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Rodmoor. John Cowper Powys
Читать онлайн.Название Rodmoor
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066248031
Автор произведения John Cowper Powys
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
“Yes, I suppose you’re right, Tassar. It’s a mistake to be sensitive to the attraction of young girls. But it’s difficult—isn’t it, Doctor?—not to be. They’re so maddeningly delicious, aren’t they, when you come to think of it? It’s something about the way their heads turn—the line from the throat, you know—and about the way they speak—something pathetic, something—what shall I call it?—helpless. It quite disarms a person. It’s more than pathetic, it’s tragic.”
The Doctor looked at him meditatively. “I think there’s a poem of Goethe’s which would bear that out,” he remarked, “if I’m not mistaken it was written after he visited Sicily—yes, after that storm at sea, you remember, when the story of Christ’s walking on the waves came into his mind.”
Sorio wrinkled up his eyes and peered at the speaker with a sort of humorous malignity.
“Doctor,” he said, “pardon my telling you, but you’ve still got some crumbs on your moustache.”
“The one word,” put in their host, while Dr. Raughty moved very hastily away from the table and surveyed himself with a whimsical puckering of all the lines in his face, at one of Stork’s numerous mirrors, “the one word that I shall henceforth refuse to have pronounced in my house is the word ‘sea.’ I’m surprised to hear that Goethe—a man of classical taste—ever refers to such Gothic abominations.”
“Ah!” cried Sorio, “the great Goethe! The sly old curmudgeon Goethe! He knew how to deal with these little velvet paws!”
Dr. Raughty, reseating himself, drummed absent-mindedly with his fingers upon the empty macaroon plate. Then with a soft and pensive sigh he produced his tobacco pouch, and filling his pipe, struck a match.
“Doctor,” murmured Sorio, his rebellious lips curved into a sardonic smile and his eyes screwed up till they looked as sinister as those of his namesake, Hadrian, “why do you move your head backwards and forwards like that, when you light your pipe?”
“Don’t answer him, Fingal,” expostulated Baltazar, “he’s behaving badly now. He’s ‘showing off’ as they say of children.”
“I’m not showing off,” cried Sorio loudly, “I’m asking the Doctor a perfectly polite question. It’s very interesting the way he lights his pipe. There’s more in it than appears. There’s a great deal in it. It’s a secret of the Doctor’s; probably a pantheistic one.”
“What on earth do you mean by a ‘pantheistic’ one? How, under Heaven, can the way Fingal holds a match be termed ‘pantheistic’?” protested Stork irritably. “You’re really going a little too far, Adriano mio.”
“Not at all, not at all,” argued Sorio, stretching out his long, lean arms and grasping the back of a chair. “The Doctor can deny it or not, as he pleases, but what I say is perfectly true. He gets a cosmic ecstasy from moving his head up and down like that. He feels as if he were the centre of the universe when he does it.”
The Doctor looked sideways and then upon the ground. Sorio’s rudeness evidently disconcerted him.
“I think,” he said, rising from his chair and putting down his glass, “I must be going now. I’ve an early call to make to-morrow morning.”
Baltazar cast a reproachful look at Adrian and rose too. They went into the hall together and the same shufflings and heavy breathings came to the ears of the listener as on Raughty’s arrival. The Doctor was putting on his goloshes and gaiters.
Adrian went out to see him off and, as if to make up for his bad behaviour, walked with him across the green, to his house in the main street. They parted at last, the best of good friends, but Sorio found Baltazar seriously provoked when he returned.
“Why did you treat him like that?” the latter persisted. “You’ve got no grudge against him, have you? It was just your silly fashion of getting even with things in general, eh? Your nice little habit of venting your bad temper on the most harmless person within reach?”
Sorio stared blankly at his friend. It was unusual for Mr. Stork to express himself so strongly.
“I’m sorry, my dear, very sorry,” muttered the accused man, looking remorsefully at the Doctor’s empty glass and plate.
“You may well be,” rejoined the other. “The one thing I can’t stand is this sort of social lapse. It’s unpardonable—unpardonable! Besides, it’s childish. Hit out by all means when there’s reason for it or you’re dealing with some scurvy dog who needs suppressing but to make a sensitive person like Fingal uncomfortable, out of a pure spirit of bullying—it’s damnable!”
“I’m sorry, Tassar,” repeated the other meekly. “I can’t think why I did it. He’s certainly a charming person. I’ll make up to him, my dear. I’ll be gentle as a lamb when I see him next.”
Baltazar smiled and made a humorous and hopeless gesture with his hands. “We shall see,” he said, “we shall see.”
He locked the door and lit a couple of candles with ritualistic deliberation. “Turn out the lamp, amico mio, and let us sleep on all this. The best way of choosing between two loves is to say one’s prayers and go to bed. These things decide themselves in dreams.”
“In dreams,” repeated the other, submissively following him upstairs, “in dreams. But I wish I knew why the Doctor’s ankles look so thick when he sits down. He must wear extraordinary under-clothes.”
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