Читать книгу That Hideous Strength - Клайв Льюис, Клайв Стейплз Льюис, C. S. Lewis - Страница 9

‘This is a blow!’ said Curry standing in front of the fireplace in his magnificent rooms which overlooked Newton. They were the best set in College.

‘Something from NO?’ said James Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. NO, which stood for Non-Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton. His election to this post, some fifteen years before, had been one of the earliest triumphs of the Progressive Element. By dint of saying that the College needed ‘new blood’ and must be shaken out of its ‘academic grooves’, they had succeeded in bringing in an elderly civil servant who had certainly never been contaminated by academic weaknesses since he left his rather obscure Cambridge college in the previous century, but who had written a monumental report on National Sanitation. The subject had, if anything, rather recommended him to the Progressive Element. They regarded it as a slap in the face for the dilettanti and Diehards, who replied by christening their new Warden Non-Olet. But gradually even Place’s supporters had adopted the name. For Place had not answered their expectations, having turned out to be a dyspeptic with a taste for philately, whose voice was so seldom heard that some of the junior Fellows did not know what it sounded like.

‘Yes, blast him,’ said Curry, ‘wishes to see me on a most important matter as soon as I can conveniently call on him after dinner.’

‘That means,’ said the Bursar, ‘that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business.’

‘I don’t give a damn for that,’ said Curry. ‘How can you go back on a Resolution? It isn’t that. But it’s enough to muck up the whole evening.’

‘Only your evening,’ said Feverstone. ‘Don’t forget to leave out that very special brandy of yours before you go.’

‘Jewel! Good God!’ said Busby, burying his left hand in his beard.

‘I was rather sorry for old Jewel,’ said Mark. His motives for saying this were very mixed. To do him justice, it must be said that the quite unexpected and apparently unnecessary brutality of Feverstone’s behaviour to the old man had disgusted him. And then, too, the whole idea of his debt to Feverstone in the matter of his own fellowship had been rankling all day. Who was this man Feverstone? But paradoxically, even while he felt that the time had come for asserting his own independence and showing that his agreement with all the methods of the Progressive Element must not be taken for granted, he also felt that a little independence would raise him to a higher position within that Element itself. If the idea ‘Feverstone will think all the more of you for showing your teeth’ had occurred to him in so many words, he would probably have rejected it as servile; but it didn’t.

‘Sorry for Jewel?’ said Curry wheeling round. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew what he was like in his prime.’

‘I agree with you,’ said Feverstone to Mark, ‘but then I take the Clausewitz view. Total war is the most humane in the long run. I shut him up instantaneously. Now that he’s got over the shock, he’s quite enjoying himself because I’ve fully confirmed everything he’s been saying about the Younger Generation for the last forty years. What was the alternative? To let him drivel on until he’d worked himself into a coughing fit or a heart attack, and give him in addition the disappointment of finding that he was treated civilly.’

‘That’s a point of view, certainly,’ said Mark.

‘Damn it all,’ continued Feverstone, ‘no man likes to have his stock in trade taken away. What would poor Curry, here, do if the Die-hards one day all refused to do any Die-harding? Othello’s occupation would be gone.’

‘Dinner is served, Sir,’ said Curry’s ‘Shooter’–for that is what they call a College servant at Bracton.

‘That’s all rot, Dick,’ said Curry as they sat down. ‘There’s nothing I should like better than to see the end of all these Die-hards and obstructionists and be able to get on with the job. You don’t suppose I like having to spend all my time merely getting the road clear?’ Mark noticed that his host was a little nettled at Lord Feverstone’s banter. The latter had an extremely virile and infectious laugh. Mark felt he was beginning to like him.

‘The job being…?’ said Feverstone, not exactly glancing, much less winking, at Mark, but making him feel that he was somehow being included in the fun.

‘Well, some of us have got work of our own to do,’ replied Curry, dropping his voice to give it a more serious tone, almost as some people drop their voices to speak of medical or religious matters.

‘I never knew you were that sort of person,’ said Feverstone.

‘That’s the worst of the whole system,’ said Curry. ‘In a place like this you’ve either got to be content to see everything go to pieces–I mean, become stagnant–or else to sacrifice your own career as a scholar to all these infernal college politics. One of these days I shall chuck that side of it and get down to my book. The stuff’s all there, you know, Feverstone. One long vacation clear and I really believe I could put it into shape.’

