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

Syme was shabby in those days. He wore an old-fashioned black
chimney-pot hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, black and
ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the early villains in
Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair were more unkempt
and leonine than when they appeared long afterwards, cut and pointed, on the
lawns of Saffron Park. A long, lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for
twopence, stood out from between his tightened teeth, and altogether he
looked a very satisfactory specimen of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed
a holy war. Perhaps this was why a policeman on the Embankment spoke to him,
and said "Good evening."
Syme, at a crisis of his morbid fears for humanity, seemed stung by the
mere stolidity of the automatic official, a mere bulk of blue in the
twilight.
"A good evening is it?" he said sharply. "You fellows would call the
end of the world a good evening. Look at that bloody red sun and that bloody
river! I tell you that if that were literally human blood, spilt and
shining, you would still be standing here as solid as ever, looking out for
some poor harmless tramp whom you could move on. You policemen are cruel to
the poor, but I could forgive you even your cruelty if it were not for your
calm."
"If we are calm," replied the policeman, "it is the calm of organised
resistance."
"Eh?" said Syme, staring.
"The soldier must be calm in the thick of the battle," pursued the
policeman. "The composure of an army is the anger of a nation."
"Good God, the Board Schools!" said Syme. "Is this undenominational
education?"
"No," said the policeman sadly, "I never had any of those advantages.
The Board Schools came after my time. What education I had was very rough
and old-fashioned, I am afraid."
"Where did you have it?" asked Syme, wondering.
"Oh, at Harrow," said the policeman
The class sympathies which, false as they are, are the truest things in
so many men, broke out of Syme before he could control them.
"But, good Lord, man," he said, "you oughtn't to be a policeman!"
The policeman sighed and shook his head.
"I know," he said solemnly, "I know I am not worthy."
"But why did you join the police?" asked Syme with rude curiosity.
"For much the same reason that you abused the police," replied the
other. "I found that there was a special opening in the service for those
whose fears for humanity were concerned rather with the aberrations of the
scientific intellect than with the normal and excusable, though excessive,
outbreaks of the human will. I trust I make myself clear."
"If you mean that you make your opinion clear," said Syme, "I suppose
you do. But as for making yourself clear, it is the last thing you do. How
comes a man like you to be talking philosophy in a blue helmet on the Thames
embankment?
"You have evidently not heard of the latest development in our police
system," replied the other. "I am not surprised at it. We are keeping it
rather dark from the educated class, because that class contains most of our