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

not always appreciate, of creating institutions from below; that is by
popular initiative. Like every other good thing, it has its lighter aspects;
one of which, as has been remarked by Mr Wells and others, is that a person
may become a public institution without becoming an official institution. A
girl of great beauty or brilliancy will be a sort of uncrowned queen, even
if she is not a Film Star or the original of a Gibson Girl. Among those who
had the fortune, or misfortune, to exist beautifully in public in this
manner, was a certain Hypatia Hard, who had passed through the preliminary
stage of receiving florid compliments in society paragraphs of the local
press, to the position of one who is actually interviewed by real pressmen.
On War and Peace and Patriotism and Prohibition and Evolution and the Bible
she had made her pronouncements with a charming smile; and if none of them
seemed very near to the real grounds of her own reputation, it was almost
equally hard to say what the grounds of her reputation really were. Beauty,
and being the daughter of a rich man, are things not rare in her country;
but to these she added whatever it is that attracts the wandering eye of
journalism. Next to none of her admirers had even seen her, or even hoped to
do so; and none of them could possibly derive any sordid benefit from her
father's wealth. It was simply a sort of popular romance, the modern
substitute for mythology; and it laid the first foundations of the more
turgid and tempestuous sort of romance in which she was to figure later on;
and in which many held that the reputation of Father Brown, as well as of
others, had been blown to rags.
It was accepted, sometimes romantically, sometimes resignedly, by those
whom American satire has named the Sob Sisters, that she had already married
a very worthy and respectable business man of the name of Potter. It was
even possible to regard her for a moment as Mrs Potter, on the universal
understanding that her husband was only the husband of Mrs Potter.
Then came the Great Scandal, by which her friends and enemies were
horrified beyond their wildest hopes. Her name was coupled (as the queer
phrase goes) with a literary man living in Mexico; in status an American,
but in spirit a very Spanish American. Unfortunately his vices resembled her
virtues, in being good copy. He was no less a person than the famous or
infamous Rudel Romanes; the poet whose works had been so universally
popularized by being vetoed by libraries or prosecuted by the police.
Anyhow, her pure and placid star was seen in conjunction with this comet. He
was of the sort to be compared to a comet, being hairy and hot; the first in
his portraits, the second in his poetry. He was also destructive; the
comet's tail was a trail of divorces, which some called his success as a
lover and some his prolonged failure as a husband. It was hard on Hypatia;
there are disadvantages in conducting the perfect private life in public;
like a domestic interior in a shop - window. Interviewers reported doubtful
utterances about Love's Larger Law of Supreme Self - Realization. The Pagans
applauded. The Sob Sisterhood permitted themselves a note of romantic
regret; some having even the hardened audacity to quote from the poem of
Maud Mueller, to the effect that of all the words of tongue or pen, the
saddest are 'It might have been.' And Mr Agar P. Rock, who hated the Sob
Sisterhood with a holy and righteous hatred, said that in this case he
thoroughly agreed with Bret Harte's emendation of the poem:
'More sad are those we daily see; it is, but it hadn't ought to be.'