Читать книгу The Holy Terror - H.G. Wells - Страница 16

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Of all the movements fermenting through the venerable halls and colonnades and the narrow lanes and winding streets of Camford, the Communists had the most convincing air of meaning something and definitely going somewhere. Their scientific pretensions, the aggressive confidence with which they sustained their remarkable, though incomprehensible, Hegelianism, impressed him, and their bias for revolutionary violence was all in their favour. But their doctrinaire inflexibility and intolerance did not attract him.

A large, fat young man at one of their meetings was quite interesting about the Seizure of Power. That sounded like sense. Of course one must seize power.

But Rudolf did not join the "Party". He spoke at a meeting and intimated a certain sympathy, but he kept outside. He did not speak very well on that occasion. There was something uncongenial in the atmosphere for which at first he could not find a name. It was as if he lacked some shibboleth and was out of court from the beginning. And not only that. They set their new adherents, he gathered, to do all sorts of undignified and time-wasting jobs, such as distributing unconvincing leaflets and selling newspapers full of stale provocation. And they were shepherded—shepherded was the word—by a post-graduate, one Jim Mortland, who had been four times to and fro to Moscow and behaved like a Malay who had been to Mecca. He had the languid authority of a rather jaded sergeant-major with a batch of new recruits. He seemed always to be transmitting orders from higher up and far away. Moscow? Why the devil should wisdom centre at Moscow? Why should Spain be the only arena for revolutionary activities? What had all this stuff to do with Rudie's perplexities and English social and economic unrest? And moreover, there was this Stalin-Trotsky split, a world-wide scolding match, irrelevances, personalities, alien issues, imported stuff. Where was it likely to take this bunch of English trailers? He attended one or two meetings; there were one or two young peers and hardly a single real proletarian—and suddenly he found the missing word—dilettante! That settled Camford Communism for him. It wasn't good enough. So for a time he remained politically indeterminate.

Yet his reveries now were all of political adventure. The success of his speech had lit and given a direction to his ambition, and every day it burnt more brightly. He felt in his bones now that he had the making of a political figure. Once he started. His very indecision about the line he had to take marked the seriousness of his intentions. He found his inclination towards a sort of scheming reverie more and more of an interference with his work.

A day or so before the end of the term he went for a walk by the Cramb meadows to get tea at Chuck's Hill Farm. He had cleared up all his work and he felt free to indulge to the full in that ancient vice of his.

His thoughts ran over these various movements he had sampled. His ruling thought was what he could do with them and what they could do for him. "One has to take a line of one's own," he said, "and all the same, if one is to get anywhere, one has to have an Organisation—with a capital O. One must go over big or not go over at all. You've got to have a newspaper. Newspapers. Radio talks. Great halls. Stewards. It has to be paid for. You've got to have backers...

"One might capture some organisation..."

In his reveries capturing an Organisation involved a good lot of timely shooting.

What was it caught people? What was it caught backers? What got faithful adherents? What was it made them believe in you? So that you got started? Other people got supporters. You had to be obviously successful to hold them and you had to give them something, something that they felt they could not get or do or be themselves...

Brooding in the warm afternoon sunshine over the Chuck's Farm tea-things, with unlimited supplies of Mother Braybone's newish bread and admirable butter and home-made strawberry jam, all things became possible. His thoughts were like the printed text of a book that has been over-illustrated by a far too enthusiastic illustrator. The text kept to a certain level of possibility, but the reverie soared fantastically and magnificently. He found himself presently with a group of intimate colleagues, devoted to him. (They really were devoted to him.) And behind them was the party, his party.

Would they wear a shirt?

Shirts were overdone. Brown shirts, green shirts, black shirts, purple shirts; the idea was played out. The Whitlow-men wouldn't have that. They'd have belts. They'd have trousers with elastic webbing in them and belts with heavy buckles that could be whipped off in a moment for a fight. Good. And by way of recognition, a badge, a badge worn inside the jacket, like the sheriff's badge in an American gangster film. A good idea that!

What to call them? The Whitlow men? The Rud men? They'd have to have a slogan. Something to shout, something to stick on their banners.

And an idea? He had long thought that the separation of the United States and the British Empire was a terrible waste of strength, that a drive for reunion could be made very popular, and that gave him, "The man who speaks English is my brother." Because nowadays, now that we were drawing so near to America by air and radio and common dangers, why should not our political movements straddle the Atlantic?

So far it had never happened. Even their Communists and our Communists were different. But that needn't be so now. And that altered everything. This was a great thought for Rudie.

The reverie produced a vision of the mighty canyons of the New York City streets as he had seen them in photographs and pictures and films, and people were scattering torn-up paper from the windows upon the milling swarms below, and great banners hung across from one side to the other bearing his slogan. "The man who speaks English is my brother." There was an immense excited crowd, all displaying badges, all Rud men. It was a tremendous occasion. Rud had arrived in America. The Big Union had been achieved.

Why not? Various things stood in the way, of course; the monarchy, ancient prejudices, irritations, suspicions on both sides of the Atlantic. Rud's imagination swept them aside.

The reverie suddenly produced a touching meeting between a British monarch, a very hypothetical British monarch, and Rud. "Our family," said the monarch, opening his coat suddenly and displaying the hidden badge, "have been Rudmen and Rud-women for some time. If it is necessary to Anglo-American coalescence for us to efface ourselves, we are prepared."

An almost religious reverence came into Rud's eyes as he contemplated this beautiful present from his imagination, over an unusually large, an almost fervent bite of jam-spread bread and butter.

He found he had to assist that excessive mouthful with the back of his disengaged hand.

Then he blushed at his own puerility, finished his slice in a more business-like way, emptied his cup of tea and produced and lit a cigarette.

"The problem," he whispered, "is to find those nuclear associates. Then we could start something...

"But we have to give them something new...

"All these things that are going on now—communism, fascism and all that—they are nearly played out—they are three-parts dead. By the time I get going it would be like crying stinking fish to go in for any of them. A new appeal. It has to have a freshness, whatever it is..."

And then suddenly it seemed to him that he saw an idea, a programme, a scheme of operations, a way to success plain before him. For a moment he had the impression of something full and completed, the exact thing needful. His mind just stopped at that and stared at it—as one might stare, if suddenly a door opened in a hitherto impenetrable and unclimbable wall and revealed—the dark and indistinguishable landscape of some unknown land on which no sun had ever yet risen. And then it was as if the door slammed again.

"If they're all out," he whispered. "And if there is a right way—

"They haven't got it. Any of them...

"But if one did get it!"

He seemed to see the confusion suddenly crystallising under the spell of a magic word—some missing elusive word—surely he had had it quite plain only a moment before!—and in his reverie, he it was who had shouted that word. And now it had gone. Gone altogether.

What was it? That missing Sesame?...

What was it? What was it?

There was an extraordinary blankness upon the sunlit meadows and the steel-blue, winding Cramb...

He sat stock-still for some time realising his hallucination only very gradually. His cigarette went out between his fingers. Then, still with a dazed expression, he roused himself and began rattling his spoon against his cup to get his bill.

Returning to college he was still trying to recall something that had never really been in his mind.