That Hideous Strength Read online

  There is one sense in which every narrative is false; it dare not attempt, even if it could, to express the actual movement of time. This day was so long to Mark that a faithful account of it would be unreadable. Sometimes he sat upstairs-for at last they finished “doing” his bedroom-sometimes he went out into the fog, sometimes he hung about the public rooms. Every now and then these would be unaccountably filled up by crowds of talking people, and for a few minutes the strain of trying not to look unoccupied, not to seem miserable and embarrassed, would be imposed on him: then suddenly, as if summoned by their next engagement, all these people would hurry away.

  Some time after lunch he met Stone in one of the passages. Mark had not thought of him since yesterday morning, but now, looking at the expression on his face and something furtive in his whole manner, he realised that here, at any rate, was someone who felt as uncomfortable as himself. Stone had the look which Mark had often seen before in unpopular boys or new boys at school, in “outsiders” at Bracton-the look which was for Mark the symbol of all his worst fears, for to be one who must wear that look was, in his scale of values, the greatest evil. His instinct was not to speak to this man Stone. He knew by experience how dangerous it is to be friends with a sinking man or even to be seen with him: you cannot keep him afloat and he may pull you under. But his own craving for companionship was now acute, so that against his better judgement he smiled a sickly smile and said “Hullo!”

  Stone gave a start as if to be spoken to were almost a frightening experience. “Good afternoon,” he said nervously and made to pass on.

  “Let’s come and talk somewhere, if you’re not busy,” said Mark.

  “I am-that is to say-I’m not quite sure how long I shall be free,” said Stone.

  “Tell me about this place,” said Mark. “It seems to me perfectly bloody, but I haven’t yet made up my mind. Come to my room.”

  “I don’t think that at all. Not at all. Who said I thought that?” answered Stone very quickly. And Mark did not answer because at that moment he saw the Deputy Director approaching them. He was to discover during the next few weeks that no passage and no public room at Belbury was ever safe from the prolonged indoor walks of the Deputy Director. They could not be regarded as a form of espionage for the creak of Wither’s boots and the dreary little tune which he was nearly always humming would have defeated any such purpose. One heard him quite a long way off. Often one saw him a long way off as well, for he was a tall man-without his stoop he would have been very tall indeed-and often, even in a crowd, one saw that face at a distance staring vaguely towards one. But this was Mark’s first experience of that ubiquity, and he felt that the D.D. could not have appeared at a more unfortunate moment. Very slowly he came towards them, looked in their direction though it was not plain from his face whether he recognised them or not, and passed on. Neither of the young men attempted to resume their conversation.

  At tea Mark saw Feverstone and went at once to sit beside him. He knew that the worst thing a man in his position could do was to try to force himself on anyone, but he was now feeling desperate.

  “I say, Feverstone,” he began gaily, “I’m in search of information ”-and was relieved to see Feverstone smile in reply.

  “Yes,” said Mark. “I haven’t had exactly what you’d call a glowing reception from Steele. But the D.D. won’t hear of my leaving. And the Fairy seems to want me to write newspaper articles. What the hell am I supposed to be doing?”

  Feverstone laughed long and loud.

  “Because,” concluded Mark, “I’m damned if I can find out. I’ve tried to tackle the old boy direct . . .”

  “God!” said Feverstone, laughing even louder.

  “Can one never get anything out of him?”

  “Not what you want,” said Feverstone with a chuckle.

  “Well, how the devil is one to find out what’s wanted if nobody offers any information?”

  “Quite.”

  “Oh, and by the way, that reminds me of something else. How on earth did Curry get hold of the idea that I’m resigning my Fellowship?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I never had the faintest notion of resigning it.”

  “Really! I was told distinctly by the Fairy that you weren’t coming back.”

  “You don’t suppose I’d do it through her if I was going to resign?”

  Feverstone’s smile brightened and widened. “It doesn’t make any odds, you know,” he said. “If the N.I.C.E. want you to have a nominal job somewhere outside Belbury, you’ll have one: and if they don’t, you won’t. Just like that.”

  “Damn the N.I.C.E. I’m merely trying to retain the Fellowship I already had, which is no concern of theirs. One doesn’t want to fall between two stools.”

  “One doesn’t want to.”

  “You mean?”

  “Take my advice and get into Wither’s good books again as soon as you can. I gave you a good start but you seem to have rubbed him up the wrong way. His attitude has changed since this morning. You need to humour him, you know. And just between ourselves, I wouldn’t be too thick with the Fairy: it won’t do you any good higher up. There are wheels within wheels.”

  “In the meantime,” said Mark, “I’ve written to Curry to explain that it’s all rot about my resignation.”

  “No harm if it amuses you,” said Feverstone, still smiling.

  “Well, I don’t suppose College wants to kick me out simply because Curry misunderstood something Miss Hardcastle said to you.”

  “You can’t be deprived of a fellowship under any statute I know, except for gross immorality.”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t mean that. I meant not Being re-elected when I come up for re-election next term.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “And that’s why I must rely on you to get that idea out of Curry’s head.”

