Читать книгу Stephen Morris & Pilotage - Nevil Shute Norway - Страница 3
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Three reputations cling closely to the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford. To the clever people it is the Reading Room of the famous Bodleian Library and, as such, entitled to the utmost veneration. To tourists and sightseers it is a quaint old circular building, from the roof of which a fine view of the colleges can be obtained. But to the young undergraduates it has more unusual associations, for that same circular roof is one of the very few places in the city of Oxford where they can meet in intimate conversation unchaperoned. Nobody else connected with the University ever dreams of going up there.
Stephen Morris was up there early, fully a quarter of an hour before the time that he had stated.
He moved round to the side of the building from which Helen Riley would approach, and as he did so he saw her down below. She rode her bicycle to the foot of the steps, alighted, and entered the building, very delicate and sweet.
Oh, but he must be firm—must, must be final.
Then she was with him.
‘Good evening,’ she said nervously.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Let’s sit down.’
So they sat down together under the shadow of the grey dome.
‘What is it, Stephen?’ she asked very gently.
He cleared his throat and looked straight ahead of him. ‘I suppose we’d better get to business right away,’ he said. ‘I wrote and asked you to marry me—you know that. I’m afraid I want to back out of it.’
The girl stirred suddenly. ‘You made a mistake?’
‘I made a mistake,’ he said evenly, ‘not in what I said to you about ... myself, but in other things. One gets carried away, I suppose. I can’t afford to marry and I never could, really.’
‘But, Stephen,’ said the girl. ‘You didn’t ask me to marry you at once. You told me we should have to wait.’
There was a brief silence. A sparrow came and perched in the sunlight upon the stone balustrade, looked at them for a moment and flew away again.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But when I wrote that, I had an unusually good job in rubber in sight. I’ve lost it now—they can’t take me on, certainly for a year and probably not then, business being very bad. I had the time in sight when we could get married. Now that’s gone.’
‘But, Stephen,’ said the girl, ‘isn’t there anything else? What are you going to do?’
‘I met your cousin Malcolm yesterday, out at the hill climb. He spoke of a possible job for me in his little business, at three pounds a week. It’s flying and mechanic’s work—manual labour, I suppose one ought to call it. I don’t see that I can do any better than that, other than clerical work or schoolmastering. I haven’t been able to find anything that gives me the faintest chance of marrying, now or in the future.
‘So I want you to be free,’ he said, ‘and do your best to forget this. One does, you know.’
‘It’s a pity it ever happened,’ said the girl.
‘It’s a pity it ever happened,’ he repeated.
They got up and for a little time leaned against the parapet, looking out over the spires of the town, sick at heart. At last Morris turned to her.
‘I don’t think we have anything else to settle, have we?’ he asked, very gently.
‘I suppose not,’ said the girl. She turned and faced him.
‘Stephen dear,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
Stephen turned away, and avoided her eyes. ‘I think I do,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing I want to say about—this. We’ve had a good time, haven’t we? And nobody can ever take that away from us ...’
Then she was gone.
Stephen Morris walked slowly back to college. He wanted someone to talk to—frightfully badly.
