Читать книгу Dr. Wainwright's Patient. A Novel онлайн

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It was indeed Captain Derinzy who had passed up the village street. It is needless to say that he had not heard anything of the comments which his appearance had evoked; but had he heard them, they would not have made the smallest difference to him. He was essentially a man of the world, and on persons of his class these things have very little effect. A is irretrievably involved; B has outwritten himself; C is much too intimate with Mrs. D; while D is ruining that wretched young E at écarté--so at least say Y and Z; but the earlier letters of the alphabet do not care much about it. They know that the world must be always full of shaves and cancans, and, like men versed in the great art of living, they know they must have their share of them, and know how to take them. Captain Derinzy passed up the village street without bestowing one single thought upon that street's inhabitants, or indeed upon anything or anybody within a hundred miles of Beachborough. He looked utterly incongruous to the place, and he felt utterly incongruous to it, and if he were recalled to the fact of its existence, or of his existence in it, by his accidentally slipping over one of the round knobbly stones which supplied the place of a footway, or having to step across one of the wide self-made sluices which, coming from the cottages, discharged themselves into the common kennel, all he did was to wish it heartily at the devil; an aspiration which he uttered in good round rich tones, and without any heed to the feelings of such lookers-on as might be present.