Читать книгу That Hideous Strength - Клайв Льюис, Клайв Стейплз Льюис, C. S. Lewis - Страница 10

3 Belbury and St Anne’s-on-the-Hill

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On his way up the wide staircase Mark caught sight of himself and his companion in a mirror. Feverstone looked, as always, master of his clothes, his face, and of the whole situation. The blob of cotton wool on Mark’s upper lip had been blown awry during the journey so that it looked like one-half of a fiercely up-turned false moustache and revealed a patch of blackened blood beneath it. A moment later he found himself in a bigwindowed room with a blazing fire, being introduced to Mr John Wither, Deputy Director of the NICE.

Wither was a white-haired old man with a courtly manner. His face was clean shaven and very large indeed, with watery blue eyes and something rather vague and chaotic about it. He did not appear to be giving them his whole attention and this impression must, I think, have been due to the eyes, for his actual words and gestures were polite to the point of effusiveness. He said it was a great, a very great pleasure, to welcome Mr Studdock among them. It added to the deep obligations under which Lord Feverstone had already laid him. He hoped they had had an agreeable journey. Mr Wither appeared to be under the impression that they had come by air and, when this was corrected, that they had come from London by train. Then he began enquiring whether Mr Studdock found his quarters perfectly comfortable and had to be reminded that they had only that moment arrived. ‘I suppose,’ thought Mark, ‘the old chap is trying to put me at my ease.’ In fact, Mr Wither’s conversation was having precisely the opposite effect. Mark wished he would offer him a cigarette. His growing conviction that this man really knew nothing about him and even that all the well-knit schemes and promises of Feverstone were at this moment dissolving into some sort of mist, was extremely uncomfortable. At last he took his courage in both hands and endeavoured to bring Mr Wither to the point by saying that he was still not quite clear in what capacity he would be able to assist the Institute.

‘I assure you, Mr Studdock,’ said the Deputy Director with an unusually far away look in his eye, ‘that you needn’t anticipate the slightest–er–the slightest difficulty on that point. There was never any idea of circumscribing your activities and your general influence on policy, much less your relations with your colleagues and what I might call in general the terms of reference under which you would be collaborating with us, without the fullest possible consideration of your own views and, indeed, your own advice. You will find us, Mr Studdock, if I might express myself in that way, a very happy family.’

‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Sir,’ said Mark. ‘I didn’t mean that at all. I only meant that I felt I should like some sort of idea of what exactly I should be doing if I came to you.’

‘Well now, when you speak of coming to us,’ said the Deputy Director, ‘that raises a point on which I hope there is no misunderstanding. I think we all agreed that no question of residence need be raised–I mean, at this stage. We thought, we all thought, that you should be left entirely free to carry on your work wherever you pleased. If you care to live in London or Cambridge–’

‘Edgestow,’ prompted Lord Feverstone.

‘Ah yes, Edgestow,’ here the Deputy Director turned round and addressed Feverstone. ‘I was just explaining to Mr–er–Studdock, and I feel sure you will fully agree with me, that nothing was further from the mind of the Committee than to dictate in any way, or even to advise, where Mr–where your friend should live. Of course, wherever he lives we should naturally place air transport and road transport at his disposal. I daresay, Lord Feverstone, you have already explained to him that he will find all questions of that sort will adjust themselves without the smallest difficulty.’

‘Really, Sir,’ said Mark, ‘I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I haven’t–I mean I shouldn’t have the smallest objection to living anywhere: I only–’

The Deputy Director interrupted him, if anything so gentle as Wither’s voice can be called an interruption. ‘But I assure you, Mr–er–I assure you, Sir, that there is not the smallest objection to your residing wherever you may find it convenient. There was never, at any stage, the slightest suggestion–’ But here Mark, almost in desperation, ventured to interrupt himself.

‘It is the exact nature of the work,’ he said, ‘and of my qualifications for it that I wanted to get clear.’

‘My dear friend,’ said the Deputy Director, ‘you need not have the slightest uneasiness in that direction. As I said before, you will find us a very happy family, and may feel perfectly satisfied that no questions as to your entire suitability have been agitating anyone’s mind in the least. I should not be offering you a position among us if there were the slightest danger of your not being completely welcome to all, or the least suspicion that your very valuable qualities were not fully appreciated. You are–you are among friends here, Mr Studdock. I should be the last person to advise you to connect yourself with any organisation where you ran the risk of being exposed–er–to disagreeable personal contacts.’

Mark did not ask again in so many words what the NICE wanted him to do; partly because he began to be afraid that he was supposed to know this already, and partly because a perfectly direct question would have sounded a crudity in that room–a crudity which might suddenly exclude him from the warm and almost drugged atmosphere of vague, yet heavily important, confidence in which he was gradually being enfolded.

