Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy Part 4

"You seem to have a great many of them," said the lady.

"Oh, we have to," answered the manager. "There's a regular rush on the book. Indeed, you know it's a book that is bound to make a sensation. In fact, in certain quarters, they are saying that it's a book that ought not to--" And here Mr. Sellyer's voice became so low and ingratiating that I couldn't hear the rest of the sentence.

"Oh, really!" said Mrs. Ra.s.selyer. "Well, I think I'll take it then. One ought to see what these talked-of things are about, anyway."

She had already begun to b.u.t.ton her gloves, and to readjust her feather boa with which she had been knocking the Easter cards off the counter. Then she suddenly remembered something.

"Oh, I was forgetting," she said. "Will you send something to the house for Mr. Ra.s.selyer at the same time? He's going down to Virginia for the vacation. You know the kind of thing he likes, do you not?"

"Oh, perfectly, madam," said the manager. "Mr. Ra.s.selyer generally reads works of--er--I think he buys mostly books on--er--"

"Oh, travel and that sort of thing," said the lady.

"Precisely. I think we have here," and he pointed to the counter on the left, "what Mr. Ra.s.selyer wants."

He indicated a row of handsome books--"Seven Weeks in the Sahara, seven dollars; Six Months in a Waggon, six-fifty net; Afternoons in an Oxcart, two volumes, four-thirty, with twenty off."

"I think he has read those," said Mrs. Ra.s.selyer. "At least there are a good many at home that seem like that."

"Oh, very possibly--but here, now, Among the Cannibals of Corfu--yes, that I think he has had--Among the--that, too, I think--but this I am certain he would like, just in this morning--Among the Monkeys of New Guinea--ten dollars, net."

And with this Mr. Sellyer laid his hand on a pile of new books, apparently as numerous as the huge pile of Golden Dreams.

"Among the Monkeys," he repeated, almost caressingly.

"It seems rather expensive," said the lady.

"Oh, very much so--a most expensive book," the manager repeated in a tone of enthusiasm. "You see, Mrs. Ra.s.selyer, it's the ill.u.s.trations, actual photographs"--he ran the leaves over in his fingers--"of actual monkeys, taken with the camera--and the paper, you notice--in fact, madam, the book costs, the mere manufacture of it, nine dollars and ninety cents--of course we make no profit on it. But it's a book we like to handle."

Everybody likes to be taken into the details of technical business; and of course everybody likes to know that a bookseller is losing money. These, I realised, were two axioms in the methods of Mr. Sellyer.

So very naturally Mrs. Ra.s.selyer bought Among the Monkeys, and in another moment Mr. Sellyer was directing a clerk to write down an address on Fifth Avenue, and was bowing deeply as he showed the lady out of the door.

As he turned back to his counter his manner seemed much changed.

"That Monkey book," I heard him murmur to his a.s.sistant, "is going to be a pretty stiff proposition."

But he had no time for further speculation.

Another lady entered.

This time even to an eye less trained than Mr. Sellyer's, the deep, expensive mourning and the pensive face proclaimed the sentimental widow.

"Something new in fiction," repeated the manager, "yes, madam--here's a charming thing--Golden Dreams"--he hung lovingly on the words--"a very sweet story, singularly sweet; in fact, madam, the critics are saying it is the sweetest thing that Mr. Slush has done."

"Is it good?" said the lady. I began to realise that all customers asked this.

"A charming book," said the manager. "It's a love story--very simple and sweet, yet wonderfully charming.

Indeed, the reviews say it's the most charming book of the month. My wife was reading it aloud only last night.

She could hardly read for tears."

"I suppose it's quite a safe book, is it?" asked the widow. "I want it for my little daughter."

"Oh, quite safe," said Mr. Sellyer, with an almost parental tone, "in fact, written quite in the old style, like the dear old books of the past--quite like"--here Mr. Sellyer paused with a certain slight haze of doubt visible in his eye--"like d.i.c.kens and Fielding and Sterne and so on. We sell a great many to the clergy, madam."

