NATICA LOVED the store from the beginning. Stephen's attitude was less enthusiastic, but he had no objection to her taking the lead in all the arrangements.
"The great thing about your mother's gift," she told him, "is that it will allow us to operate in the red until we've established the character of our shop. Once that's done I have no doubt we can attract a steady clientele. And in the meantime we are spared the agony of Christmas and birthday cards, and those overpriced little papier-mâché boxes, and prints of birds and flowers, and, above all, children's books. We'll provide a small, hospitable center for serious readers."
"What about best sellers?"
"We'll have all the best sellers. Only we won't put them in the window with a sign screaming they're that. Popular books will take their chance with the others."
"And detective stories?"
"But they appeal to the most serious readers of all! As a matter of fact I intend to make myself an expert in crime fiction."
And she did. In a few months' time Natica became known among browsers of the upper East Side as the attractive and intellectual young member of a famous clan who could discuss the latest book on the Axis powers and the newest whodunit, and who never showed impatience with a non-purchaser. She had always been a rapid reader, and with the added material of reviews and releases she found it easy enough to keep ahead of the neighborhood ladies who, as she put it to Stephen, "matronized" their tastefully redecorated little store.
Angelica Hill and her daughters were constant customers, and their friends and relations soon followed. Tyler Bennett's mother, Aunt Sally, as round and dimpled and friendly and breathless as her Hill brothers were lean and grim and dry—proof enough, as Natica took it, of the blander effect of inherited wealth on their sex—was a passionate lover of mysteries and came in almost daily.
"Tyler told me you had a head for business, my dear, which I suppose is why you do this so well. Of course, he doesn't consider a bookstore business, and he thinks you're throwing yourself away. Isn't that just like Tyler? But I tell him that his glorious 'downtown' isn't the only place in the universe, and that when he's made all the money in the world, what does he think he's going to do? He doesn't go in for cards or sports like his cousins, so he'll probably end up on a porch rocker reading thrillers like his poor old ma!"
Stephen soon began to feel and, much worse, to show impatience with the less intelligent and more demanding lady customers, and Natica tactfully suggested that he spend more of his time in the little back office, invisible to the public, taking care of ordering new titles. She kept him from interfering with their hard-working and efficient lady bookkeeper, who shared this space, by persuading him that such toil was beneath him and tried to salvage his pride by sending some of the more intellectual customers back to "consult" with him.
They had no need of additional help as yet, but one morning before Stephen had arrived (he rarely appeared before eleven) a young man of no more than nineteen came in to apply for a job as salesman. He immediately interested her. He was short, with thick black hair and bunched-up features rendered almost unnoticeable by cold gray penetrating eyes which stared at her with an impertinence sufficiently surprising in one seeking a position.
"You won't remember me, but I was a prefect last year in your husband's dorm in Averhill."
She glanced at his scanty résumé and then recalled the name: Giles Woodward. "I have certainly heard Stephen speak of you. But shouldn't you be in college?"
"I've been suspended for a year." The stare now seemed to put her on the defensive. "It was supposed to be for a drunken prank, but that was the front for a trumped-up morals charge they couldn't prove. They think I won't come back, but they have another think coming."
He waited with an air of near defiance for her to ask what the charge was. She decided that it would be more interesting not to. "And you want a job in the meantime?"
"Well, my old man won't give me a dime."
"I see." It was still early; there were no customers in the shop. She asked him some questions about current books and found him succinct, sharp and astonishingly well informed in his answers. What could she lose?
"Can I talk to my husband and get back to you?"
"Tell him I'd like to work for him. He was one of the decent guys at Averhill. There weren't many."
Stephen was concerned when she related the matter. "A morals charge! That's apt to mean buggery. Some form of inversion, anyway. Poor Giles. How like him to tell you more than he had to."
"Shall I take him on?"
"Why not? I'd like to help him. But imagine my not having heard about his suspension. It shows how careful people are not to discuss Averhill topics when I'm around."
"Did he have that kind of trouble at school?"
"At school it wasn't considered trouble. By the students, anyhow."
"I see. Boys will be boys. Well, it certainly won't be noticed in the book business."
