Read Online The Naylors by J.I.M. Stewart - Free Book Online

called the ‘higher criticism’. Elsmere might be just George’s man. He couldn’t, of course, now read the book – and nobody may borrow a book from the Bodleian – but at least he could take a peep at it and estimate whether it might help. He remembered that undergraduates reading English Literature spent a lot of time in the Radcliffe Camera. Mrs Ward’s illuminating masterpiece (for he thus thought of it for the nonce) would probably be over there, and on an open shelf from which he could take it down at once.
    Strong in this persuasion, George hurried down the staircase of the Bodleian, intent of gaining the Camera, not a hundred yards away. He hurried so much that he found something bumping against his legs. It was Blackwell’s gratuitous plastic bag, and it was knobbly because it quite plainly contained books. So might he be suspected of theft? Ought he to open the bag and display its contents – Lewis, Rushdie and Storey – to the man in the lidless box? Or would this be behaviour so outré in character that they would lock him up forthwith? The complete irrationality of this last apprehension so alarmed George (who occasionally went in for lurking fears of madness) that at the critical moment he actually took to his heels – bolting past the guardian presence as if the whole Bodleian were in conflagration, and he himself responsible as having ‘made fire’ in it. The guardian presence reacted only with mild curiosity. Eccentric characters abound in Oxford.
    Although thus confused, George as he mounted the steps of the Camera didn’t forget to fish his new admission ticket from his pocket. The woman who had bestowed it on him had insisted that it was essential here too. Inside the portal there was another flight of steps, curving down to a gloomy but deceptively non-subterraneous region the nature of which eluded his recollection. Was it a reading-room, or just an enormous book-stack? It was a reading-room, and at its entrance there was a notice saying English and Theology. This bobbing up again of the Queen of the Sciences disconcerted George, but then he reflected that the melange was just right for Mrs Humphry Ward’s fictional dealing with the Higher Criticism. Moreover, there was a thoughtfully provided line of coat-pegs, and on one of these he gratefully hung up Blackwell’s bag. Thus disburdened, he found calm and confidence restored to him. He entered the great rotunda.
    It was deserted. It was utterly empty. Such at least was his first impression – although he was equally conscious of its being thronged with books: thousands and thousands of books in a deep vacation slumber. Of course the Camera was predominantly an undergraduates’ reading-room, although learned persons did occasionally frequent it as well. So it was unsurprising that on this fine summer afternoon there seemed to be nobody in evidence. But there must, of course, be a man to whom to show his ticket. No lidless box was on view, but there was a desk near the entrance which suggested itself as being for a member of the library staff rather than for a reader. But nobody sat behind it. Still clutching his ticket, George began anxiously to hunt around. The chap must also have the duty of returning stray books to their shelves: something like that. And the place had so many alcoves, radiating like the spokes of a wheel, that he might well elude notice for a time. Increasingly conscious of the high impropriety of being loose in the Camera without accrediting himself, George scurried from alcove to alcove, unconsciously holding his ticket head-high. And at length he came upon somebody: a somewhat unimpressive somebody, dusty and elderly, who was kneeling on the floor with his nose close to a row of books.
    ‘Oh, there you are!’ George said with perhaps an involuntary hint of reproach. ‘I’ve got to show you this.’
    Thus accosted, the elderly man got to his feet, turned round, and looked at George with detectable