There & Back Part 8

CHAPTER X. _THE LIBRARY_.

Simon and Richard followed the man through a narrow door in the thick wall, across a wide pa.s.sage, and then along a narrow one. A door was thrown open, and they stepped into a sombre room. The floor of the hall was of great echoing slabs of stone, but now their feet sank in the deep silence of a soft carpet.

Here a new awe, dwelling, however, in an air of homeliness, awoke in Richard. Around him, from floor to ceiling, was ranged a whole army of books, mostly in fine old bindings; in spite of open window and great fire and huge chimney, the large lofty room was redolent of them. Their odour, however, was not altogether pleasing to Richard, whose practised organ detected in it the signs of a blamable degree of decay. The faint effluvia of decomposing paper, leather, paste, and glue, were to Richard as the air of an ill-ventilated ward in the nostrils of a physician. He sniffed and made an involuntary grimace: he had not seen Mr. Lestrange, who was close to him, half hidden by a bookcase that stood out from the wall.

"Good morning, Armour!" said Lestrange. "Your young man does not seem to relish books!"

"In a grand place like this, sir," remarked Richard, taking answer upon himself, "such a library as I never saw, except, of course, at the British Museum, it makes a man sorry to discover indications of neglect."

"What do you mean?" returned Lestrange in displeasure.

Richard's remark was the more offensive that his superior style issued in a comparatively common tone. Neither was there anything in the appearance of the place to justify it.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, fearing he had been rude, "but I am a bookbinder!"

"Well?" rejoined Lestrange, taking him now for a sneaking tradesman on the track of a big job.

"I know at once the condition of an old book by the smell of it,"

pursued Richard. "The moment I came in, I knew there must be some here in a bad way--not in their clothes merely, but in their bodies as well--the paper of them, I mean. Whether a man has what they call a soul or not, a book certainly has: the paper and print are the body, and the binding is the clothes. A gentleman I know--but he's a mystic--goes farther, and says the paper is the body, the print the soul, and the meaning the spirit."

A pretty fellow to be an atheist! my reader may well think.

Mr. Lestrange stared. He must be a local preacher, this blacksmith, this bookbinder, or whatever he was!

"I am sorry you think the books hypocrites," he said. "They look all right!" he added, casting his eyes over the shelves before him.

"Would you mind me taking down one or two?" asked Richard. "My hands are rather black, but the colour is ingrain, as Spenser might say."

"Do so, by all means," answered Lestrange, curious to see how far the fellow could support with proof the accuracy of his scent.

Richard moved three paces, and took down a volume--one of a set, the original edition in quarto of "The Decline and Fall," bound in russia-leather.

"I thought so!" he said; "going!--going!--Look at the joints of this Gibbon, sir. That's always the way with russia--now-a-days, at least!--Smell that, grandfather! Isn't it sweet? But there's no stay in it! Smell that joint! The leather's stone-dead!--It's the rarest thing to see a volume bound in russia, of which the joints are not broken, or at least cracking. These joints, you see, are gone to powder! All russia does--sooner or later, whatever be the cause.--Just put that joint to your nose, sir! That's part of what you smell so strong in the room."

He held out the book to him, but Lestrange drew back: it was not fit his nose should stoop to the request of a tradesman!

Richard replaced the book, and took down one after another of the same set.

"Every one, you see, sir," he said, "going the same way! Dust to dust!"

"If they're _all_ going that way," remarked the young man, "it would cost every stick on the estate to rebind them!"

"I should be sorry to rebind any of them. An old binding is like an old picture! Just look at this French binding! It's very dingy, and a good deal broken, but you never see anything like that nowadays--as mellow as modest, and as rich as roses! Here's one says the same thing as your grand hall out there, only in a piping voice."

Lestrange was not exactly stuck-up; he had feared the fellow was b.u.mptious, and felt there was no knowing what he might say next, but by this time had ceased to imagine his dignity in danger. The young blacksmith's admiration of the books and of the hall pleased him, and he became more cordial.

"Do you say _all_ russia-leather behaves in the same fashion?" he asked.

"Yes, now. I fancy it did not some years ago. There may be some change in the preparation of the leather. I don't know. It is a great pity!

Russia is lovely to the eye--and to the nostrils.--May I take a look at some of the _old_ books, sir?"

"What do you call an _old_ book?"

"One not later, say, than the time of James the First.--Have you a first folio, sir?"

Lestrange was thinking of his coming baronetcy.

"First folio?" he answered absently. "I dare say you will find a good many first folios on the shelves!"

"I mean the folio Shakespeare of 1623. There are, of course, many folios much scarcer! I saw one the other day that the booksellers themselves gave eight hundred guineas for!"

"What was it?" asked Lestrange carelessly.

"It was a wonderful copy--unique as to condition--of Gower's _Confessio Amantis;_--not a _very_ interesting book, though I do not doubt Shakespeare was fond of it. You see Shakespeare could hear the stones preaching!"

"By Jove, a man may hear the sticks do that any Sunday!"

"True enough, sir, ha-ha!"

"Have you read Gower, then?"

"A good deal of him."

"Was it that same precious copy you read him in?"

"It was; but I hadn't time for more than about the half. I must finish on another edition, I fear."

"How did you get hold of a book of such value?"

"The booksellers who bought it, asked me to take it into my hospital. It wanted just a little, a very little patching. The copy in the museum is not to compare to it."

"You say it was not interesting?"

"Not _very_ interesting, I said, sir."

"Why did you read so much of it, then?"

"When a book is hard to come at, you are the more ready to read it when you have the chance."

"I suppose that's why one borrows his neighbour's books and don't read his own! I seldom take one down from those shelves."

Richard felt as if a wall was broken down between them.

All the time they talked, old Simon stood beside, pleased to note how well his grandson could hold up the ball with the young squire, but saying nothing. If the matter had been hoof of horse, cow, or a.s.s, he would not have been silent: he knew hoofs better than Richard knew books.

Richard took down a small folio, the back of which looked much too soft and loose. Opening it, he found what he expected--a wreck. It was hardly fit to be called any more a book. The clothes had forsaken the body, or rather the body had decayed away from the clothes.

"Now, look here!" he said. "Here is Cowley's Poems--in such a state that I doubt if anything would ever make a book of it again. I thought by the back all was wrong inside! See how the leaves have come away singly: the paper itself is rotten! I doubt if there is any way to make paper so far gone as this hold together. I know a good deal can be done, and I must learn what is known. I shan't be master of my trade till I know all that can be done now to stop such a book from crumbling into dust! Then I may find out something more!"