Читать книгу The Holy Terror - H.G. Wells - Страница 7

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Aunt Julia's earliest attempts at changing Rudie's heart by love had not been very successful, but she was a persistent woman and full of ideas of the most diverse sort about the bringing up of children and the lamentable foolishness with which people in general set about that business. People marry for passion, a most improper motive, and their children take them by surprise. They don't deserve them. Maybe in a more scientific world only spinsters will have children. She knew she was on the right track—or tracks—in disapproving of whatever had been done, was being done or was ever likely to be done with Rudie. Children are right, and parents and pedagogues never understand them. That is the privilege and compensation of the observant spinster. Very likely she had been a little precipitate with Rudie, but she felt she should try again.

She had a nice long talk one evening with Mrs. Whitlow. "You ought to have him psycho-analysed," she said. "It lies too deep for us untrained observers. Very likely that Oedipus complex. But what we have to remember always is that, like every child, he is intrinsically good."

"At times," said Mrs. Whitlow, "that is very hard to believe."

"I copied some bits of wisdom out of a book by Mr. Neill," said Aunt Julia. "Listen, dear: 'I cannot say the truth is, but I can declare my strong conviction that the boy is never in the wrong.' What do you think of that? And 'the self that God made'—isn't that beautifully put 'the self that God made is in conflict with all our silly teaching and interference.' And this!—what a comfort it is in these times of war and trouble!—'Human beings are good, they want to do good; they want to love and be loved.' When one thinks of all those poor love-starved young aviators bombing—what was the name of that place in India—yesterday? Just unsatisfied love-hunger. And then this again: 'Criminality,' he says, my dear, 'springs from lack of love.'"

"On the part of the criminal—"

"Oh, no, dear! No. No! NO! On the part of the people who make the laws. And so you see what we have to do, is just to find out the complex that is tying poor little Rudie down to all his naughtiness. When he broke the leg of his rabbit when he was playing with it the other day, that was really a protest—a symbol."

"It wasn't a nice symbol for the rabbit."

"We have to discover his complex—that is the next thing."

"He keeps so quiet about that."

"Naturally. We have to discover it. Now tell me—do you and George, do you ever quarrel in front of Rudie?"

"My dear!"

"Does he ever see you caressing or making love?"

"Julia, darling!"

"Does he—is he disposed to avoid his father?"

"He keeps out of his way—especially when he is up to mischief."

"A pure Oedipus," said Julia, nodding her head several times. "Probably a chemically pure Oedipus. Now tell me: When you and he are together and his father comes in, does he seem to want to get close to you—edge between you, so to speak? As if to protect you?"

"It's generally the other way about. He wants to be protected. Not that his father ever ill-treats him. But the boy has that sort of conscience. He always feels his father may have found out something."

"Exactly. And now tell me—tell me—do you think—has he any particular feeling—any sort of aversion,"—Julia became very red in the face but her eyes were bright and resolute—"Steeples?"

Mrs. Whitlow thought. "He certainly hates going to church for the children's service," she said. "If you mean that."

"Exactly. Transfers it to the church—where dear Mr. Woolley presides. And no doubt to Mr. Woolley. The Oedipus in perfection. The radiating father-hate. But don't trust my untrained judgment, dear. Go to a proper psycho-analyst and have all this cleared up. Then you will know..."

Thus Aunt Julia.

But Mrs. Whitlow did not go to a psycho-analyst. She had seen only one or two in her life and she had not liked the look of them. But the idea of getting some advice took hold of her and she decided to go to old Doctor Carstall, who was so big and deliberate that you felt you could put the utmost confidence in him. And by making an excuse of Rudie's bilious attacks, old Doctor Carstall looked him over.

"He's the most ordinary boy I ever met," said old Doctor Carstall, "except that he has a certain excess of—go in him, and a lack of self-restraint. He's fairly intelligent of course—in his way."

"He's not an ordinary boy," said Mrs. Whitlow, defending every mother's dearest illusion, "not by any means."

"As you will," said old Doctor Carstall. "But keep him out of the hands of these faddists and send him to the most conventional school you can find. He'll probably do as well as most ordinary little boys—get scholarships, play games and all that. He has—well—tenacity. He doesn't feel scruples if he wants anything. Don't imagine he's anything out of the way for naughtiness. It's just that that curious go of his brings it out..."

"Nasty little kid," soliloquised old Doctor Carstall, when Mrs. Whitlow had departed. "There's millions like him—more or less.

"Millions," he repeated. "Most people forget what nasty children they were themselves. They forget it.

"Just because children are small and pink—or small and sickly like this little beast—they imagine them angelic. If you magnified them, everyone would see plainer what they are."

He reflected. "Tenacity? That's no virtue...Though of course it may be an advantage..."

The great lines of Wordsworth floated protestingly through his memory and were ill received.

"But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our Home," he said and then added irreligiously, vulgarly and outrageously: "I don't think. His clouds of glory would smell of sulphur all the time."

Aunt Julia was never able to put her finger exactly on Rudie's complex—if so be he had one. Whatever it was, presumably it remained unresolved and festering in his soul, and this story can tell no more about it.