Читать книгу Unconditional Surrender онлайн

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"I was promised champagne," said Guy.

"Champagne," said Coney, taken aback, not knowing who he was, not knowing either of these uniformed figures looming out of the lightless mist, but knowing that Spruce had, in fact, a few bottles of that wine laid down. "I don't know anything about champagne."

"Well, we'll come up and see," said Ian.

Coney led them upstairs.

Though depleted the company was still numerous enough to provide a solid screen between the entrance and the far corner in which Ludovic was seated. For two minutes now he had been in enjoyment of what he had come for, the attention of his host.

"The arrangement is haphazard or planned?" Spruce was asking.

"Planned."

"The plan is not immediately apparent. There are the more or less generalised aphorisms, there are the particular observations--which I thought, if I may say so, extremely acute and funny. I wondered: are they in any cases libelous? And besides these there seemed to me two poetic themes which occur again and again. There is the Drowned Sailor motif--an echo of the Waste Land perhaps? Had you Eliot consciously in mind?"