Mark, who had never seen Curry baited before, was beginning to enjoy himself.

‘I see,’ said Feverstone. ‘In order to keep the place going as a learned society, all the best brains in it have to give up doing anything about learning.’

‘Exactly!’ said Curry. ‘That’s just–’ and then stopped, uncertain whether he was being taken quite seriously. Feverstone burst into laughter. The Bursar who had up till now been busily engaged in eating, wiped his beard carefully and spoke seriously.

‘All that’s very well in theory,’ he said, ‘but I think Curry’s quite right. Supposing he resigned his office as Sub-Warden and retired into his cave. He might give us a thundering good book on economics–’

‘Economics?’ said Feverstone lifting his eyebrows.

‘I happen to be a military historian, James,’ said Curry. He was often somewhat annoyed at the difficulty which his colleagues seemed to find in remembering what particular branch of learning he had been elected to pursue.

‘I mean military history, of course,’ said Busby. ‘As I say, he might give us a thundering good book on military history. But it would be superseded in twenty years. Whereas the work he is actually doing for the College will benefit it for centuries. This whole business, now, of bringing the NICE to Edgestow. What about a thing like that, Feverstone? I’m not speaking merely of the financial side of it, though as Bursar I naturally rate that pretty high. But think of the new life, the awakening of new vision, the stirring of dormant impulses. What would any book on economics–’

‘Military history,’ said Feverstone gently, but this time Busby did not hear him.

‘What would any book on economics be, compared with a thing like that?’ he continued. ‘I look upon it as the greatest triumph of practical idealism that this century has yet seen.’

The good wine was beginning to do its good office. We have all known the kind of clergyman who tends to forget his clerical collar after the third glass; but Busby’s habit was the reverse. It was after the third glass that he began to remember his collar. As wine and candlelight loosened his tongue, the parson still latent within him after thirty years’ apostasy began to wake into a strange galvanic life.

‘As you chaps know,’ he said, ‘I make no claim to orthodoxy. But if religion is understood in the deepest sense, I have no hesitation in saying that Curry, by bringing the NICE to Edgestow, has done more for it in one year than Jewel has done in his whole life.’

‘Well,’ said Curry modestly, ‘that’s rather the sort of thing one had hoped. I mightn’t put it exactly as you do, James–’

‘No, no,’ said the Bursar, ‘of course not. We all have our different languages; but we all really mean the same thing.’

‘Has anyone discovered,’ asked Feverstone, ‘what, precisely, the NICE is, or what it intends to do?’

Curry looked at him with a slightly startled expression. ‘That comes oddly from you, Dick,’ he said. ‘I thought you were in on it, yourself.’

‘Isn’t it a little naïf,’ said Feverstone, ‘to suppose that being in on a thing involves any distinct knowledge of its official programme?’

‘Oh well, if you mean details,’ said Curry, and then stopped.

‘Surely, Feverstone,’ said Busby, ‘you’re making a great mystery about nothing. I should have thought the objects of the NICE were pretty clear. It’s the first attempt to take applied science seriously from the national point of view. The difference in scale between it and anything we’ve had before amounts to a difference in kind. The buildings alone, the apparatus alone –! Think what it has done already for industry. Think how it is going to mobilise all the talent of the country; and not only scientific talent in the narrower sense. Fifteen departmental directors at fifteen thousand a year each! Its own legal staff! Its own police, I’m told! Its own permanent staff of architects, surveyors, engineers! The thing’s stupendous!’

‘Careers for our sons,’ said Feverstone. ‘I see.’

‘What do you mean by that, Lord Feverstone?’ said Busby putting down his glass.

‘Lord!’ said Feverstone, his eyes laughing, ‘what a brick to drop. I’d quite forgotten you had a family, James.’

‘I agree with James,’ said Curry, who had been waiting somewhat impatiently to speak. ‘The NICE marks the beginning of a new era–the really scientific era. Up to now, everything has been haphazard. This is going to put science itself on a scientific basis. There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting every day and they’ve got a wonderful gadget–I was shown the model last time I was in town–by which the findings of each committee print themselves off in their own little compartment on the Analytical Notice-Board every half hour. Then, that report slides itself into the right position where it’s connected up by little arrows with all the relevant parts of the other reports. A glance at the Board shows you the policy of the whole Institute actually taking shape under your own eyes. There’ll be a staff of at least twenty experts at the top of the building working this Notice-Board in a room rather like the Tube control rooms. It’s a marvellous gadget. The different kinds of business all come out in the Board in different coloured lights. It must have cost half a million. They call it a Pragmatometer.’

