Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [15]
Because she is such a bright light that no one peers behind her at me.
Justice and Mercy have gone from the earth.
The Bill has been read in the Commons. We barely recognise it. It has had its throat cut, the lifeblood drained out of its veins. It is a shadow of itself now, a mockery, a twitching monster.
It no longer protects animals from vivisection, but vivisectors from prosecution. It allows anyone to apply for a licence to do anything to any animal. It says a man of science is under no obligation to put a suffering creature (such as a blinded rabbit or an eviscerated rat) out of its misery unless in his opinion that suffering is likely to endure long.
Fá leaned against me, when the news came, and her whole weight bore down. "Mary," she said, "what have we done?"
At times like this I wish we shared a bed, as some friends I knew in Rome used to do. Then I could hold her all night. Fá has always joked about her body, calling it Kensington's own grotesque. She doesn't understand that I love every pound of flesh.
Late August, and we are in Wales. The Parliamentary Session is over, and the summer, and all our hope.
The Vivisector's Charter is passed. It is the first time I have ever cursed the Queen. We always thought Victoria was on the side of the animals; we always said she had a tender heart. How could she have signed her name to this?
Hengwrt does not seem as beautiful as it was last summer; we have missed the best of it. Or rather, all its loveliness is at a little distance, as if behind glass. The Rembrandt girl's eyes puzzle over us.
Fá never looks up. She is busy writing the bitterest letters I have ever read, to those of our supporters who have melted away. I have begun again on the business of circulars. I print them and post them and eminent people sign them and return them and I compile a list of the signatories and send it to other eminent people. Circular is the right word.
The damage is done, but we go on; nerves are cut, but still they feel. An unpopular cause has its own momentum. It bears down on you, blind and urgent as a train. Qualms are no longer permitted. We have set our faces the way we mean to go. There is no more room for nice distinctions, reservations, doubts, normal life.
Another story for my scrapbook. An old man went hunting rabbits with a ferret, and was found buried days later, halfway up a collapsed burrow.
Of course, saving them may kill us too.
Lord Shaftesbury writes to say that the Act is better than nothing, and should be given a chance. Air. Gladstone assures us, again, that his sympathies are with us—but he will sign nothing.
Some we once called comrades have given in entirely. We burn their letters. Why waste our breath pleading for reform? We will settle for nothing now but abolition. Government is corrupt. Doctors and scientists are liars, all. We will address ourselves to the hearts of the public with a simple message. No living thing should be cut open to satisfy human curiosity.
I say we, because I am as one with Fa in this.
I persuaded her to spend the afternoon in the garden, for the good of her health. The shrubs are dreadfully overgrown. She cuts the best flowers to send away to the friends we have left. I hold the basket and she wields the knife like a sabre.
This evening I looked at my plate and felt queasy. Now that I begin to consider the claims of the animals afresh, it seems to me that vivisection is only the outermost skin of the onion. Whatever about the rest of Mr. Darwin's views, he has proved that we are closer to the lower kingdoms than we ever suspected. God has made us all of one stuff. And I wonder now why, if Fá and I will not fish for sport, on principle, we still dine on salmon? Why I sit here in boots made of calfskin, holding a tortoiseshell comb, on cushions filled with down, on a horsehair stool?
These thoughts make me dizzy. I have not mentioned them to Fá; she would tell me I was getting hysterical.
But where does it end? We have fenced in the creatures of the world, made them depend on us like fearful children. We