"Г.К.Честертон. The Scandal of Father Brown " - читать интересную книгу автора

damned theatrical good looks. And if you'll forgive me, Madam, I strongly
advise you to have nothing to do with him, if he comes bothering here. Your
husband has already told the hotel people to keep him out - '
Hypatia sprang to her feet and, with a very unusual gesture, covered
her face, thrusting her fingers into her hair. She seemed to be shaken,
possibly with sobs, but by the time she had recovered they had turned into a
sort of wild laughter.
'Oh, you are all too funny,' she said, and, in a way very unusual with
her, ducked and darted to the door and disappeared.
'Bit hysterical when they laugh like that,' said Rock uncomfortably;
then, rather at a loss, and turning to the little priest: 'as I say, if
you're English, you ought really to be on my side against these Dagos,
anyhow. Oh, I'm not one of those who talk tosh about Anglo - Saxons; but
there is such a thing as history. You can always claim that America got her
civilization from England.'
'Also, to temper our pride,' said Father Brown, 'we must always admit
that England got her civilization from Dagos.'
Again there glowed in the other's mind the exasperated sense that his
interlocutor was fencing with him, and fencing on the wrong side, in some
secret and evasive way; and he curtly professed a failure to comprehend.
'Well, there was a Dago, or possibly a Wop, called Julius Caesar,' said
Father Brown; 'he was afterwards killed in a stabbing match; you know these
Dagos always use knives. And there was another one called Augustine, who
brought Christianity to our little island; and really, I don't think we
should have had much civilization without those two.'
'Anyhow, that's all ancient history,' said the somewhat irritated
journalist, 'and I'm very much interested in modern history. What I see is
that these scoundrels are bringing Paganism to our country, and destroying
all the Christianity there is. Also destroying all the common sense there
is. All settled habits, all solid social order, all the way in which the
farmers who were our fathers and grandfathers did manage to live in the
world, melted into a hot mush by sensations and sensualities about filmstars
who divorced every month or so, and make every silly girl think that
marriage is only a way of getting divorced.'
'You are quite right,' said Father Brown. 'Of course I quite agree with
you there. But you must make some allowances. Perhaps these Southern people
are a little prone to that sort of fault. You must remember that Northern
people have other kinds of faults. Perhaps these surroundings do encourage
people to give too rich an importance to mere romance.'
The whole integral indignation of Agar Rock's life rose up within him
at the word.
'I hate Romance,' he said, hitting the little table before him. 'I've
fought the papers I worked for for forty years about the infernal trash.
Every blackguard bolting with a barmaid is called a romantic elopement or
something; and now our own Hypatia Hard, a daughter of a decent people, may
get dragged into some rotten romantic divorce case, that will be trumpeted
to the whole world as happily as a royal wedding. This mad poet Romanes is
hanging round her; and you bet the spotlight will follow him, as if he were
any rotten little Dago who is called the Great Lover on the films. I saw him
outside; and he's got the regular spotlight face. Now my sympathies are with