Novel Notes. Jerome Klapka Jerome

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ another dream that I remember, an angel (or a devil, I am not quite sure which) has come to a man and told him that so long as he loves no living human thing – so long as he never suffers himself to feel one touch of tenderness towards wife or child, towards kith or kin, towards stranger or towards friend, so long will he succeed and prosper in his dealings – so long will all this world’s affairs go well with him; and he will grow each day richer and greater and more powerful. But if ever he let one kindly thought for living thing come into his heart, in that moment all his plans and schemes will topple down about his ears; and from that hour his name will be despised by men, and then forgotten.

      And the man treasures up these words, for he is an ambitious man, and wealth and fame and power are the sweetest things in all the world to him. A woman loves him and dies, thirsting for a loving look from him; children’s footsteps creep into his life and steal away again, old faces fade and new ones come and go.

      But never a kindly touch of his hand rests on any living thing; never a kindly word comes from his lips; never a kindly thought springs from his heart. And in all his doings fortune favours him.

      The years pass by, and at last there is left to him only one thing that he need fear – a child’s small, wistful face. The child loves him, as the woman, long ago, had loved him, and her eyes follow him with a hungry, beseeching look. But he sets his teeth, and turns away from her.

      The little face grows thin, and one day they come to him where he sits before the keyboard of his many enterprises, and tell him she is dying. He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child’s eyes open and turn towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards him, pleading dumbly. But the man’s face never changes, and the little arms fall feebly back upon the tumbled coverlet, and the wistful eyes grow still, and a woman steps softly forward, and draws the lids down over them; then the man goes back to his plans and schemes.

      But in the night, when the great house is silent, he steals up to the room where the child still lies, and pushes back the white, uneven sheet.

      “Dead – dead,” he mutters. Then he takes the tiny corpse up in his arms, and holds it tight against his breast, and kisses the cold lips, and the cold cheeks, and the little, cold, stiff hands.

      And at that point my story becomes impossible, for I dream that the dead child lies always beneath the sheet in that quiet room, and that the little face never changes, nor the limbs decay.

      I puzzle about this for an instant, but soon forget to wonder; for when the Dream Fairy tells us tales we are only as little children, sitting round with open eyes, believing all, though marvelling that such things should be.

      Each night, when all else in the house sleeps, the door of that room opens noiselessly, and the man enters and closes it behind him. Each night he draws away the white sheet, and takes the small dead body in his arms; and through the dark hours he paces softly to and fro, holding it close against his breast, kissing it and crooning to it, like a mother to her sleeping baby.

      When the first ray of dawn peeps into the room, he lays the dead child back again, and smooths the sheet above her, and steals away.

      And he succeeds and prospers in all things, and each day he grows richer and greater and more powerful.

      CHAPTER III

      We had much trouble with our heroine. Brown wanted her ugly. Brown’s chief ambition in life is to be original, and his method of obtaining the original is to take the unoriginal and turn it upside down.

      If Brown were given a little planet of his own to do as he liked with, he would call day, night, and summer, winter. He would make all his men and women walk on their heads and shake hands with their feet, his trees would grow with their roots in the air, and the old cock would lay all the eggs while the hens sat on the fence and crowed. Then he would step back and say, “See what an original world I have created, entirely my own idea!”

      There are many other people besides Brown whose notion of originality would seem to be precisely similar.

      I know a little girl, the descendant of a long line of politicians. The hereditary instinct is so strongly developed in her that she is almost incapable of thinking for herself. Instead, she copies in everything her elder sister, who takes more after the mother. If her sister has two helpings of rice pudding for supper, then she has two helpings of rice pudding. If her sister isn’t hungry and doesn’t want any supper at all, then she goes to bed without any supper.

      This lack of character in the child troubles her mother, who is not an admirer of the political virtues, and one evening, taking the little one on her lap, she talked seriously to her.

      “Do try to think for yourself,” said she. “Don’t always do just what Jessie does, that’s silly. Have an idea of your own now and then. Be a little original.”

      The child promised she’d try, and went to bed thoughtful.

      Next morning, for breakfast, a dish of kippers and a dish of kidneys were placed on the table, side by side. Now the child loved kippers with an affection that amounted almost to passion, while she loathed kidneys worse than powders. It was the one subject on which she did know her own mind.

      “A kidney or a kipper for you, Jessie?” asked the mother, addressing the elder child first.

      Jessie hesitated for a moment, while her sister sat regarding her in an agony of suspense.

      “Kipper, please, ma,” Jessie answered at last, and the younger child turned her head away to hide the tears.

      “You’ll have a kipper, of course, Trixy?” said the mother, who had noticed nothing.

      “No, thank you, ma,” said the small heroine, stifling a sob, and speaking in a dry, tremulous voice, “I’ll have a kidney.”

      “But I thought you couldn’t bear kidneys,” exclaimed her mother, surprised.

      “No, ma, I don’t like ’em much.”

      “And you’re so fond of kippers!”

      “Yes, ma.”

      “Well, then, why on earth don’t you have one?”

      “’Cos Jessie’s going to have one, and you told me to be original,” and here the poor mite, reflecting upon the price her originality was going to cost her, burst into tears.

* * * * *

      The other three of us refused to sacrifice ourselves upon the altar of Brown’s originality. We decided to be content with the customary beautiful girl.

      “Good or bad?” queried Brown.

      “Bad,” responded MacShaughnassy emphatically. “What do you say, Jephson?”

      “Well,” replied Jephson, taking the pipe from between his lips, and speaking in that soothingly melancholy tone of voice that he never varies, whether telling a joke about a wedding or an anecdote relating to a funeral, “not altogether bad. Bad, with good instincts, the good instincts well under control.”

      “I wonder why it is,” murmured MacShaughnassy reflectively, “that bad people are so much more interesting than good.”

      “I don’t think the reason is very difficult to find,” answered Jephson. “There’s more uncertainty about them. They keep you more on the alert. It’s like the difference between riding a well-broken, steady-going hack and a lively СКАЧАТЬ