"Charles L. Harness-O Lyric Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

I had relived that last conference five years ago a dozen times. She had been quite disturbed, and she
kept fiddling with the controls on her wheelchair. "You need an A in this course if you are going to get
that scholarship in quantum physics. Are you making any progress with your paper on Browning?"
How much is any? "Some," I said. Where had the time gone? Time time time. I had six end-of-term
assignments and projects. Too much time on the time project. And now Browning was left. An
Appreciation of Robert Browning. Term paper for Eng Lit 205. How could it have happened? I loved
this lovely stricken woman. I knew it hurt her to deny me that A and the scholarship. Well, it hurt me too.
I was hurting all over. For me, for her, for my future.
"What are you doing this summer?" she had asked.
I had shrugged. "Nothing."
She brightened. "I'll give you an A. Now. You'll get the scholarship. Finish the paper this summer. Let
me have it by the end of August. Promise?"
"Of course!" I had been surprised and grateful. I had stretched out my hand, as though to shake on the
deal, and probably by simple reflex she had given me hers. But then I had taken that hand in both of
mine, and I had laid the fingers out flat, and I had kissed the palm, and given it back to her, and left,
picking my way through the stacks of books and papers.
Five years ago.
The Browning paper.
I had tried. For the next two weeks of that summer I had kept the library terminals hot, collecting data,
getting microprintouts. I had even drafted a couple of preliminary pages. Who the hell was this guy
Robert Browning? The husband of Elizabeth Barrett: that was his only claim to fame. In fact, a lot of the
computer entries called him Robert Barrett.
"He wrote beautiful things, significant things," Mae had insisted (arguing so futilely at the cold bar of
history). "That's how they met, in the first place. She was already a great poet, and she understood his
poetry: 'My Last Duchess.' ('She liked whate'er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere.') 'How
They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.' ('I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.')
'Home Thoughts from Abroad.' ('Oh to be in England, now that April's there.') 'Pippa Passes.' ('God's in
his heaven-- All's right with the world.') And of course that remarkable little thing, 'The Pied Piper of
Hamelin.' All before he met Elizabeth Barrett."
I looked it all up. Robert declared his love. At first Elizabeth rejected him. My father will never
consent, she said. Besides, I am a semi-invalid. I would be a burden to you. Consent be damned!
declared Robert. Arise! She did. And so they were married, and moved to Italy, and she continued her
career with the greatest love poems of the nineteenth century: Sonnets from the Portuguese. And all the
other marvels: Aurora Leigh, A Musical Instrument, De Profundis, Bianca Among the Nightingales. But
Robert just faded away. He wrote and was ignored. She wrote and flourished.
At one of our early conferences Mae had posed an interesting speculation. "If Robert had written one
really significant long poem, it might have been enough to ignite well-deserved interest in his earlier
works. He might have got an entry in Poets' Dictionary, and perhaps a half column in the Encyclopedia of
English Poets. But no. 'The Pied Piper' has survived, and that's all."
So now it was five years later, and I had brought Dr. Mae Leslie, plus wheelchair, in my van to my
laboratory. She hadn't wanted to leave her campus cubbyhole at first. She was still mad at me. She still
felt betrayed. Because to this very day I hadn't finished my Appreciation of Robert Browning. As it
turned out, I had had to drop my Browning research in the middle of that first summer and get a job, or
starve. That fateful August had passed, and no paper. But I had got the A, and then the scholarship. We
hadn't spoken since, except for my call to her yesterday.
I got her out of the van and onto the sidewalk. She checked the controls on her wheelchair. "Lead on.
I'm right behind you."
And so on into the entrance way, past the offices ("Hold my calls." "Yes, Mr. Roland"), and into the
back of the main building.
She was impressed. "Is all this your lab?"