That Hideous Strength Page 14

  “Isn’t Mark at home?” asked Denniston with some surprise.

  “No,” said Jane. “He’s at Belbury. I think he’s going to have a job in the N.I.C.E.” She was rather pleased to be able to say this for she was well aware of the distinction it implied. If Denniston was impressed he did not show it.

  “I don’t think,” he said, “that ‘joining us’ would mean, at the moment, coming to live at St. Anne’s: specially in the case of a married woman. Unless old Mark got really interested and came himself”

  “That is quite out of the question,” said Jane. (“He doesn’t know Mark,” she thought.)

  “Anyway,” continued Denniston, “that is hardly the real point at the moment. Would he object to your joining-putting yourself under the Head’s orders and making the promises and all that?”

  “Would he object?” asked Jane.

  “What on earth would it have to do with him?”

  “Well,” said Denniston, hesitating a little, “the Head-or the authorities he obeys-have rather old-fashioned notions. He wouldn’t like a married woman to come in if it could be avoided, without her husband’s-without consulting--”

  “Do you mean I’m to ask Mark’s permission?” said Jane with a strained little laugh. The resentment which had been rising and ebbing, but rising each time a little more than it ebbed, for several minutes, had now overflowed. All this talk of promises and obedience to an unknown Mr. Fisher-King had already repelled her. But the idea of this same person sending her back to get Mark’s permission-as if she were a child asking leave to go to a party-was the climax. For a moment she looked on Mr. Denniston with real dislike.

  She saw him, and Mark, and the Fisher-King man and this preposterous Indian fakir simply as men-complacent, patriarchal figures making arrangements for women as if women were children or bartering them like cattle. (“And so the king promised that if anyone killed the dragon he would give him his daughter in marriage.”) She was very angry.

  “Arthur,” said Camilla, “I see a light over there. Do you think it’s a bonfire?”

  “Yes, I should say it was.”

  “My feet are getting cold. Let’s go for a little walk and look at the fire. I wish we had some chestnuts.”

  “Oh, do let’s,” said Jane.

  They got out. It was warmer in the open than it had by now become in the car-warm and full of leavy smells, and dampness, and the small noise of dripping branches. The fire was big and in its middle life-a smoking hillside of leaves on one side and great caves and cliffs of glowing red on the other. They stood round it and chatted of indifferent matters for a time.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Jane presently. “I won’t join your-your-whatever it is. But I’ll promise to let you know if I have any more dreams of that sort.”

  “That is splendid,” said Denniston. “And I think it is as much as we had a right to expect. I quite see your point of view. May I ask for one more promise?”

  “What is that?”

  “Not to mention us to anyone.”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  Later, when they had returned to the car and were driving back, Mr. Denniston said, “I hope the dreams will not worry you much, now, Mrs. Studdock. No: I don’t mean I hope they’ll stop: and I don’t think they will either. But now that you know they are not something in yourself but only things going on in the outer world, nasty things, no doubt, but no worse than lots you read in the papers, I believe you’ll find them quite bearable. The less you think of them as your dreams and the more you think of them-well, as news-the better you’ll feel about them.”

  Six

  FOG

  I

  A NIGHT (with little sleep) and half another day dragged past before Mark was able to see the Deputy Director again. He went to him in a chastened frame of mind, anxious to get the job on almost any terms.

  “I have brought back the Form, sir,” he said.

  “What Form?” asked the Deputy Director. Mark found he was talking to a new and different Wither. The absent-mindedness was still there, but the courtliness was gone. The man looked at him as if out of a dream, as if divided from him by an immense distance, but with a sort of dreamy distaste which might turn into active hatred if ever that distance were diminished. He still smiled, but there was something cat-like in the smile; an occasional alteration of the lines about the mouth which even hinted at a snarl. Mark in his hands was as a mouse. At Bracton the Progressive Element, having to face only scholars, had passed for very knowing fellows, but here at Belbury, one felt quite different. Wither said he had understood that Mark had already refused the job. He could not, in any event, renew the offer. He spoke vaguely and alarmingly of strains and frictions, of injudicious behaviour, of the danger of making enemies, of the impossibility that the N.I.C.E could harbour a person who appeared to have quarrelled with all its members in the first week. He spoke even more vaguely and alarmingly of conversations he had had with “your colleagues at Bracton” which entirely confirmed this view. He doubted if Mark were really suited to a learned career, but disclaimed any intention of giving advice. Only after he had hinted and murmured Mark into a sufficient state of dejection did he throw him, like a bone to a dog, the suggestion of an appointment for a probationary period at (roughly-he could not commit the Institute) six hundred a year. And Mark took it. He attempted to get answers even then to some of his questions. From whom was he to take orders? Was he to reside at Belbury?

