There & Back. George MacDonald
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 ass, 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!”
“Well, for that one, I don’t think it matters: Cowley ain’t much!” said Lestrange, throwing the volume on a table. “I remember once taking down the book, and trying to read some of it: I could not; it’s the dullest rubbish ever written.”
“It’s not so bad as that, sir!” answered Richard, and taking up the book he turned the leaves with light, practiced hand. “He was counted the greatest poet of his day, and no age loves dullness! Listen a moment, sir; I will read only one stanza.”
He had found the “Hymn to the Light,” and read:—
“First born of Chaos, who so fair didst come From the old Negro’s darksome womb! Which when it saw the lovely Child, The melancholy Mass put on kind looks and smil’d.”
“I don’t see much in that!” said Lestrange, as Richard closed the book, and glanced up expectant.
Richard was silent for an instant.
“At any rate,” he returned, “it is necessary to the understanding of our history, that we should know the kind of thing admired and called good at any given time of it: so our lecturer at King’s used to tell us.”
“At King’s!” cried Lestrange.
“King’s college, London, I mean,” said Richard. “They have evening classes there, to which a man can go after his day’s work. My father always took care I should have time for anything I wanted to do. I go still when I am at home—not always, but when the lecturer takes up any special subject I want to know more about.”
“You’ll be an author yourself some day, I suppose!”
“There’s little hope or fear of that, sir! But I can’t bear not to know what’s in my very hands. I can’t be content with the outsides of the books I bind. It seems a shame to come so near light and never see it shine. If I were a tailor, I should learn anatomy. I know one tailor who is as familiar with the human form as any sculptor in London—more, perhaps!”
Lestrange began to feel uncomfortable. If he let this prodigy go on talking and asking questions, he would find out how little he knew about anything! But Richard was no prodigy. He was only a youth capable of interest in everything, with the stimulus of not finding the fountains of knowledge at his very door, and the aid of having to work all day at some pleasant task, nearly associated with higher things that he loved better. He did know a good deal for his age, but not so very much for his opportunity, his advantages being great. Most men who learn would learn more, I suspect, if they had work to do, and difficulty in the way of learning. Those counted high among Richard’s advantages. He was, besides, considerably attracted by the mechanics of literature—a department little cultivated by those who have most need of what grows in it.
Further talk followed. Lestrange grew interested in the phenomenon of a blacksmith that bound books and read them. He began to dream of patronage and responsive devotion. What a thing it would be for him, in after years, with the cares of property and parliament combining to curtail his leisure, to have such a man at his beck, able to gather the information he desired, and to reduce, tabulate, and embody it so as to render his chief the best-informed man in the House! while at other times he would manage for him his troublesome tenants, and upon occasion shoe his wife’s favourite horse! He could also depend upon him to provide, from the rich stores of his memory, suitable quotations when he wished to make a speech! Lestrange had never thought whether the wish to appear might not indicate the duty to be; had never seen that, until he was, to desire to appear was to cherish the soul of a sneak. He had no notion of anything but the look; no notion that, having made a good speech, he would deserve an atom the less praise for it that he could not have made it without his secretary. Did any one think the less of clearing a five-barred gate, he would have answered, that it could not be done without a horse? Where was the difference? A man you paid to be your secretary, still more a man whose education to be your secretary you had paid for—was he not yours in a way at least analogous to that in which a horse was yours? He could break away from you more easily, no doubt, but a man knew better than a horse on which side his bread was buttered!
“I think, squire, I’ll go and have a pipe with the coachman!” said the blacksmith at length.
“As you please, Armour,” answered Lestrange. “I will take care of your—nephew, is he?”
“My grandson, sir—from London.”
“All right! There’s good stuff in the breed, Armour!—I will bring him to you.”
Richard went on taking down book after book, and showing his host how much they required attention.
“And you could set all right for—?—for how much?” asked Lestrange.
“That no one could say. It would, however, cost little more than time and skill. The material would not come to much. Only, where the paper itself is in decay, I do not know about that. I have learned nothing in that department yet.”
“For generations none of us have cared about books—that must be why they have gone so to the bad!—the books, I mean,” he added with a laugh. “There was a bishop, and I think there was a poet, somewhere in the family; but my father—hm!—I doubt if he would care to lay out money on the library!”
“Tell him,” suggested Richard, “that it is a very valuable library—at least so it appears to me from the little I have seen of it; but I am sure of this, that it is rapidly sinking in value. After another twenty years of neglect it would not fetch half the price it might easily be brought up to now.”
“I don’t know that that would weigh much with him. So long as he sees the shelves full, and the book-backs all right, he won’t want anything better. He cares only how things look.”
“But the whole look of the library is growing worse—gradually, it is true, and in a measure it can’t be helped—but faster than you would think, and faster than it ought. The backs, which, from a library point of view, are the faces of the books, may, up to a certain moment, look well, and after that go much more rapidly. I fear damp is getting at these from somewhere!”
“Would you undertake to set all right, if my father made you a reasonable offer?”
“I would—provided