"Cather, Willa - Alexander's Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

indicated a willingness to dine with him.
Bartley never dined alone if he could help it,
and Mainhall was a good gossip who always knew
what had been going on in town; especially,
he knew everything that was not printed in
the newspapers. The nephew of one of the
standard Victorian novelists, Mainhall bobbed
about among the various literary cliques of
London and its outlying suburbs, careful to
lose touch with none of them. He had written
a number of books himself; among them a
"History of Dancing," a "History of Costume,"
a "Key to Shakespeare's Sonnets," a study of
"The Poetry of Ernest Dowson," etc.
Although Mainhall's enthusiasm was often
tiresome, and although he was often unable
to distinguish between facts and vivid
figments of his imagination, his imperturbable
good nature overcame even the people whom he
bored most, so that they ended by becoming,
in a reluctant manner, his friends.
In appearance, Mainhall was astonishingly
like the conventional stage-Englishman of
American drama: tall and thin, with high,
hitching shoulders and a small head glistening
with closely brushed yellow hair. He spoke
with an extreme Oxford accent, and when he was
talking well, his face sometimes wore the rapt
expression of a very emotional man listening
to music. Mainhall liked Alexander because
he was an engineer. He had preconceived
ideas about everything, and his idea about
Americans was that they should be engineers
or mechanics. He hated them when they
presumed to be anything else.

While they sat at dinner Mainhall acquainted
Bartley with the fortunes of his old friends
in London, and as they left the table he
proposed that they should go to see Hugh
MacConnell's new comedy, "Bog Lights."

"It's really quite the best thing MacConnell's done,"
he explained as they got into a hansom.
"It's tremendously well put on, too.
Florence Merrill and Cyril Henderson.
But Hilda Burgoyne's the hit of the piece.
Hugh's written a delightful part for her,
and she's quite inexpressible. It's been on
only two weeks, and I've been half a dozen times