Человек, который был Четвергом

Gilbert Keith CHESTERTON

THE MAN WHO  
WAS THURSDAY

DETECTIVE STORY

УДК 372.8:821.111 
ББК 81.2 Англ-93 
 
Ч51

ISBN 978-5-9925-1706-4

Честертон, Гилберт Кейт.

Ч51          Человек, который был Четвергом : книга для чтения на 

английском языке / Г. К. Честертон.. — Санкт-Петербург : 
КАРО, 2024. — 272 с. — (Detective story).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1706-4.

Сюрреалистический роман Гилберта Кита Честертона «Чело-

век, который был „Четвергом“» — это и психологический триллер, и 
детективная история. В центре сюжета семь анархистов из Лондона 
начала XX  века, называющих себя по именам дней недели. Габриэль 
Сайм, поэт и детектив Скотланд-Ярда, проникает на тайное собрание 
анархистов и становится «Четвергом». Однако вскоре он узнает, что 
не он один работает под прикрытием, и начинается кошмар...

УДК 372.8:821.111 

ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2024
Все права защищены

Гилберт Кейт Честертон

THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

ЧЕЛОВЕК, КОТОРЫЙ БЫЛ ЧЕТВЕРГОМ

Книга для чтения на английском языке

Комментарии и словарь Е. Г. Тигонен 
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To Edmund Clerihew Bentley

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the
weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order their crippled vices came—
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns
from us
Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as
eve,
High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,
When all church bells were silent our cap and beds were
heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fishshaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;

Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain—
Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.
Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,
Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.
But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter
charms.
God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:
We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked,
relieved—
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand the true thing that it
tells—
Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet
crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.
The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to
withstand—
Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked
amain,
And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the
brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be
told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing
old.
We have found common things at last and marriage and a
creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.
G. K. C.

Chapter I

The Two Poets of Saffron Park

T
HE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset
side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud
of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout;
its skyline was fantastic, and even its ground plan
was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative
builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes
Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that
the two sovereigns were identical. It was described
with some justice as an artistic colony, though it
never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre
were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant
place were quite indisputable. The stranger who
looked for the first time at the quaint red houses
could only think how very oddly shaped the people
must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met
the people was he disappointed in this respect. The
place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he
could regard it not as a deception but rather as a

G. K. CHESTERTON / THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

dream. Even if the people were not “artists,” the
whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man
with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—
that young man was not really a poet; but surely he
was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild,
white beard and the wild, white hat—that venerable
humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he
was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egglike head and the
bare, birdlike neck had no real right to the airs of
science that he assumed. He had not discovered
anything new in biology; but what biological creature
could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so
much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into its social
atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written
comedy.
More especially this attractive unreality fell upon
it about nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were
dark against the afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This
again was more strongly true of the many nights of
local festivity, when the little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in
the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous
fruit. And this was strongest of all on one particular

CHAPTER I / THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK

7

evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of
which the auburnhaired 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 redhaired 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 preRaphaelite1 picture.

1 preRaphaelite — Прерафаэлиты, группа английских
художников и писателей XIX века, избравшая своим идеалом «наивное» искусство Средних веков и раннего Возрождения

G. K. CHESTERTON / THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

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 redhot 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

CHAPTER I / THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK

9

poet of Saffron Park. For a long time the redhaired
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 mildlooking 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 of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were not comets
and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this
garden.”
The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale,
pointed beard endured these thunders with a certain
submissive solemnity. The third party of the group,
Gregory’s sister Rosamond, who had her brother’s

G. K. CHESTERTON / THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY

braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath
them, laughed with such mixture of admiration and
disapproval as she gave commonly to the family
oracle.
Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour.
“An artist is identical with an anarchist,” he cried.
“You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is
an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst
of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than
the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes
all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only.
If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world
would be the Underground Railway.”
“So it is,” said Mr. Syme.
“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational
when anyone else attempted paradox. “Why do all
the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so
sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It
is because they know that the train is going right. It
is because they know that whatever place they have
taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they
know that the next station must be Victoria, and
nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh,