It had long been the notion of Frederick Erlcort, who held it
playfully, held it seriously, according to the company he was in, that
there might be a censorship of taste and conscience in literary
matters strictly affiliated with the retail commerce in books. When he
first began to propose it, playfully, seriously, as his listener
chose, he said that he had noticed how in the great department stores
where nearly everything to supply human need was sold, the shopmen and
shopwomen seemed instructed by the ownership or the management to deal
in absolute good faith with the customers, and not to misrepresent the
quality, the make, or the material of any article in the slightest
degree. A thing was not to be called silk or wool when it was partly
cotton; it was not to be said that it would wash when it would not
wash, or that the color would not come off when it would come off, or
that the stuff was English or French when it was American.
When Erlcort once noted his interest in the fact to a floor-walker
whom he happened to find at leisure, the floor-walker said, Yes, that
was so; and the house did it because it was business, good business,
the only good business. He was instantly enthusiastic, and he said
that just in the same way, as an extension of its good faith with the
public, the house had established the rule of taking back any article
which a customer did not like, or did not find what she had supposed
when she got it home, and refunding the money. This was the best sort
of business; it held custom; the woman became a customer for life. The
floor-walker laughed, and after he had told an anxious applicant,
"Second aisle to the left, lady; three counters back," he concluded to
Erlcort, "I say she because a man never brings a thing back when he's
made a mistake; but a woman can always blame it on the house. That
so?"
Erlcort laughed with him, and in going out he stopped at the
book-counter. Rather it was a bookstore, and no small one, with ranks
of new books covering the large tables and mounting to their level
from the floor, neatly piled, and with shelves of complete editions
and soberer-looking volumes stretching along the wall as high as the
ceiling. "Do you happen to have a good book--a book that would read
good, I mean--in your stock here?" he asked the neat blonde behind
the literary barricade.
"Well, here's a book that a good many are reading," she answered, with
prompt interest and a smile that told in the book's favor; it was a
protectingly filial and guardedly ladylike smile.
"Yes, but is it a book worth reading--worth the money?"
"Well, I don't know as I'm a judge," the kind little blonde replied.
She added, daringly, "All I can say is, I set up till two last night
to finish it."
"And you advise me to buy it?"
"Well, we're not allowed to do that, exactly. I can only tell you what
I know."
"But if I take it, and it isn't what I expected, I can return it and
get my money back?"
"That's something I never was asked before. Mr. Jeffers! Mr. Jeffers!"
she called to a floor-walker passing near; and when he stopped and
came up to the counter, she put the case to him.
He took the book from Erlcort's hand and examined the outside of it
curiously if not critically. Then he looked from it to Erlcort, and
said, "Oh, how do you do again! Well, no, sir; I don't know as we
could do that. You see, you would have to read it to find out that you
didn't want it, and that would be like using or wearing an article,
wouldn't it? We couldn't take back a thing that had been used or
worn--heigh?"
"But you might have some means of knowing whether a book is good or
not?"
"Well, yes, we might. That's a point we have never had raised before.
Miss Prittiman, haven't we any means of knowing whether a book's
something we can guarantee or not?"
"Well, Mr. Jeffers, there's the publisher's advertisement."
"Why, yes, so there is! And a respectable publisher wouldn't indorse a
book that wasn't the genuine article, would he now, sir?"
"He mightn't," Erlcort said, as if he felt the force of the argument.
"And there are the notices in the newspapers. They ought to tell,"
Miss Prittiman added, more convincingly. "I don't know," she said, as
from a sensitive conscience, "whether there have been any about this
book yet, but I should think there would be."
"And in the mean time, as you won't guarantee the book so that I can
bring it back and get my money if I find it worthless, I must accept
the publisher's word?" Erlcort pressed further.
"I should think you could do that," the floor-walker suggested, with
the appearance of being tired.
"Well, I think I will, for once," Erlcort relented. "But wait! What
does the publisher say?"
"It's all printed on this slip inside," the blonde said, and she
showed it as she took the book from him. "Shall I send it? Or will
you--"
"No, no, thank you, I'll take it with me. Let me--"
He kept the printed slip and began to read it. The blonde wrapped the
book up and laid it with a half-dollar in change on the counter before
Erlcort. The floor-walker went away; Erlcort heard him saying, "No,
madam; toys on the fifth floor, at the extreme rear, left," while he
lost himself in the glowing promises of the publisher. It appeared
that the book he had just bought was by a perfectly new author, an old
lady of seventy who had never written a novel before, and might
therefore be trusted for an entire freshness of thought and feeling.
The plot was of a gripping intensity; the characters were painted with
large, bold strokes, and were of an unexampled virility; the story was
packed with passion from cover to cover; and the reader would be held
breathless by the author's skill in working from the tragic conditions
to an all-round happy conclusion.
From time to time Erlcort heard the gentle blonde saying such things
as, "Oh yes; it's the best-seller, all right," and, "All I can say is
I set up till two o'clock in the morning to finish it," and, "Yes,
ma'am; it's by a new writer; a very old lady of seventy who is just
beginning to write; well, that's what I _heard_."
