"G.K.Chesterton. The man who was Thursday. A nightmare (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a singularly
frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining avenue of death.
They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a
queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but
presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of a
scientific lecture-theatre. There were no rifles or pistols in this
apartment, but round the walls of it were hung more dubious and dreadful
shapes, things that looked like the bulbs of iron plants, or the eggs of
iron birds. They were bombs, and the very room itself seemed like the inside
of a bomb. Syme knocked his cigar ash off against the wall, and went in.
"And now, my dear Mr. Syme," said Gregory, throwing himself in an
expansive manner on the bench under the largest bomb, "now we are quite
cosy, so let us talk properly. Now no human words can give you any notion of
why I brought you here. It was one of those quite arbitrary emotions, like
jumping off a cliff or falling in love. Suffice it to say that you were an
inexpressibly irritating fellow, and, to do you justice, you are still. I
would break twenty oaths of secrecy for the pleasure of taking you down a
peg. That way you have of lighting a cigar would make a priest break the
seal of confession. Well, you said that you were quite certain I was not a
serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?"
"It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented Syme;
"but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me information,
because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a promise not to
tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in mere
curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is it really all about?
What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?"
"To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do
not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of
anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig
deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary
distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere
rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution
talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have
abolished Right and Wrong."
"And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope you
will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me."
"You spoke of a second question," snapped Gregory.
"With pleasure," resumed Syme. "In all your present acts and
surroundings there is a scientific attempt at secrecy. I have an aunt who
lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people living
from preference under a public-house. You have a heavy iron door. You cannot
pass it without submitting to the humiliation of calling yourself Mr.
Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel instruments which make the
place, if I may say so, more impressive than homelike. May I ask why, after
taking all this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the earth,
you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to every silly
woman in Saffron Park?"
Gregory smiled.
"The answer is simple," he said. "I told you I was a serious anarchist,
and you did not believe me. Nor do they believe me. Unless I took them into