‘You are very kind,’ he said. ‘The only thing I should like to get just a little clearer is the exact–well, the exact scope of the appointment.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Wither in a voice so low and rich that it was almost a sigh, ‘I am very glad you have raised this issue now in a quite informal way. Obviously neither you nor I would wish to commit ourselves, in this room, in any sense which was at all injurious to the powers of the Committee. I quite understand your motives and–er–respect them. We are not, of course, speaking of an Appointment in the quasi-technical sense of the term; it would be improper for both of us (though, you may well remind me, in different ways) to do so–or at least it might lead to certain inconveniences. But I think I can most definitely assure you that nobody wants to force you into any kind of straight waistcoat or bed of Procrustes. We do not really think, among ourselves, in terms of strictly demarcated functions, of course. I take it that men like you and me are–well, to put it frankly, hardly in the habit of using concepts of that type. Everyone in the Institute feels that his own work is not so much a departmental contribution to an end already defined as a moment or grade in the progressive self-definition of an organic whole.’

And Mark said–God forgive him, for he was young and shy and vain and timid, all in one–‘I do think that is so important. The elasticity of your organisation is one of the things that attracts me.’ After that, he had no further chance of bringing the Director to the point and whenever the slow, gentle voice ceased he found himself answering it in its own style, and apparently helpless to do otherwise despite the torturing recurrence of the question, ‘What are we both talking about?’ At the very end of the interview there came one moment of clarity. Mr Wither supposed that he, Mark, would find it convenient to join the NICE club: even for the next few days he would be freer as a member than as someone’s guest. Mark agreed and then flushed crimson like a small boy on learning that the easiest course was to become a life member at the cost of £200. He had not that amount in the bank. Of course if he had got the new job with its fifteen hundred a year, all would be well. But had he got it? Was there a job at all?

‘How silly,’ he said aloud, ‘I haven’t got my cheque book with me.’

A moment later he found himself on the stairs with Feverstone.

‘Well?’ asked Mark eagerly. Feverstone did not seem to hear him.

‘Well?’ repeated Mark. ‘When shall I know my fate? I mean, have I got the job?’

‘Hullo Guy!’ bawled Feverstone suddenly to a man in the hall beneath. Next moment he had trotted down to the foot of the stairs, grasped his friend warmly by the hand, and disappeared. Mark, following him more slowly, found himself in the hall, silent, alone, and self-conscious, among the groups and pairs of chattering men, who were all crossing it towards the big folding doors on his left.

It seemed to last long, this standing, this wondering what to do, this effort to look natural and not to catch the eyes of strangers. The noise and the agreeable smells which came from the folding doors made it obvious that people were going to lunch. Mark hesitated, uncertain of his own status. In the end, he decided that he couldn’t stand there looking like a fool any longer, and went in.

He had hoped that there would be several small tables at one of which he could have sat alone. But there was only a single long table, already so nearly filled that, after looking in vain for Feverstone, he had to sit down beside a stranger. ‘I suppose one sits where one likes?’ he murmured as he did so; but the stranger apparently did not hear. He was a bustling sort of man who was eating very quickly and talking at the same time to his neighbour on the other side.

‘That’s just it,’ he was saying. ‘As I told him, it makes no difference to me which way they settle it. I’ve no objection to the IJP people taking over the whole thing if that’s what the DD wants but what I dislike is one man being responsible for it when half the work is being done by someone else. As I said to him, you’ve now got three HD’s all tumbling over one another about some job that could really be done by a clerk. It’s becoming ridiculous. Look at what happened this morning.’ Conversation on these lines continued throughout the meal.

Although the food and the drinks were excellent, it was a relief to Mark when people began getting up from table. Following the general movement, he recrossed the hall and came into a large room furnished as a lounge where coffee was being served. Here at last he saw Feverstone. Indeed, it would have been difficult not to notice him for he was the centre of a group and laughing prodigiously. Mark wished to approach him, if only to find out whether he were expected to stay the night and, if so, whether a room had been assigned to him. But the knot of men round Feverstone was of that confidential kind which it is difficult to join. He moved towards one of the many tables and began turning over the glossy pages of an illustrated weekly. Every few seconds he looked up to see if there were any chance of getting a word with Feverstone alone. The fifth time he did so, he found himself looking into the face of one of his own colleagues, a Fellow of Bracton called William Hingest. The Progressive Element called him, though not to his face, Bill the Blizzard.

Hingest had not, as Curry anticipated, been present at the College Meeting and was hardly on speaking terms with Lord Feverstone. Mark realised with a certain awe that here was a man directly in touch with the NICE–one who started, so to speak, at a point beyond Feverstone. Hingest, who was a physical chemist, was one of the two scientists at Bracton who had a reputation outside England. I hope the reader has not been misled into supposing that the Fellows of Bracton were a specially distinguished body. It was certainly not the intention of the Progressive Element to elect mediocrities to fellowships, but their determination to elect ‘sound men’ cruelly limited their field of choice and, as Busby had once said, ‘You can’t have everything.’ Bill the Blizzard had an old-fashioned curly moustache in which white had almost, but not completely, triumphed over yellow, a large beak-like nose, and a bald head.

‘This is an unexpected pleasure,’ said Mark with a hint of formality. He was always a little afraid of Hingest.

‘Huh?’ grunted Bill. ‘Eh? Oh, it’s you, Studdock? Didn’t know they’d secured your services here.’

