75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

‘You should have thought of that three months ago,’ I said severely.

‘True,’ she replied. ‘There’s not much good in thinking of it now. It was unfortunate, by the way, that my mother had me called Castalia.’

‘Oh, Castalia, your mother—’ I was beginning when she reached for the mustard pot.

‘No, no, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If you’d been a chaste woman yourself you would have screamed at the sight of me – instead of which you rushed across the room and took me in your arms. No, Cassandra. We are neither of us chaste.’ So we went on talking.

Meanwhile the room was filling up, for it was the day appointed to discuss the results of our observations. Everyone, I thought, felt as I did about Castalia. They kissed her and said how glad they were to see her again. At length, when we were all assembled, Jane rose and said that it was time to begin. She began by saying that we had now asked questions for over five years, and that though the results were bound to be inconclusive – here Castalia nudged me and whispered that she was not so sure about that. Then she got up, and, interrupting Jane in the middle of a sentence, said:

‘Before you say any more, I want to know – am I to stay in the room? Because,’ she added, ‘I have to confess that I am an impure woman.’

Everyone looked at her in astonishment.

‘You are going to have a baby?’ asked Jane.

She nodded her head.

It was extraordinary to see the different expressions on their faces. A sort of hum went through the room, in which I could catch the words ‘impure,’ ‘baby,’ ‘Castalia,’ and so on. Jane, who was herself considerably moved, put it to us:

‘Shall she go? Is she impure?’

Such a roar filled the room as might have been heard in the street outside.

‘No! No! No! Let her stay! Impure? Fiddlesticks!’ Yet I fancied that some of the youngest, girls of nineteen or twenty, held back as if overcome with shyness. Then we all came about her and began asking questions, and at last I saw one of the youngest, who had kept in the background, approach shyly and say to her:

‘What is chastity then? I mean is it good, or is it bad, or is it nothing at all?’ She replied so low that I could not catch what she said.

‘You know I was shocked,’ said another, ‘for at least ten minutes.’

‘In my opinion,’ said Poll, who was growing crusty from always reading in the London Library, ‘chastity is nothing but ignorance – a most discreditable state of mind. We should admit only the unchaste to our society. I vote that Castalia shall be our President.’

This was violently disputed.

‘It is as unfair to brand women with chastity as with unchastity,’ said Poll. ‘Some of us haven’t the opportunity either. Moreover, I don’t believe Cassy herself maintains that she acted as she did from a pure love of knowledge.’

‘He is only twenty-one and divinely beautiful,’ said Cassy, with a ravishing gesture.

‘I move,’ said Helen, ‘that no one be allowed to talk of chastity or unchastity save those who are in love.’

‘Oh, bother,’ said Judith, who had been enquiring into scientific matters, ‘I’m not in love and I’m longing to explain my measures for dispensing with prostitutes and fertilizing virgins by Act of Parliament.’

She went on to tell us of an invention of hers to be erected at Tube stations and other public resorts, which, upon payment of a small fee, would safeguard the nation’s health, accommodate its sons, and relieve its daughters. Then she had contrived a method of preserving in sealed tubes the germs of future Lord Chancellors ‘or poets or painters or musicians,’ she went on, ‘supposing, that is to say, that these breeds are not extinct, and that women still wish to bear children—’

‘Of course we wish to bear children!’ cried Castalia, impatiently. Jane rapped the table.

‘That is the very point we are met to consider,’ she said. ‘For five years we have been trying to find out whether we are justified in continuing the human race. Castalia has anticipated our decision. But it remains for the rest of us to make up our minds.’

Here one after another of our messengers rose and delivered their reports. The marvels of civilisation far exceeded our expectations, and, as we learnt for the first time how man flies in the air, talks across space, penetrates to the heart of an atom, and embraces the universe in his speculations, a murmur of admiration burst from our lips.