There & Back

He could do nothing till he knew where he was to work, and therefore, after breakfast in the servants’ hall, he asked one of the men to let him know when Mr. Lestrange would see him, and went to his room.

Richard had not yet become aware of any moral pressure. The duty of aspiration or self-conquest, had never in any shape been forced upon him, and his conscience had not made him acquainted with it. What is called a good conscience is often but a dull one that gives no trouble when it ought to bark loudest; but Richard’s was not of that sort, and yet was very much at ease. I may say for him that he had done nothing he knew to be bad at the moment; and very little that he had to be ashamed of afterwards, either at school or since he left it. Partly through the care of his parents, he had never got into what is called bad company, had formed no undesirable intimacies. He had a natural cleanliness, a natural sense of the becoming, which did much to keep him from evil: he could not consent to regard himself with disgust, and he would have been easily disgusted with himself. If he did not, as I have indicated, set himself with any conscious effort to rise above himself, he did do something against sinking below himself. The books he chose were almost all of the better sort. He had instinctively laid aside some in which he recognized a degrading influence.

But here let me remark that it depends partly on the degree of a man’s moral development, whether this or that book will be to him degrading or otherwise. A book which one man ought to scorn, may be of elevating tendency to another, because it is a little above his present moral condition. A book which to enjoy would harm a more delicate mind, may perhaps benefit the nature that would have chosen a coarser book still. We cannot determine the operation of energies, when we do not know on what moral level they are at work. The dead may be left to bury their dead; it would be sad to see an angel haunting a charnel-house.

I have been led into this digression through the desire to give an approximate idea of the good, rather vacant, unselfish, and yet self-contented, if not self-satisfied condition of Richard’s being.

He got out a manuscript-book in which he was in the habit of setting down whatever came to him, and wrote for some time, happily making more than one spot of ink on the toilet-cover, which served to open the eyes of Mrs. Locke to her mistake in thinking a workman would not want a writing-table; so that before the next evening he found in his chamber everything comfortable for writing, as well as for sleeping and dressing.

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with the message that Mr. Lestrange was in the morning-room, and wished to see him.

He followed the man and found Lestrange at the breakfast-table, with a tall young woman, very ordinary-looking, except for her large, soft, dark eyes, and the little lady whose mare he had shod, and whose voice he had that morning heard from the tree-top.

He advanced half-way to the table, and stood.

“Ah, there you are!” said Lestrange, glancing up, and immediately reverting to his plate. “We’ve got to set to work, haven’t we?”

He had, I presume, found the ladies not uninterested in the restoration that was about to be initiated, and had therefore sent for Richard while breakfast was going on.

The fledgling baronet, except for his too favourable opinion of himself, in which he was unlike only a very few, and an amount of assumption not small toward his supposed inferiors, was not a disagreeable human, and now spoke pleasantly.

“Yes, sir,” answered Richard. “Shall I wait outside until you have done breakfast?”

He feared the servant might have made a mistake.

“I sent for you,” replied Lestrange curtly.

“Very well, sir. I have not yet learned whether the tools I sent on have been delivered, but there will be plenty to do in the way of preparation.—May I ask if you have settled where I am to work, sir?”

“Ah! I had not thought of that!”

“It seems to me, sir, that the library itself would suit best; that is, if I might have a good-sized kitchen-table in it, and roll up half the carpet. When I had to beat a book I could take it into the passage, or just outside the window. Nothing else would make any dust.”

Lestrange had been thinking how to have the binder under his eye, and yet not seem to watch a fellow so much above his notion of a working man; the family made very little use of the library, and Richard’s proposal seemed just the thing. He would be sure to stick to his work where some one might any moment be coming in!

“I don’t see any difficulty,” he answered.

“I should want a little fire for my glue-pot and polishing-iron. There will be gilding and lettering too, though I hope not much—title-pieces to replace, and a touch here and there to give to the tooling! No man with any reverence in him would meddle much with such delicate, lovely old things as many of these gildings! He would not dare more than just touch them!”

The little lady sat eating her toast, but losing no word that was said. She knew from his voice the young man was the same to whom she had called out of the beech-tree; but now she seemed to recognize him as the blacksmith whose hand she had bound up: what could a blacksmith do in a library? She was puzzled.