On his way up-town in the Subway he clung to the wonted strap,
unsupported by anything in the romance which he had bought; and yet he
could not take the book back and get his money, or even exchange it
for some article of neckwear or footwear. In his extremity he thought
he would try giving it to the trainman just before he reached his
stop.
"You want to _give_ it to me? Well, that's something that never
happened to me on _this_ line before. I guess my wife will like it.
I--_1009th Street! Change for East Brooklyn and the Bronx!_" the guard
shouted, and he let Erlcort out of the car, the very first of the tide
that spilled itself forth at the station. He called after him, "Do as
much for you some time."
The incident first amused Erlcort, and then it began to trouble him;
but he appeased his remorse by toying with his old notion of a
critical bookstore. His mind was still at play with it when he stopped
at the bell-pull of an elderly girl of his acquaintance who had a
studio ten stories above, and the habit of giving him afternoon tea in
it if he called there about five o'clock. She had her ugly
painting-apron still on, and her thumb through the hole in her
palette, when she opened her door to him.
"Too soon?" he asked.
She answered as well as she could with the brush held horizontally in
her mouth while she glared inhospitably at him. "Well, not much," and
then she let him in, and went and lighted her spirit-lamp.
He began at once to tell her of his strange experience, and went on
till she said: "Well, there's your tea. _I_ don't know what you've
been driving at, but I suppose you do. Is it the old thing?"
"It's my critical bookstore, if that's what you call the old thing."
"Oh! _That!_ I thought it had failed 'way back in the dark ages."
"The dark ages are not _back_, please; they're all 'round, and you
know very well that my critical bookstore has never been tried yet.
But tell me one thing: should you wish to live with a picture, even
for a few hours, which had been painted by an old lady of seventy who
had never tried to paint before?"
"If I intended to go crazy, yes. What has all that got to do with it?"
"That's the joint commendation of the publisher and the kind little
blonde who united to sell me the book I just gave to that poor Subway
trainman. Do you ever buy a new book?"
"No; I always borrow an old one."
"But if you _had_ to buy a new one, wouldn't you like to know of a
place where you could be sure of getting a good one?"
"I shouldn't mind. Or, yes, I should, rather. Where's it to be?"
"Oh, I know. I've had my eye on the place for a good while. It's a
funny old place in Sixth Avenue--"
"Sixth _Avenue_!"
"Don't interrupt--where the dearest old codger in the world is just
going out of the house-furnishing business in a small way. It's kept
getting smaller and smaller--I've watched it shrink--till now it can't
stand up against the big shops, and the old codger told me the other
day that it was no use."
"Poor fellow!"
"No. He's not badly off, and he's going back up-state where he came
from about forty years ago, and he can live--or die--very well on what
he's put by. I've known him rather a good while, and we've been
friends ever since we've been acquainted."
"Go on," the elderly girl said.
Erlcort was not stopping, but she spoke so as to close her mouth,
which she was apt to let hang open in a way that she did not like; she
had her intimates pledged to tell her when she was doing it, but she
could not make a man promise, and she had to look after her mouth
herself with Erlcort. It was not a bad mouth; her eyes were large, and
it was merely large to match them.
"When shall you begin--open shop?" she asked.
"My old codger's lease expires in the fall," he answered, "but he
would be glad to have me take it off his hands this spring. I could
give the summer to changing and decorating, and begin my campaign in
the fall--the first of October, say. Wouldn't you like to come some
day and see the old place?"
"I should love it. But you're not supposing I shall be of the least
use, I hope? I'm not decorational, you know. Easel pictures, and small
ones at that."
"Of course. But you are a woman, and have ideas of the cozy. I mean
that the place shall be made attractive."
"Do you think the situation will be--on Sixth Avenue?"
"It will be quaint. It's in a retarded region of low buildings, with a
carpenter's shop two doors off. The L roars overhead and the surface
cars squeal before, but that is New York, you know, and it's very
central. Besides, at the back of the shop, with the front door shut,
it is very quiet."
The next day the friends lunched together at an Italian restaurant
very near the place, and rather hurried themselves away to the old
codger's store.
"He _is_ a dear," Margaret whispered to Erlcort in following him about
to see the advantages of the place.
"Oh, mine's setting-hen's time," he justified his hospitality in
finally asking them to take seats on a nail-keg apiece. "You mustn't
think you're interruptin'. Look 'round all ye want to, or set down and
rest ye."
"That would be a good motto for your bookstore," she screamed to
Erlcort, when they got out into the roar of the avenue. "'Look 'round
all ye want to, or set down and rest ye.' Wasn't he sweet? And I don't
wonder you're taken with the place: it _has_ such capabilities. You
might as well begin imagining how you will arrange it."
They were walking involuntarily up the avenue, and when they came to
the Park they went into it, and in the excitement of their planning
they went as far as the Ramble, where they sat down on a bench and
disappointed some squirrels who supposed they had brought peanuts with
them.