Giles was just as good as she had hoped. He was the first to arrive in the morning and opened the store. He arranged the new books and even decorated the shop window. He rapidly learned the names and tastes of the principal customers, and knew which had charge accounts, so that prices and addresses did not need to be mentioned. A lady walking out of the store with two books under her arm almost felt as if she had been given a present, and complimented ^n her literary acumen to boot. He was scrupulously polite to Natica, whose orders he executed promptly, but she continued to feel a guarded impertinence in his manner, as if he knew a good deal more about her than he chose to tell. And of course it was impossible that he did not know every detail of her career at Averhill. But did she care? He gave her a curious sense of being an ally.
He was different with Stephen, whom he evidently admired. She supposed that if Stephen's theory of the reason for Giles's college suspension was true, the youth might well have a crush on her handsome husband, even one that had started at school. She had no objection to this, which should simply add to the efficiency of her new employee, but she didn't like Giles's constant volunteering to take jobs off Stephen's hands, which had the result of the latter's taking off more time from the shop to spend in the bar or squash courts of the Racquet Club. However, she could only take care of so many things at once. Her present job was to get the store on its feet.
One afternoon, when she and Stephen were in the back office opening book packages, Giles burst in to announce the approach of a presumably unwelcome visitor.
"It's old lady Knight! She's flying over Madison Avenue and preparing to land here."
"Flying?"
"Well, she's on a broomstick."
Natica found a moment to wonder if he even knew everything about her and Estelle. "What do you suppose she's doing in New York?"
"Maybe she's founding another poetry class. Isn't that what she did at school? Shall we pray for a recklessly speeding bus?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Giles. Stephen, shall we ask her to lunch?"
"In God's name, no! Don't even tell her I'm here."
Natica went towards the door to greet her former friend. The poetess looked even older and more raddled under a large shiny black straw hat. She stretched both hands out to Natica and crooned:
"My my, my!"
"My, my, what, Estelle?" Natica rather coolly took one of the offered extremities.
"My, my, my, aren't you the clever one?"
"Clever?"
"To have achieved not only a beautiful husband with a thumping bank account, but to have set up the most popular bookstore in town!"
Natica did not mind Stephen overhearing this—it served him right for cowering in the office—but she didn't like the presence of the grinning Giles, whom Estelle of course did not recognize, having had no contact with students. She pointed to a browsing customer, and Giles left. "What happy chance brings you to town, Estelle?"
"Well, you know I have to have my breathing spells, and Wilbur made me sell my Boston flat."
"Made you? Wilbur?"
"Oh, he was very stern. Not at all like his usual self. He said that he would never set foot in it again. I decided I'd better humor him. And anyway, I like coming to New York. But he went on like a madman at the idea of my taking another apartment, so I'm staying at the St. Regis. I suppose he doesn't trust me with flats. Dear me, maybe I should be mum about all that." Here she glanced conspiratorially about the little shop.
"I don't see any reason that you and I should not discuss apartments, Estelle."
"Well, you are a cool one. Perhaps I'd better buy a book. What do you recommend?"
"You don't have to buy a book. Tell me the news. How are all our friends at Averhill?"
"Friends? I don't know that I number many such in that benighted institution. Do you?"
"Well, there's one I may no longer be able to call a friend, but whose welfare I shall always care about. And that, of course, is Tommy Barnes. How is he?" "You never hear from him?"
"Never. And that's only natural. I don't expect him to write. But have you seen him?"
"I haven't. Wilbur has. Indeed, Wilbur and he have become rather thick. My righteous spouse may be trying to make up for that Boston business. Whoops! There I go again. Mum's the word. Anyway, Barnes is leaving at the end of this school year."
"Oh. Lockwood was ruthless about that?"
"My dear, what did you expect?"
"A miracle. And their day is over. Do you happen to know what Tommy is planning to do next?"
"I think Wilbur said something about his getting a parish in the South. The Deep South, I believe. In a Negro neighborhood."
"Oh, Estelle!"
"Well, they have souls, too, I suppose."
Natica was hardly aware of what either of them said after this. When Estelle took her leave at last, she hurried to the back office where she found Stephen pale and tense.
"I must go up and see Tommy," he announced grimly.
"Oh, my dear, what can you possibly accomplish?"
"That's just what I'm going to have to find out."