Читать книгу A Sheaf - John Galsworthy - Страница 8

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With but little further talk we had nearly reached my rooms, when he said abruptly:

“A lark! Can’t you hear it? Over there, in that wretched little gold-fish shop again.”

But I could only hear the sounds of traffic.

“It’s your imagination,” I said. “It really is too lively on the subject of birds and beasts.”

“I tell you,” he persisted, “there’s a caged lark there. Very likely, half-a-dozen.”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “suppose there are! We could go and buy them and set them free, but it would only encourage the demand. Or we could assault the shopmen. Do you recommend that?”

“I don’t joke on this subject,” he answered shortly.

“But surely,” I said, “if we can’t do anything to help the poor things we had better keep our ears from hearing.”

“And our eyes shut? Suppose we all did that, what sort of world should we be living in?”

“Very much the same as now, I expect.”

“Blasphemy! Rank, hopeless blasphemy!”

“Please don’t exaggerate!”

“I am not. There is only one possible defence of that attitude, and it’s this: The world is—and was deliberately meant to be—divided into two halves: the half that suffers and the half that benefits by that suffering.”

“Well?”

“Is it so?”

“Perhaps.”

“You acquiesce in that definition of the world’s nature? Very well, if you belong to the first half you are a poor-spirited creature, consciously acquiescing in your own misery. If to the second, you are a brute, consciously acquiescing in your own happiness, at the expense of others. Well, which are you?”

“I have not said that I belong to either.”

“There are only two halves to a whole. No, my friend, disabuse yourself once for all of that cheap and comfortable philosophy of shutting your eyes to what you think you can’t remedy, unless you are willing to be labelled ‘brute.’ ‘He who is not with me is against me,’ you know.”

“Well,” I said, “after that, perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me what I can do by making myself miserable over things I can’t help?”

“I will,” he answered. “In the first place, kindly consider that you are not living in a private world of your own. Everything you say and do and think has its effect on everybody around you. For example, if you feel, and say loudly enough, that it is an infernal shame to keep larks and other wild song-birds in cages, you will infallibly infect a number of other people with that sentiment, and in course of time those people who feel as you do will become so numerous that larks, thrushes, blackbirds, and linnets will no longer be caught and kept in cages. Whereas, if you merely think: ‘Oh! this is dreadful, quite too dreadful, but, you see, I can do nothing; therefore consideration for myself and others demands that I shall stop my ears and hold my tongue,’ then, indeed, nothing will ever be done, and larks, blackbirds, etc., will continue to be caught and prisoned. How do you imagine it ever came about that bears and bulls and badgers are no longer baited; cocks no longer openly encouraged to tear each other in pieces; donkeys no longer beaten to a pulp? Only by people going about and shouting out that these things made them uncomfortable. How did it come about that more than half the population of this country are not still classed as ‘serfs’ under the law? Simply because a few of our ancestors were made unhappy by seeing their fellow-creatures owned and treated like dogs, and roundly said so—in fact, were not ashamed to be sentimental humanitarians like me.”

“That is all obvious. But my point is that there is moderation in all things, and a time for everything.”

“By your leave,” he said, “there is little moderation desirable when we are face to face with real suffering, and, as a general rule, no time like the present.”

“But there is, as you were saying just now, such a thing as a sense of proportion. I cannot see that it’s my business to excite myself about the caging of larks when there are so many much greater evils.”

“Forgive my saying so,” he answered, “but if, when a caged lark comes under your nose, excitement does not take hold of you, with or against your will, there is mighty little chance of your getting excited about anything. For, consider what it means to be a caged lark—what pining and misery for that little creature, which only lives for its life up in the blue. Consider what blasphemy against Nature, and what an insult to all that is high and poetic in man, it is to cage such an exquisite thing of freedom!”

“You forget that it is done out of love for the song—to bring it into towns where people can’t otherwise hear it.”

“It is done for a living—and that people without imagination may squeeze out of unhappy creatures a little gratification!”

“It is not a crime to have no imagination.”

“No, sir; but neither is the lack of it a thing to pride oneself on, or pass by in silence, when it inflicts suffering.”

“I am not defending the custom of caging larks.”

“No; but you are responsible for its continuance.”

“I?”

“You! and all those other people who believe in minding their own business.”

“Really,” I said; “you must not attack people on that ground. We cannot all be busybodies!”

“The saints forbid!” he answered. “But when a thing exists which you really abhor—as you do this—I do wish you would consider a little whether, in letting it strictly alone, you are minding your own business on principle, or because it is so jolly comfortable to do so.”

“Speaking for myself——”

“Yes,” he broke in; “quite! But let me ask you one thing: Have you, as a member of the human race, any feeling that you share in the advancement of its gentleness, of its sense of beauty and justice—that, in proportion as the human race becomes more lovable and lovely, you too become more lovable and lovely?”

“Naturally.”

“Then is it not your business to support all that you feel makes for that advancing perfection?”

“I don’t say that it isn’t.”

“In that case it is not your business to stop your ears, and shut your eyes, and hold your tongue, when you come across wild song-birds caged.”

But we had reached my rooms.

“Before I go in,” I said, “there is just one little thing I’ve got to say to you: Don’t you think that, for a man with your ‘sense of proportion,’ you exaggerate the importance of beasts and their happiness?”

He looked at me for a long time without speaking, and when he did speak it was in a queer, abstracted voice:

“I have often thought over that,” he said, “and honestly I don’t believe I do. For I have observed that before men can be gentle and broad-minded with each other, they are always gentle and broad-minded about beasts. These dumb things, so beautiful—even the plain ones—in their different ways, and so touching in their dumbness, do draw us to magnanimity, and help the wings of our hearts to grow. No; I don’t think I exaggerate, my friend. Most surely I don’t want to; for there is no disservice one can do to all these helpless things so great as to ride past the hounds, to fly so far in front of public feeling as to cause nausea and reaction. But I feel that most of us, deep down, really love these furred and feathered creatures that cannot save themselves from us—that are like our own children, because they are helpless; that are in a way sacred, because in them we watch, and through them we understand, those greatest blessings of the earth—Beauty and Freedom. They give us so much, they ask nothing from us. What can we do in return but spare them all the suffering we can? No, my friend; I do not think—whether for their sakes or our own—that I exaggerate.”

When he had said those words he turned away, and left me standing there.