‘I was sorry not to see you at the College Meeting yesterday,’ said Mark.

This was a lie. The Progressive Element always found Hingest’s presence an embarrassment. As a scientist–and the only really eminent scientist they had–he was their rightful property; but he was that hateful anomaly, the wrong sort of scientist. Glossop, who was a classic, was his chief friend in College. He had the air (the ‘affectation’ Curry called it) of not attaching much importance to his own revolutionary discoveries in chemistry and of valuing himself much more on being a Hingest: the family was of almost mythical antiquity, ‘never contaminated,’ as its nineteenth-century historian had said, ‘by traitor, placeman or baronetcy’. He had given particular offence on the occasion of de Broglie’s visit to Edgestow. The Frenchman had spent his spare time exclusively in Bill the Blizzard’s society, but when an enthusiastic junior Fellow had thrown out a feeler about the rich feast of science which the two savants must have shared, Bill the Blizzard had appeared to search his memory for a moment and then replied that he didn’t think they had got onto that subject. ‘Gassing Almanac de Gotha nonsense, I suppose,’ was Curry’s comment, though not in Hingest’s presence.

‘Eh? What’s that? College Meeting?’ said the Blizzard. ‘What were they talking about?’

‘About the sale of Bragdon Wood.’

‘All nonsense,’ muttered the Blizzard.

‘I hope you would have agreed with the decision we came to.’

‘It made no difference what decision they came to.’

‘Oh!’ said Mark with some surprise.

‘It was all nonsense. The NICE would have had the Wood in any case. They had powers to compel a sale.’

‘What an extraordinary thing! I was given to understand they were going to Cambridge if we didn’t sell.’

Hingest sniffed loudly.

‘Not a word of truth in it. As to its being an extraordinary thing, that depends on what you mean. There’s nothing extraordinary in the Fellows of Bracton talking all afternoon about an unreal issue. And there’s nothing extraordinary in the fact that the NICE should wish, if possible, to hand over to Bracton the odium of turning the heart of England into a cross between an abortive American hotel and a glorified gas works. The only real puzzle is why the NICE should want that bit of land.’

‘I suppose we shall find out as things go on.’

‘You may. I shan’t.’

‘Oh?’ said Mark interrogatively.

‘I’ve had enough of it,’ said Hingest, lowering his voice, ‘I’m leaving tonight. I don’t know what you were doing at Bracton, but if it was any good I’d advise you to go back and stick to it.’

‘Really!’ said Mark. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Doesn’t matter for an old fellow like me,’ said Hingest, ‘but they could play the devil with you. Of course it all depends on what a man likes.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Mark, ‘I haven’t fully made up my mind.’ He had been taught to regard Hingest as a warped reactionary. ‘I don’t even know yet what my job would be if I stayed.’

‘What’s your subject?’

‘Sociology.’

‘Huh,’ said Hingest. ‘In that case I can soon point you out the man you’d be under. A fellow called Steele. Over there by the window, do you see?’

‘Perhaps you could introduce me.’

‘You’re determined to stay then?’

‘Well, I suppose I ought at least to see him.’

‘All right,’ said Hingest. ‘No business of mine.’ Then he added in a louder voice, ‘Steele.’

Steele turned round. He was a tall, unsmiling man with that kind of face which, though long and horse-like, has nevertheless rather thick and pouting lips.

‘This is Studdock,’ said Hingest, ‘the new man for your department.’ Then he turned away.

‘Oh,’ said Steele. Then after a pause, ‘Did he say my department?’

‘That’s what he said,’ replied Mark with an attempt at a smile, ‘but perhaps he’s got it wrong. I’m supposed to be a sociologist–if that throws any light on it.’

‘I’m HD for Sociology all right,’ said Steele, ‘but this is the first I’ve heard about you. Who told you you were to be there?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ said Mark, ‘the whole thing is rather vague. I’ve just had a talk with the Deputy Director but we didn’t actually go into any details.’

‘How did you manage to see him?’

‘Lord Feverstone introduced me.’

Steele whistled. ‘I say, Cosser,’ he called out to a freckle-faced man who was passing by, ‘listen to this. Feverstone has just unloaded this chap on our department. Taken him straight to the DD without saying a word to me about it. What do you think of that?’

‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Cosser, hardly glancing at Mark but looking very hard at Steele.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mark, a little more loudly and a little more stiffly than he had yet spoken. ‘Don’t be alarmed. I seem to have been put in rather a false position. There must have been some misunderstanding. As a matter of fact I am, at the moment, merely having a look round. I’m not at all certain that I intend to stay in any case.’

Neither of the other two took any notice of this last suggestion.

‘That’s Feverstone all over,’ said Cosser to Steele.

Steele turned to Mark. ‘I shouldn’t advise you to take much notice of what Lord Feverstone says here,’ he remarked. ‘This isn’t his business at all.’

‘All I object to,’ said Mark, wishing that he could prevent his face from turning red, ‘is being put in a false position. I only came over as an experiment. It is a matter of indifference to me whether I take a job in the NICE or not.’