  Wither replied, “I think, Mr. Studdock, we have already mentioned elasticity as the keynote of the Institute. Unless you are prepared to treat membership as . . . er . . . a vocation rather than a mere appointment, I could not conscientiously advise you to come to us. There are no watertight compartments. I fear I could not persuade the committee to invent for your benefit some cut-and-dried position in which you would discharge artificially limited duties and, apart from those, regard your time as your own. Pray allow me to finish, Mr. Studdock. We are, as I have said before, more like a family, or even, perhaps, like a single personality. There must be no question of ‘taking your orders,’ as you, rather unfortunately, suggest, from some specified official and considering yourself free to adopt an intransigent attitude to your other colleagues. (I must ask you not to interrupt me, please.) That is not the spirit in which I would wish you to approach your duties. You must make yourself useful, Mr. Studdock-generally useful. I do not think the Institute could allow anyone to remain in it who showed a disposition to stand on his rights . . . who grudged this or that piece of service because it fell outside some function which he had chosen to circumscribe by a rigid definition. On the other hand, it would be quite equally disastrous . . . I mean for yourself, Mr. Studdock: I am thinking throughout of your own interests . . . quite equally disastrous if you allowed yourself ever to be distracted from your real work by unauthorised collaboration . . . or, worse still, interference . . . with the work of other members. Do not let casual suggestions distract you or dissipate your energies. Concentration, Mr. Studdock, concentration. And the free spirit of give and take. If you avoid both the errors I have mentioned then . . . ah, I do not think I need despair of correcting on your behalf certain unfortunate impressions which, we must admit, your behaviour has already produced. No, Mr. Studdock, I can allow no further discussion. My time is already fully occupied. I cannot be continually harassed by conversations of this sort. You must find your own level, Mr. Studdock. Good morning, Mr. Studdock, good morning. Remember what I have said. I am trying to do all I can for you. Good morning.”

  Mark reimbursed himself for the humiliation of this interview by reflecting that if he were not a married man he would not have borne it for a moment. This seemed to him (though he did not put it into words) to throw the burden upon Jane. It also set him free to think of all the things he would have said to Wither if he hadn’t had Jane to bother about-and would still say if ever he got a chance. This kept him in a sort of twilight happiness for several minutes; and when he went
to tea he found that the reward for his submission had already begun. The Fairy signed to him to come and sit beside her.

  “You haven’t done anything. about Alcasan yet?” she asked.

  “No,” said Mark, “because I hadn’t really decided to stay, not until this morning. I could come up and look at your materials this afternoon . . . at least as far as I know, for I haven’t yet really found out what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “Elasticity, sonny, elasticity,” said Miss Hardcastle.

  “You never will. Your line is to do whatever you’re told and above all not to bother the old man.”

  II

  During the next few days several processes, which afterwards came to seem important, were steadily going on.

  The fog, which covered Edgestow as well as Belbury, continued and grew denser. At Edgestow one regarded it as “coming up from the river,” but in reality it lay all over the heart of England. It blanketed the whole town so that walls dripped and you could write your name in the dampness on tables and men worked by artificial light at midday. The workings, where Bragdon Wood had been, ceased to offend conservative eyes and became mere clangings, thuddings, hootings, shouts, curses, and metallic screams in an invisible world.

  Some felt glad that the obscenity should thus be covered, for all beyond the Wynd was now an abomination. The grip of the N.I.C.E. on Edgestow was tightening. The river itself, which had once been brownish-green and amber and smooth-skinned silver, tugging at the reeds and playing with the red roots, now flowed opaque, thick with mud, sailed on by endless fleets of empty tins, sheets of paper, cigarette ends, and fragments of wood, sometimes varied by rainbow patches of oil. Then the invasion actually crossed it. The Institute had bought the land up to the left or eastern bank. But now Busby was summoned to meet Feverstone and a Professor Frost as the representatives of the N.I.C.E . . . and learned for the first time that the Wynd itself was to be diverted: there was to be no river in Edgestow. This was still strictly confidential, but the Institute had already powers to force it. This being so, a new adjustment of boundaries between it and the College was clearly needed. Busby’s jaw fell when he realised that the Institute wanted to come right up to the College walls. He refused, of course. And it was then that he first heard a hint of requisitioning. The College could sell to-day and the Institute offered a good price: if they did not, compulsion and a merely nominal compensation awaited them. Relations between Feverstone and the Bursar deteriorated during this interview. An extraordinary College meeting had to be summoned, and Busby had to put the best face he could on things to his colleagues. He was almost physically shocked by the storm of hatred which met him. In vain did he point out that those who were now abusing him had themselves voted for the sale of the Wood: but equally in vain did they abuse him. The College was caught in the net of necessity. They sold the little strip on their side of the Wynd which meant so much. It was no more than a terrace between the Eastern walls and the water. Twenty-four hours later the N.I.C.E. boarded over the doomed Wynd and converted the terrace into a dump. All day long workmen were trampling across the planks with heavy loads which they flung down against the very walls of Bracton till the pile had covered the boarded blindness which had once been the Henrietta Maria window and reached almost to the east window of chapel.

