Edwin felt the surprised relief of one who has plunged into the sea and discovers himself fairly buoyant on the threatening waves.
“Janet,” asked Mrs Orgreave, “will supper be ready?”
In the obscurer corners of the room grey shadows gathered furtively, waiting their time.
Five.
“Seen my latest, Charlie?” asked Tom, in his thin voice.
“No, what is it?” Charlie replied. The younger brother was flattered by this proof of esteem from the elder, but he did his best by casualness of tone to prevent the fact from transpiring.
All the youths were now standing in a group in the middle of the drawing-room. Their faces showed pale and more distinct than their bodies in the darkening twilight. Mrs Orgreave, her husband, and the girls had gone into the dining-room.
Tom Orgreave, with the gestures of a precisian, drew a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked a rosewood bookcase that stood between the two windows. Jimmie winked to Johnnie, and included Edwin in the fellowship of the wink, which meant that Tom was more comic than Tom thought, with his locked bookcases and his simple vanities of a collector. Tom collected books. As Edwin gazed at the bookcase he perceived that it was filled mainly with rich bindings. And suddenly all his own book-buying seemed to him petty and pitiful. He saw books in a new aspect. He had need of no instruction, of no explanation. The amorous care with which Tom drew a volume from the bookcase was enough in itself to enlighten Edwin completely. He saw that a book might be more than reading matter, might be a bibelot, a curious jewel, to satisfy the lust of the eye and of the hand. He instantly condemned his own few books as being naught; he was ashamed of them. Each book in that bookcase was a separate treasure.
“See this, my boy?” said Tom, handing to Charlie a calf-bound volume, with a crest on the sides. “Six volumes. Picked them up at Stafford—Assizes, you know. It’s the Wilbraham crest. I never knew they’d been selling their library.”