For when his thoughts dwelt for a moment upon the tawny-haired barmaid who had been the immediate cause of his removal from Oxford University (for the proctors had been waiting for him beneath when he lowered himself from her bedroom window like Romeo upon a rope) he could scarcely deny that he was in love with her too. And when he allowed his fancy to play about the girl in the Festival Office, he had to admit that although she couldn’t spell and appeared to be witless there was nevertheless something fey and secret about her which could easily win a man’s heart. Astonished by this revelation, and as if to test further the huge catholicity of his taste, he even permitted himself to consider the claims of Miss Foulkes, a waspish redhead who was said to be a member of the Communist Party and whose lively opposition to the Festival was causing considerable embarrassment to the Mayor. Lance had once danced with Miss Foulkes at the annual beanfeast of the Tennis Club; upon that occasion their conversation had been confined to the subject of Dialectical Materialism. And yet he could not be absolutely sure, upon this bright May morning, that the multitudinous freckles upon her nose had actually displeased him nor that there had not passed through his mind a momentary speculation whether her rather pretty mouth could be put to better purpose than repeating the dogmas of Karl Marx.

The fact of the matter was that Lance was in love with Life. Being a poet, he was naturally a kind of Pantheist; and being young he was a Pan-amorist as well. As he strode through the buttercups which gilded his shoes, and sang to himself some improvised and exceedingly improper verses about Odo and Dodo, his heart felt as if it would burst with an overflowing and comprehensive love of Virginia and ladies’-smocks and Edna and marshmallows and barmaids and buttercups and of the kingfisher which suddenly shot like an azure arrow out of a hollow tree and with its beautiful darting swiftness took his breath away.

Tirra-lirra by the river sang Sir Lancelot.

II

Poised On top of the step-ladder, Stephen looked down upon his box-shaped front shop, the black cat rippling and purring in the window, the Rowlandson prints above the fireplace, the table littered with the unsorted and probably unsaleable books which he’d bought yesterday at an auction, the glass-fronted bookcase which contained his few first editions. Because he had never considered the shop from this angle before he felt curiously aloof; the ladder was a point of vantage from which he surveyed not merely his private world but the past five years he had spent in it. It didn’t seem so long since he’d put up that rather foolish motto above the shelves, a tag out of his little Latin which steadily became less: QUOD PETIS HIC EST. It was foolish because hardly any of his customers understood it and in any case it wasn’t true. What they sought was only occasionally and by fortunate chance to be found in those short inadequate shelves. “Have you got an up-to-date book on metallurgy, please?” “I want something on spiders, suitable for a boy.” “Anything about embroidery.” “Do you happen to have the Poetical Works of Ossian?” Or Councillor Noakes whispering furtively: “I want you to get me a little book on Flagellation.” If Stephen had learned anything during his five years as a bookseller, it was that the frontiers of the human mind were immeasurable, and that people were like ants questing hopelessly within that vast wilderness. But what diverse and diverting ants they were! It was an odd paradox, thought Stephen, that the experience of keeping a bookshop had taught him less about Letters than it had taught him about Life.

The glass-fronted door of the shop was suddenly darkened and from his high perch he looked down upon a bald and shining pate. The old gentleman who owned it clutched to the bosom of his black cassock a bundle of books in shabby green bindings, and Stephen laid a bet with himself that the books were by Dickens, that they were believed to be first editions, that half the plates were missing and that the other half were foxed.

The old gentleman looked up.

“Ah, there you are! I’ve brought you a few old books. They’re not Theology this time, you’ll be glad to hear.”

Stephen came down the ladder. “I was cleaning out some cupboards,” the Vicar went on, “and really, nowadays, one simply hasn’t got room—”

Stephen had known, too, that the explanation would run like that: there was always so little room, there was never so little money. As he glanced at the damp-stained title-pages, the Vicar said:

“They’re first editions, at least I’ve always understood so.”

“Yes, they’re the first bound editions,” Stephen explained patiently; “but I’m afraid they’re not very rare. You see, most of these books first came out in parts, and collectors like to have them in the original state, with the paper-wrappers and the advertisements all complete. I’m afraid—”

“You can’t make an offer for them?” The Vicar was rubbing his old rheumaticky fingers where the thin string had cut them.

“Well …” Stephen began to tie up the bundle, and as he did so he felt his absurd weakness getting the better of him, his uncontrollable impulse of compassion. “Well, of course, they might sell.” Angry with himself, he added almost roughly: “Perhaps I could give you a pound for the lot.”

“You and I never argue,” said the Vicar brightly. “A willing buyer and a willing seller can always do a deal. I should hardly have troubled you, but expenses have been rather heavy lately. That boy of mine—you heard he was —er—sent down? Some foolish escapade; I didn’t inquire into it. Boys will be boys. Have you managed to sell many copies of his book?”

“Poetry is a bit difficult.” And indeed, out of the fifty copies of that slim volume which Stephen had bought in another of his moments of compassionate folly, there were still forty-seven left. It was called La Vie est Vaine, and needless to say the Vicar had paid for its private publication. His printer had certainly cheated him, for the arty pink wrappers were fading to dirty orange and the bindings were springing, so that each of the little books had begun to open like a flower in the sun.

“You wait till the Festival visitors begin to arrive,” beamed the Vicar. “Then they’ll sell like hot cakes. Ah, thank you”—as Stephen took a pound out of the tobacco-tin which served as a till— “I can’t deny that it will come in handy, just at the moment. Boys like mine are very expensive.