‘And there,’ said Busby, ‘you see again what the Institute is already doing for the country. Pragmatometry is going to be a big thing. Hundreds of people are going in for it. Why this Analytical Notice-Board will probably be out of date before the building is finished!’

‘Yes, by Jove,’ said Feverstone, ‘and NO himself told me this morning that the sanitation of the Institute was going to be something quite out of the ordinary.’

‘So it is,’ said Busby sturdily. ‘I don’t see why one should think that unimportant.’

‘And what do you think about it, Studdock?’ said Feverstone.

‘I think,’ said Mark, ‘that James touched on the most important point when he said that it would have its own legal staff and its own police. I don’t give a fig for Pragmatometers and sanitation de luxe. The real thing is that this time we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state, just as war has been backed by the whole force of the state in the past. One hopes, of course, that it’ll find out more than the old free-lance science did; but what’s certain is that it can do more.’

‘Damn,’ said Curry, looking at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go and talk to NO now. If you people would like any brandy when you’ve finished your wine, it’s in that cupboard. You’ll find balloon glasses on the shelf above. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’re not going, James, are you?’

‘Yes,’ said the Bursar. ‘I’m going to bed early. Don’t let me break up the party for you two. I’ve been on my legs nearly all day, you know. A man’s a fool to hold any office in this College. Continual anxiety. Crushing responsibility. And then you get people suggesting that all the little research-beetles who never poke their noses outside their libraries and laboratories are the real workers! I’d like to see Glossop or any of that lot face the sort of day’s work I’ve had today. Curry, my lad, you’d have had an easier life if you’d stuck to economics.’

‘I’ve told you before,’ began Curry, but the Bursar, now risen, was bending over Lord Feverstone and telling him a funny story.

As soon as the two men had got out of the room, Lord Feverstone looked steadily at Mark for some seconds with an enigmatic expression. Then he chuckled. Then the chuckle developed into a laugh. He threw his lean, muscular body well back into his chair and laughed louder and louder. He was very infectious in his laughter and Mark found himself laughing too–quite sincerely and even helplessly, like a child. ‘Pragmatometers–palatial lavatories–practical idealism,’ gasped Feverstone. It was a moment of extraordinary liberation for Mark. All sorts of things about Curry and Busby which he had not previously noticed, or else, noticing, had slurred over in his reverence for the Progressive Element, came back to his mind. He wondered how he could have been so blind to the funny side of them.

‘It really is rather devastating,’ said Feverstone when he had partially recovered, ‘that the people one has to use for getting things done should talk such drivel the moment you ask them about the things themselves.’

‘And yet they are, in a sense, the brains of Bracton,’ said Mark.

‘Good Lord no! Glossop and Bill the Blizzard, and even old Jewel, have ten times their intelligence.’

‘I didn’t know you took that view.’

‘I think Glossop, etc., are quite mistaken. I think their idea of culture and knowledge and what not is unrealistic. I don’t think it fits the world we’re living in. It’s a mere fantasy. But it is quite a clear idea and they follow it out consistently. They know what they want. But our two poor friends, though they can be persuaded to take the right train, or even to drive it, haven’t a ghost of a notion where it’s going to, or why. They’ll sweat blood to bring the NICE to Edgestow: that’s why they’re indispensable. But what the point of the NICE is, what the point of anything is–ask them another. Pragmatometry! Fifteen sub-directors!’

‘Well, perhaps I’m in the same boat myself.’

‘Not at all. You saw the point at once. I knew you would. I’ve read everything you’ve written since you were in for your fellowship. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Mark was silent. The giddy sensation of being suddenly whirled up from one plane of secrecy to another, coupled with the growing effect of Curry’s excellent port, prevented him from speaking.

‘I want you to come into the Institute,’ said Feverstone.

‘You mean–to leave Bracton?’

‘That makes no odds. Anyway, I don’t suppose there’s anything you want here. We’d make Curry Warden when NO retires and–’

‘They were talking of making you Warden.’