Richard noted that she was dressed in some green stuff, which perhaps was the cause of his having been unable to discover her in the tree! Her great eyes—they were bigger than those of the tall lady—every now and then looked up at him with a renewed question, to which they seemed to find no answer. They were big blue eyes—very dark for blue, and rather too round for perfection; but their roundness was at one with the prevailing expression of her face, which was innocent daring, inquiry, and confidence. The paleness of it was a healthy paleness, with just an inclination to freckle. Her dark, half-scorched-looking hair was so abundant and rebellious, that it had to be all over compelled with gold pins. Its manipulation had neither beginning, middle, nor end. She ate daintily enough, but as if she meant to have a breakfast that should last her till luncheon—when plainly the active little furnace of her life would want fresh fuel. But it was of another kind of fuel she was thinking now. In the man who stood there, so independent, yet so free from self-assertion, she saw a prospect of learning something. She was hungry after knowing, but, though fond of reading, was very ignorant of books. She thought like a poet, but had never read a real poem. She was full of imagination, but very imperfectly knew what the word meant. She had never in her life read a work of genuine imagination—not even Undine, not even The Ugly Duckling.

CHAPTER XIV. THE LIBRARY

After some talk, it was settled that Richard should work in the large oriel of the library. Mrs. Locke was called, and the necessary orders were given. Employer and workman were both anxious, the one to see, the other to make a commencement. In a few minutes Richard had looked out as many of the books in most need of attention as would keep him, turning from the one to the other, as each required time in the press or to dry, thoroughly employed.

“There is a volume here I should like to know your mind about, sir,” he said, after looking at one of them a moment or two, “—the first collected edition of Spenser’s works, actually bound up with Sir John Harrington’s translation of Ariosto! If it were a good, or even an old binding, I should have said nothing.”

“It don’t seem in a bad way.”

“No, but the one book is so unworthy of the other!”

“What would you propose?”

“I would separate them; put the Spenser in plain calf, and make the present cover, with a new back, do for Sir John; it is a good enough coat for him.”

“Very well. Do as you think best.”

“I should like to send them both to my father.”

“But you have undertaken everything!”

“I am quite ready, sir; but in that case these must wait. My faculty is best laid out on mending, and I must do some good work in that first. I don’t know that I’m quite up to my father in binding. I mentioned him because if he were to help me with those that must be bound, I should have the more time for what often takes longer. You may trust my father, sir; he does not want to make a fortune.”

“I will try him then,” answered the cautious heir. “At least I will send him the books, and learn what he would charge.”

He had more of the ordinary tradesman in him than Richard and his uncle put together.

“I will put the prices on them, and engage that my father will charge no more,” said Richard.

Lestrange was content on hearing them, and Richard set to work with the other volumes.

The bookbinder, always busy, soon began to be respected in the house, and before long had gained several indulgences—among the rest, to have a table for himself in the library, at which, when work-hours were over, he might read or write when he pleased. As his labours went on, the bookscape began to revive, and continued slowly putting on an autumnal radiance of light and colour. Dingy and broken backs gradually disappeared. Pamphlets and magazines, such as, from knowledge or inquiry, Richard thought worth the expense, were sent off to his father to be bound. But I must continue my narrative from a point long before his work began to make much of a show.

A few valuable books, much injured by time and rough usage,—among the rest a quarto of The Merry Wives—he had pulled apart, and was treating with certain solutions, in preparation for binding them, when Lestrange came in one morning, accompanied by the curate of the parish. His eyes fell on a loose title-page which he happened to know.

“What on earth are you doing?” he cried. “You will destroy that book! By Jove!—You little know what you’re about!”

“I do know what I am about, sir. I shall do the book nothing but good,” answered Richard. “It could not have lasted many years without what I am doing.”

“Leave it alone,” said Lestrange. “I must ask some one. The treatment is too dangerous.”

“Excuse me, sir; the treatment is by no means dangerous. After this bath, I shall take it through one of thin size, to help the paper to hold together. The book has suffered much, both from damp and insects.”

“No matter!” answered Lestrange imperiously. “I will not have you meddle further with that volume.—Would you believe it, Hardy,” he went on, turning to the curate, “it is that translation of Ovid he is experimenting upon!”

“I beg your pardon, I am not experimenting,” said Richard.

“I hardly think it is such a very rare book!” replied the curate. “I believe it could be replaced!”

“Ah, you don’t know, I see! I thought I had shown you!” returned Lestrange excitedly. “Look there!”

He pointed to the title-page, which was lying on the table.

“I see!” said Hardy. “It is a first edition—in black letter—of Arthur Golding’s Ovid!”

“But you don’t look! Why don’t you look? Have you no eyes for that faded ink just under the title?”