Carmen's Messenger by Harold Bindloss

It rained and the light was going when Foster sat in a window seat of the library at the Garth. He was alone, but did not mind this. The Featherstones treated him as one of the family; he was free to do what he liked, and Alice had just gone away, after talking to him for half an hour. Lighting a cigarette, he mused and looked about.

Outside, the firs rose, black and dripping, above the wet drive. Between their trunks he saw the river, stained with peat, brawling among the stones, and the streaks of foam that stretched across a coffee-colored pool. Then a few boggy fields ran back into the mist that hung about the hills. A red fire threw a soft glow about the library. The room was somewhat shabby but spacious. Rows of old books in stained bindings, which Foster thought nobody read, faded into the gloom at its other end. It was warm and quiet, and he found it a comfortable retreat.