"Г.К.Честертон. The Scandal of Father Brown " - читать интересную книгу автора

was bald before most of his last American or Australian admirers had heard
of his hyacinthine locks. So was D'Annunzio. As a fact, Romanes still has
rather a fine head, as you will see if you look at it closely; he looks like
an intellectual man; and he is. Unfortunately, like a good many other
intellectual men, he's a fool. He's let himself go to seed with selfishness
and fussing about his digestion. So that the ambitious American lady, who
thought it would be like soaring to Olympus with the Nine Muses to elope
with a poet, found that a day or so of it was about enough for her. So that
when her husband came after her, and stormed the place, she was delighted to
go back to him.'
'But her husband?' queried Rock. 'I am still rather puzzled about her
husband.'
'Ah, you've been reading too many of your erotic modern novels,' said
Father Brown; and partly closed his eyes in answer to the protesting glare
of the other. 'I know a lot of stories start with a wildly beautiful woman
wedded to some elderly swine in the stock market. But why? In that, as in
most things, modern novels are the very reverse of modern. I don't say it
never happens; but it hardly ever happens now except by her own fault. Girls
nowadays marry whom they like; especially spoilt girls like Hypatia. And
whom do they marry? A beautiful wealthy girl like that would have a ring of
admirers; and whom would she choose? The chances are a hundred to one that
she'd marry very young and choose the handsomest man she met at a dance or a
tennis - party. Well, ordinary business men are sometimes handsome. A young
god appeared (called Potter) and she wouldn't care if he was a broker or a
burglar. But, given the environment, you will admit it's more likely he
would be a broker; also, it's quite likely that he'd be called Potter. You
see, you are so incurably romantic that your whole case was founded on the
idea that a man looking like a young god couldn't be called Potter. Believe
me, names are not so appropriately distributed.'
'Well,' said the other, after a short pause, 'and what do you suppose
happened after that?'
Father Brown got up rather abruptly from the seat in which he had
collapsed; the candlelight threw the shadow of his short figure across the
wall and ceiling, giving an odd impression that the balance of the room had
been altered.
'Ah,' he muttered, 'that's the devil of it. That's the real devil. Much
worse than the old Indian demons in this jungle. You thought I was only
making out a case for the loose ways of these Latin Americans - well, the
queer thing about you' - and he blinked owlishly at the other through his
spectacles - 'the queerest thing about you is that in a way you're right.
'You say down with romance. I say I'd take my chance in fighting the
genuine romances - all the more because they are precious few, outside the
first fiery days of youth. I say - take away the Intellectual Friendships;
take away the Platonic Unions; take away the Higher Laws of Self -
Fulfilment and the rest, and I'll risk the normal dangers of the job. Take
away the love that isn't love, but only pride and vainglory and publicity
and making a splash; and we'll take our chance of fighting the love that is
love, when it has to be fought, as well as the love that is lust and
lechery. Priests know young people will have passions, as doctors know they
will have measles. But Hypatia Potter is forty if she is a day, and she