Читать книгу Wintersmoon онлайн

46 страница из 136

It was thus precisely that Beaminster felt about the Zoffany. But to-day, entering the room, he saw at a glance that he had no luck. Seated one on either side of the long table were the two men whom, of all the Zoffany company, he liked the least, Pompey Turle and Charles Ravage. Pompey was not the Christian name given to Mr. Turle by his godfather and godmother, in baptism, but rather by his critics and detractors (of whom there were, alas, many) in his later years. He was a stout, heavy, lowering, over-moustached Foreign Office official who had written a small book on Shelley, reviewed a little in the more eclectic weeklies, and reduced the art of bad manners to an ignoble science.

Because of his self-satisfied pomposities he was christened Pompey, and because of his intolerable self-satisfaction and priggish superiorities men fled from before him as from the wrath of God.

Beaminster loathed him with all the loathing of one who had been taught to value courtesy before riches and kindliness of soul before intellect.