Читать книгу The Holy Terror - H.G. Wells - Страница 9

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His early religious experiences did not amount to very much and they played only a small part in his subsequent career. Still, one may say a word or two about them before dismissing them.

He was never God-fearing.

Nowhere in the world in his days was there any atmosphere in which the presence of God was felt. The general behaviour of people everywhere made it plain that whatever they professed when they were questioned, they did not feel any such Power within or about them. For most of them it would have been an entirely paralysing thought to have been living in the presence, in the sight and knowledge of an unseen and silent Deity. With indefinite powers of intervention. The tension would have become unendurable; they would have screamed. They dismissed the thought, therefore, and they dismissed Him, not explicitly, of course, but tacitly and practically. On most of their occasions, even the professional religious people, from popes and archbishops down to confirmation candidates, behaved exactly like atheists—as well but no better.

Young Rudolf indeed heard very little about the supreme immanence. Mrs. Whitlow had a delicacy about mentioning Him except in connection with the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments and similar formalities, and Mr. Whitlow only mentioned Him on occasions of dismay—as for example when he heard that Aunt Julia had come in to see them. Then usually he would exclaim: "Oh, God!"

From the outset young Rudolf put up a considerable God-resistance. He read such portions of the scripture as were chosen for his learning reluctantly and with incredulity and aversion. Father was bad enough without this vaster Father behind him. From all the world around him Rud caught the trick of putting divinity out of his mind in the ordinary affairs of life. But only by degrees. He had some bad times, usually about judgment-day and hell-fire. They were worse to dream about than falling into tigers' dens. He had called Alf a fool several times. That, he learnt, was a hell-fire business. And there was very little on the other side of the account. He had tried praying—as, for example, at cricket for a score of twenty and then he had got out first ball.

"All right, God," said little Rudie. "You see."

Then he heard tell that old Doctor Carstall was an atheist. The schoolfellow who told him that spoke in hushed tones. "What's a Natheist?" asked Rudie.

"It's—he don't believe there's any God at all. Ain't it orful?"

"He'll have to go to hell," said Rudie.

"He'll have to go to hell. And him so respected! It's a frightful pity."

At his next opportunity Rudie had a good look at Doctor Carstall.

He seemed to be carrying it off all right.

Then Rudie had an impulse to ask young Carstall about it, but he did not dare.

There was something about this sinister idea of Atheism that attracted him. It was frightful. Oh! unspeakable, but it had a magnificence. Suppose really there was nobody watching...

The things you might do!...

He did not talk very much about these high matters. They came too close up to him for frankness or the risk of self-exposure. And even had he wanted to do so most of the other kids would have been too scared. But he listened to his elders. When he heard one of the senior boys arguing that "somebody must have made the world," it seemed a perfectly valid argument, though for any practical purposes it led nowhere.

Gradually his thoughts took the shape of feeling that the God one heard about in school did not exist, that they didn't mean it whatever it was about the Trinity, but that nevertheless there was a God—another God, that Maker—who went away—so that you could do any little things you wanted to do—who was indeed away generally, but who might at any time stage a tremendous come-back. Then He would ask everybody what they had done with the things of his making, and Rudie's impression was that most people would look pretty silly long before it came down to him. There was no reason Rudie could see why he in particular should be pitched upon. He was quite prepared to turn God's-evidence against one or two people he knew.

So far as Aunt Julia's edifying inventions about that exemplary Christ Child were concerned, he believed in them only to the extent of disliking him almost as heartily as he did his mother's hypothetical dear little girl. And as for gratitude to anyone, who needn't have done it, mind you, getting himself crucified (knowing quite well he would rise again the third day) to save Rudie from that hell-fire from which nevertheless he still somehow went in great danger, that was something too spiritual altogether for his hard little intelligence. Long before he was adolescent he had put religion outside of himself and thought about it less and less.

His mother puzzled about him and tried to feel loving and proud about him. If she had been quite frank with herself she would have confessed to herself that this dome-browed son she had borne was a little cad in grain, to whom unfeeling ruthlessness and greediness and implacable wilfulness were as natural as night-prowling to a hyena or an evil odour to flowering privet.

The chances of the genes had given her that, but her spirit struggled against her luck. It was too much to admit. She knew better than anyone how easily and meanly he could lie. She had found him pilfering, and his instincts seemed furtively dirty, but she could not think of her own flesh and blood in such harsh terms. "His soul is unawakened," she told herself, "one must be patient."

And after all, he was very clever at school, continually top of his class and passing examinations with facility. His essays were always "excellent"; he had an "instinct for phrasing". (If only he would not boast to her so much about these things!) And if he was horrid, he was interesting. That at any rate could be said for him. With a certain compunction his mother realised that she thought much more about him than she did about Sam or Alf. They were no trouble. They were ordinary like their father. You loved them, of course, but calmly. You did not distress yourself about them.

For a term or so there was an earnest young assistant master in the early stages of evangelical mania at Hooplady House. He perceived the moral obscurity in which Rudolf lived and tried to throw a ray of light into it. He got the boy to have a long walk with him and, beginning artfully by botanising, led the talk to ideals and one's Object in Life.

It was mostly his own Object in Life he talked about. Rud was as hard to draw as a frightened badger. The earnest young assistant master confided that he himself might not live very long. He believed he was tuberculous. Once or twice he had coughed blood.

"I spew up all my dinner sometimes," said Rud, faintly interested, "and last Easter my nose bled something frightful. Until mother got a cold key."

"That isn't like tuberculosis, which just eats your lungs away.

"Don't worms?" said Rud. "I saw a picture the other day of liver fluke in a chap's liver. Something horrid. You get it from eating watercress."

The earnest young assistant master shifted his ground abruptly. "I'd hate to die before I had done something really good and fine in the world," he said. "Sometimes I think I'd like to take orders. After I've got my B.A. London it wouldn't be so difficult. And then I could do God's work in some dreadful slum. Or go to a leper colony. Or be the chaplain of a hospital or prison. It would be fine to go to a war—as a chaplain, just upholding the fellows. Helping them. Toc-H and all that. Don't you ever want to do things like that?"

"I'd like to be a machine-gunner," said Rud.

"Oh, but that's killing!"

"Well, what will you do if this next war they keep talking about now really comes?"

"I should certainly not be a soldier. Among other things, I doubt if I am physically fit. I should either get into a Red Cross Unit or go as a padre. Under fire, of course—into the front line. But without a weapon in my hand—ever."

"Everyone isn't like that."

"There would be no more war if they were. What a death it would be, to stand out boldly between the lines and cry aloud, 'Peace,' holding out bare hands to both sides."

"You'd get peppered to rights," said Rud, regarding the young man's exalted face with extreme disapproval.

The assistant Master was lost in a vision. He stood still with shiny eyes and face uplifted and his thin, white, knuckly hands were tightly clenched. He made his companion feel uncomfortable and absolutely resolved never to come for a walk with him again.

"There's a shorter way back over this next stile and across the fields," said Rud after a lengthy pause.

And that is as much as need be told of the spiritual circumstances of Rudolf Whitlow in his youth.

There is no record that his soul ever awakened. There is no record that it stirred even in its sleep. There is no evidence indeed that he ever had a soul.