‘You see,’ said Steele to Cosser, ‘there isn’t really any room for a man in our show–specially for someone who doesn’t know the work. Unless they put him on the UL.’

‘That’s right,’ said Cosser.

‘Mr Studdock, I think,’ said a new voice at Mark’s elbow, a treble voice which seemed disproportionate to the huge hill of a man whom he saw when he turned his head. He recognised the speaker at once. His dark, smooth face and black hair were unmistakable, and so was the foreign accent. This was Professor Filostrato, the great physiologist, whom Mark had sat next to at a dinner about two years before. He was fat to that degree which is comic on the stage, but the effect was not funny in real life. Mark was charmed that such a man should have remembered him.

‘I am very glad you have come to join us,’ said Filostrato taking hold of Mark’s arm and gently piloting him away from Steele and Cosser.

‘To tell you the truth,’ said Mark, ‘I’m not sure that I have. I was brought over by Feverstone but he has disappeared, and Steele–I’d have been in his Department I suppose–doesn’t seem to know anything about me.’

‘Bah! Steele!’ said the Professor. ‘That is all a bagatelle. He get too big for his boots. He will be put in his place one of these days. It may be you who will put him. I have read all your work, si si. Do not consider him.’

‘I have a strong objection to being put in a false position–’ began Mark.

‘Listen, my friend,’ interrupted Filostrato, ‘you must put all such ideas out of your head. The first thing to realise is that the NICE is serious. It is nothing less than the existence of the human race that depends on our work: our real work, you comprehend? You will find frictions and impertinences among this canaglia, this rabble. They are no more to be regarded than your dislike of a brother officer when the battle is at its crisis.’

‘As long as I’m given something to do that is worth doing,’ said Mark, ‘I shouldn’t allow anything of that sort to interfere with it.’

‘Yes, yes, that is right. The work is more important than you can yet understand. You will see. These Steeles and Feverstones –they are of no consequence. As long as you have the good will of the Deputy Director, you snap your fingers at them. You need listen to no one but him, you comprehend? Ah–and there is one other. Do not have the Fairy for your enemy. For the rest–you laugh at them.’

‘The Fairy?’

‘Yes. Her they call the Fairy. Oh my God, a terrible Inglesaccia! She is the head of our police, the Institutional Police. Ecco, she come. I will present you. Miss Hardcastle, permit that I present to you Mr Studdock.’

Mark found himself writhing from the stoker’s or carter’s hand-grip of a big woman in a black, short-skirted uniform. Despite a bust that would have done credit to a Victorian barmaid, she was rather thickly built than fat and her iron-grey hair was cropped short. Her face was square, stern and pale, and her voice deep. A smudge of lipstick laid on with violent inattention to the real shape of her mouth was her only concession to fashion and she rolled or chewed a long black cheroot, unlit, between her teeth. As she talked she had a habit of removing this, staring intently at the mixture of lipstick and saliva on its mangled end, and then replacing it more firmly than before. She sat down immediately in a chair close to where Mark was standing, flung her right leg over one of the arms, and fixed him with a gaze of cold intimacy.

Clickclack, distinct in the silence, where Jane stood waiting, came the tread of the person on the other side of the wall. Then the door opened and Jane found herself facing a tall woman of about her own age. This person looked at her with keen, non-committal eyes.

‘Does a Miss Ironwood live here?’ said Jane.

‘Yes,’ said the other girl, neither opening the door any further nor standing aside.

‘I want to see her, please,’ said Jane.

‘Have you an appointment?’ said the tall woman.

‘Well, not exactly,’ said Jane. ‘I was directed here by Dr Dimble who knows Miss Ironwood. He said I shouldn’t need an appointment.’

‘Oh, if you’re from Dr Dimble that is another matter,’ said the woman. ‘Come in. Now wait a moment while I attend to this lock. That’s better. Now we’re all right. There’s not room for two on this path so you must excuse me if I go first.’

The woman led her along a brick path beside a wall on which fruit trees were growing, and then to the left along a mossy path with gooseberry bushes on each side. Then came a little lawn with a see-saw in the middle of it, and beyond that a greenhouse. Here they found themselves in the sort of hamlet that sometimes occurs in the purlieus of a large garden–walking in fact down a little street which had a barn and a stable on one side and, on the other, a second greenhouse, and a potting shed and a pigstye–inhabited, as the grunts and the not wholly agreeable smell informed her. After that were narrow paths across a vegetable garden that seemed to be on a fairly steep hillside, and then, rose bushes, all stiff and prickly in their winter garb. At one place, they were going along a path made of single planks. This reminded Jane of something. It was a very large garden. It was like–like–yes, now she had it: it was like the garden in Peter Rabbit. Or was it like the garden in the Romance of the Rose? No, not in the least like really. Or like Klingsor’s garden? Or the garden in Alice? Or like the garden on the top of some Mesopotamian ziggurat which had probably given rise to the whole legend of Paradise? Or simply like all walled gardens? Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man’s point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women’s dreams. Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way? A sentence rose to her memory. ‘The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.’ Where on earth had she read that? And, incidentally, what frightful nonsense she had been thinking for the last minute or so! She shook off all these ideas about gardens and determined to pull herself together. A curious feeling that she was now on hostile, or at least alien, ground warned her to keep all her wits about her. At that moment, they suddenly emerged from between plantations of rhododendron and laurel, and found themselves at a small side door, flanked by a water butt, in the long wall of a large house. Just as they did so a window clapped shut upstairs.

