"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."
Charlie accepted the book with respect. Its edges were gilt, and the
paper thin and soft. Edwin looked over his shoulder, and saw the
title-page of Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris," in French. The
volume had a most romantic, foreign, even exotic air. Edwin desired it
fervently, or something that might rank equal with it.
"How much did they stick you for this lot?" asked Charlie.
Tom held up one finger.
"Quid?" Charlie wanted to be sure. Tom nodded.
"Cheap as dirt, of course!" said Tom. "Binding's worth more than that.
Look at the other volumes. Look at them!"
"Pity it's only a second edition," said Charlie.
"Well, damn it, man! One can't have everything."
Charlie passed the volume to Edwin, who fingered it with the strangest
delight. Was it possible that this exquisitely delicate and uncustomary
treasure, which seemed to exhale all the charm of France and the savour
of her history, had been found at Stafford? He had been to Stafford
himself. He had read "Notre-Dame" himself, but in English, out of a
common book like any common book--not out of a bibelot.
"You've read it, of course, Clayhanger?" Tom said.
"Oh!" Edwin answered humbly. "Only in a translation." Yet there was a
certain falseness in his humility, for he was proud of having read the
work. What sort of a duffer would he have appeared had he been obliged
to reply `No'?
"You ought to read French _in_ French," said Tom, kindly authoritative.
"Can't," said Edwin.
"Bosh!" Charlie cried. "You were always spiffing in French. You could
simply knock spots off me."
"And do you read French in French, the Sunday?" Edwin asked.
"Well," said Charlie, "I must say it was Thomas put me up to it. You
simply begin to read, that's all. What you don't understand, you miss.
But you soon understand. You can always look at a dictionary if you
feel like it. I usually don't."
"I'm sure _you_ could read French easily in a month," said Tom. "They
always gave a good grounding at Oldcastle. There's simply nothing in
it."
"Really!" Edwin murmured, relinquishing the book. "I must have a shot,
I never thought of it." And he never thought of reading French for
pleasure. He had construed Xavier de Maistre's "Voyage autour de ma
Chambre" for marks, assuredly not for pleasure. "Are there any books in
this style to be got on that bookstall in Hanbridge Market?" he inquired
of Tom.
"Sometimes," said Tom, wiping his spectacles. "Oh yes!"
It was astounding to Edwin how blind he had been to the romance of
existence in the Five Towns.
"It's all very well," observed Charlie reflectively, fingering one or
two of the other volumes--"it's all very well, and Victor Hugo is Victor
Hugo; but you can say what you like--there's a lot of this that'll bear
skipping, your worships."
"Not a line!" said a passionate, vibrating voice.
The voice so startled and thrilled Edwin that he almost jumped, as he
looked round. To Edwin it was dramatic; it was even dangerous and
threatening. He had never heard a quiet voice so charged with intense
emotion. Hilda Lessways had come back to the room, and she stood near
the door, her face gleaming in the dusk. She stood like an Amazonian
defender of the aged poet. Edwin asked himself, "Can any one be so
excited as that about a book?" The eyes, lips, and nostrils were a
revelation to him. He could feel his heart beating. But the girl
strongly repelled him. Nobody else appeared to be conscious that
anything singular had occurred. Jimmie and Johnnie sidled out of the
room.
"Oh! Indeed!" Charlie directed his candid and yet faintly ironic smile
upon Hilda Lessways. "Don't _you_ think that some of it's dullish,
Teddy?"
Edwin blushed. "Well, ye-es," he answered, honestly judicial.
"Mrs Orgreave wants to know when you're coming to supper," said Hilda,
and left.
Tom was relocking the bookcase.