He smiled: “Yours is perhaps the English point of view. Still——”
“It’s more important that they shouldn’t hurt themselves than that they
shouldn’t hurt pigeons, if that’s what you’re driving at,” I said.
“There wouldn’t appear to you, I suppose, to be any connection in the
matter?”
“I tell you,” I repeated, “I know nothing about pigeon-shooting!”
He stared very straight before him.
“Imagine,” he said, “a blue sea, and a half-circle of grass, with a low
wall. Imagine on that grass five traps, from which lead paths—like the
rays of a star—to the central point on the base of that half-circle.
And imagine on that central point a gentleman with a double-barrelled
gun, another man, and a retriever dog. And imagine one of those traps
opening, and a little dazed gray bird (not a bit like that fellow you
saw just now) emerge and fly perhaps six yards. And imagine the sound of
the gun and the little bird dipping in its flight, but struggling on.
And imagine the sound of the gun again and the little bird falling to
the ground and wriggling on along it. And imagine the retriever dog run
forward and pick it up and walk slowly back with it, still quivering, in
his mouth. Or imagine, once in a way, the little bird drop dead as a
stone at the first sound. Or imagine again that it winces at the shots,
yet carries on over the boundary, to fall into the sea. Or—but this
very seldom—imagine it wing up and out, unhurt, to the first freedom it
has ever known. My friend, the joke is this: To the man who lets no
little bird away to freedom comes much honour, and a nice round sum of
money! Do you still think there is no connection?”
“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t sound too sportsman-like. And yet, I
suppose, looking at it quite broadly, it does minister in a sort of way
to the law of the survival of the fittest.”
“In which species—man or pigeon?”
“The sportsman is necessary to the expansion of Empire. Besides, you
must remember that one does not expect high standards at Monte Carlo.”
He looked at me. “Do you never read any sporting paper?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did you ever hunt the carted stag?”
“No, I never did.”
“Well, you’ve been coursing, anyway.”
“Certainly; but there’s no comparing that with pigeon-shooting.”
“In coursing I admit,” he said, “there’s pleasure to the dogs, and some
chance for the hare, who, besides, is not in captivity. Also that where
there is no coursing there are few hares, in these days. And yet——”;
he seemed to fall into a reverie.
Then, looking at me in a queer, mournful sort of way, he said suddenly:
“I don’t wish to attack that sport, when there are so many much worse,
but by way of showing you how liable all these things are to contribute
to the improvement of our species I will tell you a little experience of
my own. When I was at college I was in a rather sporting set; we hunted,
and played at racing, and loved to be ‘_au courant_’ with all that sort
of thing. One year it so happened that the uncle of one of us won the
Waterloo Cup with a greyhound whose name was—never mind. We became at
once ardent lovers of the sport of coursing, consumed by the desire to
hold a Waterloo Cup Meeting in miniature, with rabbits for hares and our
own terriers for greyhounds. Well, we held it; sixteen of us nominating
our dogs. Now kindly note that of those sixteen eight at least were
members of the aristocracy, and all had been at public schools of
standing and repute. For the purposes of our meeting, of course, we
required fifteen rabbits caught and kept in bags. These we ordered of a
local blackguard, with a due margin over to provide against such of the
rabbits as might die of fright before they were let out, or be too
terrified to run after being loosed. We made the fellow whose uncle had
won the Waterloo Cup judge, apportioned among ourselves the other
officers, and assembled—the judge on horseback, in case a rabbit might
happen to run, say, fifty yards. Assembled with us were many local cads,
two fourth-rate bookies, our excited, yapping terriers, and twenty-four
bagged rabbits. The course was cleared. Two of us advanced, holding our
terriers by the loins; the judge signed that he was ready; the first
rabbit was turned down. It crept out of the bag, and squatted, close to
the ground, with its ears laid back. The local blackguard stirred it
with his foot. It crept two yards, and squatted closer. All the terriers
began shrieking their little souls out, all the cads began to yell, but
the rabbit did not move—its heart, you see, was broken. At last the
local blackguard took it up and wrung its neck. After that some rabbits
ran, and some did not, till all were killed! The terrier of one of us
was judged victor by him whose uncle had won the Waterloo Cup; and we
went back to our colleges to drink everybody’s health. Now, my friend,
mark! We were sixteen decent youths, converted by infection into sixteen
rabbit-catching cads. Two of us are dead; but the rest of us—what do we
think of it now? I tell you this little incident, to confirm you in your
feeling that pigeon-shooting, coursing, and the like, tend to improve
our species, even here in England.”
§ 3.
Before I could comment on my friend’s narrative we were spattered with
mud by passing riders, and stopped to repair the damage to our coats.
“Jolly for my new coat!” I said. “Do you notice, by the way, that they
are cutting men’s tails longer this spring? More becoming to a fellow, I
think.”
He raised those quizzical eyebrows of his and murmured:
“And horses’ tails shorter. Did you see those that passed just now?”
“No.”
“There were none!”
“Nonsense!” I said. “My dear fellow, you really are obsessed about
beasts! They were just ordinary.”
“Quite—a few scrubby hairs, and a wriggle.”
“Now, please,” I said, “don’t begin to talk of the cruelty of docking
horses’ tails, and tell me a story of an old horse in a pond.”
“No,” he answered, “for I should have to invent that. What I was going
to say was this: Which do you think the greater fools in the matter of
fashion—men or women?”
“Oh! Women.”
“Why?”
“There’s always some sense at the bottom of men’s fashions.”
“Even of docking tails?”
“You can’t compare it, anyway,” I said, “with such a fashion as the
wearing of ‘aigrettes.’ That’s a cruel fashion if you like.”
“Ah! But you see,” he said, “the women who wear them are ignorant of its
cruelty. If they were not, they would never wear them. No gentlewoman
wears them, now that the facts have come out.”
“What is that you say?” I remarked.
He looked at me gravely.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he asked, “that any woman of gentle instincts,
who _knows_ that the ‘aigrette,’ as they call it, is a nuptial plume
sported by the white egret only during the nesting season—and that, in
order to obtain it, the mother-birds are shot, and that, after their
death, practically all their young die from hunger and exposure—do you
mean to tell me that any gentlewoman, knowing that, wears them? Why!
most women are mothers themselves! What would they think of gods who
shot women with babies in arms for the sake of obtaining their white
skins or their crop of hair to wear on their heads, eh?”
“But, my dear fellow,” I said, “you see these plumes about all over the
place!”
“Only on people who don’t mind wearing imitation stuff.”