‘God!’ said Feverstone and stared. Mark realised that from Feverstone’s point of view this was like the suggestion that he should become Headmaster of a small idiots’ school, and thanked his stars that his own remark had not been uttered in a tone that made it obviously serious. Then they both laughed again.

‘You,’ said Feverstone, ‘would be absolutely wasted as Warden. That’s the job for Curry. He’ll do it very well. You want a man who loves business and wire-pulling for their own sake and doesn’t really ask what it’s all about. If he did, he’d start bringing in his own–well, I suppose he’d call them “ideas”. As it is, we’ve only got to tell him that he thinks so-and-so is a man the College wants, and he will think it. And then he’ll never rest till so-and-so gets a fellowship. That’s what we want the College for: a drag net, a recruiting office.’

‘A recruiting office for the NICE, you mean?’

‘Yes, in the first instance. But it’s only part of the general show.’

‘I’m not sure that I know what you mean.’

‘You soon will. The Home Side, and all that, you know! It sounds rather in Busby’s style to say that Humanity is at the cross-roads. But it is the main question at the moment: which side one’s on–obscurantism or Order. It does really look as if we now had the power to dig ourselves in as a species for a pretty staggering period, to take control of our own destiny. If Science is really given a free hand it can now take over the human race and re-condition it: make man a really efficient animal. If it doesn’t–well, we’re done.’

‘Go on.’

‘There are three main problems. First, the interplanetary problem–’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Well, that doesn’t really matter. We can’t do anything about that at present. The only man who could help was Weston.’

‘He was killed in a blitz, wasn’t he?’

‘He was murdered.’

‘Murdered?’

‘I’m pretty sure of it, and I’ve a shrewd idea who the murderer was.’

‘Good God! Can nothing be done?’

‘There’s no evidence. The murderer is a respectable Cambridge don with weak eyes, a game leg, and a fair beard. He’s dined in this College.’

‘What was Weston murdered for?’

‘For being on our side. The murderer is one of the enemy.’

‘You don’t mean to say he murdered him for that?’

‘Yes,’ said Feverstone, bringing his hand down smartly on the table. ‘That’s just the point. You’ll hear people like Curry or James burbling away about the “war” against reaction. It never enters their heads that it might be a real war with real casualties. They think the violent resistance of the other side ended with the persecution of Galileo and all that. But don’t believe it. It is just seriously beginning. They know now that we have at last got real powers: that the question of what humanity is to be is going to be decided in the next sixty years. They’re going to fight every inch. They’ll stop at nothing.’

‘They can’t win,’ said Mark.

‘We’ll hope not,’ said Lord Feverstone. ‘I think they can’t. That is why it is of such immense importance to each of us to choose the right side. If you try to be neutral you become simply a pawn.’

‘Oh, I haven’t any doubt which is my side,’ said Mark. ‘Hang it all–the preservation of the human race–it’s a pretty rock-bottom obligation.’

‘Well, personally,’ said Feverstone, ‘I’m not indulging in any Busbyisms about that. It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too. Both can be explained psycho-analytically if they take that line. The practical point is that you and I don’t like being pawns, and we do rather like fighting–specially on the winning side.’

‘And what is the first practical step?’

‘Yes, that’s the real question. As I said, the interplanetary problem must be left on one side for the moment. The second problem is our rivals on this planet. I don’t mean only insects and bacteria. There’s far too much life of every kind about, animal and vegetable. We haven’t really cleared the place yet. First we couldn’t; and then we had aesthetic and humanitarian scruples; and we still haven’t short-circuited the question of the balance of nature. All that is to be gone into. The third problem is Man himself.’

‘Go on. This interests me very much.’

‘Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest–which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of. Quite.’

‘What sort of thing have you in mind?’

‘Quite simple and obvious things, at first–sterilisation of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no “take-it-or-leave-it” nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain…’

‘But this is stupendous, Feverstone.’

‘It’s the real thing at last. A new type of man: and it’s people like you who’ve got to begin to make him.’

‘That’s my trouble. Don’t think it’s false modesty, but I haven’t yet seen how I can contribute.’

‘No, but we have. You are what we need: a trained sociologist with a radically realistic outlook, not afraid of responsibility. Also, a sociologist who can write.’

‘You don’t mean you want me to write up all this?’