The lady bought Golden Dreams, received it wrapped up in green enamelled paper, and pa.s.sed out.

"Have you any good light reading for vacation time?"

called out the next customer in a loud, breezy voice--he had the air of a stock broker starting on a holiday.

"Yes," said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into a laugh as he answered, "here's an excellent thing--Golden Dreams--quite the most humorous book of the season--simply screaming--my wife was reading it aloud only yesterday.

She could hardly read for laughing."

"What's the price, one dollar? One-fifty. All right, wrap it up." There was a clink of money on the counter, and the customer was gone. I began to see exactly where professors and college people who want copies of Epictetus at 18 cents and sections of World Reprints of Literature at 12 cents a section come in, in the book trade.

"Yes, Judge!" said the manager to the next customer, a huge, dignified personage in a wide-awake hat, "sea stories? Certainly. Excellent reading, no doubt, when the brain is overcharged as yours must be. Here is the very latest--Among the Monkeys of New Guinea, ten dollars, reduced to four-fifty. The manufacture alone costs six-eighty. We're selling it out. Thank you, Judge. Send it? Yes. Good morning."

After that the customers came and went in a string. I noticed that though the store was filled with books--ten thousand of them, at a guess--Mr. Sellyer was apparently only selling two. Every woman who entered went away with Golden Dreams: every man was given a copy of the Monkeys of New Guinea. To one lady Golden Dreams was sold as exactly the reading for a holiday, to another as the very book to read AFTER a holiday; another bought it as a book for a rainy day, and a fourth as the right sort of reading for a fine day. The Monkeys was sold as a sea story, a land story, a story of the jungle, and a story of the mountains, and it was put at a price corresponding to Mr. Sellyer's estimate of the purchaser.

At last after a busy two hours, the store grew empty for a moment.

"Wilfred," said Mr. Sellyer, turning to his chief a.s.sistant, "I am going out to lunch. Keep those two books running as hard as you can. We'll try them for another day and then cut them right out. And I'll drop round to Dockem & Discount, the publishers, and make a kick about them, and see what they'll do."

I felt that I had lingered long enough. I drew near with the Epictetus in my hand.

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Sellyer, professional again in a moment. "Epictetus? A charming thing. Eighteen cents.

Thank you. Perhaps we have some other things there that might interest you. We have a few second-hand things in the alcove there that you might care to look at. There's an Aristotle, two volumes--a very fine thing--practically illegible, that you might like: and a Cicero came in yesterday--very choice--damaged by damp--and I think we have a Machiavelli, quite exceptional--practically torn to pieces, and the covers gone--a very rare old thing, sir, if you're an expert."

"No, thanks," I said. And then from a curiosity that had been growing in me and that I couldn't resist, "That book--Golden Dreams," I said, "you seem to think it a very wonderful work?"

Mr. Sellyer directed one of his shrewd glances at me. He knew I didn't want to buy the book, and perhaps, like lesser people, he had his off moments of confidence.

He shook his head.

"A bad business," he said. "The publishers have unloaded the thing on us, and we have to do what we can. They're stuck with it, I understand, and they look to us to help them. They're advertising it largely and may pull it off. Of course, there's just a chance. One can't tell.

It's just possible we may get the church people down on it and if so we're all right. But short of that we'll never make it. I imagine it's perfectly rotten."

"Haven't you read it?" I asked.

"Dear me, no!" said the manager. His air was that of a milkman who is offered a gla.s.s of his own milk. "A pretty time I'd have if I tried to READ the new books. It's quite enough to keep track of them without that."

"But those people," I went on, deeply perplexed, "who bought the book. Won't they be disappointed?"

Mr. Sellyer shook his head. "Oh, no," he said; "you see, they won't READ it. They never do."

"But at any rate," I insisted, "your wife thought it a fine story."

Mr. Sellyer smiled widely.