75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

The war was over and peace was in process of being signed, when I once more found myself with Castalia in the room where our meetings used to be held. We began idly turning over the pages of our old minute books. ‘Queer,’ I mused, ‘to see what we were thinking five years ago.’ ‘We are agreed,’ Castalia quoted, reading over my shoulder, ‘that it is the object of life to produce good people and good books.’ We made no comment upon that . ‘A good man is at any rate honest, passionate and unworldly.’ ‘What a woman’s language!’ I observed. ‘Oh, dear,’ cried Castalia, pushing the book away from her, ‘what fools we were! It was all Poll’s father’s fault,’ she went on. ‘I believe he did it on purpose – that ridiculous will, I mean, forcing Poll to read all the books in the London Library. If we hadn’t learnt to read,’ she said bitterly, ‘we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and that I believe was the happiest life after all. I know what you’re going to say about war,’ she checked me, ‘and the horror of bearing children to see them killed, but our mothers did it, and their mothers, and their mothers before them. And they didn’t complain. They couldn’t read. I’ve done my best,’ she sighed, ‘to prevent my little girl from learning to read, but what’s the use? I caught Ann only yesterday with a newspaper in her hand and she was beginning to ask me if it was “true.” Next she’ll ask me whether Mr. Lloyd George is a good man, then whether Mr. Arnold Bennett is a good novelist, and finally whether I believe in God. How can I bring my daughter up to believe in nothing?’ she demanded.

‘Surely you could teach her to believe that a man’s intellect is, and always will be, fundamentally superior to a woman’s?’ I suggested. She brightened at this and began to turn over our old minutes again. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘think of their discoveries, their mathematics, their science, their philosophy, their scholarship—’ and then she began to laugh, ‘I shall never forget old Hobkin and the hairpin,’ she said, and went on reading and laughing and I thought she was quite happy, when suddenly she drew the book from her and burst out, ‘Oh, Cassandra, why do you torment me? Don’t you know that our belief in man’s intellect is the greatest fallacy of them all?’ ‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘Ask any journalist, schoolmaster, politician or public house keeper in the land and they will all tell you that men are much cleverer than women.’ ‘As if I doubted it,’ she said scornfully. ‘How could they help it? Haven’t we bred them and fed and kept them in comfort since the beginning of time so that they may be clever even if they’re nothing else? It’s all our doing!’ she cried. ‘We insisted upon having intellect and now we’ve got it. And it’s intellect,’ she continued, ‘that’s at the bottom of it. What could be more charming than a boy before he has begun to cultivate his intellect? He is beautiful to look at; he gives himself no airs; he understands the meaning of art and literature instinctively; he goes about enjoying his life and making other people enjoy theirs. Then they teach him to cultivate his intellect. He becomes a barrister, a civil servant, a general, an author, a professor. Every day he goes to an office. Every year he produces a book. He maintains a whole family by the products of his brain – poor devil! Soon he cannot come into a room without making us all feel uncomfortable; he condescends to every woman he meets, and dares not tell the truth even to his own wife; instead of rejoicing our eyes we have to shut them if we are to take him in our arms. True, they console themselves with stars of all shapes, ribbons of all shades, and incomes of all sizes – but what is to console us? That we shall be able in ten years’ time to spend a week-end at Lahore? [586] Or that the least insect in Japan has a name twice the length of its body? Oh, Cassandra, for Heaven’s sake let us devise a method by which men may bear children! It is our only chance. For unless we provide them with some innocent occupation we shall get neither good people nor good books; we shall perish beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity; and not a human being will survive to know that there once was Shakespeare!’

‘It is too late,’ I replied. ‘We cannot provide even for the children that we have.’

‘And then you ask me to believe in intellect,’ she said.

While we spoke, men were crying hoarsely and wearily in the street, and, listening, we heard that the Treaty of Peace had just been signed. The voices died away. The rain was falling and interfered no doubt with the proper explosion of the fireworks.

‘My cook will have bought the Evening News ,’ said Castalia, ‘and Ann will be spelling it out over her tea. I must go home.’

‘It’s no good – not a bit of good,’ I said. ‘Once she knows how to read there’s only one thing you can teach her to believe in – and that is herself.’

‘Well, that would be a change,’ sighed Castalia.

So we swept up the papers of our Society, and, though Ann was playing with her doll very happily, we solemnly made her a present of the lot and told her we had chosen her to be President of the Society of the future – upon which she burst into tears, poor little girl.