‘No. We want you to write it down–to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan’t have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We’ll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the NICE wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you’d have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end. Odd thing it is–the word “experiment” is unpopular, but not the word “experimental”. You musn’t experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the NICE and it’s all correct!’

‘You don’t mean that this–er–journalistic side would be my main job?’

‘It’s nothing to do with journalism. Your readers in the first instance would be Committees of the House of Commons, not the public. But that would only be a side line. As for the job itself–why, it’s impossible to say how it might develop. Talking to a man like you, I don’t stress the financial side. You’d start at something quite modest: say about fifteen hundred a year.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ said Mark, flushing with pure excitement.

‘Of course,’ said Feverstone, ‘I ought to warn you, there is the danger. Not yet, perhaps. But when things really begin to hum, it’s quite on the cards they may try to bump you off, like poor old Weston.’

‘I don’t think I was thinking about that either,’ said Mark.

‘Look here,’ said Feverstone. ‘Let me run you across tomorrow to see John Wither. He told me to bring you for the week-end if you were interested. You’ll meet all the important people there and it’ll give you a chance to make up your mind.’

‘How does Wither come into it? I thought Jules was the head of the NICE.’ Jules was a distinguished novelist and scientific populariser whose name always appeared before the public in connection with the new Institute.

‘Jules! Hell’s bells!’ said Feverstone. ‘You don’t imagine that little mascot has anything to say to what really goes on? He’s all right for selling the Institute to the great British public in the Sunday papers and he draws a whacking salary. He’s no use for work. There’s nothing inside his head except some nineteenth-century socialist stuff, and blah about the rights of man. He’s just about got as far as Darwin!’

‘Oh quite,’ said Mark. ‘I was always rather puzzled at his being in the show at all. Do you know, since you’re so kind, I think I’d better accept your offer and go over to Wither’s for the week-end. What time would you be starting?’

‘About quarter to eleven. They tell me you live out Sandawn way. I could call and pick you up.’

‘Thanks very much. Now tell me about Wither.’

‘John Wither,’ began Feverstone, but suddenly broke off. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Here comes Curry. Now we shall have to hear everything NO said and how wonderfully the arch-politician has managed him. Don’t run away. I shall need your moral support.’

The last bus had gone long before Mark left College and he walked home up the hill in brilliant moonlight. Something happened to him the moment he had let himself into the flat which was very unusual. He found himself, on the doormat, embracing a frightened, half-sobbing Jane–even a humble Jane–who was saying, ‘Oh Mark, I’ve been so frightened.’

There was a quality in the very muscles of his wife’s body which took him by surprise. A certain indefinable defensiveness had momentarily deserted her. He had known such occasions before, but they were rare. They were already becoming rarer. And they tended, in his experience, to be followed next day by inexplicable quarrels. This puzzled him greatly, but he had never put his bewilderment into words.

It is doubtful whether he could have understood her feelings even if they had been explained to him; and Jane, in any case, could not have explained them. She was in extreme confusion. But the reasons for her unusual behaviour on this particular evening were simple enough. She had got back from the Dimbles at about half-past four, feeling much exhilarated by her walk, and hungry, and quite sure that her experiences on the previous night and at lunch were over and done with. She had had to light up and draw the curtains before she had finished tea, for the days were getting short. While doing so, the thought had come into her mind that her fright at the dream and at the mere mention of a mantle, an old man, an old man buried but not dead, and a language like Spanish, had really been as irrational as a child’s fear of the dark. This had led her to remember moments when she had feared the dark as a child. Perhaps, she allowed herself to remember them too long. At any rate, when she sat down to drink her last cup of tea, the evening had somehow deteriorated. It never recovered. First, she found it rather difficult to keep her mind on her book. Then, when she had acknowledged this difficulty, she found it difficult to fix on any book. Then she realised that she was restless. From being restless, she became nervous. Then followed a long time when she was not frightened, but knew that she would be very frightened indeed if she did not keep herself in hand. Then came a curious reluctance to go into the kitchen to get herself some supper, and a difficulty–indeed, an impossibility–of eating anything when she had got it. And now, there was no disguising the fact that she was frightened. In desperation she rang up the Dimbles. ‘I think I might go and see the person you suggested, after all,’ she said. Mrs Dimble’s voice came back, after a curious little pause, giving her the address. Ironwood was the name–Miss Ironwood, apparently. Jane had assumed it would be a man and was rather repelled. Miss Ironwood lived out at St Anne’s on the Hill. Jane asked if she should make an appointment. ‘No,’ said Mrs Dimble, ‘they’ll be–you needn’t make an appointment.’ Jane kept the conversation going as long as she could. She had rung up not chiefly to get the address but to hear Mother Dimble’s voice. Secretly she had had a wild hope that Mother Dimble would recognise her distress and say at once, ‘I’ll come straight up to you by car.’ Instead, she got the mere information and a hurried ‘Good-night.’ It seemed to Jane that there was something queer about Mrs Dimble’s voice. She felt that by ringing up she had interrupted a conversation about herself–or no–not about herself but about something else more important, with which she was somehow connected. And what had Mrs Dimble meant by, ‘They’ll be–’ ‘They’ll be expecting you?’ Horrible, childish night-nursery visions of They ‘expecting her’ passed before her mind. She saw Miss Ironwood, dressed all in black, sitting with her hands folded on her knees and then someone leading her into Miss Ironwood’s presence and saying, ‘She’s come,’ and leaving her there.

