“This house of Sefton’s just serves to remind one of what a parvenu’s house is not,” said little Tivett, sententiously.
Sophy looked at the titles of the books. How ignorant they made her feel! There was hardly one that she had ever seen before; and yet no doubt they were the very cream of classic and modern literature, not to have read which stamped one as illiterate.
“I have been looking at your books,” she said, when Sefton came in with Eve. “They are too lovely.”
“Rather nicely bound, aren’t they?” he said, smiling gently at her enthusiasm. “They are a somewhat scratch collection, not quite family literature; but those vellum bindings with the blue labels give a nice tone of colour against the prevailing brown.”
“That is so like Sefton,” said Mr. Tivett. “He values his books from an æsthetic standpoint. Thinks of the effect of their bindings, not of the literature inside.”
“As one gets older reading becomes more and more impossible. There is a satisfaction in possessing books, but one’s chief pleasure is in their outsides. I sit here sometimes after midnight, smoking the pipe of the lotus-eater and looking at my bindings, and I feel as if that were enough for culture.”
“I dare say that is quite the pleasantest way of enjoying a library,” said Mr. Tivett, as if he saw the matter in a new light.
“Of course it is. There’s no use in thinking of the lifetime it would need to read all the great books. That way madness lies. De Quincey went into the question once arithmetically, and to read his bare statement is distraction. I think it was that calculation of his which first put me off reading.”
“Then your books are only ornaments?” said Sophy, disappointed.
“My books are a dado by Riviere and Zaehnsdorf. There are a great many of them with the leaves unopened. I take out a volume now and then, and peep between the pages. One gets the best of a book that way—the flavour without the substance of the author. But I came to take you down to tea, Miss Marchant. My banjoist has arrived, and Lady Hartley and Mrs. Montford are doing all they can to spoil him.”