The
little gavotte is an old dance in the second-hand book store. The
$2-shelf. The $1-rack. The 75-cent table. The 30-cent grab counter. And
finis. New scribblings crowd for place, old scribblings exeunt.
The girl without an umbrella studies titles. A love story, of course, and
only thirty cents. An opened page reads, "he took her in his arms...." Who
would not buy such a book on a rainy day?
* * * * *
It rains and other people come in. A middle-aged man in a curious coat, a
curious hat and a curious face. Slate-colored skin, slate-colored eyes
behind silver spectacles. A scholar in caricature, an Old Clothes Dealer
out of Alice in Wonderland. The rain runs from his stringy, slate-colored
hair. He approaches the high shelves, thrusts the silver spectacles
farther down on his nose. In front of him a curious row of literary
gargoyles--"The Astral Light," "What and Where Is God?", "Man" by Dohony
of Texas, "The Star of the Magi."
Thin slate-colored fingers fumble nervously over the title backs. A second
man, figure short, squat, red-faced, crowds the erratic scholar. A third.
The rain is bringing them in in numbers. These are the basement students
of the gargoyle philosophies, the gargoyle sciences, the gargoyle
religions. Perpetual motion machine inventors, alchemists with staring,
nervous-eyed medieval faces, fourth dimensionists, sun worshippers,
cabalistic researchers, voodoo authorities--the old-book store is suddenly
alive with them. They move about furtively with no word for one another,
lost in their grotesque dreamings.
* * * * *
On a rainy day the city gives them up and they come puttering excitedly
into the loop on a quest. The world is a garish unreality to them. The
streets and the crowds of automatic-faced men and women, the upward rush
of buildings and the horizontal rush of traffic are no more than vague
grimacings. Life is something of which the streets are oblivious. But here
on the gargoyle shelves, the high, shadowed shelves of the old book
store--truth stands in all its terrible reality, wrapped in its authentic
habiliments. Dr. Hickson of the psychopathic laboratory would give these
curious rainy day phantasts identities as weird as the volumes they
caress. But the old book store clerk is more kind. He lets them rummage.
Before the rain ends they will buy "The Cradle of the Giants," "The Key to
Satanism," Cornelius Agrippa's "Natural Magic," "The Astral Chord,"
"Occultism and Its Usages." They will buy books by Jacob Boehme, William
Law, Sadler, Hyslop, Ramachaska. And they will go hurrying home with their
treasures pressed close to them. Stuffy bedrooms lined with hints of
Sabbatical horror, strewn with bizarre refuse; musty smelling books out of
whose pages fantastic shapes rear themselves against the gaslights,
macabre worlds in which unreason rides like a headless D'Artagnan;
evenings in the park arguing suddenly with startled strangers on the
existence of the philosophers' stone or the astrological causes of
influenza--these form a background for the curious men whom the rain has
drifted into the old book store and who stand with their eyes haunting the
gargoyle titles.
The rain brings in another tribesman--a famed though somewhat ragged
bibliomaniac. His casual gestures hide the sudden fever old books kindle
in his thought. Old books--old books, a magical phrase to him. His eyes
travel like a lover's back and forth, up and down. He knows them all--the
sets, the first editions, the bargains, the riff-raff. A democratic lover
is here. But the clerk watches him. For this lover is an antagonist. Yes,
this somewhat ragged, gleaming-eyed gentleman with the casual manner is a
terrible person to have around in a second-hand book store on a rainy day.
Only six months ago one of his horrible tribe pounced upon Sander's
"Indian Wars," price 30 cents; value, alas, $150.00. Only two months ago
another of his kidney fell upon a copy of Jean Jacques Rosseau's "Emile"
with Jean's own dedication on the title page to "His Majesty, the King of
France." Price 75 cents; value, gadzooks, $200.
There will be nothing today, however. Merely an hour's caress of old
friends on the high shelves while the rain beats outside. Unless--unless
this Stevenson happens by any chance to be a "first." A furtive glance at
the title page. No. The clerk sighs with relief as the Stevenson goes back
on the shelf. It might have been something overlooked.
* * * * *
The rain ends. The old book store slowly empties. A troop of men and women
saunter out, pausing to say farewell to the gaudily ragged tomes in the
old book store. The sky has grown lighter. The buildings shake the last
drops of rain from their spatula tops. There is a different-looking,
well-linened gentleman thrusts his head into the old book store and
inquires, "Have you a copy of 'The Investors' Guide'?"