I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark, sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were the sole furniture.
Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.
‘We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,’ she said; ‘and—’
‘That will be some time yet,’ I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; ‘and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library—if the other rooms should turn out as rich as that one.’
‘I believe old books are expensive now-a-days,’ she returned. ‘They are more sought after, I understand.’
We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara and Mary were assiduous in their help.
To go back for a little to my own old chest—we found it, as I said, full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not inclined to expend on them—for I had no pleasure in such details as involved nothing of the picturesque—I threw the one in my hand upon the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley, who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least a quarter of an hour, exclaimed—
‘Come, Charley; I’m sick of the rubbish. Let’s go and have a walk before supper.’
‘Rubbish!’ he repeated; ‘I am ashamed of you!’
‘I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she’s got in her head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and all that.’