A minute or two later Jane was sitting waiting in a large sparely furnished room with a shut stove to warm it. Most of the floor was bare, and the walls, above the waist-high wainscotting, were of greyish white plaster, so that the whole effect was faintly austere and conventual. The tall woman’s tread died away in the passages and the room became very quiet when it had done so. Occasionally the cawing of rooks could be heard. ‘I’ve let myself in for it now,’ thought Jane. ‘I shall have to tell this woman that dream and she’ll ask all sorts of questions.’ She considered herself, in general, a modern person who could talk without embarrassment of anything, but it began to look quite different as she sat in that room. All sorts of secret reservations in her programme of frankness–things which, she now realised, she had set apart as never to be told –came creeping back into consciousness. It was surprising that very few of them were connected with sex. ‘In dentists’,’ said Jane, ‘they at least leave illustrated papers in the waiting room.’ She got up and opened the one book that lay on the table in the middle of the room. Instantly her eyes lit on the following words: ‘The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the–’

At that moment the door was suddenly opened. Jane turned crimson as she shut the book and looked up. The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that–so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on a horse, and so divinely tall.

‘Is–is Miss Ironwood in?’ said Jane.

‘Are you Mrs Studdock?’ said the girl.

‘Yes,’ said Jane.

‘I will bring you to her at once,’ said the other. ‘We have been expecting you. My name is Camilla–Camilla Denniston.’

Jane followed her. From the narrowness and plainness of the passages, Jane judged that they were still in the back parts of the house, and that, if so, it must be a very large house indeed. They went a long way before Camilla knocked at a door and stood aside for Jane to enter, after saying in a low, clear voice (‘like a servant’, Jane thought), ‘She has come.’ And Jane went in; and there was Miss Ironwood dressed all in black and sitting with her hands folded on her knees, just as Jane had seen her when dreaming–if she were dreaming–last night in the flat.

‘Sit down, young lady,’ said Miss Ironwood.

The hands which were folded on her knees were very big and bony though they did not suggest coarseness, and even when seated Miss Ironwood was extremely tall. Everything about her was big–the nose, the unsmiling lips, and the grey eyes. She was perhaps nearer sixty than fifty. There was an atmosphere in the room which Jane found uncongenial.

‘What is your name, young lady?’ said Miss Ironwood, taking up a pencil and a notebook.

‘Jane Studdock.’

‘Are you married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does your husband know you have come to us?’

‘No.’

‘And your age, if you please?’

‘Twenty-three.’

‘And now,’ said Miss Ironwood, ‘what have you to tell me?’

Jane took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been having bad dreams and–and feeling depressed lately,’ she said.

‘What were the dreams?’ asked Miss Ironwood.

Jane’s narrative–she did not do it very well–took some time. While she was speaking she kept her eyes fixed on Miss Ironwood’s large hands and her black skirt and the pencil and the notebook. And that was why she suddenly stopped. For as she proceeded she saw Miss Ironwood’s hand cease to write and the fingers wrap themselves round the pencil: immensely strong fingers they seemed. And every moment they tightened, till the knuckles grew white and the veins stood out on the backs of the hands and at last, as if under the influence of some stifled emotion, they broke the pencil in two. It was then that Jane stopped in astonishment and looked up at Miss Ironwood’s face. The wide grey eyes were still looking at her with no change of expression.

‘Pray continue, young lady,’ said Miss Ironwood.

Jane resumed her story. When she had finished Miss Ironwood put a number of questions. After that she became silent for so long that Jane said,

‘Is there, do you think, anything very seriously wrong with me?’

‘There is nothing wrong with you,’ said Miss Ironwood.

‘You mean it will go away?’

‘I have no means of telling. I should say probably not.’

Disappointment shadowed Jane’s face.

‘Then–can’t anything be done about it? They were horrible dreams–horribly vivid, not like dreams at all.’

‘I can quite understand that.’

‘Is it something that can’t be cured?’

‘The reason you cannot be cured is that you are not ill.’

‘But there must be something wrong. It’s surely not natural to have dreams like that.’

There was a pause. ‘I think,’ said Miss Ironwood, ‘I had better tell you the whole truth.’

‘Yes, do,’ said Jane in a strained voice. The other’s words had frightened her.

‘And I will begin by saying this,’ continued Miss Ironwood. ‘You are a more important person than you imagine.’

Jane said nothing, but thought inwardly, ‘She is humouring me. She thinks I am mad.’

‘What was your maiden name?’ asked Miss Ironwood.

‘Tudor,’ said Jane. At any other moment she would have said it rather self-consciously, for she was very anxious not to be supposed vain of her ancient ancestry.

‘The Warwickshire branch of the family?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you ever read a little book–it is only forty pages long–written by an ancestor of yours about the battle of Worcester?’