They decided that the front of the shop should be elaborately simple;
perhaps the door should be painted black, with a small-paned sash and
a heavy brass latch. On each side should be a small-paned show-window,
with books laid inside on an inclined shelving; on the door should be
a modest bronze plate, reading, "The Critical Bookstore." They
rejected _shop_ as an affectation, and they hooted the notion of "Ye
Critical Bookstore" as altogether loathsome. The door and window would
be in a rather belated taste, but the beautiful is never out of date,
and black paint and small panes might be found rococo in their
old-fashionedness now. There should be a fireplace, or perhaps a
Franklin stove, at the rear of the room, with a high-shouldered,
small-paned sash on each side letting in the light from the yard of
the carpenter-shop. On the chimneypiece should be lettered, "Look
'round all ye want to, or set down and rest ye."
The genius of the place should be a refined hospitality, such as the
gentle old codger had practised with them, and to facilitate this
there should be a pair of high-backed settles, one under each window.
The book-counter should stretch the whole length of the store, and at
intervals beside it, against the book-shelving, should be set
old-fashioned chairs, but not too old-fashioned. Against the lower
book-shelves on a deeper shelf might be stood against the books a few
sketches in water-color, or even oil.
This was Margaret Green's idea.
"And would you guarantee the quality?" Erlcort asked.
"Perhaps they wouldn't be for sale, though if any one insisted--"
"I see. Well, pass the sketches. What else?"
"Well, a few little figures in plaster, or even marble or bronze, very
Greek, or very American; things in low relief."
"Pass the little figures and low reliefs. But don't forget it's a
_bookstore_."
"Oh, I won't. The sketches of all kinds would be strictly subordinated
to the books. If I had a tea-room handy here, with a table and the
backs of some menus to draw on, I could show you just how it would
look."
"What's the matter with the Casino?"
"Nothing; only it's rather early for tea yet."
"It isn't for soda-lemonade."
She set him the example of instantly rising, and led the way back
along the lake to the Casino, resting at that afternoon hour among its
spring flowers and blossoms innocent of its lurid after-dark
frequentation. He got some paper from the waiter who came to take
their order. She began to draw rapidly, and by the time the waiter
came again she was giving Erlcort the last scrap of paper.
"Well," he said, "I had no idea that I had imagined anything so
charming! If this critical bookstore doesn't succeed, it'll be because
there are no critics. But what--what are these little things hung
against the partitions of the shelves?"
"Oh--mirrors. Little round ones."
"But why mirrors of any shape?"
"Nothing; only people like to see themselves in a glass of any shape.
And when," Margaret added, in a burst of candor, "a woman looks up and
sees herself with a book in her hand, she will feel so intellectual
she will never put it down. She will buy it."
"Margaret Green, this is immoral. Strike out those mirrors, or I will
smash them every one!"
"Oh, very well!" she said, and she rubbed them out with the top of her
pencil. "If you want your place a howling wilderness."
He looked at the ruin her rubber had wrought. "They _were_ rather
nice. Could--could you rub them in again?"
"Not if I tried a hundred years. Besides, they _were_ rather impudent.
What time is it?"
"No time at all. It's half-past three."
"Dear me! I must be going. And if you're really going to start that
precious critical bookstore in the fall, you must begin work on it
right away."
"Work?"
"Reading up for it. If you're going to guarantee the books, you must
know what's in them, mustn't you?"
He realized that he must do what she said; he must know from his own
knowledge what was in the books he offered for sale, and he began
reading, or reading _at_, the new books immediately. He was a good
deal occupied by day with the arrangement of his store, though he left
it mainly with the lively young decorator who undertook for a lump sum
to realize Margaret Green's ideas. It was at night that he did most of
his reading in the spring books which the publishers were willing to
send him gratis, when they understood he was going to open a
bookstore, and only wanted sample copies. As long as she remained in
town Margaret Green helped him read, and they talked the books over,
and mostly rejected them. By the time she went to Europe in August
with another elderly girl they had not chosen more than eight or ten
books; but they hoped for better things in the fall.
Word of what he was doing had gone out from Margaret, and a great many
women of their rather esthetic circle began writing to him about the
books they were reading, and commending them to him or warning him
against them. The circle of his volunteer associates enlarged itself
in the nature of an endless chain, and before society quite broke up
for the summer a Sympathetic Tea was offered to Erlcort by a Leading
Society Woman at the Intellectual Club, where he was invited to
address the Intellectuals in explanation of his project. This was
before Margaret sailed, and he hurried to her in horror.
"Why, of course you must accept. You're not going to hide your
Critical Bookstore under a bushel; you can't have too much publicity."
The Leading Society Woman flowed in fulsome gratitude at his
acceptance, and promised no one but the club should be there; he had
hinted his reluctance. She kept her promise, but among the
Intellectuals there was a girl who was a just beginning journalist,
and who pumped Erlcort's whole scheme out of him, unsuspicious of what
she was doing, till he saw it all, with his picture, in the Sunday
Supplement. She rightly judged that the intimacy of an interview would
be more popular with her readers than the cold and distant report of
his formal address, which she must give, though she received it so
ardently with all the other Intellectuals. They flocked flatteringly,
almost suffocatingly, around him at the end. His scheme was just what
every one had vaguely thought of: something must be done to stem the
tide of worthless fiction, which was so often shocking as well as
silly, and they would only be too glad to help read for him. They were
nearly all just going to sail, but they would each take a spring book
on the ship, and write him about it from the other side; they would
each get a fall book coming home, and report as soon as they got back.
