The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (parable of the sower read online TXT) 📕

“That’ll do for you!” she cried. “Next thing I suppose you’ll say Daddy’s pro-German, and me, too! I’d like to see you say that to Mr. Mifflin himself.”

“I will, don’t worry,” said Aubrey grimly. He knew now that he had put himself hopelessly in the wrong in Titania’s mind, but he refused to abate his own convictions. With sinking heart he saw her face relieved against the shelves of faded bindings. Her eyes shone with a deep and sultry blue, her chin quivered with anger.

“Look here,” she said furiously. “Either you or I must leave this place. If you intend to stay, please call me a taxi.”

Aubrey was as angry as she was.

“I’m going,” he said. “But you’ve got to play fair with me. I tell you on my oath, these two men, Mifflin and Weintraub, are framing something up. I’m going to get the goods on them and show you. But you mustn’t put them wise that I’m on their track. If you do, of course, they’ll call it off. I don’t care what you think of me. You’ve got to promise me that.”

“I won’t promise you anything,” she said, “except never to speak to you again. I never saw a man like you before⁠—and I’ve seen a good many.”

“I won’t leave here until you promise me not to warn them,” he retorted. “What I told you, I said in confidence. They’ve already found out where I’m lodging. Do you think this is a joke? They’ve tried to put me out of the way twice. If you breathe a word of this to Mifflin he’ll warn the other two.”

“You’re afraid to have Mr. Mifflin know you broke into his shop,” she taunted.

“You can think what you like.”

“I won’t promise you anything!” she burst out. Then her face altered. The defiant little line of her mouth bent and her strength seemed to run out at each end of that pathetic curve. “Yes, I will,” she said. “I suppose that’s fair. I couldn’t tell Mr. Mifflin, anyway. I’d be ashamed to tell him how you frightened me. I think you’re hateful. I came over here thinking I was going to have such a good time, and you’ve spoilt it all!”

For one terrible moment he thought she was going to cry. But he remembered having seen heroines cry in the movies, and knew it was only done when there was a table and chair handy.

“Miss Chapman,” he said, “I’m as sorry as a man can be. But I swear I did what I did in all honesty. If I’m wrong in this, you need never speak to me again. If I’m wrong, you⁠—you can tell your father to take his advertising away from the Grey-Matter Company. I can’t say more than that.”

And, to do him justice, he couldn’t. It was the supreme sacrifice.

She let him out of the front door without another word.

Seldom has a young man spent a more desolate afternoon than Aubrey on that Sunday. His only consolation was that twenty minutes after he had left the bookshop he saw a taxi drive up (he was then sitting gloomily at his bedroom window) and Titania enter it and drive away. He supposed that she had gone to join the party in Larchmont, and was glad to know that she was out of what he now called the war zone. For the first time on record, O. Henry failed to solace him. His pipe tasted bitter and brackish. He was eager to know what Weintraub was doing, but did not dare make any investigations in broad daylight. His idea was to wait until dark. Observing the Sabbath calm of the streets, and the pageant of baby carriages wheeling toward Thackeray Boulevard, he wondered again whether he had thrown away this girl’s friendship for a merely imaginary suspicion.

At last he could endure his cramped bedroom no longer. Downstairs someone was dolefully playing a flute, most horrible of all tortures to tightened nerves. While her lodgers were at church the tireless Mrs. Schiller was doing a little housecleaning: he could hear the monotonous rasp of a carpet-sweeper passing back and forth in an adjoining room. He creaked irritably downstairs, and heard the usual splashing behind the bathroom door. In the frame of the hall mirror he saw a pencilled note: “Will Mrs. Smith please call Tarkington 1565,” it said. Unreasonably annoyed, he tore a piece of paper out of his notebook and wrote on it “Will Mrs. Smith please call Bath 4200.” Mounting to the second floor he tapped on the bathroom door. “Don’t come in!” cried an agitated female voice. He thrust the memorandum under the door, and left the house.

Walking the windy paths of Prospect Park he condemned himself to relentless self-scrutiny. “I’ve damned myself forever with her,” he groaned, “unless I can prove something.” The vision of Titania’s face silhouetted against the shelves of books came maddeningly to his mind. “I was going to have such a good time, and you’ve spoilt it all!” With what angry conviction she had said: “I never saw a man like you before⁠—and I’ve seen a good many!”

Even in his disturbance of soul the familiar jargon of his profession came naturally to utterance. “At least she admits I’m different,” he said dolefully. He remembered the first item in the Grey-Matter Code, a neat little booklet issued by his employers for the information of their representatives:

Business is built upon confidence. Before you can sell Grey-Matter Service to a Client, you must sell yourself.

“How am I going to sell myself to her?” he wondered. “I’ve simply got to deliver, that’s all. I’ve got to give her service that’s difference. If I fall down on this, she’ll never speak to me again. Not only that, the firm will lose the old man’s account. It’s simply unthinkable.”

Nevertheless, he thought about it a good deal, stimulated from time to time as in the course of his walk (which led him