  Feverstone said nothing.

  “You will be sure,” urged Mark against his own better judgement, “to make it quite clear to him that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.”

  “Don’t you know Curry? He will have got his whole wangling-machine going on the problem of your successor long ago.”

  “That’s why I am relying on you to stop him.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why me?”

  “Well-damn it all, Feverstone, it was you who first put the idea into his head.”

  “Do you know,” said Feverstone, helping himself to a muffin, “I find your style of conversation rather difficult. You will come up for re-election in a few months. The College may decide to re-elect you; or, of course, it may not. As far as I can make out, you are at present attempting to canvass my vote in advance. To which the proper answer is the one I now give-go to hell!”

  “You know perfectly well that there was no doubt about my re-election until you spoke a word in Curry’s ear.”

  Feverstone eyed the muffin critically. “You make me rather tired,” he said. “If you don’t know how to steer your own course in a place like Bracton, why come and pester me? I’m not a bucking nurse. And for your own good I would advise you in talking to people here to adopt a more agreeable manner than you are using now. Otherwise your life may be, in the famous words, ‘nasty, poor, brutish, and short!’”

  “Short?” said Mark. “Is that a threat? Do you mean my life at Bracton or at the N.I.C.E . . . ?”

  I shouldn’t stress the distinction too much if I were you,” said Feverstone.

  “I shall remember that,” said Mark, rising from his chair. As he made to move away he could not help turning to this smiling man once again and saying, “It was you who brought me here. I thought you at least were my friend.”

  “Incurable romantic!” said Lord Feverstone, deftly extending his mouth to an even wider grin and popping the muffin into it entire.

  And so Mark knew that if he lost the Belbury job he would lose his Fellowship at Bracton as well.

  III

&nbs
p; During these days Jane spent as little time as possible in the flat and kept herself awake reading in bed, as long as she could, each night. Sleep had become her enemy. In the daytime she kept on going to Edgestow-nominally in the attempt to find another “woman who would come in twice a week” instead of Mrs. Maggs. On one of these occasions she was delighted to find herself suddenly addressed by Camilla Denniston. Camilla had just stepped out of a car and next moment she introduced a tall dark man as her husband. Jane saw at once that both the Dennistons were the sort of people she liked. She knew that Mr. Denniston had once been a friend of Mark’s but she had never met him; and her first thought was to wonder, as she had wondered before, why Mark’s present friends were so inferior to those he once had. Carey and Wadsden and the Taylors, who had all been members of the set in which she first got to know him, had been nicer than Curry and Busby, not to mention the Feverstone man and this Mr. Denniston was obviously very much nicer indeed.

  “We were just coming to see you,” said Camilla.

  “Look here, we have lunch with us. Let’s drive you up to the woods beyond Sandown and all feed together in the car. There’s lots to talk about.”

  “Or what about your coming to the flat and lunching with me?” said Jane, inwardly wondering how she could manage this. “It’s hardly a day for picnicking.”

  “That only means extra washing-up for you,” said Camilla. “Had we better go somewhere in town, Arthur?-if Mrs. Studdock thinks it’s too cold and foggy.”

  “A restaurant would hardly do, Mrs. Studdock,” said Denniston, “we want to be private.” The “we” obviously meant “we three” and established at once a pleasant, business-like unity between them. “As well,” he continued. “Don’t you like a rather foggy day in a wood in autumn? You’ll find we shall be perfectly warm sitting in the car.”

  Jane said she’d never heard of anyone liking fogs before but she didn’t mind trying. All three got in.

  “That’s why Camilla and I got married,” said Denniston as they drove off. “We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It’s a useful taste if one lives in England.”

  “How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?” said Jane. “I don’t think I should ever learn to like rain and snow.”

  “It’s the other way round,” said Denniston. “Everyone begins as a child by liking weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children-and the dogs! They know what snow’s made for.”

  “I’m sure I hated wet days as a child,” said Jane.

  “That’s because the grown-ups kept you in,” said Camilla. “Any child loves rain if it’s allowed to go out and paddle about in it.”

  Presently they left the unfenced road beyond Sandown and went bumping across grass and among trees and finally came to rest in a sort of little grassy bay with a fir thicket on one side and a group of beeches on the other. There were wet cobwebs and a rich autumnal smell all round them. Then all three sat together in the back of the car, and there was some unstrapping of baskets, and then sandwiches and a little flask of sherry and finally hot coffee and cigarettes. Jane was beginning to enjoy herself.

  “Now!” said Camilla.

  “Well,” said Denniston, “I suppose I’d better begin. You know, of course, where we’ve come from, Mrs. Studdock?”

  “From Miss Ironwood’s,” said Jane.

  “Well, from the same house. But we don’t belong to Grace Ironwood. She and we both belong to someone else.”

  “Yes?” said Jane.

  “Our little household, or company, or society, or whatever you like to call it is run by a Mr. Fisher-King. At least that is the name he has recently taken. You might or might not know his original name if I told it to you. He is a great traveller but now an invalid. He got a wound in his foot on his last journey which won’t heal.”

