The Chronicles of Narnia 7-in-1 Bundle with Bonus Book, Boxen. Клайв Стейплз Льюис
Читать онлайн книгу.
he missed the whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia, awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. And when they laughed—well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life. Then, to his utter rage and horror, he saw the other three humans actually walking out into the open to meet the animals.
“The fools!” he said to himself. “Now those brutes will eat the rings along with the children and I’ll never be able to get home again. What a selfish little boy that Digory is! And the others are just as bad. If they want to throw away their own lives, that’s their business. But what about me? They don’t seem to think of that. No one thinks of me.”
Finally, when a whole crowd of animals came rushing toward him, he turned and ran for his life. And now anyone could see that the air of that young world was really doing the old gentleman good. In London he had been far too old to run: now, he ran at a speed which would have made him certain to win the hundred yards’ race at any Prep school in England. His coat-tails flying out behind him were a fine sight. But of course it was no use. Many of the animals behind him were swift ones; it was the first run they had ever taken in their lives and they were all longing to use their new muscles. “After him! After him!” they shouted. “Perhaps he’s that Neevil! Tally-ho! Tantivy! Cut him off! Round him up! Keep it up! Hurrah!”
In a very few minutes some of them got ahead of him. They lined up in a row and barred his way. Others hemmed him in from behind. Wherever he looked he saw terrors. Antlers of great elks and the huge face of an elephant towered over him. Heavy, serious-minded bears and boars grunted behind him. Cool-looking leopards and panthers with sarcastic faces (as he thought) stared at him and waved their tails. What struck him most of all was the number of open mouths. The animals had really opened their mouths to pant; he thought they had opened their mouths to eat him.
Uncle Andrew stood trembling and swaying this way and that. He had never liked animals at the best of times, being usually rather afraid of them; and of course years of doing cruel experiments on animals had made him hate and fear them far more.
“Now, sir,” said the Bulldog in his business-like way, “are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?” That was what it really said; but all Uncle Andrew heard was “Gr-r-r-arrh-ow!”
Digory and His Uncle Are Both in Trouble
YOU MAY THINK THE ANIMALS WERE VERY STUPID not to see at once that Uncle Andrew was the same kind of creature as the two children and the Cabby. But you must remember that the animals knew nothing about clothes. They thought that Polly’s frock and Digory’s Norfolk suit and the Cabby’s bowler hat were as much parts of them as their own fur and feathers. They wouldn’t have known even that those three were all of the same kind if they hadn’t spoken to them and if Strawberry had not seemed to think so. And Uncle Andrew was a great deal taller than the children and a good deal thinner than the Cabby. He was all in black except for his white waistcoat (not very white by now), and the great gray mop of his hair (now very wild indeed) didn’t look to them like anything they had seen in the three other humans. So it was only natural that they should be puzzled. Worst of all, he didn’t seem to be able to talk.
He had tried to. When the Bulldog spoke to him (or, as he thought, first snarled and then growled at him) he held out his shaking hand and gasped “Good Doggie, then, poor old fellow.” But the beasts could not understand him any more than he could understand them. They didn’t hear any words: only a vague sizzling noise. Perhaps it was just as well they didn’t, for no dog that I ever knew, least of all a Talking Dog of Narnia, likes being called a Good Doggie then; any more than you would like being called My Little Man.
Then Uncle Andrew dropped down in a dead faint.
“There!” said a Warthog, “it’s only a tree. I always thought so.” (Remember, they had never yet seen a faint or even a fall.)
The Bulldog, who had been sniffing Uncle Andrew all over, raised its head and said, “It’s an animal. Certainly an animal. And probably the same kind as those other ones.”
“I don’t see that,” said one of the Bears. “An animal wouldn’t just roll over like that. We’re animals and we don’t roll over. We stand up. Like this.” He rose to his hind legs, took a step backward, tripped over a low branch and fell flat on his back.
“The Third Joke, the Third Joke, the Third Joke!” said the Jackdaw in great excitement.
“I still think it’s a sort of tree,” said the Warthog.
“If it’s a tree,” said the other Bear, “there might be a bees’ nest in it.”
“I’m sure it’s not a tree,” said the Badger. “I had a sort of idea it was trying to speak before it toppled over.”
“That was only the wind in its branches,” said the Warthog.
“You surely don’t mean,” said the Jackdaw to the Badger, “that you think it’s a talking animal! It didn’t say any words.”
“And yet, you know,” said the Elephant (the She-Elephant, of course; her husband, as you remember, had been called away by Aslan). “And yet, you know, it might be an animal of some kind. Mightn’t the whitish lump at this end be a sort of face? And couldn’t those holes be eyes and a mouth? No nose, of course. But then—ahem—one mustn’t be narrow-minded. Very few of us have what could exactly be called a Nose.” She squinted down the length of her own trunk with pardonable pride.
“I object to that remark very strongly,” said the Bulldog.
“The Elephant is quite right,” said the Tapir.
“I tell you what!” said the Donkey brightly, “perhaps it’s an animal that can’t talk but thinks it can.”
“Can it be made to stand up?” said the Elephant thoughtfully. She took the limp form of Uncle Andrew gently in her trunk and set him up on end: upside down, unfortunately, so that two half-sovereigns, three half-crowns, and a sixpence fell out of his pocket. But it was no use. Uncle Andrew merely collapsed again.
“There!” said several voices. “It isn’t an animal at all. It’s not alive.”
“I tell you, it is an animal,” said the Bulldog. “Smell it for yourself.”
“Smelling isn’t everything,” said the Elephant.
“Why,” said the Bulldog, “if a fellow can’t trust his nose, what is he to trust?”
“Well, his brains perhaps,” she replied mildly.
“I object to that remark