"Wells, H G - The Research Magnificent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

"He told me to go away and think it over. Said he would preach
about it next Sunday. . . . Well, a swishing isn't a likely thing
anyhow. But I would. . . . There isn't a master here I'd stand a
thrashing from--not one. . . . And because I choose to say what I
think! . . . I'd run amuck."

For a week or so the school was exhilarated by a vain and ill-
concealed hope that the head might try it just to see if Benham
would. It was tantalizingly within the bounds of possibility. . . .

These incidents came back to White's mind as he turned over the
newspapers in the upper drawer of the bureau. The drawer was
labelled "Fear--the First Limitation," and the material in it was
evidently designed for the opening volume of the great unfinished
book. Indeed, a portion of it was already arranged and written up.

As White read through this manuscript he was reminded of a score of
schoolboy discussions Benham and he and Prothero had had together.
Here was the same old toughness of mind, a kind of intellectual
hardihood, that had sometimes shocked his schoolfellows. Benham had
been one of those boys who do not originate ideas very freely, but
who go out to them with a fierce sincerity. He believed and
disbelieved with emphasis. Prothero had first set him doubting, but
it was Benham's own temperament took him on to denial. His youthful
atheism had been a matter for secret consternation in White. White
did not believe very much in God even then, but this positive
disbelieving frightened him. It was going too far. There had been
a terrible moment in the dormitory, during a thunderstorm, a
thunderstorm so vehement that it had awakened them all, when Latham,
the humourist and a quietly devout boy, had suddenly challenged
Benham to deny his Maker.

"NOW say you don't believe in God?"

Benham sat up in bed and repeated his negative faith, while little
Hopkins, the Bishop's son, being less certain about the accuracy of
Providence than His aim, edged as far as he could away from Benham's
cubicle and rolled his head in his bedclothes.

"And anyhow," said Benham, when it was clear that he was not to be
struck dead forthwith, "you show a poor idea of your God to think
he'd kill a schoolboy for honest doubt. Even old Roddles--"

"I can't listen to you," cried Latham the humourist, "I can't listen
to you. It's--HORRIBLE."

"Well, who began it?" asked Benham.

A flash of lightning lit the dormitory and showed him to White
white-faced and ablaze with excitement, sitting up with the bed-