Читать книгу Beau Ideal - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 8

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“Tell me,” said Jacob the Jew (or Jacopi Judescu, the Roumanian gypsy). “What was really your reason for that sloppy feeble ‘kindness’ to Ramon Gonzales.... I am a philosopher and a student of that lowest of the animals, called Man.... Was it to please your Christian God and to acquire merit?... Or to up-hold your insolent British assumption of an inevitable and natural superiority?... You and your God—the Great Forgivers!... ‘Injure me—and I’ll forgive you and make you feel so damned uncomfortable that you’ll be more injured than I am.’ ... Aren’t you capable of a good decent hate or ...”

“Yes. I hate your filthy voice, dear Jacob,” replied the Englishman.

“No. Tell me,” persisted Jacob. “I loathe being puzzled.... Besides, don’t you see I’m going mad.... Talk, man.... These corpses.... Why did you behave like that to Ramon Gonzales?... He betrayed you, didn’t he?... I would have strangled him.... I would have had his eyes.... Didn’t he betray and denounce you after you had found him in the desert and saved his life?... To Sergeant Lebaudy?”

“Yes. He recognized me—and did his, ah—duty,” was the reply.

“For twenty-five pieces of silver!... Recognized you as one of the Zinderneuf men he knew at Sidi, and promptly sold you?...

“Consigned you to sudden death—or a lingering death—for twenty-five francs and a Sergeant’s favour!... And here the Judas was—wondrously delivered into your hand—and you ‘forgave’ him and comforted him!... Now why?... What was the game, the motive, the reason, the object? Why should a sane man act like that?... What was the game?”

“No game, no motive, no reason,” answered the Englishman. “He acted according to his lights—I to mine.”

“And where do you get your ‘lights’? What flame lit them?”

“Oh—I don’t know.... Home.... Family.... One’s women-folk.... School.... Upbringing.... Traditions.... One unconsciously imbibes ideas of doing the decent thing.... I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in life.... Poor old Ramon wasn’t.... One does the decent thing if one is—decent.”

“You don’t go about, then, consciously and definitely forgiving your enemies and heaping coals of fire on them because you’re a Christian.”

“No, of course not.... Don’t talk rot....”

“Nor with a view to securing a firm option on a highly eligible and desirable mansion in the sky—suitable for English gentleman of position—one of the most favourable residential sites on the Golden Street....”

“Not in the least.... Don’t be an ass....”

“You disappoint me. I was hoping to find, before I died, one of those rare animals, a Christian gentleman—who does all these funny things because he is a Christian—and this was positively my last chance.... I shall die in here.”

“I expect Christianity was the flame that lit those little ‘lights,’ Jacob.... Our home and school and social customs, institutions and ideas are based on the Christian ideal, anyhow.... And we owe what’s good in them to that I believe.... We get our beau idéal quite unconsciously, I think, and we follow it quite unconsciously—if we follow it at all....”

“Well, and what is it, my noble Christian martyr?”

“Oh, just to be—decent, and to do the decent thing, y’know.”

“So, indirectly, at any rate, you returned good for evil to Judas Ramon Gonzales because you were a Christian, you think?”

“Yes.... Indirectly ... I suppose.... We aren’t good at hating and vengeance and all that.... It’s not done.... It isn’t—decent....”

“But you puzzle me. What of Ramon the Judas ... Ramon who sold you? He was a great Christian, you know.... A staunch patron of your Christian God.... Always praying and invoking your Holy Family.”

“There are good and bad in all religions, Jacob.... I have the highest admiration for your great people—but I have met rotten specimens.... Bad as some of my own....”

Silence.

“Look here, Christian,” began Jacob the Jew again. “If I summoned up enough strength, and swung this chain with all my might against your right cheek, would you turn the other also?”

“No. I should punch you on the nose,” said the Englishman simply.

Silence.

“Tell me. Do you kneel down night and morning and pray to your kind Christian God, Englishman? The forgiving God of Love, Who has landed you here?” asked Jacob the Jew.

“I landed myself here,” was the reply. “And—er—no.... I don’t pray—in words—much.... You won’t mind asking questions for fear of being thought inquisitive, will you, gentle Jacob?”

“Oh, no.... Let’s see now.... You forgive the very worst of injuries because you are a Christian, but not because you’re a Christian.... You do as you would be done by, and not as you’ve been ‘done’ by.... You don’t pray in words, and hold daily communion with your kind Christian God—you regard Him as a gentleman—an English gentleman of course—who quite understands, and merely desires that you be—decent, which of course, you naturally would be, whether He wished it or not.... And you’ll punch me on the nose if I smite you on the cheek—but you don’t even do that much to anyone who betrays you to a dreadful death.... And really, in your nice little mind, you loathe talking about your religion, and you are terrified lest you give the impression that you think it is better than other people’s, for fear of hurting their feelings....”

“Oh, shut up, Jacob. You’d talk the hind leg off a dog.”

“What else is there to do but talk?... And so you are perfectly certain that you are a most superior person, but you strive your very utmost to conceal the awful fact.... You’re a puzzling creature.... What is your motivating force? What is your philosophy? What are you up to?...”

“Well, at the moment, I’m going to issue the water-ration.... Last but one....” said the Englishman.

“I can’t understand you English....” grumbled Jacob.

“A common complaint, I believe,” said the Englishman. The quiet American laughed.