Читать книгу The Holy Terror - H.G. Wells - Страница 25

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The next day the purposeful life was resumed, and they went on to study the industrial troubles of Balting. And hardly had they come into the dingy, winding streets of that town before they found a shop-front bright with the announcements of a brand-new political party, the League of Free Democrats; Leader, Jim Flab. Most of the window was adorned with copies of a handbill asking and answering the very natural question, "Who IS Jim Flab?" above the portrait of a cadaverous man of thirty-five or forty with a skew chin, a forced glare in his eyes and a crooked mouth featuring an extremity of resolution to the very best of its ability.

"He is the Leader of the League of Free Democrats," said the handbill, "Consecrated to the Salvation of this Our England, P.T.O."

The handbill was printed on both sides, and each side was exposed alternately in the window. The reverse contained much further information, which Chiffan devoured, with that exalted pallor on his face which stood him in the stead of laughter. "Come and read it, Rud," he said.

Rud joined him. He found something unpleasantly like a burlesque of his own dreams in Mr. Jim Flab's proposals, but Chiffan did not seem to observe that. Mr. Flab, it seemed had had an eventful, noble and indignant career, he had "travelled extensively," seen the Pope and the President and Hitler and Stalin, been jailed for political reasons in Russia, Spain, America and Scotland, and was still in the early thirties, mounting towards his self-chosen task of national leadership. There was plainly an instinct for rhetoric in the man, and a large willingness to avail himself of all the current prejudices, antagonisms and suspicions of the time. He boasted of Town Councillors, military men, including "a V.C. with head injuries," several majors, business men and solicitors among his embattled following, and they had met, he alleged, by moonlight at Stonehenge, that "original temple of the British spirit," and there lifting their hands before their faces "according to the ancient rite," taken the Vow of the Free Democrats.

"We've never thought of a vow," said Chiffan.

The League of Free Democrats was still very new. The date of that profoundly solemn occasion was "the Vernal Equinox" of the current year. He was attacking the "Reds" in particular "all along the line," wherever the line might be, and his programme, mostly in capitals, included Fearless Exposure of Red Plots, Smashing of the Rings of International Financiers, Britain to be Strong and Fearless, Kicking out Party Hacks and Old Gangs, the Revival of Simple Christianity, National Plan to Abolish Unemployment and so on and so forth.

Chiffan read these projects over in an appreciative whisper. "Pretty comprehensive," he remarked, and then: "Oh! look at this. 'Lack of finance and lack of speakers are our chief difficulties.' Chance for you, Rud! 'We want one thousand pounds to found anti-red combat groups all over industrial England.' Combat groups, eh? Lovely. Vows! Combat groups!"

"It's wild," said Rud.

"It's not a bit wild."

"But who's going to—"

"Lots maybe. You mustn't suppose, Rud, this chap doesn't know what he's up to. This is the stuff to give them, he thinks, if you want to be a Leader. Consider him as a reporter. He's got something to tell us, Rud. He's a very useful reporter on the state of the country. He talks to crowds that answer back, while you, so far, have just talked in your Union. And back there at the summer school. This stuff has been tested by cheers. He's been heckled. He's gone home and thought out answers. And that stuff is what goes...Would-be leaders of his kidney...All over the country they're breaking out like spots on a boy's face. Competition. We aren't going to have it all our own way, Rud. And the Colonel Blimps are rolling up behind him..."

Chiffan considered for a moment and then moved towards the door of the shop. "Come along," he said.

"What are you going to do?"

"I am going in."

"The man's a blatant bosher."

"He's not. He knows exactly what he is up to. Master Jim Flab is no fool, whatever else he is. I want to feel his bumps. I want to find out who pays for all this."

"But what are we to say?"

"You—nothing. You just listen for once."

In the shop there was a counter with some piles of handbills, walls draped with primitive flags of black and red (the League Flag), a large photograph of Stonehenge framed in wilted laurel, enlargements of the inspiring likeness of Jim Flab, and in charge of it all a lumpish young man drowsing over a cross-word puzzle. He stood up with a start and made a hasty and uncompleted movement as if to take up something hidden behind the counter. Possibly a weapon. He decided that was unnecessary. "Whad you want?" he said.

