Читать книгу A Sheaf - John Galsworthy - Страница 5

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We had left my rooms, and were walking briskly down the street towards the river, when my friend stopped before the window of a small shop and said:

“Gold-fish!”

I^[1] looked at him very doubtfully; one had known him so long that one never looked at him in any other way.

“Can you imagine,” he went on, “how any sane person can find pleasure in the sight of those swift things swimming for ever and ever in a bowl about twice the length of their own tails?”

“No,” I said, “I cannot—though, of course, they’re very pretty.”

“That is, no doubt, the reason why they are kept in misery.”

Again I looked at him; there is nothing in the world I distrust so much as irony.

“People don’t think about these things,” I said.

“You are right,” he answered, “they do not. Let me give you some evidence of that.... I was travelling last spring in a far country, and made an expedition to a certain woodland spot. Outside the little forest inn I noticed a ring of people and dogs gathered round a gray animal rather larger than a cat. It had a sharp-nosed head too small for its body, and bright black eyes, and was moving restlessly round and round a pole to which it was tethered by a chain. If a dog came near, it hunched its bushy back and made a rush at him. Except for that it seemed a shy-souled, timid little thing. In fact, by its eyes, and the way it shrank into itself, you could tell it was scared of everything around. Now, there was a small, thin-faced man in a white jacket holding up a tub on end and explaining to the people that this was the little creature’s habitat, and that it wanted to get back underneath; and, sure enough, when he held the tub within its reach, the little animal stood up at once on its hind legs and pawed, evidently trying to get the tub to fall down and cover it. The people all laughed at this; the man laughed too, and the little creature went on pawing. At last the man said: ‘Mind your back-legs, Patsy!’ and let the tub fall. The show was over. But presently another lot came up; the white-coated man lifted the tub, and it began all over again.

“ ‘What is that animal?’ I asked him.

“ ‘A ’coon.’

“ ‘How old?’

“ ‘Three years—too old to tame.’

“ ‘Where did you catch it?’

“ ‘In the forest—lots of ’coons in the forest.’

“ ‘Do they live in the open, or in holes?’

“ ‘Up in the trees, sure; they only gits in the hollows when it rains.’

“ ‘Oh! they live in the open? Then isn’t it queer she should be so fond of her tub?’

“ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she do that to git away from people!’ and he laughed—a genial little man. ‘She not like people and dogs. She too old to tame. She know me, though.’

“ ‘I see,’ I said. ‘You take the tub off her, and show her to the people, and put it back again. Yes, she would know you!’

“ ‘Yes,’ he repeated, rather proudly, ‘she know me—Patsy, Patsy! Presently, you bet, we catch lot more, and make a cage, and put them in.’

“He was gazing very kindly at the little creature, who on her gray hind legs was anxiously begging for the tub to come down and hide her, and I said: ‘But isn’t it rather a miserable life for this poor little devil?’

“He gave me a very queer look. ‘There’s lots of people,’ he said—and his voice sounded as if I’d hurt him—‘never gits a chance to see a ’coon’—and he dropped the tub over the racoon....

“Well! Can you conceive anything more pitiful than that poor little wild creature of the open, begging and begging for a tub to fall over it and shut out all the light and air? Doesn’t it show what misery caged things have to go through?”

“But, surely,” I said, “those other people would feel the same as you. The little white-coated man was only a servant.”

He seemed to run them over in his memory. “Not one!” he answered slowly. “Not a single one! I am sure it never even occurred to them—why should it? They were there to enjoy themselves.”

We walked in silence till I said:

“I can’t help feeling that your little white-coated man was acting good-heartedly according to his lights.”

“Quite! And after all what are the sufferings of a racoon compared with the enlargement of the human mind?”

“Don’t be extravagant! You know he didn’t mean to be cruel.”

“Does a man ever mean to be cruel? He merely makes or keeps his living; but to make or keep his living he will do anything that does not absolutely prick to his heart through the skin of his indolence or his obtuseness.”

“I think,” I said, “that you might have expressed that less cynically, even if it’s true.”

“Nothing that’s true is cynical, and nothing that is cynical is true. Indifference to the suffering of beasts always comes from over-absorption in our own comfort.”

“Absorption, not over-absorption, perhaps.”

“Ha! Let us see that! Very soon after seeing the racoon I was staying at the most celebrated health resort of that country, and, walking in its grounds, I came on an aviary. In the upper cages were canaries, and in the lower cage a splendid hawk. It was as large as our buzzard hawk, brown-backed and winged, light underneath, and with the finest dark-brown eyes of any bird I ever saw. The cage was quite ten feet each way—a noble allowance for the very soul of freedom! The bird had every luxury. There was water, and a large piece of raw meat that hadn’t been touched. Yet it was never still for a moment, flying from perch to perch, and dropping to the ground again and again so lightly, to run, literally run, up to the bars to see if perhaps—they were not there. Its face was as intelligent as any dog’s——”

My friend muttered something I couldn’t catch, and then went on:

“That afternoon I took the drive for which one visits that hotel, and it occurred to me to ask my chauffeur what kind of hawk it was. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I ain’t just too sure what it is they’ve got caged up now; they changes ’em so often.’

“ ‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that they die in captivity?’

“ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘them big birds soon gits moulty and go off.’ Well, when I paid my bill I went up to the semblance of proprietor—it was one of those establishments where the only creature responsible is ‘Co.’—and I said:

“ ‘I see you keep a hawk out there?’

“ ‘Yes. Fine bird. Quite an attraction!’

“ ‘People like to look at it?’

“ ‘Just so. They’re uncommon—that sort.’

“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I call it cruel to keep a hawk shut up like that.’

“ ‘Cruel? Why? What’s a hawk, anyway—cruel devils enough!’

“ ‘My dear sir,’ I said, ‘they earn their living just like men, without caring for other creatures’ sufferings. You are not shut up, apparently, for doing that. Good-bye.’ ”

As he said this, my friend looked at me, and added:

“You think that was a lapse of taste. What would you have said to a man who cloaked the cruelty of his commercial instincts by blaming a hawk for being what Nature had made him?”

There was such feeling in his voice that I hesitated long before answering.

“Well,” I said, at last, “in England, anyway, we only keep such creatures in captivity for scientific purposes. I doubt if you could find a single instance nowadays of its being done just as a commercial attraction.”

He stared at me.

“Yes,” he said, “we do it publicly and scientifically, to enlarge the mind. But let me put to you this question. Which do you consider has the larger mind—the man who has satisfied his idle curiosity by staring at all the caged animals of the earth, or the man who has been brought up to feel that to keep such indomitable creatures as hawks and eagles, wolves and panthers, shut up, to gratify mere curiosity, is a dreadful thing?”

To that singular question I knew not what to answer. At last I said:

“I think you underrate the pleasure they give. We English are so awfully fond of animals!”

[1]	For “I” read “almost anyone.”—J. G.