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Soul of a Bishop-Part7_H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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No, he did not love the birds. It was useless to pretend.

Whatever one may say about other birds a cuckoo is a low



detestable cad of a bird.

Then the bishop began to be particularly tormented by a bird



that made a short, insistent, wheezing sound at regular intervals

of perhaps twenty seconds. If a bird could have whooping-cough,



that, he thought, was the sort of whoop it would have. But even

if it had whooping-cough he could not pity it. He hung in its



intervals waiting for the return of the wheeze.

And then that blackbird reasserted itself. It had a rich



boastful note; it seemed proud of its noisy reiteration of simple

self-assertion. For some obscure reason the phrase "oleographic



sounds" drifted into the bishop's thoughts. This bird produced

the peculiar and irrational impression that it had recently made



a considerable sum of money by shrewd industrialism. It was, he

thought grimly, a genuine Princhester blackbird.



This wickedly uncharitable reference to his diocese ran all

unchallenged through the bishop's mind. And others no less wicked



followed it.

Once during his summer holidays in Florence he and Lady Ella



had subscribed to an association for the protection of

song-birds. He recalled this now with a mild wonder. It seemed to



him that perhaps after all it was as well to let fruit-growers

and Italians deal with singing-birds in their own way. Perhaps



after all they had a wisdom....

He passed his hands over his face. The world after all is not



made entirely for singing-birds; there is such a thing as

proportion. Singing-birds may become a luxury, an indulgence, an



excess.

Did the birds eat the fruit in Paradise?



Perhaps there they worked for some collectivemusical effect,

had some sort of conductor in the place of this--hullabaloo....



He decided to walk about the room for a time and then remake

his bed....



The sunrise found the bishop with his head and shoulders out of

the window trying to see that blackbird. He just wanted to look



at it. He was persuaded it was a quite exceptionalblackbird.

Again came that oppressive sense of the futility of the



contemporary church, but this time it came in the most grotesque

form. For hanging half out of the casement he was suddenly



reminded of St. Francis of Assisi, and how at his rebuke the

wheeling swallow stilled their cries.



But it was all so different then.

(3)



It was only after he had passed four similar nights, with

intervening days of lassitude and afternoon siestas, that the



bishop realized that he was in the grip of insomnia.

He did not go at once to a doctor, but he told his trouble to



every one he met and received much tentative advice. He had meant

to have his talk with Eleanor on the morning next after their



conversation in the dining-room, but his bodily and spiritual

anaemia prevented him.



The fifth night was the beginning of the Whitsuntide Ember

week, and he wore a red cassock and had a distracting and rather



interesting day welcoming his ordination candidates. They had a

good effect upon him; we spiritualize ourselves when we seek to



spiritualize others, and he went to bed in a happier frame of

mind than he had done since the day of the shock. He woke in the



night, but he woke much more himself than he had been since the

trouble began. He repeated that verse of Ken's:



"When in the night I sleepless lie,

My soul with heavenly thoughts supply;



Let no ill dreams disturb my rest,

No powers of darkness me molest."



Almost immediately after these there floated into his mind, as

if it were a message, the dear familiar words:






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