‘Damn the Dimbles!’ said Jane to herself, and then unsaid it, more in fear than in remorse. And now that the life-line had been used and brought no comfort, the terror, as if insulted by her futile attempt to escape it, rushed back on her with no possibility of disguise, and she could never afterwards remember whether the horrible old man and the mantle had actually appeared to her in a dream or whether she had merely sat there, huddled and wild eyed, hoping, hoping, hoping (even praying, though she believed in no one to pray to) that they would not.

And that is why Mark found such an unexpected Jane on the doormat. It was a pity, he thought, that this should have happened on a night when he was so late and so tired and, to tell the truth, not perfectly sober.

‘Do you feel quite all right this morning?’ said Mark.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jane shortly.

Mark was lying in bed and drinking a cup of tea. Jane was seated at the dressing table, partially dressed, and doing her hair. Mark’s eyes rested on her with indolent, early-morning pleasure. If he guessed very little of the mal-adjustment between them, this was partly due to our race’s incurable habit of ‘projection’. We think the lamb gentle because its wool is soft to our hands: men call a woman voluptuous when she arouses voluptuous feelings in them. Jane’s body, soft though firm and slim though rounded, was so exactly to Mark’s mind that it was all but impossible for him not to attribute to her the same sensations which she excited in him.

‘You’re quite sure you’re all right?’ he asked again.

‘Quite,’ said Jane more shortly still.

Jane thought she was annoyed because her hair was not going up to her liking and because Mark was fussing. She also knew, of course, that she was deeply angry with herself for the collapse which had betrayed her last night, into being what she most detested–the fluttering, tearful ‘little woman’ of sentimental fiction running for comfort to male arms. But she thought this anger was only in the back of her mind, and had no suspicion that it was pulsing through every vein and producing at that very moment the clumsiness in her fingers which made her hair seem intractable.

‘Because,’ continued Mark, ‘if you felt the least bit uncomfortable, I could put off going to see this man Wither.’

Jane said nothing.

‘If I did go,’ said Mark, ‘I’d certainly have to be away for the night, perhaps two.’

Jane closed her lips a little more firmly and still said nothing.

‘Supposing I did,’ said Mark, ‘you wouldn’t think of asking Myrtle over to stay?’

‘No thank you,’ said Jane emphatically, and then, ‘I’m quite accustomed to being alone.’

‘I know,’ said Mark in a rather defensive voice. ‘That’s the devil of the way things are in College at present. That’s one of the chief reasons I’m thinking of another job.’

Jane was still silent.

‘Look here, old thing,’ said Mark, suddenly sitting up and throwing his legs out of bed. ‘There’s no good beating about the bush. I don’t feel comfortable about going away while you’re in your present state–’

‘What state?’ said Jane, turning round and facing him for the first time.

‘Well–I mean–just a bit nervy–as anyone may be temporarily.’

‘Because I happened to be having a nightmare when you came home last night–or rather this morning–there’s no need to talk as if I was a neurasthenic.’ This was not in the least what Jane had intended or expected to say.

‘Now there’s no good going on like that…’ began Mark.

