Free The Nymph and the Lamp by Thomas H Raddall Page B

glass Carney could see a few late customers sitting at the tables and a bored slattern moving about with plates. The air was hung with cigarette smoke, eddying slowly in the faint draft of a fan somewhere at the back of the room.
    â€œSo this is where you eat!” he exclaimed.
    â€œIt’s better than it looks,” Miss Jardine said defensively. “During the day the customers are mostly clerks and typists like me. At this time of night the place is patronized mostly by men wanting a cheap snack and a place to sit and smoke. I live upstairs. The landlady’s rather a fearsome creature but the rooms are very clean, and I haven’t far to go to the office. When I first came to the city I boarded with a family in the north end. It was very nice, but it cost more than this, and it was a nuisance getting back and forth. I seemed to spend half my time waiting for trams.”
    She turned towards the side door and put a foot on the step, “I’m sorry I can’t invite you in. There’s no parlor for the lodgers, and we’re not allowed to entertain anyone in our rooms.”
    Carney had released that captive hand at last, and he stood awkwardly, wondering what he should say next. Miss Jardine solved his problem quickly.
    â€œWell, it’s been very nice, all of it, Mr. Carney. It was so kind of you to ask me.” She put out a hand and he took it with a boyish eagerness.
    â€œI…” he stammered. “Look here, I suppose it’s too much to ask, but couldn’t we do this again tomorrow?”
    For a moment her fingers lay quiet in his grasp. Then he felt them stiffen and he let the hand go.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mr. Carney. I couldn’t, really. I’ve got things to do.”
    â€œWhat about the next day?”
    A silence. Then, in a subdued voice, “I’m sorry.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œGood night, Mr. Carney.”
    â€œGood night.”
    She ran up the steps. The door closed with a firm click and left him staring at the withered paint.

CHAPTER 6
    Carney killed the time partly with tram rides about the city, getting off as fancy moved; but chiefly he wandered along the docks, where he was at ease talking to sailors and longshoremen, or boarding a ship and striking up an acquaintance with the wireless operator or one of the mates. The city baked and sweated in the August heat, even the harbor seemed to burn with the shimmering blue flame of alcohol. Amid the clatter of cargo winches the stevedores moved listlessly about the slings. Urchins dived and splashed all day from the ends of the wharves. The fetor of Water Street hung in the unmoving air above the docks. From the hills behind Bedford Basin a bush fire sent up a haze of thin brown smoke, and towards sundown there was sometimes a whiff of burning leaves, borne along the water by a stir of the evening air.
    On the morning before the Lord Elgin was due to sail he took the ferry across the harbor to see about his berth. The familiar ship lay at a wharf on the Dartmouth side, loading stores, mail, and odds and ends of equipment for another round of the outposts. She had a black hull and a slender buff funnel, a pair of very tall masts of the sort deemed necessary for wireless telegraphy in its earlier days, and a heavy iron sheave hanging over the bow for cable repair work. The foredeck was cluttered with red and black buoys, and in a temporary stall on the afterdeck, placidly chewing her cud, stood a Guernsey cow consigned to some post towards the east.
    The ship went about the coast like a traveling tinker, tackling every sort of job that had to do with what the East Coast Pilot called “all necessary aids to navigation,” and doing them very well. Every fisherman knew her slim silhouette and unmistakable masts, and greeted her in passing with a respectful wave of hand, as city dwellers greet the policeman on the beat; and on the lonely lighthouses and wireless stations men and women