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

out at even a superficial glance. He at least was the common or garden
Dynamiter. He wore, indeed, the high white collar and satin tie that were
the uniform of the occasion; but out of this collar there sprang a head
quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable, a bewildering bush of brown hair
and beard that almost obscured the eyes like those of a Skye terrier. But
the eyes did look out of the tangle, and they were the sad eyes of some
Russian serf. The effect of this figure was not terrible like that of the
President, but it had every diablerie that can come from the utterly
grotesque. If out of that stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the
head of a cat or a dog, it could not have been a more idiotic contrast.
The man's name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circle
of days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurably tragic; he
could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolous part demanded
of him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came in the President,
with that daring disregard of public suspicion which was his policy, was
actually chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assume conventional graces.
"Our friend Tuesday," said the President in a deep voice at once of
quietude and volume, "our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp the idea. He
dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a soul to behave
like one. He insists on the ways of the stage conspirator. Now if a
gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one need know
that he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman puts on a top hat and a
frock-coat, and then goes about on his hands and knees-- well, he may
attract attention. That's what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on his
hands and knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time he
finds it quite difficult to walk upright."
"I am not good at goncealment," said Gogol sulkily, with a thick
foreign accent; "I am not ashamed of the cause."
"Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you," said the President
good-naturedly. "You hide as much as anybody; but you can't do it, you see,
you're such an ass! You try to combine two inconsistent methods. When a
householder finds a man under his bed, he will probably pause to note the
circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in a top hat, you will
agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even to forget it. Now
when you were found under Admiral Biffin's bed--"
"I am not good at deception," said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.
"Right, my boy, right," said the President with a ponderous heartiness,
"you aren't good at anything."
While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking more
steadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all his
sense of something spiritually queer return.
He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and
costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at
the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the
man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which
would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of
all these types. Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the
tenth or twentieth glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly
human. The only metaphor he could think of was this, that they all looked as
men of fashion and presence would look, with the additional twist given in a