‘Like what?’ said Jane icily, and then, before he had time to reply, ‘If you’ve decided that I’m going mad you’d better get Brizeacre to come down and certify me. It would be convenient to do it while you’re away. They could get me packed off while you are at Mr Wither’s without any fuss. I’m going to see about the breakfast now. If you don’t shave and dress pretty quickly, you’ll not be ready when Lord Feverstone calls.’

The upshot of it was that Mark gave himself a very bad cut while shaving (and saw, at once, a picture of himself talking to the all-important Wither with a great blob of cotton-wool on his upper lip) while Jane decided, from a mixture of motives, to cook Mark an unusually elaborate breakfast–of which she would rather die than eat any herself–and did so with the swift efficiency of an angry woman, only to upset it all over the new stove at the last moment. They were still at the table and both pretending to read newspapers when Lord Feverstone arrived. Most unfortunately Mrs Maggs arrived at the same moment. Mrs Maggs was that element in Jane’s economy represented by the phrase ‘I have a woman who comes in twice a week.’ Twenty years earlier Jane’s mother would have addressed such a functionary as ‘Maggs’ and been addressed by her as ‘Mum’. But Jane and her ‘woman who came in’ called one another Mrs Maggs and Mrs Studdock. They were about the same age and to a bachelor’s eye there was no very noticeable difference in the clothes they wore. It was therefore perhaps not inexcusable that when Mark attempted to introduce Feverstone to his wife Feverstone should have shaken Mrs Maggs by the hand; but it did not sweeten the last few minutes before the two men departed.

Jane left the flat under pretence of shopping almost at once. ‘I really couldn’t stand Mrs Maggs today,’ she said to herself. ‘She’s a terrible talker.’ So that was Lord Feverstone–that man with the loud, unnatural laugh and the mouth like a shark, and no manners. Apparently a perfect fool too! What good could it do Mark to go about with a man like that? Jane had distrusted his face. She could always tell–there was something shifty about him. Probably he was making a fool of Mark. Mark was so easily taken in. If only he wasn’t at Bracton! It was a horrible college. What did Mark see in people like Mr Curry and the odious old clergyman with the beard? And meanwhile, what of the day that awaited her, and the night, and the next night, and beyond that–for when men say they may be away for two nights, it means that two nights is the minimum, and they hope to be away for a week. A telegram (never a trunk call) puts it all right, as far as they are concerned.

She must do something. She even thought of following Mark’s advice and getting Myrtle to come and stay. But Myrtle was her sister-in-law, Mark’s twin sister, with much too much of the adoring sister’s attitude to the brilliant brother. She would talk about Mark’s health and his shirts and socks with a continual undercurrent of unexpressed yet unmistakable astonishment at Jane’s good luck in marrying him. No, certainly not Myrtle. Then she thought of going to see Dr Brizeacre as a patient. He was a Bracton man and would therefore probably charge her nothing. But when she came to think of answering, to Brizeacre of all people, the sort of questions which Brizeacre would certainly ask, this turned out to be impossible. She must do something. In the end, somewhat to her own surprise, she found that she had decided to go out to St Anne’s and see Miss Ironwood. She thought herself a fool for doing so.

An observer placed at the right altitude above Edgestow that day might have seen far to the south a moving spot on a main road and later, to the east, much nearer the silver thread of the Wynd, and much more slowly moving, the smoke of a train.

The spot would have been the car which was carrying Mark Studdock towards the Blood Transfusion Office at Belbury, where the nucleus of the NICE had taken up its temporary abode. The very size and style of the car had made a favourable impression on him the moment he saw it. The upholstery was of such quality that one felt it ought to be good to eat. And what fine, male energy (Mark felt sick of women at the moment) revealed itself in the very gestures with which Feverstone settled himself at the wheel and put his elbow on the horn, and clasped his pipe firmly between his teeth! The speed of the car, even in the narrow streets of Edgestow, was impressive, and so were the laconic criticisms of Feverstone on other drivers and pedestrians. Once over the level crossing and beyond Jane’s old college (St Elizabeth’s), he began to show what his car could do. Their speed became so great that even on a rather empty road the inexcusably bad drivers, the manifestly half-witted pedestrians and men with horses, the hen that they actually ran over and the dogs and hens that Feverstone pronounced ‘damned lucky’, seemed to follow one another almost without intermission. Telegraph posts raced by, bridges rushed overhead with a roar, villages streamed backward to join the country already devoured, and Mark, drunk with air and at once fascinated and repelled by the insolence of Feverstone’s driving sat saying, ‘Yes,’ and ‘Quite,’ and ‘It was their fault,’ and stealing side-long glances at his companion. Certainly, he was a change from the fussy importance of Curry and the Bursar! The long, straight nose and the clenched teeth, the hard bony outlines beneath the face, the very way he wore his clothes, all spoke of a big man driving a big car to somewhere where they would find big stuff going on. And he, Mark, was to be in it all. At one or two moments when his heart came into his mouth he wondered whether the quality of Lord Feverstone’s driving quite justified its speed. ‘You need never take a cross-road like that seriously,’ yelled Feverstone as they plunged on after the narrowest of these escapes. ‘Quite,’ bawled Mark. ‘No good making a fetish of them!’ ‘Drive much yourself?’ said Feverstone. ‘Used to a good deal,’ said Mark.

