Читать книгу The Holy Terror - H.G. Wells - Страница 6

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Mrs. Whitlow was a woman of some intelligence and she had had a good modern education, which had confused her mind considerably. Nevertheless she kept up her reading.

She thought that women were the race and men merely incidents, and that every great man in the world owed nearly everything to his mother. She thought that if Adam had had a mother things might have been very different, and that the story of Ruth and Naomi was the most beautiful story in the world. And she thought that after Sam and Alf she ought to have had a daughter, and when Rudolf came squalling into her life she repined gently.

Once or twice she said to him, wistfully but unwisely, "If only you had been a dear little girl," and so sowed the seeds of an enduring misogyny. The sex-war was all alight in him from the age of six onward.

The first girl he hit was his cousin Rachel, who had recited:

"Sugar and spice and all things nice

That's what little girls are made of

Slugs and snails and little dogs' tails

And that's what little boys are made of,"

to him. He hit her, and all she did was to slap back—just a stinging slap—and then he got her by her long hair. Whereupon she pinched—so painfully it made him yell with surprise—and then got hold of his wrists in a strong sort of grip that immobilised him and then she put out her tongue at him. "Yaaaa!" she said. He couldn't get free of her. Not for the moment. Of course he would have won all right, in spite of the fact that she was nearly a year older, but just at this point the mothers came in.

Her mother completely misunderstood the situation. "Rachel!" she cried, "what are you doing to that poor little boy?"

(Jimini! What wasn't he just going to do to her!)

He brooded on this affair afterwards. It left an uneasiness and an aversion. There was something queer about these girls; they were like insects; you didn't know what they might do to you next. And their shins were difficult to get at. They weren't as soft as they ought to be, not nearly.

What properly ought he to have done? Jerked his wrists free of course, and then?

"He's not a gentle child," said his mother to Rachel's mother. "He's not gentle."

"Love him all the more," said Aunt Julia who was also present.

But after one or two attempts to take him to her bosom and sit him on her lap and reason with him gently or talk to him beautifully about the child Jesus, about whose entirely undocumented youth she invented the most unwarrantable stories, she realised her sister-in-law's difficulties better. Rudie fought her love like a wild cat.

They tried to soften his nature by giving him pets. But they had to take the white mice away from him again because he wanted to teach them to swim and submerge themselves in the bath at the word of command and was inclined to be punitive when they failed to realise what was expected of them. Dogs he regarded with suspicion and had a way of picking up stones when he saw them. The suspicion was mutual. His white rabbits died either of eccentric and irregular dietary or by being dropped suddenly as a punishment for squirming about and kicking in sudden disconcerting jerks. For a time he seemed really to like a gay little kitten that pursued a rabbit's foot on a piece of string with the most ridiculous nimbleness and waggery. Then something happened. A great running and banging-about upstairs was heard. The kitten came headlong down the staircase incredibly scared. Rudie followed in pursuit—armed with his little cricket bat.

"She won't play with me any longer," he bellowed. "She's got to. Where's she gone?"

What can you do with a boy like that?