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

one particular evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of which
the auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not by any means the only
evening of which he was the hero. On many nights those passing by his little
back garden might hear his high, didactic voice laying down the law to men
and particularly to women. The attitude of women in such cases was indeed
one of the paradoxes of the place. Most of the women were of the kind
vaguely called emancipated, and professed some protest against male
supremacy. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant
compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while
he is talking. And Mr. Lucian Gregory, the red-haired poet, was really (in
some sense) a man worth listening to, even if one only laughed at the end of
it. He put the old cant of the lawlessness of art and the art of lawlessness
with a certain impudent freshness which gave at least a momentary pleasure.
He was helped in some degree by the arresting oddity of his appearance,
which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth. His dark red hair
parted in the middle was literally like a woman's, and curved into the slow
curls of a virgin in a pre-Raphaelite picture. From within this almost
saintly oval, however, his face projected suddenly broad and brutal, the
chin carried forward with a look of cockney contempt. This combination at
once tickled and terrified the nerves of a neurotic population. He seemed
like a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape.
This particular evening, if it is remembered for nothing else, will be
remembered in that place for its strange sunset. It looked like the end of
the world. All the heaven seemed covered with a quite vivid and palpable
plumage; you could only say that the sky was full of feathers, and of
feathers that almost brushed the face. Across the great part of the dome
they were grey, with the strangest tints of violet and mauve and an
unnatural pink or pale green; but towards the west the whole grew past
description, transparent and passionate, and the last red-hot plumes of it
covered up the sun like something too good to be seen. The whole was so
close about the earth, as to express nothing but a violent secrecy. The very
empyrean seemed to be a secret. It expressed that splendid smallness which
is the soul of local patriotism. The very sky seemed small.
I say that there are some inhabitants who may remember the evening if
only by that oppressive sky. There are others who may remember it because it
marked the first appearance in the place of the second poet of Saffron Park.
For a long time the red-haired revolutionary had reigned without a rival; it
was upon the night of the sunset that his solitude suddenly ended. The new
poet, who introduced himself by the name of Gabriel Syme was a very
mild-looking mortal, with a fair, pointed beard and faint, yellow hair. But
an impression grew that he was less meek than he looked. He signalised his
entrance by differing with the established poet, Gregory, upon the whole
nature of poetry. He said that he (Syme) was poet of law, a poet of order;
nay, he said he was a poet of respectability. So all the Saffron Parkers
looked at him as if he had that moment fallen out of that impossible sky.
In fact, Mr. Lucian Gregory, the anarchic poet, connected the two
events.
"It may well be," he said, in his sudden lyrical manner, "it may well
be on such a night of clouds and cruel colours that there is brought forth
upon the earth such a portent as a respectable poet. You say you are a poet