adder and
seated himself on the topmost one, at right angles to a topmost shelf
the contents of which he proposed to investigate, duster and note-book
in hand. The vast perspective of the gallery lengthened out before him,
cool, faint-tinted, full of a diffused and silvery light. The
self-coloured, unpainted paneling of the walls and bookcases--but one
shade warmer in tone than that of the stone mullions and transomes of
the lofty windows--gave an indescribable delicacy of effect to the
atmosphere of the room. Through the many-paned, leaded lights of the
eastern bay, the sunshine--misty, full of dancing notes--streamed in
obliquely, bringing into quaint prominence of light and shadow a very
miscellaneous collection of objects.--A marble Buddha, benign of
aspect, his right hand raised in blessing, seated, cross-legged upon
the many-petalled lotus. A pair of cavalier's jack-boots, standing just
below, most truculent and ungainly of foot-gear, wooden, hinged,
leather-covered. A trophy of Polynesian spears, shields, and canoe
paddles. A bronze Antinous, seductive of bearing and dainty of limb,
but roughened by green rust. A collection of old sporting prints,
softly coloured, covering a bare space of wall, beneath a moose skull,
from the broad flat antlers of which hung a pair of Canadian
snow-shoes. Along the inside wall of the great room, placed at regular
intervals, were consol tables bearing tall oriental jars and huge bowls
of fine porcelain, filled with potpourri; so that the scent of dried
rose leaves, bay, verbena, and many spices impregnated the air. The
place was, in short, a museum. Whatever of strange, grotesque, and
curious, Calmadys of past generations had collected in their
wanderings, by land and sea, found lodgment here. It was a home of
half-forgotten histories, of valorous deeds grown dim through the lapse
of years; a harbour of refuge for derelict gods, derelict weapons,
derelict volumes, derelict instruments which had once discoursed sweet
enough music, but the fashion of which had now passed away. The
somewhat obsolete sentiment of the place harmonised with the thin,
silvery light and the thin sweetness of spices and dead roses which
pervaded it. It seemed to smile, as with the pitying tolerance of the
benign image of Buddha, at the heat and flame, the untempered scarlet
and purple of the fleeting procession of individual lives, that had
ministered to its furnishing. For how much vigorous endeavour, now