Читать книгу The Dream - H. G. Wells - Страница 14

“I think I mentioned the line of hills, the Downs that bounded the world of my upbringing to the north. What lay beyond them was a matter for wonder and speculation to me long before I was able to clamber to their crests. In summer time the sun set behind them to the north-west, often in a glow of gold and splendour, and I remember that among my fancies was a belief that the Day of Judgment was over there and that Celestial City to which Mr. Snapes would some day lead us—in procession, of course, and with a banner.

“My first ascent of this childhood’s boundary must have occurred when I was eight or nine. I do not remember with whom I went or any other particulars, but I have a very acute memory of my disappointment at looking down a long, very gentle slope and seeing nothing but fields and hedges and groups of large sheep feeding. What I had expected to find I cannot now remember. I seem to have noted only the foreground then, and it must have been after many such excursions that I began to realise the variegated spaciousness of the country to the north. The view indeed went very far; on a clear day we saw blue hills nearly twenty miles away; there were woodlands and parklands, brown ridges of plough-land that became golden ridges of corn in summer time, village churches amidst clustering greenery, and the gleaming of ponds and lakes. Southward the horizon lifted as the Downs were ascended and the breadth of the sea-belt increased. It was my father drew my attention to that, on the first occasion of our crossing the Downs together.

“‘Go as ‘igh as you like, ‘Arry,’ he said, ‘and the sea goes up as ‘igh. There it is, you see—level with us and we ever so ‘igh above Cherry Gardens. And yet it don’t drown’d Cherry Gardens And why don’t it drown’d Cherry Gardens seeing that it might? Tell me that, ‘Arry.’

“I couldn’t.

“‘Providence,’ said my father triumphantly. ‘Providence does it. ‘Olds back the sea, Thus Far. And over there, see ‘ow plain it is! is France.’

“I saw France and it was exceptionally plain.

“‘Sometimes you see France and sometimes you don’t,’ said my father. ‘There’s a lesson in that too, my boy, for those who care to take it.’

“It had always been the custom of my father to go out after tea on Sundays, summer and winter alike, and walk right over the Downs to Chessing Hanger, six miles and more away. He went, I knew, to see my Uncle John, Uncle John Julip, my mother’s brother, who was gardener to Lord Bramble of Chessing Hanger Park. But it was only when he began to take me with him that I realised that these walks had any other motive than fraternal (in law) affection and the natural desire of a pent-up shopkeeper for exercise. But from the first journey on I knew that the clue to these expeditions lay in the burthens with which we returned to Cherry Gardens. Always there was supper in the cosy little gardener’s cottage, and always as we departed we picked up an unobtrusive load of flowers, fruit or vegetables, celery, peas, aubergines, mushrooms or what-not, and returned through the dusk or moonlight or darkness or drizzle as the season and the weather might determine to the little shop. And sometimes my father would be silent or whistle softly and sometimes he would improve our journey with a discourse on the wonders of nature, the beauty of goodness, and the beneficence of Providence to man.

“He talked of the moon one moonlight night. ‘Look at it, ‘Arry,’ he said—’a dead world. Like a skull it is, up there, stripped of its soul which is its flesh so to speak and all its trees, which, if you take me, were its ‘air and its whiskers—stripped and dead for ever and ever. Dry as a bone. And everyone who lived there gone too. Dust and ashes and gone.’

“‘Where they gone, farver?’ I would ask.

“‘Gorn to their judgment,’ he would explain with gusto. ‘Kings and greengroshers, all the lot of ‘em, tried and made sheep and goats of, and gone to their bliss or their sufferings, ‘Arry. According to their iniquities. Weighed and found wanting.’

“Long pause.

“‘It’s a pity,’ he said.

“‘What is, farver?’

“‘Pity it’s over. It ‘ud be something to look at, them running about up there. Friendly-like it ‘ud be. But that’s questioning the ways of Providence, that is. I suppose we’d be always staring up and falling over things...You never see a thing in this world, ‘Arry, that you think isn’t right but what when you come to think it out it isn’t wiser than you knew. Providence is as deep as E is! and you can’t get be’ind ‘im. And don’t go banging them pears against your side, my boy; they’m Wi’yums, and they won’t like it.’

“About the curious habits of animals and the ways and migrations of birds my father would also talk very freely.

“‘Me and you, ‘Arry, we walk by the light of reason. We ‘ave reasonable minds given us to do it with. But animals and birds and worms and things, they live by Instink; they jus’ feel they ‘ave to do this or that and they do it. It’s Instink keeps the whale in the sea and the bird in the air; but we go where our legs carry us as reason ‘as directed. You can’t ask an animal Why did you do this? or Why did you do that?—you just ‘it it; but a man you ask and ‘e ‘as to answer, being a reasonable creature. That’s why we ‘as jails and punishment and are answerable for our sins, ‘Arry. Every sin we ‘as to answer for, great or small. But an animal don’t ‘ave to answer. It’s innocent. You ‘it it or else you leave it be...’

“My father thought for a time. ‘Except for dogs and some old cats,’ he said. He mused among his memories for a time. ‘I’ve known some sinful cats, ‘Arry,’ he said.

“He would enlarge on the wonders of instinct.

“He would explain how swallows and starlings and storks and such-like birds were driven by instinct thousands of miles, getting drowned on the way and dashed to pieces against lighthouses. ‘Else they’d freeze and starve where they was, ‘Arry,’ said my father. And every bird knew by instinct what sort of nest it had to build, no one ever showing it or telling it. Kangaroos carried their young in pouches by instinct, but man being a reasonable creature made perambulators. Chickens ran about by instinct directly they were born; not like human children, who had to be carried and taken care of until reason came. And jolly lucky that was for the chicken, ‘For ‘ow a ‘en would carry them,’ said my father, ‘I carn’t imagine.’

“I remember that I put my father into a difficulty by asking him why Providence had not given birds an instinct against beating themselves against lighthouses and moths against the gas-jet and the candle-flame. For in the room over the shop on a summer’s night it was quite unpleasant to read a book because of the disabled flies and moths that fell scorched upon its pages. ‘It’s to teach ‘em some lesson,’ said my father at last. But what it’s to teach them, ‘Arry, I don’t rightly know.’

“And sometimes he would talk, with illustrative stories, of ill-gotten gold never staying with the getter, and sometimes he would talk of murders—for there were still many murders in the world—and how they always came out, ‘hide them as you may.’ And always he was ready to point out the goodness and wisdom, the cleverness, forethought, ingenuity, and kindliness of Providence in the most earnest and flattering manner.

“With such high discourse did we enliven our long trudges between Cherry Gardens and Chessing Hanger, and my father’s tone was always so exalted that with a real shock I presently came to realise that every Sunday evening we were in plain English stealing and receiving stolen produce from Lord Bramble’s gardens. Indeed, I cannot imagine how we should have got along without that weekly raid. Our little home at Cherry Gardens was largely supported by my father’s share in the profits of these transactions. When the produce was too good and costly for Cherry Gardens’ needs, he would take it down to Cliffstone and sell it to a friend there who had a fashionable trade.”

Sarnac paused.

“Go on,” said Radiant. “You are making us believe in your story. It sounds more and more as if you had been there. It is so circumstantial. Who was this Lord Bramble? I have always been curious about Lords.”