Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay Read Free Book Online Page A

return, singing his carol before his opened door, turning this way and that, with flirting wings, against china lake and hills—tirra lirra sweet sweet sweet!
    But will there come a day when he does not come, when, though his door springs back, his gold bed holds him still asleep and stirless beneath its starry mesh? Or a day when he cannot get back, when, his song ended, he still stands poised as for flight, lacking power to fall sideways and sink into the floor, so that the little door shuts on him and crushes him as he stands? For at times he seems weaker, more tardy in his retreat, and you may glimpse him lying half sunkin gold, with the china lakescape resting lightly on his folded blue wing. Are he and the spell that bids him come and go immortal, or will the enchantment one day end, and leave only a box of dark and shining shell, with china door closed tightly over a golden mesh and a buried, songless bird?
    Come, press the spring once more; make sure that he will come. Rustle, flutter, tirra lirra sweet!

Book Auctions
    It is a singular scene. Around the room sit and stand inner and outer circles of impassive men; each holds a catalogue, each a pencil. Another and still more impassive man enters, every few minutes, into the middle of the circle, holding up, for their critical, sophisticated and supercilious stare, a book. None of them, it is apparent, think much of this book; it is, in each case, to judge from their expressions, a book that ought to go pretty cheap, a defective book, a book that, if they purchase it, will stand on their shelves unsold for ever. Sometimes it is several books; a lot: all poor.
    Only one man in the room admires and likes these books; he is the presiding god, raised above the rest on a dais. He thinks very well of all the books; he likes books; he is a bibliophile, a bibliolater, even a bibliomaniac. He is, in brief, a bibliopole. He too, has an impassive face, but you can tell by his voice and his utterances that he likes books. He must feel lonely, presiding over this gathering of bored bibliophobes. Yet he conceals it; he addresses them in dulcet, persuasive accents, though not infrequently his tone gently conveys admonition and reproof, a kindly but shocked, “Come, come, my dear sirs! Only five poundsfor this admirable work! Come now, we all know better than that!” But he does not say it; except by the inflexions of his admirably modulated voice. Ever so slightly turning towards some unresponsive gentleman in the circle, he says, “Guineas. Five guineas bid.” After that, with other slight glances round, “Five ten. I am bid five pounds ten. Fifteen. Six Pounds. Guineas. Six ten, I am bid. …”
    As he speaks, his eyes turn to and fro, from one to another, as if he watched tennis. But none but he has spoken; none but he, one would say, has moved. By what silent telepathy has he divined from them their offers of these shillings of which he makes mention? Or does he invent them? Is he hypnotising these hard bibliophobes with his gentle, even tones, uttering his own hopes and counsels, like the still small voice of conscience in their ears, so that when at length he pauses, (why he ever stops, is not known; since he never gets any response, it cannot be that the moment arrives when he gets less response than before) when he at last breaks off, and murmurs that the book in question has been sold to such an one, for such a price, the individual mentioned accepts his destiny, half believing that he has indeed offered this preposterous sum for a book which he dislikes and despises. That little motion he made with his catalogue; the time he sucked his pencil; scratched his chin; blew his nose; twirled his moustache; jerked his head; crossed his legs; winked his eyes; performed any one of those thousand little actions by which humankind reacts tothe encompassing universe; these must have committed him to this purchase, involved him in the payment of this sum so