The smoke which our imaginary observer might have seen to the east of Edgestow would have indicated the train in which Jane Studdock was progressing slowly towards the village of St Anne’s. Edgestow itself, for those who had reached it from London, had all the appearance of a terminus; but if you looked about you, you might see presently, in a bay, a little train of two or three coaches and a tank engine–a train that sizzled and exuded steam from beneath the foot-boards and in which most of the passengers seemed to know one another. On some days, instead of the third coach, there might be a horse-box, and on the platform there would be hampers containing dead rabbits or live poultry, and men in brown bowler hats and gaiters, and perhaps a terrier or a sheepdog that seemed to be used to travelling. In this train, which started at half-past one, Jane jerked and rattled along an embankment whence she looked down through some bare branches and some branches freckled with red and yellow leaves into Bragdon Wood itself and thence through the cutting and over the level crossing at Bragdon Camp and along the edge of Brawl Park (the great house was just visible at one point) and so to the first stop at Duke’s Eaton. Here, as at Woolham and Cure Hardy and Fourstones, the train settled back, when it stopped, with a little jerk and something like a sigh. And then there would be a noise of milk cans rolling and coarse boots treading on the platform and after that a pause which seemed to last long, during which the autumn sunlight grew warm on the window pane and smells of wood and field from beyond the tiny station floated in and seemed to claim the railway as part of the land. Passengers got in and out of her carriage at every stop; apple-faced men, and women with elastic-side boots and imitation fruit on their hats, and schoolboys. Jane hardly noticed them: for though she was theoretically an extreme democrat, no social class save her own had yet become a reality to her in any place except the printed page. And in between the stations things flitted past, so isolated from their context that each seemed to promise some unearthly happiness if one could but have descended from the train at that very moment to seize it: a house backed with a group of haystacks and wide brown fields about it, two aged horses standing head to tail, a little orchard with washing hanging on a line, and a rabbit staring at the train, whose two eyes looked like the dots, and his ears like the uprights, of a double exclamation mark. At quarter-past two she came to St Anne’s, which was the real terminus of the branch, and the end of everything. The air struck her as cold and tonic when she left the station.

Although the train had been chugging and wheezing up-hill for the latter half of her journey, there was still a climb to be done on foot, for St Anne’s is one of those villages perched on a hilltop which are commoner in Ireland than in England, and the station is some way from the village. A winding road between high banks led her up to it. As soon as she had passed the church she turned left, as she had been instructed, at the Saxon Cross. There were no houses on her left–only a row of beech trees and unfenced ploughland falling steeply away, and beyond that the timbered midland plain spreading as far as she could see and blue in the distance. She was on the highest ground in all that region. Presently, she came to a high wall on her right that seemed to run on for a great way: there was a door in it and beside the door an old iron bell-pull. A kind of flatness of spirit was on her. She felt sure she had come on a fool’s errand; nevertheless she rang. When the jangling noise had ceased there followed a silence so long, and in that upland place so chilly, that Jane began to wonder whether the house were inhabited. Then, just as she was debating whether to ring again or to turn away, she heard the noise of someone’s feet approaching briskly on the inside of the wall.

Meanwhile Lord Feverstone’s car had long since arrived at Belbury–a florid Edwardian mansion which had been built for a millionaire who admired Versailles. At the sides, it seemed to have sprouted into a widespread outgrowth of newer cement buildings, which housed the Blood Transfusion Office.