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110 pages

English

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Some critics and fans regard this short comic novel as one of the most accomplished -- and underrated -- of G. K. Chesterton's works. A windy storm hits London and blows in "holy fool" Innocent Brown, one of the most interesting and memorable literary characters of the twentieth century. On the first day of his arrival, he creates happiness and fortuitous outcomes for all of those around him. But soon afterwards, it's revealed that he's a scoundrel and a crook.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776588053
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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MANALIVE
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G. K. CHESTERTON

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Manalive First published in 1912 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-805-3 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-806-0 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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PART I - THE ENIGMAS OF INNOCENT SMITH Chapter I - How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House Chapter II - The Luggage of an Optimist Chapter III - The Banner of Beacon Chapter IV - The Garden of the God Chapter V - The Allegorical Practical Joker PART II - THE EXPLANATIONS OF INNOCENT SMITH Chapter I - The Eye of Death; or, the Murder Charge Chapter II - The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge Chapter III - The Round Road; or, the Desertion Charge Chapter IV - The Wild Weddings; or, the Polygamy Charge Chapter V - How the Great Wind Went from Beacon House
PART I - THE ENIGMAS OF INNOCENT SMITH
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Chapter I - How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House
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A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness,and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scentof forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holesand corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished himlike a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and emboweredhouses it woke like a domestic explosion, littering the floor withsome professor's papers till they seemed as precious as fugitive,or blowing out the candle by which a boy read "Treasure Island"and wrapping him in roaring dark. But everywhere it bore drama intoundramatic lives, and carried the trump of crisis across the world.Many a harassed mother in a mean backyard had looked at fivedwarfish shirts on the clothes-line as at some small, sick tragedy;it was as if she had hanged her five children. The wind came, and theywere full and kicking as if five fat imps had sprung into them; and fardown in her oppressed subconscious she half-remembered those coarsecomedies of her fathers when the elves still dwelt in the homes of men.Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed herselfinto the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with which shemight have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rentthe waving wall of woods and lifted the hammock like a balloon,and showed her shapes of quaint clouds far beyond, and picturesof bright villages far below, as if she rode heaven in a fairy boat.Many a dusty clerk or cleric, plodding a telescopic road of poplars,thought for the hundredth time that they were like the plumesof a hearse; when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashedthem round his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings.There was in it something more inspired and authoritative eventhan the old wind of the proverb; for this was the good windthat blows nobody harm.
The flying blast struck London just where it scales the northern heights,terrace above terrace, as precipitous as Edinburgh. It was roundabout this place that some poet, probably drunk, looked up astonishedat all those streets gone skywards, and (thinking vaguely of glaciersand roped mountaineers) gave it the name of Swiss Cottage, which it hasnever been able to shake off. At some stage of those heights a terraceof tall gray houses, mostly empty and almost as desolate as the Grampians,curved round at the western end, so that the last building, a boardingestablishment called "Beacon House," offered abruptly to the sunset its high,narrow and towering termination, like the prow of some deserted ship.
The ship, however, was not wholly deserted. The proprietorof the boarding-house, a Mrs. Duke, was one of those helplesspersons against whom fate wars in vain; she smiled vaguely bothbefore and after all her calamities; she was too soft to be hurt.But by the aid (or rather under the orders) of a strenuous nieceshe always kept the remains of a clientele, mostly of youngbut listless folks. And there were actually five inmatesstanding disconsolately about the garden when the great galebroke at the base of the terminal tower behind them, as the seabursts against the base of an outstanding cliff.
