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

green and gold."
"All the same," replied Syme patiently, "just at present you only see
the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp
by the light of the tree." Then after a pause he said, "But may I ask if you
have been standing out here in the dark only to resume our little argument?"
"No," cried out Gregory, in a voice that rang down the street, "I did
not stand here to resume our argument, but to end it for ever."
The silence fell again, and Syme, though he understood nothing,
listened instinctively for something serious. Gregory began in a smooth
voice and with a rather bewildering smile.
"Mr. Syme," he said, "this evening you succeeded in doing something
rather remarkable. You did something to me that no man born of woman has
ever succeeded in doing before."
"Indeed!"
"Now I remember," resumed Gregory reflectively, "one other person
succeeded in doing it. The captain of a penny steamer (if I remember
correctly) at Southend. You have irritated me."
"I am very sorry," replied Syme with gravity.
"I am afraid my fury and your insult are too shocking to be wiped out
even with an apology," said Gregory very calmly. "No duel could wipe it out.
If I struck you dead I could not wipe it out. There is only one way by which
that insult can be erased, and that way I choose. I am going, at the
possible sacrifice of my life and honour, to prove to you that you were
wrong in what you said."
"In what I said?"
"You said I was not serious about being an anarchist."
"There are degrees of seriousness," replied Syme. "I have never doubted
that you were perfectly sincere in this sense, that you thought what you
said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up to a
neglected truth."
Gregory stared at him steadily and painfully.
"And in no other sense," he asked, "you think me serious? You think me
a flaneur who lets fall occasional truths. You do not think that in a
deeper, a more deadly sense, I am serious."
Syme struck his stick violently on the stones of the road.
"Serious! " he cried. "Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these
damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One comes
here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, but I should
think very little of a man who didn't keep something in the background of
his life that was more serious than all this talking-- something more
serious, whether it was religion or only drink."
"Very well," said Gregory, his face darkening, "you shall see something
more serious than either drink or religion."
Syme stood waiting with his usual air of mildness until Gregory again
opened his lips.
"You spoke just now of having a religion. Is it really true that you
have one?"
"Oh," said Syme with a beaming smile, "we are all Catholics now."
"Then may I ask you to swear by whatever gods or saints your religion
involves that you will not reveal what I am now going to tell you to any son