H. Wells - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

but he was manifestly ashamed of his job so far as I was concerned.

"One wants," he said, pitching himselfas he supposed in my key, "to

put constructive ideas into our readers, but they are narrow, you

know, very narrow. Very." He made his moustache and lips express

judicious regret. "One has to consider them carefully, one has to

respect their attitudes. One dare not go too far with them. One

has to feelone's way."

He chummed and the moustache bristled.

A hireling, beyond question, catering for a demand. I gathered

there was a home in Tufnell Park, and three boys to be fed and

clothed and educated…

I had the curiosity to buy a copy of his magazine afterwards, and it

seemed much the same sort of thing that had worried my mother in my

boyhood. There was the usual Christian hero, this time with mutton-

chop whiskers and a long bare upper lip. The Jesuits, it seemed,

were still hard at it, and Heaven frightfully upset about the Sunday

opening of museums and the falling birth-rate, and as touchyand

vindictive as ever. There were two vigorous paragraphs upon the

utter damnableness of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, a contagious

damnableness I gathered, one wasn't safe within a mile of Holborn

Viaduct, and a foul-mouthed attack on poor little Wilkins the

novelist-who was beingbaited by the moralists at that time for

making one of his big women characters, not beingin holy wedlock,

desirea baby and say so…

The broadening of human thoughtis a slow and complex process. We

do go on, we do get on. But when one thinksthat people are living

and dying now, quarrelling and sulking, misled and misunderstanding,

vaguely fearful, condemning and thwarting one another in the close

darknesses of these narrow cults-Oh, God! one wants a gale out of

Heaven, one wants a great wind from the sea!

While I lived at Penge two little things happened to me, trivial in

themselvesand yet in their quality profoundly significant. They

had this in common, that they pierced the texture of the life I was

quietlytaking for granted and let me seethrough it into realities-

realitiesI had indeed knownabout before but never realised. Each

of these experiencesleft me with a sense of shock, with all the

values in my life perplexingly altered, attempting readjustment.

One of these disturbing and illuminating events was that I was

robbed of a new pocket-knife and the other that I fell in love. It

was altogether surprising to me to be robbed. You see, as an only

child I had always been fairly well looked after and protected, and

the result was an amazing confidence in the practical goodnessof

the people one met in the world. I knewthere were robbers in the

world, just as I knewthere were tigers; that I was ever likely to

meet robber or tiger face to face seemed equally impossible.

The knife as I rememberit was a particularly jolly one with all

sorts of instruments in it, tweezers and a thing for getting a stone

out of the hoof of a horse, and a corkscrew; it had cost me a

carefuly accumulated half-crown, and amounted indeed to a new

experiencein knives. I had had it for two or three days, and then

one afternoon I dropped it through a hole in my pocket on a footpath

crossing a field between Penge and Anerley. I heardit fall in the

way one does without at the time appreciating what had happened,

then, later, before I got home, when my hand wandered into my pocket

to embrace the still dear new possession I found it gone, and

instantly that memoryof something hitting the ground sprang up into

consciousness. I went back and commenced a search. Almost

immediately I was accosted by the leader of a little gang of four or

five extremely dirty and ragged boys of assorted sizes and slouching

carriage who were coming from the Anerley direction.

"Lost anythink, Matey?" said he.

I explained.

"'E's dropped 'is knife," said my interlocutor, and joined in the

search.

"What sort of 'andle was it, Matey?" said a small white-faced

sniffing boy in a big bowler hat.

I supplied the information. His sharp little face scrutinised the

ground about us.

"GOT it," he said, and pounced.

"Give it 'ere," said the big boy hoarsely, and secured it.

I walked towards him serenely confident that he would hand it over

to me, and that all was for the best in the best of all possible

worlds.

"No bloomin' fear!" he said, regarding me obliquely. "Oo said it

was your knife?"

Remarkable doubtsassailed me. "Of course it's my knife," I said.

The other boys gathered round me.

"This ain't your knife," said the big boy, and spat casually.

"I dropped it just now."

"Findin's keepin's, I believe," said the big boy.

"Nonsense," I said. "Give me my knife."

"'Ow many blades it got?"

"Three."

"And what sort of 'andle?"

"Bone."

"Got a corkscrew like?"

"Yes."

"Ah! This ain't your knife no'ow. See?"

He made no offer to show it to me. My breath went.

"Look here!" I said. "I sawthat kid pick it up. It IS my knife."

"Rot!" said the big boy, and slowly, deliberately put my knife into

his trouser pocket.

I braced my soulfor battle. All civilisation was behind me, but I

doubtif it kept the colour in my face. I buttoned my jacket and

clenched my fists and advanced on my antagonist-he had, I suppose,

the advantage of two years of age and three inches of height. "Hand

over that knife," I said.

Then one of the smallest of the band assailed me with extraordinary

vigour and swiftness from behind, had an arm round my neck and a

knee in my back before I had the slightest intimation of attack, and

so got me down. "I got 'im, Bill," squeaked this amazing little

ruffian. My nose was flattened by a dirty hand, and as I struck out

and hit something like sacking, some one kicked my elbow. Two or

three seemed to be at me at the same time. Then I rolled over and

sat up to discover them all making off, a ragged flight, footballing

my cap, my City Merchants' cap, amongst them. I leapt to my feet in

a passion of indignation and pursued them.

But I did not overtake them. We are beings of mixed composition,

and I doubtif mine was a single-minded pursuit. I knewthat honour

required me to pursue, and I had a vivid impression of having just

been down in the dust with a very wiry and active and dirty little

antagonist of disagreeable odour and incredible and incalculable

unscrupulousness, kneeling on me and gripping my arm and neck. I

wanted of course to be even with him, but also I doubtedif catching

him would necessarily involve that. They kicked my cap into the

ditch at the end of the field, and made off compactly along a cinder

lane while I turned aside to recover my dishonoured headdress. As I

knocked the dust out of that and out of my jacket, and brushed my

knees and readjusted my very crumpled collar, I tried to focus this

startling occurrence in my mind.

I had vague ideas of going to a policeman or of complaining at a

police station, but some boyish instinct against informing prevented

that. No doubtI entertained ideas of vindictive pursuit and

murderous reprisals. And I was acutely enraged whenever I thought

of my knife. The thing indeed rankled in my mindfor weeks and

weeks, and altered all the flavour of my world for me. It was the

first time I glimpsed the simple brute violence that lurks and peeps