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

Gregory's portable luggage, he had thrown the cloak down and left it
somewhere, perhaps on the steam-tug, perhaps on the balcony. Hoping,
therefore, that the snow-shower might be slight, he stepped back out of the
street for a moment and stood up under the doorway of a small and greasy
hair-dresser's shop, the front window of which was empty, except for a
sickly wax lady in evening dress.
Snow, however, began to thicken and fall fast; and Syme, having found
one glance at the wax lady quite sufficient to depress his spirits, stared
out instead into the white and empty street. He was considerably astonished
to see, standing quite still outside the shop and staring into the window, a
man. His top hat was loaded with snow like the hat of Father Christmas, the
white drift was rising round his boots and ankles; but it seemed as if
nothing could tear him away from the contemplation of the colourless wax
doll in dirty evening dress. That any human being should stand in such
weather looking into such a shop was a matter of sufficient wonder to Syme;
but his idle wonder turned suddenly into a personal shock; for he realised
that the man standing there was the paralytic old Professor de Worms. It
scarcely seemed the place for a person of his years and infirmities.
Syme was ready to believe anything about the perversions of this
dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor
had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that
the man's malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity
or trance. He was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very
compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that
the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk would make it easy
to escape from him and leave him miles behind. For Syme thirsted first and
last to get clear of the whole poisonous atmosphere, if only for an hour.
Then he could collect his thoughts, formulate his policy, and decide finally
whether he should or should not keep faith with Gregory.
He strolled away through the dancing snow, turned up two or three
streets, down through two or three others, and entered a small Soho
restaurant for lunch. He partook reflectively of four small and quaint
courses, drank half a bottle of red wine, and ended up over black coffee and
a black cigar, still thinking. He had taken his seat in the upper room of
the restaurant, which was full of the chink of knives and the chatter of
foreigners. He remembered that in old days he had imagined that all these
harmless and kindly aliens were anarchists. He shuddered, remembering the
real thing. But even the shudder had the delightful shame of escape. The
wine, the common food, the familiar place, the faces of natural and
talkative men, made him almost feel as if the Council of the Seven Days had
been a bad dream; and although he knew it was nevertheless an objective
reality, it was at least a distant one. Tall houses and populous streets lay
between him and his last sight of the shameful seven; he was free in free
London, and drinking wine among the free. With a somewhat easier action, he
took his hat and stick and strolled down the stair into the shop below.
When he entered that lower room he stood stricken and rooted to the
spot. At a small table, close up to the blank window and the white street of
snow, sat the old anarchist Professor over a glass of milk, with his lifted
livid face and pendent eyelids. For an instant Syme stood as rigid as the
stick he leant upon. Then with a gesture as of blind hurry, he brushed past