|My neighbour at the breakfast table complained that he had had a bad
night. What with the gale and the crash of the seas, and the creaking of
the timbers of the ship and the pair in the next cabin--especially the
pair in the next cabin.... How they talked! It was two o'clock
before they sank into silence. And such revelations! He couldn't help
overhearing them. He was alone in his cabin, and what was he to do? He
couldn't talk to himself to let them know they were being overheard. And
he didn't sing. And he hadn't a cough. And, in short, there was nothing
for it but to overhear. And the things he heard--well.... And with a
gesture of head, hands, and eyebrows he left it to me to imagine the
worst. I suggested that he might cure the trouble by telling the steward
to give the couple a hint that the next cabin was occupied. He received
the idea as a possible way out of a painful and delicate situation.
Strange, he said, it had not occurred to him.
Whether he adopted it I do not know. If I did I should know a very
important thing about him. It would give me the clue to the whole man.
It would tell me whether he was a willing or an unwilling eavesdropper,
and there are few more searching tests of character than this. We are
not to be catalogued by what we do in the open. We are all of us proper
enough when we walk abroad and play our part in society. It is not
our public hearing which reveals the sort of fellows we are. It only
indicates the kind of fellows we desire the world to take us to be. We
want the world's good opinion, and when we go out we put on our company
manners as we put on our best clothes in order to win it. No one would
put his ear to a keyhole if he thought an eye might be at the keyhole
behind him watching him in the act. The true estimate of your character
(and mine) depends on what we should do if we knew there was no keyhole
behind us. It depends, not on whether you are chivalrous to some one
else's wife in public, but whether you are chivalrous to your own wife
in private. The eminent judge who, checking himself in a torrent of
abuse of his partner at whist, contritely observed, “I beg your pardon,
madam; I thought you were my wife,” did not improve matters. He only
lifted the curtain of a rather shabby private cabin. He white-washed
himself publicly out of his dirty private pail.
Or, to take another sounding, what happens when you find yourself in the
quiet and undisturbed presence of other people's open letters? Perhaps
you have accidentally put on your son's jacket and discovered the
pockets bulging with letters. Your curiosity is excited: your parental
concern is awakened. It is not unnatural to be interested in your own
son. It is natural and proper. You can summon up a score of convincing
and weighty reasons why you should dip into those letters. You know that
all those respectable reasons would become disreputable if you heard
young John's step approaching. You know that this very reasonable
display of paternal interest would suddenly become a mean act of prying
of which you would be ashamed to be thought capable. But young John is
miles off--perhaps down in the city, perhaps far away in the country.
You are left alone with his letters and your own sense of decency. You
can read the letters in perfect safety. If there are secrets in them you
can share them. Not a soul will ever find you out. You may be entitled
to know those secrets, and young John may be benefited by your knowing
them. What do you do in these circumstances? The answer will provide you
with a fairly reliable tape measure for your own spiritual contents.
There is no discredit in being curious about the people in the next
Cabin. We are all curious about our neighbours. In his fable of “Le
Diable Boiteux,” Lesage tells how the devil transported him from one
house to another, lifted the roof, and showed what was going on inside,
with very surprising and entertaining results. If the devil, in the
guise of a very civil gentleman, paid me a call this evening, and
offered to do the same for me, offered to spirit me over Hampstead and
lift with magic and inaudible touch any roof I fancied, and show me the
mysteries and privacies of my neighbours' lives, I hope I should have
the decency to thank him and send him away. The amusement would be
purchased at too high a price. It might not do my neighbours any harm,
but it would do me a lot of harm. For, after all, the important thing
is not that we should be able, like the honest blacksmith, to look the
whole world in the face, but that we should be able to look ourselves in
the face. And it is our private standard of conduct and not our public
standard of conduct which gives or denies us that privilege. We are
merely counterfeit coin if our respect for the Eleventh Commandment only
applies to being found out by other people. It is being found out by
ourselves that ought to hurt us.
It is the private cabin side of us that really matters. I could pass
a tolerably good examination on my public behaviour. I have never
committed a murder, or a burglary. I have never picked a pocket, or
forged a cheque. But these things are not evidence of good character.
They may only mean that I never had enough honest indignation to commit
a murder, nor enough courage to break into a house. They may only mean
that I never needed to forge a cheque or pick a pocket. They may
only mean that I am afraid of the police. Respect for the law is a
testimonial that will not go far in the Valley of Jehosophat. The
question that will be asked of me there is not whether I picked my
neighbour's lock, but whether I put my ear to his keyhole; not whether
I pocketed the bank note he had left on his desk, but whether I read his
letters when his back was turned--in short, not whether I had respect
for the law, but whether I had respect for myself and the sanctities
that are outside the vulgar sphere of the law. It is what went on in my
private cabin which will probably be my undoing.
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