Like so many men who have read sedulously in their student days the reverend Horatio, now in his dignified leisure, read little, but with nicest discrimination; and in that little found an inexhaustible fund of unalloyed contentment. He would also quote felicitously from his daily reading as a man might from the conversation of a valued friend.
It is indeed not every one who ever learns the art of book-enjoyment. Your true reader must be no devourer of books. To him the thought committed to the immortality of print, crystallised to its shapeliest form, polished to its best lustre, is one which demands and repays lingering communion. If books are worth reading at all, they should be allowed to speak their full meaning; they should be hearkened to with deference. And it was always in pages that compelled such honourable attention that Dr. Tutterville sought that intellectual companionship which made his country seclusion not only tolerable, but blissfully serene.
Madam Tutterville, whether from convenience to herself, or (we had rather believe), from shrewd conception of the proprieties and wifely respect for the moods of her lord, never shared the forenoon repast. Indeed, she had generally accomplished much business in household or village before the learned divine emerged from that sanctuary where the mysteries of his careful toilet and of his early meditation were conducted in privacy and decorum.
But it was on rare occasions indeed that she could not snatch five minutes out of her multifarious occupations for the pure pleasure of watching her Horatio’s complacency as he sipped her coffee and his book.
Happy man, whose own capacity for enjoyment could so gratify another’s!
On this particular morning—a week after the exciting day of Ellinor Marvel’s return—Madam Tutterville, having duly examined the weather-glass, scanned the sky and personally tested the warmth of the air, deemed that for perhaps the last time that year she might safely set her rector’s breakfast in the garden.
For it was one of those days which a reluctant summer drops into the lap of autumn; a day of still airs and high vaulted skies, faintly but exquisitely blue; when, red and yellow, the leaves cling trembling to the bough from which there is not a puff of wind to detach them—and if they fall, fall gently as with a little sigh.
On such a day the frost, that over-night has laid light, white fingers everywhere, would be unguessed at but for the delicate tart purity of the air, which the sunshine, however it may warm it, cannot eliminate. A day in which you might be cheated into thoughts of spring, were it not for the pathos of the rustling leaf, the solitary monthly rose, the boughs that let in so much more heaven between them, and the lonely eaves where swallow broods are rioting no longer.
Madam Tutterville, as we have said, knew her parson’s tastes to a shade.
The round green table and rustic chair were therefore set between that edge of sunshine and shadow that spelt comfort. In her devoted soul the autumnal poetry was translated into housewife practicality: into broiled partridge still fizzling under the silver cover, a comb of heather-honey, a purple bunch of grapes invitingly stretched on their own changing leaves.