"Г.К.Честертон. The Club of Queer Trades " - читать интересную книгу автора

mad, and all the sane people are wicked. You are the only person I
know of here who is honest and has also some common sense. What do
you make of Wimpole?"

Mr Secretary Drummond had a pale face and red hair; but at this his
face became suddenly as red as his moustache.

"I am not a fair judge of him," he said.

"Why not?" asked Grant.

"Because I hate him like hell," said the other, after a long pause
and violently.

Neither Grant nor I needed to ask the reason; his glances towards
Miss Beaumont and the stranger were sufficiently illuminating.
Grant said quietly:

"But before--before you came to hate him, what did you really think
of him?"

"I am in a terrible difficulty," said the young man, and his voice
told us, like a clear bell, that he was an honest man. "If I spoke
about him as I feel about him now, I could not trust myself. And I
should like to be able to say that when I first saw him I thought
he was charming. But again, the fact is I didn't. I hate him, that
is my private affair. But I also disapprove of him--really I do
believe I disapprove of him quite apart from my private feelings.
When first he came, I admit he was much quieter, but I did not
like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. Then that jolly old Sir
Walter Cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this fellow, with
his cheap-jack wit, began to score off the old man in the way he
does now. Then I felt that he must be a bad lot; it must be bad to
fight the old and the kindly. And he fights the poor old chap
savagely, unceasingly, as if he hated old age and kindliness. Take,
if you want it, the evidence of a prejudiced witness. I admit that
I hate the man because a certain person admires him. But I believe
that apart from that I should hate the man because old Sir Walter
hates him."

This speech affected me with a genuine sense of esteem and pity for
the young man; that is, of pity for him because of his obviously
hopeless worship of Miss Beaumont, and of esteem for him because of
the direct realistic account of the history of Wimpole which he had
given. Still, I was sorry that he seemed so steadily set against
the man, and could not help referring it to an instinct of his
personal relations, however nobly disguised from himself.

In the middle of these meditations, Grant whispered in my ear what
was perhaps the most startling of all interruptions.