Читать книгу Dr. Wainwright's Patient - Edmund Yates - Страница 6

Paul Derinzy was left alone in the Principal Registrar's Room, and silence reigned in H.M. Stannaries Office. Snow does not melt away more speedily under the influence of the bright spring sun than do the clerks of that admirable department under the sound of one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Within ten minutes the place was deserted, the gentlemen had all cleared out, the messengers had closed up desks and lockers, despatched papers, and bolted, and the place was left to Mr. Derinzy and the office-keeper. The latter went to the door with the last departing messenger, looked up the street and down the street, and with something of the soreness of a man who knew he was imprisoned for at least thirty-six hours, said he thought they were going to have some rain; an idea which the messenger--who had an engagement to take the young lady with whom he was keeping company to Gravesend on the Sunday--indignantly pooh-poohed. Not to be put down by this sort of thing, the office-keeper declared that rain was wanted by the country, to which the messenger replied that he thought of himself more than the country; and as the country had done without it for three weeks, it might hold over without much bother till Monday, he should think; and nodded, and went his way. The office-messenger kicked the door viciously to, and proceeded to make his round of the various rooms to see that everything was in order, and to turn the key in each door after his inspection. When he came to the Principal Registrar's Room he went in as usual, but finding Mr. Derinzy there performing on his head with two hairbrushes, he begged pardon and retreated, wondering what the deuce possessed anyone to stop in the Office of H.M. Stannaries when he had the chance of leaving it and going anywhere else. A cynical fellow this office-keeper, only to be humanised by his release on Monday morning.

Mr. Paul Derinzy was in no special hurry, he had plenty of time before him, and he had his toilette to attend to; a business which, though he was no set dandy, he never scamped. He was very particular about the exact parting of his hair, the polish of his nails, and the set of his necktie; and between each act of dressing he went back to his writing-table, and re-read the little note lying upon, it. Once or twice he took the little note up, and whispered "darling!" to it, and kissed it before he put it down again. Poor Paul! he was evidently very hard hit, and just at the time of life, too, when these wounds fester and rankle so confoundedly. Your ci-devant jeune homme, your middle-aged gallant, viveur, coureur des dames, takes a love-affair as easily as his dinner: if it goes well, all right; if it comes to grief, equally all right; the sooner it is over the better he likes it. The great cynical philosopher of the age, whose cynicism it is now the fashion to deny--as though he could help it, or would have been in the least ashamed of it--in one of his ballads calls upon all his coevals of forty to declare: