H G Wells Omnibus, page 222
“I ask you, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mr. Catskill was saying; “I ask you: Is not Destiny writ large upon this day’s adventure? Not for nothing was this place a fortress in ancient times. Here it is ready to be a fortress again. M’m—a fortress… . In such an adventure as will make the stories of Cortez and Pizarro pale their ineffectual fires!”
“My dear Rupert!” cried Mr. Burleigh. “What have you got in that head of yours now?”
Mr. Catskill waved two fingers dramatically. “The conquest of a world!”
“Good God!” cried Mr. Barnstaple. “Are you mad?”
“As Clive,” said Mr. Catskill, “or Sultan Baber when he marched to Panipat.”
“It’s a tall proposition,” said Mr. Hunker, who seemed to have had his mind already prepared for these suggestions, “but I’m inclined to give it a hearing. The alternative so far as I can figure it out is to be scoured and whitewashed inside and out and then fired back into our own world—with a chance of hitting something hard on the way. You tell them, Mr. Catskill.”
“Tell them,” said Lord Barralonga, who had also been prepared. “It’s a gamble, I admit. But there’s situations when one has to gamble—or be gambled with. I’m all for the active voice.”
“It’s a gamble—certainly,” said Mr. Catskill. “But upon this narrow peninsula, upon this square mile or so of territory, the fate, Sir, of two universes awaits decision. This is no time for the faint heart and the paralyzing touch of discretion. Plan swiftly—act swiftly… .”
“This is simply thrilling!” cried Miss Greeta Grey clasping her hands about her knees and smiling radiantly at Mr. Mush.
“These people,” Mr. Barnstaple interrupted, “are three thousand years ahead of us. We are like a handful of Hottentots in a showman’s van at Earl’s Court, planning the conquest of London.”
Mr. Catskill, hands on hips, turned with extraordinary good humour upon Mr. Barnstaple. “Three thousand years away from us—yes! Three thousand years ahead of us—no! That is where you and I join issue. You say these people are super-men. M’m—super-men… . I say they are degenerate men. Let me call your attention to my reasons for this belief—in spite of their beauty, their very considerable material and intellectual achievements and so forth. Ideal people, I admit… . What then? … My case is that they have reached a summit—and passed it, that they are going on by inertia and that they have lost the power not only of resistance to disease—that weakness we shall see develop more and more—but also of meeting strange and distressing emergencies. They are gentle. Altogether too gentle. They are ineffectual. They do not know what to do. Here is Father Amerton. He disturbed that first meeting in the most insulting way. (You know you did, Father Amerton. I’m not blaming you. You are morally—sensitive. And there were things to outrage you.) He was threatened—as a little boy is threatened by a feeble old woman. Something was to be done to him. Has anything been done to him?”
“A man and a woman came and talked to me,” said Father Amerton.
“And what did you do?”
“Simply confuted them. Lifted up my voice and confuted them.”
“What did they say?”
“What could they say?”
“We all thought tremendous things were going to be done to poor Father Amerton. Well, and now take a graver case. Our friend Lord Barralonga ran amuck with his car—and killed a man. M’m. Even at home they’d have endorsed your licence you know. And fined your man. But here? … The thing has scarcely been mentioned since. Why? Because they don’t know what to say about it or do about it. And now they have put us here and begged us to be good. Until they are ready to come and try experiments upon us and inject things into us and I don’t know what. And if we submit, Sir, if we submit, we lose one of our greatest powers over these people, our power of at once giving and resisting malaise, and in addition, I know not what powers of initiative that may very well be associated with that physiological toughness of which we are to be robbed. They may trifle with our ductless glands. But Science tells us that these very glands secrete our personalities. Mentally, morally we shall be dissolved. If we submit, Sir—if we submit. But suppose we do not submit; what then?”
“Well,” said Lord Barralonga, “what then?”
“They will not know what to do. Do not be deceived by any outward shows of beauty and prosperity. These people are living, as the ancient Peruvians were living in the time of Pizarro, in an enervating dream. They have drunken the debilitating draught of Socialism and, as in ancient Peru, there is no health nor power of will left in them any more. A handful of resolute men and women who can dare—may not only dare but triumph in the face of such a world. And thus it is I lay my plans before you.”
“You mean to jump this entire Utopian planet ?” said Mr. Hunker.
“Big order,” said Lord Barralonga.
“I mean, Sir, to assert the rights of a more vigorous form of social life over a less vigorous form of social life. Here we are—in a fortress. It is a real fortress and quite defensible. While you others have been unpacking, Barralonga and Hunker and I have been seeing to that. There is a sheltered well so that if need arises we can get water from the canyon below. The rock is excavated into chambers and shelters; the wall on the land side is sound and high, glazed so that it cannot be scaled. This great archway can easily be barricaded when the need arises. Steps go down through the rock to that little bridge which can if necessary be cut away. We have not yet explored all the excavations. In Mr. Hunker we have a chemist—he was a chemist before the movie picture claimed him as its master—and he says there is ample material in the laboratory for a store of bombs. This party, I find, can muster five revolvers with ammunition. I scarcely dared hope for that. We have food for many days.”
“Oh! This is ridiculous!” cried Mr. Barnstaple standing up and then sitting down again. “This is preposterous! To turn on these friendly people! But they can blow this little headland to smithereens whenever they want to.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Catskill and held him with his outstretched finger. “We’ve thought of that. But we can take a leaf from the book of Cortez—who, in the very centre of Mexico, held Montezuma as his prisoner and hostage. We too will have our hostage. Before we lift a finger_____. First our hostage… .”
“Aerial bombs!”
“Is there such a thing in Utopia? Or such an idea? And again—we must have our hostage.”
“Somebody of importance,” said Mr. Hunker.
“Cedar and Serpentine are both important people,” said Mr. Burleigh in tones of disinterested observation.
“But surely, Sir, you do not countenance this schoolboy’s dream of piracy!” cried Mr. Barnstaple, sincerely shocked.
“Schoolboys!” cried Father Amerton. “A cabinet minister, a peer and a great entrepreneur!”
“My dear Sir,” said Mr. Burleigh, “we are, after all, only envisaging eventualities. For the life of me, I do not see why we should not thresh out these possibilities. Though I pray to Heaven we may never have to realize them. You were saying, Rupert_____?”
“We have to establish ourselves here and assert our independence and make ourselves felt by these Utopians.”
” ‘Ear, ‘ear!” said Mr. Ridley cordially. “One or two I’d like to make feel personally.”
“We have to turn this prison into a capitol, into the first foothold of mankind in this world. It is like a foot thrust into a reluctant door that must never more close upon our race.”
“It is closed,” said Mr. Barnstaple. “Except by the mercy of these Utopians we shall never see our world again. And even with their mercy, it is doubtful.”
“That’s been keeping me awake nights,” said Mr. Hunker.
“It’s an idea that must have occurred to all of us,” said Mr. -Burleigh.
“And it’s an idea that’s so thundering disagreeable that one hasn’t cared to talk about it,” said Lord Barralonga.
“I never ‘ad it until this moment,” said Penk. “You don’t reely mean to say, Sir, we can’t get back?”
“Things will be as they will be,” said Mr. Burleigh. “That is why I am anxious to hear Mr. Catskill’s ideas.”
Mr. Catskill rested his hands on his hips and his manner became very solemn. “For once,” he said, “I am in agreement with Mr. Barnaby. I believe that the chances are against our ever seeing the dear cities of our world again.”
“I felt that,” said Lady Stella, with white lips. “I knew that two days ago.”
“And so behold my week-end expand to an eternity!” said M. Dupont, and for a time no one said another word.
“It’s as if_____” Penk said at last. “Why! One might be dead!”
“But I murst be back,” Miss Greeta Grey broke out abruptly, as one who sets aside a foolish idea. “It’s absurd. I have to go on at the Alhambra on September the 2nd. It’s imperative. We came here quite easily; it’s ridiculous to say I can’t go back in the same way.”
Lord Barralonga regarded her with affectionate malignity. “You wait,” he said.
“But I murst!” she sang.
“There’s such things as impossibilities—even for Miss Greeta Grey.”
“Charter a special aeroplane!” she said. “Anything.”
He regarded her with an elfin grin and shook his head.
“My dear man,” she said, “you’ve only seen me in a holiday mood, so far. Work is serious.”
“My dear girl, that Alhambra of yours is about as far from us now as the Court of King Nebuchadnezzar… . It can’t be done.”
“But it murst” she said in her queenly way. “And that’s all about it.”
§ 3
Mr. Barnstaple got up from the table and walked apart to where a gap in the castle wall gave upon the darkling wilderness without. He sat down there. His eyes went from the little group talking around the supper-table to the sunlit crest of the cliffs across the canyon and to the wild and lonely mountain slopes below the headland. In this world he might have to live out the remainder of his days.
And those days might not be very numerous if Mr. Catskill had his way. Sydenham, and his wife and the boys were indeed as far—“as the Court of King Nebuchadnezzar.”
He had scarcely given his family a thought since he had posted his letter at Victoria. Now he felt a queer twinge of desire to send them some word or token—if only he could. Queer that they would never hear from him or of him again! How would they get on without him? Would there be any difficulty about the account at the bank? Or about the insurance money? He had always intended to have a joint and several account with his wife at the bank, and he had never quite liked to do it. Joint and several… . A thing every man ought to do… . His attention came back to Mr. Catskill unfolding his plans.
“We have to make up our minds to what may be a prolonged, a very prolonged stay here. Do not let us deceive ourselves upon that score. It may last for years—it may last for generations.”
Something struck Penk in that. “I don’t ‘ardly see,” he said, “how that can be—generations?”
“I am coming to that,” said Mr. Catskill.
“Un’appily,” said Mr. Penk, and became profoundly restrained and thoughtful with his eyes on Lady Stella.
“We have to remain, a little alien community, in this world until we dominate it, as the Romans dominated the Greeks, and until we master its science and subdue it to our purpose. That may mean a long struggle. It may mean a very long struggle indeed. And meanwhile we must maintain ourselves as a community; we must consider ourselves a colony, a garrison, until that day of reunion comes. We must hold our hostages, Sir, and net only our hostages. It may be necessary for our purpose, and if it is necessary for our purpose, so be it—to get in others of these Utopians, to catch them young, before this so-called education of theirs unfits them for our purpose, to train them in the great traditions of our Empire and our race.”
Mr. Hunker seemed on the point of saying something but refrained.
M. Dupont got up sharply from the table, walked four paces away, returned and stood still, watching Mr. Catskill.
“Generations?” said Mr. Penk.
“Yes,” said Mr. Catskill. “Generations. For here we are strangers—strangers, like that other little band of adventurers who established their citadel five-and-twenty centuries ago upon the Capitol beside the rushing Tiber. This is our Capitol. A greater Capitol—of a greater Rome—in a vaster world. And like that band of Roman adventurers we too may have to reinforce our scanty numbers at the expense of the Sabines about us, and take to ourselves servants and helpers and—mates! No sacrifice is too great for the high possibilities of this adventure.”
M. Dupont seemed to nerve himself for the sacrifice.
“Duly married,” injected Father Amerton.
“Duly married,” said Mr. Catskill in parenthesis. “And so, Sir, we will hold out here and maintain ourselves and dominate this desert countryside and spread our prestige and our influence and our spirit into the inert body of this decadent Utopian world. Until at last we are able to master the secret that Arden and Greenlake were seeking and recover the way back to our own people, opening to the crowded millions of our Empire_____”
§ 4
“Just a moment,” said Mr. Hunker. “Just a moment! About this empire_____!”
“Exactly,” said M. Dupont, recalled abruptly from some romantic day-dream. “About your Empire!”
Mr. Catskill regarded them thoughtfully and defensively. “When I say Empire I mean it in the most general sense.”
“Exactly,” snapped M. Dupont.
“I was thinking generally of our—Atlantic civilization.”
“Before, Sir, you go on to talk of Anglo-Saxon unity and the English-speaking race,” said M. Dupont, with a rising note of bitterness in his voice, “permit me to remind you, Sir, of one very important fact that you seem to be overlooking. The language of Utopia, Sir, is French. I want to remind you of that. I want to recall it to your mind. I will lay no stress here on the sacrifices and martyrdoms that France has endured in the cause of Civilization_____”
The voice of Mr. Burleigh interrupted. “A very natural misconception. But, if you will pardon the correction, the language of Utopia is not French.”
Of course, Mr. Barnstaple reflected, M. Dupont had not heard the explanation of the language difficulty.
“Permit me, Sir, to believe the evidence of my own ears,” the Frenchman replied with dignified politeness. “These Utopians, I can assure you, speak French and nothing but French—and very excellent French it is.”
“They speak no language at all,” said Mr. Burleigh.
“Not even English?” sneered M. Dupont.
“Not even English.”
“Not League of Nations, perhaps? But—Bah! Why do I argue? They speak French. Not even a Bosch would deny it. It needs an Englishman——”
A beautiful wrangle, thought Mr. Barnstaple. There was no Utopian present to undeceive M. Dupont and he stuck to his belief magnificently. With a mixture of pity and derision and anger, Mr. Barnstaple listened to this little band of lost human beings, in the twilight of a vast, strange and possibly inimical world, growing more and more fierce and keen in a dispute over the claims of their three nations to “dominate” Utopia, claims based entirely upon greeds and misconceptions. Their voices rose to shouts and sank to passionate intensity as their lifelong habits of national egotism reasserted themselves. Mr. Hunker would hear nothing of any “Empire”; M. Dupont would hear of nothing but the supreme claim of France. Mr. Catskill twisted and turned. To Mr. Barnstaple this conflict of patriotic prepossessions seemed like a dog-fight on a sinking ship. But at last Mr. Catskill, persistent and ingenious, made headway against his two antagonists.
He stood at the end of the table explaining that he had used the word Empire loosely, apologizing for using it, explaining that when he said Empire he had all Western Civilization in mind. “When I said it,” he said, turning to Mr. Hunker, “I meant a common brotherhood of understanding.” He faced towards M. Dupont. “I meant our tried and imperishable Entente.”
“There are at least no Russians here,” said M. Dupont. “And no Germans.”
“True,” said Lord Barralonga. “We start ahead of the Hun here, and we can keep ahead.”
“And I take it,” said Mr. Hunker, “that Japanese are barred.”
“No reason why we shouldn’t start clean with a complete colour bar,” reflected Lord Barralonga. “This seems to me a White Man’s World.”
“At the same time,” said M. Dupont, coldly and insistently, “you will forgive me if I ask you for some clearer definition of our present relationship and for some guarantee, some effective guarantee, that the immense sacrifices France has made and still makes in the cause of civilized life, will receive their proper recognition and their due reward in this adventure… .
“I ask only for justice,” said M. Dupont.
§ 5
Indignation made Mr. Barnstaple bold. He got down from his perch upon the wall and came up to the table.
“Are you mad,” he said, “or am I?
“This squabble over flags and countries and fanciful rights and deserts—it is hopeless folly. Do you not realize even now the position we are in?”
His breath failed him for a moment and then he resumed.
“Are you incapable of thinking of human affairs except in terms of flags and fighting and conquest and robbery? Cannot you realize the proportion of things and the quality of this world into which we have fallen? As I have said already, we are like some band of savages in a show at Earl’s Court, plotting the subjugation of London. We are like suppressed cannibals in the heart of a great city dreaming of a revival of our ancient and forgotten filthiness. What are our chances in this fantastic struggle?”
Mr. Ridley spoke reprovingly. “You’re forgetting everythink you just been told. Everythink. ‘Arf their population is laid out with flu and measles. And there’s no such thing as a ‘ealthy fighting will left in all Utopia.”
