Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who "came in" every morning, that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He might raise £50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six fivers among the rest, would postpone any violent pressure for a while. Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to raise £50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills while Guy dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months had known their company. They were a melancholy sight when he had stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise £50 must sell at an average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows for the further tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first edition of Swinburne's Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon, which could certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarmé with the Rops frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides, he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was Hérédia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved exceptions. He must preserve, too, the Italians (what a solace Leopardi had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
Amor, chee a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi pres del costui piacer si forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.
The words were stained with the blue anemone to which he had likened Pauline's eyes that first day of their love's declaration. He opened the other:
Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse,
Quando leggemmo il disiato riso
Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante:
And in this volume the words were stained with a ragged-robin which unnoticed had come back to Plashers Mead in his pocket that May eve, and which when it fell out later he had pressed between those burning pages. It was doubtless the worst kind of sentiment, but the two books must go back upon their shelves, and never must they be lost, even if everything but Shakespeare went.
Guy put his hand to his forehead and found that it was actually wet with the agony of what on this January afternoon he had been compelling himself to achieve. Each book before it was condemned he stroked fondly and smelled like incense the fragrant mustiness of the pages, since nearly every volume still commemorated either the pleasure of the moment when he had bought it or some occasion of reading equally good to recall. Then he covered the pile with a shroud of tattered stuff and wrote a letter offering them to the only bookseller in Oxford with whom he had never dealt. Two days later an assistant came over to inspect the booty.
"Well?" said Guy, painfully, when the assistant put away his note-book and shot his cuffs forward.
"Well, Mr. Hazlewood, we can offer you thirty-five pounds for that little lot."
Guy stammered a repetition of the disappointing sum.