His scheme was discussed seriously and satirically by the press; it
became a joke with many papers, and a byword quickly worn out, so that
people thought that it had been dropped. But Erlcort gave his days and
nights to preparation for his autumnal campaign. He studied in careful
comparison the reviews of the different literary authorities, and was
a little surprised to find, when he came to read the books they
reviewed, how honest and adequate they often were. He was obliged to
own to himself that if people were guided by them, few worthless books
would be sold, and he decided that the immense majority of the
book-buyers were not guided by the critics. The publishers themselves
seemed not so much to blame when he went to see them and explained his
wish to deal with them on the basis of a critical bookseller. They
said they wished all the booksellers were like him, for they would ask
nothing better than to publish only good books. The trouble, they
said, lay with the authors; they wrote such worthless books. Or if now
and then one of them did write a good book and they were over-tempted
to publish it, the public united in refusing to buy it. So he saw? But
if the booksellers persisted in selling none but good books, perhaps
something might be done. At any rate they would like to see the
experiment tried.
Erlcort felt obliged to read the books suggested to him by the endless
chain of readers who volunteered to read for him, on both sides of the
ocean, or going and coming on the ocean. Mostly the books they praised
were abject rubbish, but it took time to find this out, and he formed
the habit of reading far into the night, and if he was very much vexed
at discovering that the book recommended to him was trash, he could
not sleep unless he took veronal, and then he had a ghastly next day.
He did not go out of town except for a few brief sojourns at places
where he knew cultivated people were staying, and could give him their
opinions of the books he was reading. When the publishers began, as
they had agreed, to send him their advance sheets, the stitched but
unbound volumes roused so much interest by the novelty of their form
that his readers could not give an undivided attention to their
contents. He foresaw that in the end he should have to rely upon the
taste of mercenaries in his warfare against rubbish, and more and more
he found it necessary to expend himself in it, to read at second hand
as well as at first. His greatest relief was in returning to town and
watching the magical changes which the decorator was working in his
store. This was consolation, this was inspiration, but he longed for
the return of Margaret Green, that she might help him enjoy the
realization of her ideas in the equipment of the place; and he held
the decorator to the most slavish obedience through the carpenters and
painters who created at his bidding a miraculous interior, all white,
or just off-white, such as had never been imagined of a bookstore in
New York before. It was actually ready by the end of August, though
smelling a little of turpentine still, and Erlcort, letting himself in
at the small-paned black door, and ranging up and down the long,
beautiful room, and round and round the central book-table, and in and
out between the side tables, under the soft, bright shelving of the
walls, could hardly wait the arrival of the _Minnedingdong_ in which
the elderly girl had taken her passage back. One day, ten days ahead
of time, she blew in at the front door in a paroxysm of explanation;
she had swapped passages home with another girl who wanted to come
back later, while she herself wanted to come back earlier. She had no
very convincing reason for this as she gave it, but Erlcort did not
listen to her reason, whatever it was. He said, between the raptures
with the place that she fell in and out of, that now she was just in
time for the furnishing, which he never could have dared to undertake
alone.
In the gay September weather they visited all the antiquity shops in
Fourth Avenue, and then threw themselves frankly upon reproductions,
which they bought in the native wood and ordered painted, the settles
and the spindle-backed chairs in the cool gray which she decided was
the thing. In the same spirit they bought new brass fire-irons and new
shovel and tongs, but all very tall and antique-looking, and then they
got those little immoral mirrors, which Margaret Green attached with
her own hands to the partitions of the shelving. She also got soft
green silk curtains for the chimney windows and for the sash of the
front door; even the front windows she curtained, but very low, so
that a salesman or a saleswoman could easily reach over from the
interior and get a book that any customer had seen from the outside.
One day when all this was done, and Erlcort had begun ordering in a
stock of such books as he had selected to start with, she said:
"You're looking rather peakéd, aren't you?"
"Well, I've been _feeling_ rather peakéd, until lately, keeping awake
to read and read _after_ the volunteer readers."
"You mean you've lost sleep?"
"Something like that."
"Well, you mustn't. How many books do you start with?"
"About twenty-five."
"Good ones? It's a lot, isn't it? I didn't suppose there were so
many."
"Well, to fill our shelves I shall have to order about a thousand of
each."
"You'll never sell them in the world! You'll be ruined."
"Oh no; the publishers will take them back."
"How nice of them! But that's only what painters have to do when the
dealers can't sell their pictures."
A month off, the prospect was brilliant, and when the shelves and
tables were filled and the sketches and bas-reliefs were stuck about
and the little immoral mirrors were hung, the place was charming. The
chairs and settles were all that could be asked; Margaret Green helped
put them about; and he let her light the low fire on the hearth of
the Franklin stove; he said he should not always burn hickory, but he
had got twenty-four sticks for two dollars from an Italian in a cellar
near by, and he meant to burn that much. She upbraided him for his
extravagance while touching the match to the paper under the kindling;
but October opened cold, and he needed the fire.
