The Divine Fire | Page 6

of
dazzling globes hung over the doorway at the corner; there, as you
turned, the sombre windows of the second-hand department stretched
half way down the side street; here, in the great thoroughfare, the
newest of new books stood out, solicitous and alluring, in suits of
blazing scarlet and vivid green, of vellum and gilt, of polished leather
that shone like amber and malachite and lapis lazuli.

Within, a wall broken by a wide and lofty arch divided the front from
the back shop. On the right of the arch was the mahogany pew of the
cashier, on the left, a tall pillar stove radiating intolerable heat. Four
steps led through the arch into the back shop, the floor of which was
raised in a sort of platform. On the platform was a table, and at the table
sat the young man compiling the Quarterly Catalogue.
Front shop and back shop reeked with the smells of new mahogany,
dust, pillar-stove, gum, hot-pressed paper and Russia leather. He sat in
the middle of them, in an atmosphere so thick that it could be seen
hanging about him like an aura, luminous in the glare of the electric
light. His slender, nervous hands worked rapidly, with a business-like
air of dexterity and dispatch. But every now and then he raised his head
and stared for quite a long time at the round, white, foolish face of the
clock, and whenever he did this his eyes were the eyes of a young man
who has no adequate sense of his surroundings.
The remarkable thing about the new shop was that already, like a bar or
a restaurant, it drew to it a certain group of young men, punctually,
irresistibly. A small group--you could almost count them on the fingers
of one hand--they came from Fleet Street, from the Temple, from the
Junior Journalists' Club over the way. They were never seen looking in
at the windows or hanging about the counter; they were not the least bit
of good to the shop, those customers. But they were evidently some
good to the young man. Whatever they did or did not do, they always
ended by drifting to the platform, to his table. They sat on it in friendly
attitudes and talked to him.
He was so glad to be talked to, so frankly, engagingly, beautifully glad,
that the pathos of it would have been too poignant, the obligation it
almost forced on you too unbearable, but for his power, his monstrous,
mysterious, personal glamour.
It lay partly, no doubt, in his appearance; not, no, not at all, in his
make-up. He wore, like a thousand city clerks, a high collar, a speckled
tie, a straight, dark blue serge suit. But in spite of the stiffness thus
imposed on him, he had, unaccountably, the shy, savage beauty of an
animal untamed, uncaught. He belonged to the slender, nervous, fair

type; but the colour proper to it had been taken out of him by the shop.
His head presented the utmost clearness of line compatible with
irregularity of outline; and his face (from its heavy square forehead to
its light square jaw) was full of strange harmonies, adjustments,
compensations. His chin, rather long in a front view, rather prominent
in profile, balanced the powerful proportions of his forehead. His upper
lip, in spite of its slender arch, betrayed a youthful eagerness of the
senses; but this effect was subtilized by the fineness of his lower lip,
and, when they closed, it disappeared in the sudden, serious
straightening of the lines. Even his nose (otherwise a firm feature,
straight in the bridge and rather broad at the end) became grave or
eager as the pose of the head hid or revealed the nostrils. He had queer
eyes, of a thick dark blue, large, though deep set, showing a great deal
of iris and very little white. Without being good-looking he was good
to look at, when you could look long enough to find all these things out.
He did not like being looked at. If you tried to hold him that way, his
eyes were all over the place, seeking an escape; but they held you,
whether you liked it or not.
It was uncanny, that fascination. If he had chosen to exert it in the
interests of his shop he could presumably have cleaned those friendly
young men out any day. But he never did exert it. Surrounded by wares
whose very appearance was a venal solicitation, he never hinted by so
much as the turn of a phrase that there was anything about him to be
bought. And after what had passed between them, they felt that to hint
it themselves--to him--would have been the last indelicacy. If they ever
asked the price of a book