That same morning Edwin had been to the Saint Luke's Covered Market to
buy some apples for Maggie, who had not yet perfected the organisation
necessary to a house-mistress who does not live within half a minute of
a large central source of supplies. And, to his astonishment, he had
observed that one of the interior shops was occupied by a second-hand
bookseller with an address at Hanbridge. He had never noticed the shop
before, or, if he had noticed it, he had despised it. But the chat with
Tom Orgreave had awakened in him the alertness of a hunter. The shop
was not formally open--Wednesday's market being only half a market. The
shopkeeper, however, was busy within. Edwin loitered. Behind the piles
of negligible sermons, pietisms, keepsakes, schoolbooks, and
`Aristotles' (tied up in red twine, these last), he could descry, in the
farther gloom, actual folios and quartos. It was like seeing the gleam
of nuggets on the familiar slopes of Mow Cop, which is the Five Towns'
mountain. The proprietor, an extraordinarily grimy man, invited him to
examine. He could not refuse. He found Byron's "Childe Harold" in one
volume and "Don Juan" in another, both royal octavo editions, slightly
stained, but bound in full calf. He bought them. He knew that to keep
his resolutions he must read a lot of poetry. Then he saw Voltaire's
prose tales in four volumes, in French,--an enchanting Didot edition,
with ink as black as Hades and paper as white as snow; also bound in
full calf. He bought them. And then the proprietor showed him, in
eight similar volumes, Voltaire's "Dictionnaire Philosophique." He did
not want it; but it matched the tales and it was impressive to the eye.
And so he bought the other eight volumes. The total cost was seventeen
shillings. He was intoxicated and he was frightened. What a nucleus
for a collection of real books, of treasures! Those volumes would do no
shame even to Tom Orgreave's bookcase. And they had been lying in the
Covered Market, of all places in the universe... Blind! How blind he
had been to the possibilities of existence! Laden with a bag of apples
in one hand and a heavy parcel of books in the other, he had had to go
up to dinner in the car. It was no matter; he possessed riches. The
car stopped specially for him at the portals of the new house. He had
introduced the books into the new house surreptitiously, because he was
in fear, despite his acute joy. He had pushed the parcel under the bed.
After tea, he had passed half an hour in gazing at the volumes, as at
precious contraband. Then he had ranged them on the shelf, and had
gazed at them for perhaps another quarter of an hour. And now his
father, with the infallible nose of fathers for that which is no concern
of theirs, had lighted upon them and was peering into them, and
fingering them with his careless, brutal hands,--hands that could not
differentiate between a ready reckoner and a treasure. As the light
failed, he brought one of them and then another to the window.
"Um!" he muttered. "Voltaire!"
"Um! Byron!"