The enterprise seemed rather to mystify the neighborhood, and some old
customers of the old codger's came in upon one fictitious errand and
another to see about it, and went away without quite making it out. It
was a bookstore, all right, they owned in conference, but what did he
mean by "critical"?
The first _bona fide_ buyer appeared in a little girl who could just
get her chin on the counter, and who asked for an egg-beater. Erlcort
had begun with only one assistant, the young lady who typed his
letters and who said she guessed she could help him when she was not
working. She leaned over and tried to understand the little girl, and
then she called to Erlcort where he stood with his back to the fire
and the morning paper open before his face.
"Mr. Erlcort, have we got a book called _The Egg-beater_?"
"_The Egg-beater?_" he echoed, letting his paper drop below his face.
"No, no!" the little girl shouted, angrily. "It _ain't_ a book. It's a
thing to beat eggs with. Mother said to come here and get it."
"Well, she's sent you to the wrong place, little girl. You want to go
to a hardware-store," the young lady argued.
"Ain't this No. 1232?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is the _right_ place. Mother said to go to 1232. I guess
she knows. She's an old customer."
"_The Egg-beater! The Egg-beater!_" the blithe young novelist to whom
Erlcort told the story repeated. He was still happy in his original
success as a best-seller, and he had come to the Critical Bookstore to
spy out the stock and see whether his last novel was in it; but though
it was not, he joyously extended an acquaintance with Erlcort which
had begun elsewhere. "_The Egg-beater?_ What a splendid title for a
story of adventure! Keep the secret of its applicability to the last
word, or perhaps never reveal it at all, and leave the reader
worrying. That's one way; makes him go and talk about the book to all
the girls he knows and get them guessing. Best ad. in the world. _The
Egg-beater!_ Doesn't it suggest desert islands and penguins' nests in
the rocks? Fellow and girl shipwrecked, and girl wants to make an
omelette after they've got sick of plain eggs, and can't for want of
an egg-beater. Heigh? He invents one--makes it out of some wire that
floats off from the wreck. See? When they are rescued, she brings it
away, and doesn't let him know it till their Iron Wedding Day. They
keep it over his study fireplace always."
This author was the first to stretch his legs before Erlcort's fire
from his seat on one of the reproductions. He could not say enough of
the beauty of the place, and he asked if he might sit there and watch
for the old codger's old customers coming to buy hardware. There might
be copy in it.
But the old customers did not come so often as he hoped and Erlcort
feared. Instead there came _bona fide_ book-buyers, who asked some for
a book and some for a particular book. The first were not satisfied
with the books that Erlcort or his acting saleslady recommended, and
went away without buying. The last were indignant at not finding what
they wanted in Erlcort's selection.
"Why don't you stock it?" they demanded.
"Because I don't think it's worth reading."
"Oh, indeed!" The sarcastic customers were commonly ladies. "I
thought you let the public judge of that!"
"There are bookstores where they do. This is a critical bookstore. I
sell only the books that _I_ think worth reading. If you had noticed
my sign--"
"Oh!" the customer would say, and she, too, would go away without
buying.
There were other ladies who came, links of the endless chain of
volunteer readers who had tried to help Erlcort in making his
selection, and he could see them slyly looking his stock over for the
books they had praised to him. Mostly they went away without comment,
but with heads held high in the offense which he felt even more than
saw. One, indeed, did ask him why he had not stocked her chosen book,
and he had to say, "Well, when I came to go through it carefully, I
didn't think it quite--"
"But here is _The Green Bay Tree_, and _The Biggest Toad in the
Puddle_, and--"
"I know. For one reason and another I thought them worth stocking."
Then another head went away high in the air, with its plumes
quivering. One afternoon late a lady came flying in with all the
marks, whatever they are, of transatlantic travel upon her.
"I'm just through the customs, and I've motored up here the first
thing, even before I went home, to stop you from selling that book I
recommended. It's dreadful; and, horrors! horrors! here it is by the
hundreds! Oh, Mr. Erlcort! You mustn't sell that dreadful book! You
see, I had skipped through it in my berth going out, and posted my
letter the first thing; and just now, coming home, I found it in the
ship's library and came on that frightful episode. You know!
Where-- How _could_ you order it without reading it, on a mere say-so?
It's utterly immoral!"
"I don't agree with you," Erlcort answered, dryly. "I consider that
passage one of the finest in modern fiction--one of the most ennobling
and illumining--"
"Ennobling!" The lady made a gesture of horror. "Very well! If _that_
is your idea of a critical bookstore, all I've got to say is--"
But she had apparently no words to say it in, and she went out banging
but failing to latch the door which let through the indignant snort of
her car as it whirled her away. She left Erlcort and his assistant to
a common silence, but he imagined somehow a resolution in the
stenographer not to let the book go unsearched till she had grasped
the full iniquity of that episode and felt all its ennobling force. He
was not consoled when another lady came in and, after drifting
unmolestedly about (it was the primary rule of the place not to
follow people up), stopped before the side shelf where the book was
ranged in dozens and scores. She took a copy from the neat ranks, and
opened it; then she lifted her head by chance and caught sight of her
plume in one of the little mirrors. She stealthily lifted herself on
tiptoe till she could see her face, and then she turned to the
assistant and said, gently, "I believe I should like _this_ book,
please," and paid for it and went out.