‘No. Father had a copy–the only copy, I think he said. But I never read it. It was lost when the house was broken up after his death.’

‘Your father was mistaken in thinking it the only copy. There are at least two others: one is in America, and the other is in this house.’

‘Well?’

‘Your ancestor gave a full and, on the whole, correct account of the battle, which he says he completed on the same day on which it was fought. But he was not at it. He was in York at the time.’

Jane, who had not really been following this, looked at Miss Ironwood.

‘If he was speaking the truth,’ said Miss Ironwood, ‘and we believe that he was, he dreamed it. Do you understand?’

‘Dreamed about the battle?’

‘Yes. But dreamed it right. He saw the real battle in his dream.’

‘I don’t see the connection.’

‘Vision–the power of dreaming realities–is sometimes hereditary,’ said Miss Ironwood.

Something seemed to be interfering with Jane’s breathing. She felt a sense of injury–this was just the sort of thing she hated: something out of the past, something irrational and utterly uncalled for, coming up from its den and interfering with her.

‘Can it be proved?’ she asked. ‘I mean, we have only his word for it.’

‘We have your dreams,’ said Miss Ironwood. Her voice, always grave, had become stern. A fantastic thought crossed Jane’s mind. Could this old woman have some idea that one ought not to call even one’s remote ancestors liars?

‘My dreams?’ she said a little sharply.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Ironwood.

‘What do you mean?’

‘My opinion is that you have seen real things in your dreams. You have seen Alcasan as he really sat in the condemned cell, and you have seen a visitor whom he really had.’

‘But–but–oh, this is ridiculous,’ said Jane. ‘That part was a mere coincidence. The rest was just a nightmare. It was all impossible. He screwed off his head, I tell you. And they–dug up the horrible old man. They made him come to life.’

‘There are some confusions there, no doubt. But in my opinion there are realities behind even those episodes.’

‘I am afraid I don’t believe in that sort of thing,’ said Jane coldly.

‘Your upbringing makes it natural that you should not,’ replied Miss Ironwood. ‘Unless, of course, you have discovered for yourself that you have a tendency to dream real things.’

Jane thought of the book on the table which she had apparently remembered before she saw it, and then there was Miss Ironwood’s own appearance–that too she had seen before she saw it. But it must be nonsense.

‘Can you then do nothing for me?’

‘I can tell you the truth,’ said Miss Ironwood. ‘I have tried to do so.’

‘I mean, can you not stop it–cure it?’

‘Vision is not a disease.’

‘But I don’t want it,’ said Jane passionately. ‘I must stop it. I hate this sort of thing.’ Miss Ironwood said nothing.

‘Don’t you even know anyone who could stop it?’ said Jane. ‘Can’t you recommend anyone?’

‘If you go to an ordinary psychotherapist,’ said Miss Ironwood, ‘he will proceed on the assumption that the dreams merely reflect your own sub-conscious. He would try to treat you. I do not know what would be the results of treatment based on that assumption. I am afraid they might be very serious. And–it would certainly not remove the dreams.’

‘But what is this all about?’ said Jane. ‘I want to lead an ordinary life. I want to do my own work. It’s unbearable! Why should I be selected for this horrible thing?’

‘The answer to that is known only to authorities much higher than myself.’

There was a short silence. Jane made a vague movement and said, rather sulkily, ‘Well, if you can do nothing for me, perhaps I’d better be going–’ Then suddenly she added, ‘But how can you know all this? I mean–what realities are you talking about?’

‘I think,’ said Miss Ironwood, ‘that you yourself have probably more reason to suspect the truth of your dreams than you have yet told me. If not, you soon will have. In the meantime, I will answer your question. We know your dreams to be partly true because they fit in with information we already possess. It was because he saw their importance that Dr Dimble sent you to us.’

‘Do you mean he sent me here not to be cured but to give information?’ said Jane. The idea fitted in with things she had observed in his manner when she first told him.

‘Exactly.’

‘I wish I had known that a little earlier,’ said Jane coldly, and now definitely getting up to go. ‘I’m afraid it has been a misunderstanding. I had imagined Dr Dimble was trying to help me.’

‘He was. But he was also trying to do something more important at the same time.’

‘I suppose I should be grateful for being considered at all,’ said Jane drily, ‘and how, exactly, was I to be helped by– by all this sort of thing?’ The attempt at icy irony collapsed as she said these last words and red, undisguised anger rushed back into her face. In some ways she was very young.

‘Young lady,’ said Miss Ironwood, ‘You do not at all realise the seriousness of this matter. The things you have seen concern something compared with which the happiness, or even the life, of you and me, is of no importance. I must beg you to face the situation. You cannot get rid of your gift. You can try to suppress it, but you will fail, and you will be very badly frightened. On the other hand, you can put it at our disposal. If you do so, you will be much less frightened in the long run and you will be helping to save the human race from a very great disaster. Or thirdly, you may tell someone else about it. If you do that, I warn you that you will almost certainly fall into the hands of other people who are at least as anxious as we to make use of your faculty and who will care no more about your life and happiness than about those of a fly. The people you have seen in your dreams are real people. It is not at all unlikely that they know you have, involuntarily, been spying on them. And, if so, they will not rest till they have got hold of you. I would advise you, even for your own sake, to join our side.’