"Enquiring souls. Camford men both of us," said Chiffan, annexing a university for himself. "Long Vacation. Seeing England. We're sick of the Reds and all that, and we want to hear what your leader has to tell us. He seems good stuff."

"He is," said the lumpish young man. "But he isn't here. You can see the Major."

"What Major?"

"Major Fitz Blessington. Sit down there, will you..."

After the delay of ten minutes which the importance of the major necessitated, they went upstairs to a large shabby room over the shop, in which there were letter files and card indices, odd tables and windsor chairs, a book-case of reference books, a telephone, packages of stationery, a small safe, a rack of what Chiffan suggested later were hose-pipe bludgeons, a row of clothes-pegs bearing a number of berets and two waterproofs, the portrait of the Leader over the empty cast-iron fireplace, and a large map of England marked with blue and red wafers. In the centre was a writing-desk of painted and grained wood, littered with papers and with the apparatus and litter of a slovenly pipe smoker, and at this desk sat a small but sturdy little man with a hooked, red nose and a tumult of chins in full retreat, dissimilar blue eyes, a moustache as wild as an excited Persian kitten and a pipe in the corner of his mouth. He was dressed in a shabby old khaki uniform from which all badges and indication of rank had been removed, and diagonally across his chest was a black and red scarf after the fashion of a French mayor's. He pretended to be busy with important documents.

"Sit down, my lads," he said, pointing with a pen. "I'll be through with this stuff in a moment."

Chiffan made to examine the map of England.

"Siddown," said the major.

Rud and Chiffan disposed themselves in free and undisciplined attitudes on two of the windsor chairs. "Mm. Mm. Mm," said the major, and slapped a folder on his desk. "And now let's have a look at you, my boys."

He came round the desk towards them, leant against it and contemplated them. There was a smell about him as though his uniform had recently been cleaned with benzine and his breath enriched by whisky. It came to them through the rank smell of his pipe, and there was also a flavour of leather and something else that was probably idiosyncrasy—altogether a thoroughly manly smell. People with leftish prejudices might conceivably have said the major stank.

"So you want to join the Free Democratic party," he said. "Good for you."

"I don't know whether we do," said Chiffan. "We want to hear about it first."

"You'll soon hear about it, my boys. All England is going to hear about it before very long, by God. You'll hear about it. You're sick of the Bolsheviks and the white-livered peace skunks and the Jews and all the rest of 'urn. You want to do something about it, and you've found your way to the right place. We're out to clean up England. Jim there is the man for us. He's the man for us and the man for you. He's white. True-born English, a pukka democrat, if you understand me, and straight as a die. You ought to hear him. It's grand. It's grand."

"Yes," said Chiffan in a digestive tone. "And you started all this—these new ideas—this spring?"

"At Stonehenge, with a bit of a ceremony. And, my boys—and don't you forget it—a prayer to God. Whom you've all been pretending to forget. Jim Flab hasn't forgotten the Old Book."

"Why didn't you start before?" asked Chiffan.

The major replaced his pipe, with which he had been making generous circular movements indicative of the greatness leading and sustaining the party, in his mouth, and he spoke about its stem with a snarl that set his moustache flying high and wild, and revealed a wealth of irregular yellow teeth. "Because we've given those other slackers and humbugs rope to show their quality. That's why."

"Meaning old Bohun and his purple shirts?"

"Meaning, sir, whomsoever it may concern. To hell with posturers and posers, say we! We start free and clean."

"I suppose people are just pouring in on you?"

"By the hundred. The people of this country know a good thing when it's offered them. They've waited long enough, God knows. We can't keep up with them—taking their names. We put out our Programme. Here it is—if you haven't seen it. 'Join us and fight for us' we say, and that's enough for them."

"I see that," said Chiffan. "There were five or six hanging about outside when we came in."