It was now almost on the stroke of six, and Erlcort said to his
assistant: "I'll close the store, Miss Pearsall. You needn't stay any
longer."
"All right, sir," the girl said, and went into the little closet at
the rear for her hat and coat. Did she contrive to get a copy of that
book under her coat as she passed the shelf where it lay?
When she was gone, he turned the key in the door and went back and sat
down before the fire dying on the hearth of the Franklin stove. It was
not a very cheerful moment with him, but he could not have said that
the day had been unprofitable, either spiritually or pecuniarily. In
its experiences it had been a varied day, and he had really sold a
good many books. More people than he could have expected had taken him
seriously and even intelligently. It is true that he had been somewhat
vexed by the sort of authority the president of the Intellectual Club
had shown in the way she swelled into the store and patronized him and
it, as if she had invented them both, and blamed him in a high, sweet
voice for having so many _old_ books. "My idea was that it would be a
place where one could come for the best of the _new_ books. But here!
Why, half of them I saw in June before I sailed!" She chided him
merrily, and she acted as if it were quite part of the joke when he
said that he did not think a good book could age much in four months.
She laughed patronizingly at his conceit of getting in the fall books
by Thanksgiving; but even for the humor of it she could not let him
say he should not do anything in holiday books. "I had expected to get
_all_ my Christmas books of you, Mr. Erlcort," she crowed, but for the
present she bought nothing. In compensation he recalled the gratitude,
almost humble gratitude, of a lady (she was a lady!) who had come that
day, bringing her daughter to get a book, any book in his stock, and
to thank him for his enterprise, which she had found worked perfectly
in the case of the book she had got the week before; the book had been
an unalloyed delight, and had left a sense of heightened self-respect
with her: that book of the dreadful episode.
He wished Margaret Green had been there; but she had been there only
once since his opening; he could not think why. He heard a rattling at
the door-latch, and he said before he turned to look, "What if it
should be she _now_?" But when he went to peer through the
door-curtain it was only an old fellow who had spent the better part
of the afternoon in the best chair, reading a book. Erlcort went back
to the fire and let him rattle, which he did rather a long time, and
then went away, Erlcort hoped, in dudgeon. He was one of a number of
customers who had acted on the half of his motto asking them to sit
down and rest them, after acting on the other half to look round all
they wanted. Most of them did not read, even; they seemed to know one
another, and they talked comfortably together. Erlcort recognized a
companionship of four whom he had noticed in the Park formerly; they
were clean-enough-looking elderly men, but occupied nearly all the
chairs and settles, so that lady customers did not like to bring books
and look over them in the few places left, and Erlcort foresaw the
time when he should have to ask the old fellows to look around more
and rest them less. In resuming his own place before the fire he felt
the fleeting ache of a desire to ask Margaret Green whether it would
not be a good plan to remove the motto from the chimneypiece. He would
not have liked to do it without asking her; it had been her notion to
put it there, and her other notion of the immoral mirrors had
certainly worked well. The thoughtful expression they had reflected on
the faces of lady customers had sold a good many books; not that
Erlcort wished to sell books that way, though he argued with himself
that his responsibility ought strictly to end with the provision of
books which he had critically approved before offering them for sale.
His conscience was not wholly at peace as to his stock, not only the
books which he had included, but also those he had excluded. Some of
these tacitly pleaded against his severity; in one case an author came
and personally protested. This was the case of a book by the
ex-best-seller, who held that his last book was so much better than
his first that it ought certainly to be found in any critical
bookstore. The proceeds of his best-seller had enabled him to buy an
electric runabout, and he purred up to Erlcort's door in it to argue
the matter with him. He sat down in a reproduction and proved, gaily,
that Erlcort was quite wrong about it. He had the book with him, and
read passages from it; then he read passages from some of the books on
sale and defied Erlcort to say that his passages were not just as
good, or, as he put it merrily, the same as. He held that his marked
improvement entitled him to the favor of a critical bookstore;
without this, what motive had he in keeping from a reversion to the
errors which had won him the vicious prosperity of his first venture?
Hadn't Erlcort a duty to perform in preventing his going back to the
bad? Refuse this markedly improved fiction, and you drove him to
writing nothing but best-sellers from now on. He urged Erlcort to
reflect.
They had a jolly time, and the ex-best-seller went away in high
spirits, prophesying that Erlcort would come to his fiction yet.
There were authors who did not leave Erlcort so cheerful when they
failed to see their books on his shelves or tables. Some of them were
young authors who had written their worthless books with a devout
faith in their worth, and they went away more in sorrow than in anger,
and yet more in bewilderment. Some were old authors who had been all
their lives acceptably writing second-rate books and trying to make
them unacceptably first-rate. If he knew them he kept out of their
way, but the dejection of their looks was not less a pang to him if he
saw them searching his stock for their books in vain.