‘You keep on talking of We and Us. Are you some kind of company?’

‘Yes. You may call it a company.’

Jane had been standing for the last few minutes; and she had almost been believing what she heard. Then suddenly, all her repugnance came over her again–all her wounded vanity, her resentment of the meaningless complication in which she seemed to be caught, and her general dislike of the mysterious and the unfamiliar. At that moment, nothing seemed to matter but to get out of that room and away from the grave, patient voice of Miss Ironwood. ‘She’s made me worse already,’ thought Jane, still regarding herself as a patient. Aloud, she said,

‘I must go home now. I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.’

Mark discovered in the end that he was expected to stay, at least for the night, and when he went up to dress for dinner he was feeling more cheerful. This was partly due to a whisky and soda taken with ‘Fairy’ Hardcastle immediately before and partly to the fact that by a glance at the mirror he saw that he could now remove the objectionable piece of cotton wool from his lip. The bedroom with its bright fire and its private bathroom attached had also something to do with it. Thank goodness, he had allowed Jane to talk him into buying that new dress suit! It looked very well, laid out on the bed; and he saw now that the old one really would not have done. But what had reassured him most of all was his conversation with the Fairy.

It would be misleading to say that he liked her. She had indeed excited in him all the distaste which a young man feels at the proximity of something rankly, even insolently sexed, and at the same time wholly unattractive. And something in her cold eye had told him that she was well aware of this reaction and found it amusing. She had told him a good many smoking-room stories. Often before now Mark had shuddered at the clumsy efforts of the emancipated female to indulge in this kind of humour, but his shudders had always been consoled by a sense of superiority. This time he had the feeling that he was the butt; this woman was exasperating male prudery for her diversion. Later on, she drifted into police reminiscences. In spite of some initial scepticism, Mark was gradually horrified by her assumption that about thirty per cent of our murder trials ended by the hanging of an innocent man. There were details, too, about the execution shed which had not occurred to him before.

All this was disagreeable. But it was made up for by the deliciously esoteric character of the conversation. Several times that day he had been made to feel himself an outsider; that feeling completely disappeared while Miss Hardcastle was talking to him. He had the sense of getting in. Miss Hardcastle had apparently lived an exciting life. She had been, at different times, a suffragette, a pacifist, and a British Fascist. She had been man-handled by the police and imprisoned. On the other hand, she had met Prime Ministers, Dictators and famous film stars; all her history was secret history. She knew from both ends what a police force could do and what it could not, and there were in her opinion very few things it could not do. ‘Specially now,’ she said. ‘Here in the Institute, we’re backing the crusade against Red Tape.’

Mark gathered that, for the Fairy, the police side of the Institute was the really important side. It existed to relieve the ordinary executive of what might be called all sanitary cases–a category which ranged from vaccination to charges of unnatural vice–from which, as she pointed out, it was only a step to bringing in all cases of blackmail. As regards crime in general, they had already popularised in the press the idea that the Institute should be allowed to experiment pretty largely in the hope of discovering how far humane, remedial treatment could be substituted for the old notion of ‘retributive’ or ‘vindictive’ punishment. That was where a lot of legal Red Tape stood in their way. ‘But there are only two papers we don’t control,’ said the Fairy. ‘And we’ll smash them. You’ve got to get the ordinary man into the state in which he says “Sadism” automatically when he hears the word Punishment.’ And then one would have carte blanche. Mark did not immediately follow this. But the Fairy pointed out that what had hampered every English police force up to date was precisely the idea of deserved punishment. For desert was always finite: you could do so much to the criminal and no more. Remedial treatment, on the other hand, need have no fixed limit; it could go on till it had effected a cure, and those who were carrying it out would decide when that was. And if cure were humane and desirable, how much more prevention? Soon anyone who had ever been in the hands of the police at all would come under the control of the NICE; in the end, every citizen. ‘And that’s where you and I come in, Sonny,’ added the Fairy, tapping Mark’s chest with her forefinger. ‘There’s no distinction in the long run between police work and Sociology. You and I’ve got to work hand in hand.’

This had brought Mark back to his doubts as to whether he were really being given a job and, if so, what it was. The Fairy had warned him that Steele was a dangerous man. ‘There are two people you want to be very cautious about,’ she said. ‘One is Frost and the other is old Wither.’ But she had laughed at his fears in general. ‘You’re in all right, Sonny,’ she said. ‘Only don’t be too particular about what exactly you’ve got to do. You’ll find out as it comes along. Wither doesn’t like people who try to pin him down. There’s no good saying you’ve come here to do this and you won’t do that. The game’s too fast just at present for that sort of thing. You’ve got to make yourself useful. And don’t believe everything you’re told.’

At dinner Mark found himself seated next to Hingest.

‘Well,’ said Hingest, ‘have they finally roped you into it, eh?’

‘I rather believe they have,’ said Mark.