  “How did he come to change his name?”

  “He had a married sister in India, a Mrs. Fisher-King. She has just died and left him a large fortune on condition that he took the name. She was a remarkable woman in her way; a friend of the great native Christian mystic whom you may have heard of-the Sura. And that’s the point. The Sura had reason to believe, or thought he had reason to believe, that a great danger was hanging over the human race. And just before the end-just before he disappeared-he became convinced that it would actually come to a head in this island. And after he’d gone.”

  “Is he dead?” asked Jane.

  “That we don’t know,” answered Denniston. “Some people think he’s alive, others not. At any rate he disappeared. And Mrs. Fisher-King more or less handed over the problem to her brother, to our chief. That, in fact, was why she gave him the money. He was to collect a company round him to watch for this danger, and to strike when it came.”

  “That’s not quite right, Arthur,” said Camilla. “He was told that a company would in fact collect round him and he was to be its head.”

  “I didn’t think we need go into that,” said Arthur.

  “But I agree. And now, Mrs. Studdock, this is where you come in.”

  Jane waited.

  “The Sura said that when the time came we should find what he called a seer: a person with second sight.”

  “Not that we’d get a seer, Arthur,” said Camilla, “that a seer would turn up. Either we or the other side would get her.”

  “And it looks,” said Denniston to Jane, “as if you were the seer.”

  “But please,” said Jane, smiling, “I don’t want to be anything so exciting.”

  “No,” said Denniston. “It’s rough luck on you.” There was just the right amount of sympathy in his tone.

  Camilla turned to Jane and said, “I gathered from Grace Ironwood that you weren’t quite convinced you were a seer. I mean you thought it might be just ordinary dreams. Do you still think that?”

  “It’s all so strange and-beastly!” said Jane. She liked these people, but her habitual inner prompter was whispering, “Take care. Don’t get drawn in. Don’t commit yourself to anything. You’ve got your own life to Live.” Then an impulse of honesty forced her to add: “As a matter of fact I’ve had another dream since then. And it turns out to have been true. I saw the murder-Mr. Hingest’s murder.”

  “There you are,” said Camilla. “Oh, Mrs. Studdock, you must come in. You must, you must. That means we’re right on top of it now. Don’t you see? We’ve been wondering all this time exactly where the trouble is going to begin: and now your dream gives us a clue. You’ve seen something within a few miles of Edgestow. In fact, we are apparently in the thick of it already-whatever it is. And we can’t move an inch without your help. You are our secret service, our eyes. It’s all been arranged long before we were born. Don’t spoil everything. Do join us.”

  “No, Cam, don’t,” said Denniston. “The Pendragon-the Head, I mean, wouldn’t like us to do that. Mrs. Studdock must come in freely.”

  “But,” said Jane, “I don’t know anything about all this. Do I? I don’t want to take sides in something I don’t understand.”

  “But don’t you see,” broke in Camilla, “that you can’t be neutral? If you don’t give yourself to us, the enemy will use you.”

  The words “give yourself to us” were ill chosen. The very muscles of Jane’s body stiffened a little: if the speaker had been anyone who attracted her less than Camilla she would have become like stone to any further appeal. Denniston laid a hand on his wife’s arm.

  “You must see it from Mrs. Studdock’s point of view, dear,” he said. “You forget she knows practically nothing at all about us. And that is the real difficulty. We can’t tell her much until she has joined. We are, in fact, asking her to take a leap in the dark.” He turned to Jane with a slightly quizzical smile on his face which was, nevertheless, grave. “It is like that,” he said, “like getting married, or going into the Navy as a boy, or becoming a
monk, or trying a new thing to eat. You can’t know what it’s like until you take the plunge.” He did not perhaps know, or again perhaps he did, the complicated resentments and resistances which his choice of illustrations awoke in Jane, nor could she herself analyse them. She merely replied in a colder voice than she had yet used:

  “In that case it is rather difficult to see why one should take it at all.”

  “I admit frankly,” said Denniston, “that you can only take it on trust. It all depends really, I suppose, what impression the Dimbles and Grace and we two have made on you: and, of course, the Head himself, when you meet him.”

  Jane softened again.

  “What exactly are you asking me to do?” she said.

  “To come and see our chief, first of all. And then-well, to join. It would involve making certain promises to him. He is really a Head, you see. We have all agreed to take his orders. Oh-there’s one other thing. What view would Mark take about it?-he and I are old friends, you know.”

  “I wonder,” said Camilla. “Need we go into that for the moment?”

  “It’s bound to come up sooner or later,” said her husband.

  There was a little pause.

  “Mark?” said Jane. “How does he come into it? I can’t imagine what he’d say about all this. He’d probably think we were all off our heads.”

  “Would he object, though?” said Denniston. “I mean, would he object to your joining us?”

  “If he were at home, I suppose he’d be rather surprised if I announced I was going to stay indefinitely at St. Anne’s. Does ‘joining you’ mean that?”