'These damned publishers put their prices up and up on the poor bookseller, and my brains are all my capital, and I will not sell the stuff that's turned out like bars o' soap, though the authors may be as famous as old Nick and the publishers may roll by in their cars and build their castles in the countryside.... I sell my books all the week, and I grow my own food on my own plot on Sundays, and I'll win through till I'm laid in the earth, and have a pile o' books to keep me down when I'm dead as they have done in my lifetime.'
He thrust a slice of apple into his mouth and munched away at it, rosy defiance of an ill-ordered world shining from his healthy cheeks.
On his desk Clara saw his account book, a pile of bills, and old cheques, and it was not difficult to guess the cause of his trouble.
'I'm sure I should sell your books for you.'
'You'd draw all London into my shop, young leddy, as you'll draw them to the playhouse; but bookselling is a dusty trade and is not for fair wits or fine persons.'
Clara looked out into the shop, and was happy in its friendliness. A lean, hungry-looking man came in, bought a paper, and stayed turning over the books. She could not see his face, but something in his movement told of quality of wit and precise consciousness. He seized a book with a familiar mastery, as though he could savour and weigh its contents through his finger-tips, glanced through it, and put it away as though it were finally disposed of. There was a concentrated absorption in everything he did that made it definite and final. He was so sensitive that at the approach of another person he edged away as though to avoid a distasteful impact.... Very shabby he was, but distinguished and original. After taking up half a dozen books and not finding in them any attraction, he stopped, pondered, and moved out of the shop quite obviously having clearly in his mind some necessary and inevitable purpose.
His going was a wrench to Clara, so wholly had she been absorbed in him; but though she longed to know his name she could not bring herself to ask her old friend who he was. That did not matter. He was, and Charing Cross Road had become a hallowed place by profound experience, the bookshop a room beyond all others holy.
For some time longer, Clara sat in silence with her old friend, who lit his after-luncheon pipe and sat cross-legged, blinking and ruminant. She stared into the shop, and still it seemed that the remarkable figure was standing there fingering the books, pondering, deciding. Her emotions thrilled through her, uplifted her, and she had a sensation of being deliciously intimate with all things animate and inanimate. She touched the desk by her side, and it seemed to her that life tingled through her fingers into the wood. She smiled at the old man, and his eyes twitched, and he gave her a little happy sidelong nod. She wanted to tell him that the world was a very wonderful place, but she could only keep on smiling, and as she left the shop, the bookseller thrust his hat on the back of his head, scratched his beard, and said,—
'Pegs! I said to Jenny she'll bring me luck. But she's wasted on yon birkie ca'd a lord.'