Appleby's End by Michael Innes Page A

then – tirelessly exacting this obscure psychological manoeuvre – stood dotted about the hall and Everard, threading his way between them, explained to Appleby that they were arranged according to the best ethnological knowledge of the eighteen-eighties. “A landmark,” he said. “In its day our uncle Adolphus’ collection was something of a landmark in its own field. Pray notice the ferocious countenance of the Kurd. And only a few years ago (this one is a Tartar, and I think the force of the expression to catch a Tartar will immediately come home to you), only a few years ago the whole thing was wanted by a museum. In Idaho, I think, or perhaps it was Oregon. Only there was a hitch at the last moment.”
    â€œThey didn’t,” said Luke, “see their way to pay .”
    â€œAnd here we are.” Rather hastily Everard threw open a door. “How pleasant to see an excellent fire.”
    The library fire was really not at all bad. But any cheerfulness which this might have imparted to the room was countered by the noticeable absence of some ten or fifteen thousand books. The library, that is to say, was lined with shelving from floor to ceiling, but, with the exception of islanded volumes and groups of volumes here and there, the shelves harboured nothing but dust, empty cigar boxes and tobacco tins, pipes, carpet slippers, fragments of dog biscuit, some foils, a fencing mask, ink bottles and a small model horse, hinged at the tail and opening so as to display the muscular system and internal economy of the animal. But if the Muses as most classically conceived had taken flight from Dream, they lingered as patronesses of the most oppressively permanent of the plastic arts. Ranged round the room were some dozen life-size figures and groups in gleaming white marble. The Rape of Europa was immediately distinguishable – Europa being in high spirits and needing only a frilly skirt to present the appearance of a bare-back rider in a circus. A companion piece, in which a bull and a glossy lady were yet more inextricably entangled both with each other and with two astoundingly contorted young men, Appleby identified provisionally as a Punishment of Dirce. He was looking round with some apprehension for a Pasiphaë when Everard Raven patted him amiably into a chair.
    â€œAh,” said Everard, “I see you are looking at poor uncle Theodore’s work. Most of it, of course, is in Judith’s studio, but the choicer pieces were brought in here. The youth clasping what Mark insists is a beer barrel is Genius guarding the Secret of the Tomb. Theodore’s chef d’oeuvre , however, is generally taken to be the one opposite the fireplace. It is called Struggle between a She-Bear and a Man of the Old Stone Age. A bear was brought specially from Russia and accommodated, it is said, in the butler’s pantry. And the Old Stone Age Man was inspected and approved by Charles Darwin.” Everard paused and unexpectedly chuckled. “Of course, this sort of thing is not exactly in a modern taste. I myself prefer Judith every time. Indeed, a few years ago we explored the possibility of selling Theodore up. But there were unexpected difficulties.”
    Mark struck a match and lit Appleby’s cigar. “You see, we left it too late. Until recently these things could be put in vast machines and ground into powder for making a very superior sort of bathroom tiles. But now it appears that they use sour milk. Books, on the other hand, always have their price. We have found that a folio volume of eighteenth-century sermons is a reasonably good breakfast all round. And the works of Voltaire in full calf it isn’t easy to eat one’s way through under a month.”
    â€œMark,” said Everard, “is referring to the fact that the library has been – um – in part dispersed. We have kept a working library upstairs in the Scriptorium. But the books down here