"No!" cried the major. "Where?" and went to the window, so evidently astonished, that Chiffan was able to convey a solemn look of derision to Rud.

"I don't see 'um," said the major, turning back.

"Shyness, I expect," said Chiffan.

A faint suspicion passed momentarily across the major's countenance. There was a pause. "So you wish to join us?"

"There's trouble in the Balting shops, I'm told," said Chiffan.

"Fomented," said the major.

"It always is. And you're doing something about it?"

"Balting men must deal with Balting men."

"You mean?"

"We're running Bolsheviks and paid agitators out of the town. We give 'urn notice to quit. That's our particular task here, if you want a job with us. We saw Mr. Harry Bellows off the premises the day before yesterday."

"Stand all right with the police?"

"Mr. Supe is heart and soul with us."

"Supe?" said Rud.

"Superintendent of Police, my boy."

"And the Town Council?"

"Fifty-fifty. There's some rotten radicals and pink parlour Labour men. But we've got good friends on the bench. Good sound men and good sound patriots."

"And half the strikers are girls? More than half, Major? Not much chance for them. If you cut off help from outside."

"What's that got to do with it? Eh?" The major was suddenly on the defensive again.

"Trying to get things clear in my mind," said Chiffan.

The major removed his pipe from his mouth, walked across the room and spat with an air of extreme deliberation into the empty fireplace. "Look here, my lads, what do you think you are doing here? Joining up—or smelling round?"

Chiffan stood up and Rud followed suit.

"It doesn't smell so fresh," said Chiffan.

"Get out, you scabs—you Bolshevik spies," said the major with concentrated intensity. "I've wasted my time on you."

"We were only enquiring."

"Get out," said the major. "D'you hear me? Get OUT." He made truncated gestures of assault. He was transparently disposed to kick. Rud felt himself going white.

The major caught Rud's eye. An eye like that might mean a knife or a pistol. The major abandoned his impulse for immediate violence. "Get out—before I blow my whistle."

The departure was wary and stiff. Chiffan led the retreat. Rud kept a watchful and dangerous eye on the major and went downstairs sideways. There was tension but no actual violence.

The major continued audible above in abusive soliloquy. Apparently he had risen from the ranks, a promoted drill sergeant of the old school...

The young man in the shop had clutched a truncheon, but apparently only for self-defence.

"That," said Chiffan, when they were in the street again, "was as plain and diagrammatic as you could have. You didn't say much, Rud, but I guess you didn't miss much. This town, you see, is a nest of small factories making bits of things; half the workers are girls and kids, and helpless as mutton. The law protects them, but who cares for the law here? The employers are cowardly sweaters, and they think that industrial discipline is cheap at the price of Jim Flab and that major and the few casual roughs they have enrolled. It isn't; but they think it is. And so Jim works himself up, half rogue, half dreamer—such dreams as we dream. While the major sells the stuff."

"Such silly stuff," said Rud.

"Silly stuff, you think? P'raps no more silly than ours. P'raps less. Wait till war gets nearer and the bombing and shooting starts, wait till the people above begin to have that back-to-the-wall feeling...Same as these sweating magistrate manufacturers here have...Then you'll get it all—magnified. The big people will come in. They will put guns in the hands of chaps like that, put bombs in their hands, teach them the authority of a uniform, set them to suppress strikes...Put them at last in control of things...After which they will get out of hand. It was stinkers like that little major who ran about in Ireland during those ugly years, Black and Tans versus rebels. You don't remember. I just do. Gods, the foolishness of the Tories to touch such muck! So they lost Ireland. So in the end they are going to lose everything they ever clutched under God's sky. There's hundreds of that dirty little beast—ex-temporaries—looking for gangster jobs now. The last war bred them like maggots in a dead dog. The next war will breed thousands more.

"I'm glad we went in. That's the sort of thing ahead of you, Rud, like a dangerous back street at night, and there's miles of it that you'll have to go through before you can even begin to get that successful feeling...before you can dare to dictate peace and plenty in good earnest...before you can feel independent enough even to start our great programme—and put out that Strong Right Arm of yours..."