‘Because,’ said Hingest, ‘if you thought the better of it, I’m motoring back tonight and I could give you a lift.’

‘You haven’t yet told me why you are leaving us yourself,’ said Mark.

‘Oh well, it all depends what a man likes. If you enjoy the society of that Italian eunuch and the mad parson and that Hardcastle girl–her grandmother would have boxed her ears if she were alive–of course, there’s nothing more to be said.’

‘I suppose it’s hardly to be judged on purely social grounds–I mean, it’s something more than a club.’

‘Eh? Judged? Never judged anything in my life, to the best of my knowledge, except at a flower show. It’s all a question of taste. I came here because I thought it had something to do with science. Now that I find it’s something more like a political conspiracy, I shall go home. I’m too old for that kind of thing, and if I wanted to join a conspiracy, this one wouldn’t be my choice.’

‘You mean, I suppose, that the element of social planning doesn’t appeal to you? I can quite understand that it doesn’t fit in with your work as it does with sciences like Sociology, but–’

‘There are no sciences like Sociology. And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police run by a middle-aged virago who doesn’t wear corsets and a scheme for taking away his farm and his shop and his children from every Englishman, I’d let chemistry go to the devil and take up gardening again.’

‘I think I do understand the sentiment that still attaches to the small man, but when you come to study the reality as I have to do–’

‘I should want to pull it to bits and put something else in its place. Of course. That’s what happens when you study men: you find mare’s nests. I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything which makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors.’

‘Bill!’ said Fairy Hardcastle suddenly, from the far side of the table, in a voice so loud that even he could not ignore it. Hingest fixed his eyes upon her and his face grew a dark red.

‘Is it true,’ bawled the Fairy, ‘that you’re going off by car immediately after dinner?’

‘Yes, Miss Hardcastle, it is.’

‘I was wondering if you could give me a lift.’

‘I should be happy to do so,’ said Hingest in a voice not intended to deceive, ‘if we are going in the same direction.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I am going to Edgestow.’

‘Will you be passing Brenstock?’

‘No. I leave the by-pass at the crossroads just beyond Lord Holywood’s front gate and go down what they used to call Potter’s Lane.’

‘Oh, damn! No good to me. I may as well wait till the morning.’

After this Mark found himself engaged by his left-hand neighbour and did not see Bill the Blizzard again until he met him in the hall after dinner. He was in his overcoat and just ready to go to his car.

He began talking as he opened the door and thus Mark was drawn into accompanying him across the gravel sweep to where his car was parked.

‘Take my advice, Studdock,’ he said. ‘Or at least think it over. I don’t believe in Sociology myself, but you’ve got quite a decent career before you if you stay at Bracton. You’ll do yourself no good by getting mixed up with the NICE–and, by God, you’ll do nobody else any good either.’

‘I suppose there are two views about everything,’ said Mark.

‘Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one. But it’s no affair of mine. Good night.’

‘Good night, Hingest,’ said Mark. The other started up the car and drove off.

There was a touch of frost in the air. The shoulder of Orion, though Mark did not know even that earnest constellation, flamed at him above the tree-tops. He felt a hesitation about going back into the house. It might mean further talk with interesting and influential people; but it might also mean feeling once more an outsider, hanging about and watching conversations which he could not join. Anyway, he was tired. Strolling along the front of the house he came presently to another and smaller door by which, he judged, one could enter without passing through the hall or the public rooms. He did so, and went upstairs for the night immediately.

Camilla Denniston showed Jane out–not by the little door in the wall at which she had come in but by the main gate which opened on the same road about a hundred yards further on. Yellow light from a westward gap in the grey sky was pouring a short-lived and chilly brightness over the whole landscape. Jane had been ashamed to show either temper or anxiety before Camilla; as a result both had in reality been diminished when she said goodbye. But a settled distaste for what she called ‘all this nonsense’ remained. She was not indeed sure that it was nonsense; but she had already resolved to treat it as if it were. She would not get ‘mixed up in it’, would not be drawn in. One had to live one’s own life. To avoid entanglements and interferences had long been one of her first principles. Even when she had discovered that she was going to marry Mark if he asked her, the thought ‘but I must still keep up my own life’ had arisen at once and had never for more than a few minutes at a stretch been absent from her mind. Some resentment against love itself, and therefore against Mark, for thus invading her life, remained. She was at least very vividly aware how much a woman gives up in getting married. Mark seemed to her insufficiently aware of this. Though she did not formulate it, this fear of being invaded and entangled was the deepest ground of her determination not to have a child–or not for a long time yet. One had one’s own life to live.

Almost as soon as she got back to the flat the telephone went. ‘Is that you, Jane?’ came a voice. ‘It’s me, Margaret Dimble. Such a dreadful thing’s happened. I’ll tell you when I come. I’m too angry to speak at the moment. Have you a spare bed by any chance? What? Mr Studdock’s away? Not a bit, if you don’t mind. I’ve sent Cecil to sleep in College. You’re sure it won’t be a nuisance? Thanks most awfully. I’ll be round in half an hour.’

That Hideous Strength

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