He had his own moments of dejection. The interest of the press in his
enterprise had flashed through the Sunday issues of a single week, and
then flashed out in lasting darkness. He wondered vaguely if he had
counted without the counting-house in hoping for their continued
favor; he could not realize that nothing is so stale as old news, and
that no excess of advertising would have relumed those fitful fires.
He would have liked to talk the case over with Margaret Green. After
his first revolt from the easy publicity the reporters had first given
him, he was aware of having enjoyed it--perhaps vulgarly enjoyed it.
But he hoped not quite that; he hoped that in his fleeting celebrity
he had cared for his scheme rather than himself. He had really
believed in it, and he liked having it recognized as a feature of
modern civilization, an innovation which did his city and his country
credit. Now and then an essayist of those who wrote thoughtful
articles in the Sunday or Saturday-evening editions had dropped in,
and he had opened his heart to them in a way he would not have minded
their taking advantage of. Secretly he hoped they would see a topic in
his enterprise and his philosophy of it. But they never did, and he
was left to the shame of hopes which had held nothing to support
defeat. He would have liked to confess his shame and own the justice
of his punishment to Margaret Green, but she seemed the only friend
who never came near. Other friends came, and many strangers, the
friends to look and the strangers to buy. He had no reason to
complain of his sales; the fame of his critical bookstore might have
ceased in New York, because it had gone abroad to Chicago and St.
Louis and Pittsburg; people who were clearly from these commercial
capitals and others came and bought copiously of his criticized stock,
and they praised the notion of it in telling him that he ought to open
branches in their several cities.
They were all women, and it was nearly all women who frequented the
Critical Bookstore, but in their multitude Margaret Green was not. He
thought it the greater pity because she would have enjoyed many of
them with him, and would have divined such as hoped the culture
implicated by a critical bookstore would come off on them without
great effort of their own; she would have known the sincere spirits,
too, and could have helped direct their choice of the best where all
was so good. He smiled to find that he was invoking her help, which he
had no right to.
His longing had no effect upon her till deep in January, when the
weather was engaged late one afternoon in keeping the promise of a
January thaw in the form of the worst snow-storm of the winter. Then
she came thumping with her umbrella-handle at his door as if, he
divined, she were too stiff-handed or too package-laden to press the
latch and let herself in, and she almost fell in, but saved herself
by spilling on the floor some canvases and other things which she had
been getting at the artist's-materials store near by. "Don't bother
about them," she said, "but take me to the fire as fast as you can,"
and when she had turned from snow to rain and had dripped partially
dry before the Franklin stove, she asked, "Where have you been all the
time?"
"Waiting here for you," he answered.
"Well, you needn't. I wasn't going to come--or at least not till you
sent for me, or said you wanted my advice."
"I don't want your advice now."
"I didn't come to give it. I just dropped in because if I hadn't I
should have just dropped outside. How have you been getting along with
your ridiculous critical bookstore?"
"Well, things are rather quiet with us just now, as the publishers say
to the authors when they don't want to publish their books."
"Yes, I know that saying. Why didn't you go in for the holiday books?"
"How did you know I didn't?"
"Lots of people told me."
"Well, then, I'll tell you why. I would have had to read them first,
and no human being could do that--not even a volunteer link in an
endless chain."
"I see. But since Christmas?"
"You know very well that after Christmas the book market drops dead."
"Yes, so I've been told." She had flung her wet veil back over her
shoulders, and he thought she had never looked so adorably plain
before; if she could have seen herself in a glass she would have found
her whole face out of drawing. It seemed as if his thinking had put
her in mind of them, and she said, "Those immoral mirrors are
shameful."
"They've sold more of the best books than anything else."
"No matter. As soon as I get a little drier I shall take them down."
"Very well. _I_ didn't put them up." He laid a log of hickory on the
fire. "I'm not doing it to dry you quicker."
"Oh, I know. I'll tell you one thing. You ought to keep the magazines,
or at least the Big Four. You could keep them with a good conscience,
and you could sell them without reading; they're always good."
"There's an idea in that. I believe I'll try it."
Margaret Green was now dry enough, and she rose and removed the
mirrors. In doing this she noticed that Erlcort had apparently sold a
good many of his best books, and she said: "Well! I don't see why
_you_ should be discouraged."
"Who said I was? I'm exultant."
"Then you were exulting with the corners of your mouth down just now.
Well, I must be going. Will you get a taxi to flounder over to the
Subway with me?" While Erlcort was telephoning she was talking to him.
"I believe the magazines will revive public interest in your scheme.
Put them in your window. Try to get advance copies for it."
"You have a commercial genius, Margaret Green."
"When it comes to selling literature, I have. Selling art is where I
fall down."
"That's because you always try to sell your own art. I should fall
down, too, if I tried to sell my own literature."
They got quite back to their old friendliness; the coming of the taxi
gave them plenty of time. The electric lights were turned brilliantly
on, but there, at the far end of the store, before the Franklin stove,
they had a cozy privacy. At the moment of parting she said:
"If I were you I should take out these settles. They simply invite
loafing."
"I've noticed that they seem to do that."
"And better paint out that motto."
