His father had written to him several times, making special
inquiries after the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace, and the
_Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. He replied with generalities in a
guarded manner. He was kept very busy, and was as yet unable to send
him any more detailed information. He had begun to feel it strange
that these questions should be put, to marvel at the assumption that
they could in any way concern him. Rickman's had ceased altogether to
exist for him.
He was beginning to lose all sense of strangeness in his position. The
six days might have been six years and Court House the home of his
infancy, Lucia's presence filled it with so warm an atmosphere of
kindness and of love. The very servants had learnt something of her
gentle, considerate ways. He was at home there as he had never been at
home before. He knew every aspect of the library, through all the
changes of the light, from the first waking of its blues and crimsons
in the early morning to the broad and golden sweep of noonday through
the south window; from the quick rushing flame of the sunset to its
premature death among the rafters. Then the lamps; a little light in
the centre where they sat, and the thick enclosing darkness round
about them.
Each of those six days was like a Sunday, and Sunday to Rickman was
always a day of beatitude, being the day of dreams. And she, in her
sweet unfamiliar beauty, only half real, though so piercingly present
to him, was an incarnate dream.
Pages:
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202