Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 3

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The new world was still so very new to him, and as he turned from the Strand into the shadow of the Temple gateway, he paused for a moment like a man taking shelter. He would have said that the very sunlight was shattered by the City’s sounds, and that the tumult and the traffic of the streets confused him. He put up a hand and eased his hat.

But even in this gateway he was an obstruction, a creature who had stopped to stare, and perhaps to think. He did not belong; he was in the way, and when two men walking abreast jostled past him, he turned and followed them like some floating object that had been held up by a clump of weeds, and, becoming detached, drifted down stream.

Another archway offered itself, and passing through it he found himself in Pump Court. It was empty and silent on this October morning, and with an air of relief he drew aside into a corner of the court, and stood and stared. Again a hand went up and eased his hat. He looked about him. He saw the flagstones and three green lamp-posts, and the grey steps going up to the putty-coloured Georgian doorways. The old, soot-blackened brick walls were in the shadow, and so were the trunks of two plane trees that pushed their foliage up into the light. The leaves of the trees were turning yellow, and an occasional leaf came planing down to lie gently upon the flagstones. The only sound to be heard was the clicking of typewriters.

His eyes followed the ascending trunk of one of the plane trees. The canopy of autumn leaves caught the October sunlight, and something in him winced. Fifteen years! Fifteen springs and autumns, the birth and the fall of the leaf! And they said that time was relative. A moment later he had discovered the sundial high up on the wall, and, though it was partly hidden by ivy, he tried to read the inscription on it. It spoke of shadows and departure. Shadows. He walked on across the court under the pale foliage of the plane trees.

The typewriters chattered.