"I've sometimes fancied I'd better. _That_ invites loafing, too;
though some nice people like it."
"Nice people? Why haven't some of them bought a picture?" He perceived
that she had taken in the persistent presence of the sketches when
removing the mirrors, and he shared the indignation she expressed:
"Shabby things!"
She stood with the mirrors under her arm, and he asked what she was
going to do with them, as he followed her to the door with her other
things.
"Put them around the studio. But you needn't come to see the effect."
"No. I shall come to see you."
But when he came in a lull of February, and he could walk part of the
way up through the Park on the sunny Saturday afternoon, she said:
"I suppose you've come to pour out some more of your griefs. Well,
pour away! Has the magazine project failed?"
"On the contrary, it has been a _succès fou_. But I don't feel
altogether easy in my mind about it. The fact is, they seem to print
much more rubbish than I supposed."
"Of course they do; they must; rubbish is the breath in their
nostrils."
She painted away, screwing her eyes almost shut and getting very close
to her picture. He had never thought her so plain; she was letting her
mouth hang open. He wondered why she was so charming; but when she
stepped back rhythmically, tilting her pretty head this way and that,
he saw why: it was her unfailing grace. She suddenly remembered her
mouth and shut it to say, "Well?"
"Well, some people have come back at me. They've said, What a rotten
number this or that was! They were right; and yet there were things in
all those magazines better than anything they had ever printed. What's
to be done about it? I can't ask people to buy truck or read truck
because it comes bound up with essays and stories and poems of the
first quality."
"No. You can't. Why," she asked, drifting up to her picture again,
"don't you tear the bad out, and sell the good?"
Erlcort gave a disdainful sound, such as cannot be spelled in English.
"Do you know how defiantly the bad is bound up with the good in the
magazines? They're wired together, and you could no more tear out the
bad and leave the good than you could part vice from virtue in human
nature."
"I see," Margaret Green said, but she saw no further, and she had to
let him go disconsolate. After waiting a decent time she went to find
him in his critical bookstore. It was late in an afternoon of the days
that were getting longer, and only one electric was lighted in the
rear of the room, where Erlcort sat before the fireless Franklin
stove, so busy at something that he scarcely seemed aware of her.
"What in the world are you doing?" she demanded.
He looked up. "Who? I? Oh, it's you! Why, I'm merely censoring the
truck in the May number of this magazine." He held up a little roller,
as long as the magazine was wide, blacked with printer's ink, which he
had been applying to the open periodical. "I've taken a hint from the
way the Russian censorship blots out seditious literature before it
lets it go to the public."
"And _what_ a mess you're making!"
"Of course it will have to dry before it's put on sale."
"I should think so. Listen to me, Frederick Erlcort: you're going
crazy."
"I've sometimes thought so: crazy with conceit and vanity and
arrogance. Who am I that I should set up for a critical
bookstore-keeper? What is the Republic of Letters, anyway? A vast,
benevolent, generous democracy, where one may have what one likes, or
a cold oligarchy where he is compelled to take what is good for him?
Is it a restricted citizenship, with a minority representation, or is
it universal suffrage?"
"Now," Margaret Green said, "you are talking sense. Why didn't you
think of this in the beginning?"
"Is it a world, a whole earth," he went on, "where the weeds mostly
outflourish the flowers, or is it a wretched little florist's
conservatory where the watering-pot assumes to better the instruction
of the rain which falls upon the just and the unjust? What is all the
worthy family of asses to do if there are no thistles to feed them?
Because the succulent fruits and nourishing cereals are better for the
finer organisms, are the coarser not to have fodder? No; I have made a
mistake. Literature is the whole world; it is the expression of the
gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, and it is the pleasure of the
gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, as well as the expression and the
pleasure of the wise, the fine, the elect. Let the multitude have
their truck, their rubbish, their rot; it may not be the truck, the
rubbish, the rot that it would be to us, or may slowly and by natural
selection become to certain of them. But let there be no artificial
selection, no survival of the fittest by main force--the force of the
spectator, who thinks he knows better than the creator of the ugly and
the beautiful, the fair and foul, the evil and good."
"Oh, _now_ if the Intellectual Club could hear you!" Margaret Green
said, with a long, deep, admiring suspiration. "And what are you
going to do with your critical bookstore?"
"I'm going to sell it. I've had an offer from the author of that
best-seller--I've told you about him. I was just trying to censor that
magazine while I was thinking it over. He's got an idea. He's going to
keep it a critical bookstore, but the criticism is to be made by
universal suffrage and the will of the majority. The latest books will
be put to a vote; and the one getting the greatest number of votes
will be the first offered for sale, and the author will receive a free
passage to Europe by the southern route."
"The southern route!" Margaret mused. "I've never been that way. It
must be delightful."
"Then come with _me_! _I'm_ going."
"But how can I?"
"By marrying me!"
"I never thought of that," she said. Then, with the conscientious
resolution of an elderly girl who puts her fate to the touch of any
risk the truth compels, she added: "Or, yes! I _have_. But I never
supposed you would ask me." She stared at him, and she was aware she
was letting her mouth hang open. While she was trying for some word to
close it with he closed it for her.