All day that hill of houses over London had been domed and sealed up withcold cloud. Yet three men and two girls had at last found even the grayand chilly garden more tolerable than the black and cheerless interior.When the wind came it split the sky and shouldered the cloudland leftand right, unbarring great clear furnaces of evening gold. The burst of lightreleased and the burst of air blowing seemed to come almost simultaneously;and the wind especially caught everything in a throttling violence.The bright short grass lay all one way like brushed hair.Every shrub in the garden tugged at its roots like a dog at the collar,and strained every leaping leaf after the hunting and exterminating element.Now and again a twig would snap and fly like a bolt from an arbalist.The three men stood stiffly and aslant against the wind, as if leaning againsta wall. The two ladies disappeared into the house; rather, to speak truly,they were blown into the house. Their two frocks, blue and white,looked like two big broken flowers, driving and drifting upon the gale.Nor is such a poetic fancy inappropriate, for there was somethingoddly romantic about this inrush of air and light after a long,leaden and unlifting day. Grass and garden trees seemed glitteringwith something at once good and unnatural, like a fire from fairyland.It seemed like a strange sunrise at the wrong end of the day.
The girl in white dived in quickly enough, for she worea white hat of the proportions of a parachute, which mighthave wafted her away into the coloured clouds of evening.She was their one splash of splendour, and irradiated wealthin that impecunious place (staying there temporarily with afriend), an heiress in a small way, by name Rosamund Hunt,brown-eyed, round-faced, but resolute and rather boisterous.On top of her wealth she was good-humoured and rather good-looking;but she had not married, perhaps because there was alwaysa crowd of men around her. She was not fast (though somemight have called her vulgar), but she gave irresolute youthsan impression of being at once popular and inaccessible.A man felt as if he had fallen in love with Cleopatra,or as if he were asking for a great actress at the stage door.Indeed, some theatrical spangles seemed to cling about Miss Hunt;she played the guitar and the mandoline; she always wanted charades;and with that great rending of the sky by sun and storm,she felt a girlish melodrama swell again within her.To the crashing orchestration of the air the clouds roselike the curtain of some long-expected pantomime.
Nor, oddly, was the girl in blue entirely unimpressed by thisapocalypse in a private garden; though she was one of most prosaicand practical creatures alive. She was, indeed, no other thanthe strenuous niece whose strength alone upheld that mansion of decay.But as the gale swung and swelled the blue and white skirts till theytook on the monstrous contours of Victorian crinolines, a sunken memorystirred in her that was almost romance—a memory of a dusty volumeof Punch in an aunt's house in infancy: pictures of crinoline hoopsand croquet hoops and some pretty story, of which perhaps they were a part.This half-perceptible fragrance in her thoughts faded almost instantly,and Diana Duke entered the house even more promptly than her companion.Tall, slim, aquiline, and dark, she seemed made for such swiftness.In body she was of the breed of those birds and beasts that are at oncelong and alert, like greyhounds or herons or even like an innocent snake.The whole house revolved on her as on a rod of steel. It wouldbe wrong to say that she commanded; for her own efficiency was soimpatient that she obeyed herself before any one else obeyed her.Before electricians could mend a bell or locksmiths open a door,before dentists could pluck a tooth or butlers draw a tight cork,it was done already with the silent violence of her slim hands.She was light; but there was nothing leaping about her lightness.She spurned the ground, and she meant to spurn it. People talkof the pathos and failure of plain women; but it is a more terriblething that a beautiful woman may succeed in everything but womanhood.
"It's enough to blow your head off," said the young woman in white,going to the looking-glass.
The young woman in blue made no reply, but put away her gardening gloves,and then went to the sideboard and began to spread out an afternooncloth for tea.
"Enough to blow your head off, I say," said Miss Rosamund Hunt,with the unruffled cheeriness of one whose songs and speecheshad always been safe for an encore.
"Only your hat, I think," said Diana Duke, "but I dare say that issometimes more important."
Rosamund's face showed for an instant the offence of aspoilt child, and then the humour of a very healthy person.She broke into a laugh and said, "Well, it would have to be a bigwind to blow your head off."
There was another silence; and the sunset breaking more and more fromthe sundering clouds, filled the room with soft fire and painted the dullwalls with ruby and gold.
"Somebody once told me," said Rosamund Hunt, "that it's easierto keep one's head when one has lost one's heart."
"Oh, don't talk such rubbish," said Diana with savage sharpness.
Outside, the garden was clad in a golden splendour;but the wind was still stiffly blowing, and the three menwho stood their ground might also have considered the problemof hats and heads. A