  In these days many members of the Progressive Element dropped off and joined the opposition. Those who were left were hammered closer together by the unpopularity they had to face. And though the College was thus sharply divided within, yet for the very same reason it also took on a new unity perforce in its relations to the outer world. Bracton as a whole bore the blame for bringing the N.I.C.E. to Edgestow at all. This was unfair, for many high authorities in the University had thoroughly approved Bracton’s action in doing so, but now that the result was becoming apparent people refused to remember this. Busby, though he had heard the hint of requisitioning in confidence, lost no time in spreading it through Edgestow common rooms. “It would have done no good if we had refused to sell,” he said. But nobody believed that this was why Bracton had sold, and the unpopularity of that College steadily increased. The undergraduates got wind of it, and stopped attending the lectures of Bracton dons. Busby, and even the wholly innocent warden, were mobbed in the streets.

  The Town, which did not usually share the opinions of the University, was also in an unsettled condition. The disturbance in which the Bracton windows had been broken was taken little notice of in the London papers or even in the Edgestow Telegraph. But it was followed by other episodes. There was an indecent assault in one of the mean streets down by the station. There were two “beatings up” in a public-house. There were increasing complaints of threatening and disorderly behaviour on the part of the N.I.C.E. workmen. But these complaints never appeared in the papers. Those who had actually seen ugly incidents were surprised to read in the Telegraph that the new Institute was settling down very comfortably in Edgestow and the most cordial relations developing between it and the natives. Those who had not seen them but only heard of them, finding nothing in the Telegraph, dismissed the stories as rumours or exaggerations. Those who had seen them wrote letters to it, but it did not print their letters.

  But if episodes could be doubted, no one could doubt that nearly all the hotels of the town had passed into the hands of the Institute, so that a man could no longer drink with a friend in his accustomed bar; that familiar shops were crowded with strangers who seemed to have plenty of money, and that prices were higher; that there was a queue for every omnibus and a difficulty in getting into every cinema. Quiet houses that had looked out on quiet streets were shaken all day long by heavy and unaccustomed traffic: wherever one went one was jostled by crowds of strangers. To a little midland market town like Edgestow even visitors from the other side of the county had hitherto ranked as aliens: the day-long clamour of Northern, Welsh, and even Irish voices, the shouts, the cat-calls, the songs, the wild faces passing in the fog, were utterly detestable. “There’s going to be trouble here “was the comment of many a citizen: and in a few days, “You’d think they wanted trouble.” It is not recorded who first said, “We need more police.” And then at last the Edgestow Telegraph took notice. A shy little article-a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand-appeared suggesting that the local police were quite incapable of dealing with the new population.

  Of all these things Jane took little notice. She was, during these days, merely “hanging on.” Perhaps Mark would summon her to Belbury. Perhaps he would give up the whole Belbury scheme and come home-his letters were vague and unsatisfactory. Perhaps she would go out to St. Anne’s and see the Dennistons. The dreams continued. But Mr. Denniston had been right; it was better when one had given in to regarding them as “news.” If it had not been she could hardly have endured her nights. There was one recurrent dream in which nothing exactly happened. She seemed indeed to be lying in her own bed. But there was someone beside the bed-someone who had apparently drawn a chair up to the bedside and then sat down to watch. He had a note-book in which he occasionally made an entry. Otherwise he sat perfectly still and patiently attentive-like a doctor. She knew his face already, and came to know it infinitely well: the pince-nez, the well-chiselled, rather white features, and the little pointed beard. And presumably-if he could see her he must by now know hers equally well: it was certainly herself whom he appeared to be studying. Jane did not write about this to the Dennistons the first time it occurred. Even after the second she delayed until it was too late to post the letter that day. She had a sort of hope that the longer she kept silent the more likely they would be to come in and see her again. She wanted comfort, but she wanted it, if possible, without going out to St. Anne’s without meeting this Fisher-King man and getting drawn into his orbit.

  Mark meanwhile was working at the rehabilitation of Alcasan. He had never seen a police dossier before and found it difficult to understand. In spite of his efforts to conceal his ignorance the Fairy soon discovered it. “I�
��ll put you onto the Captain,” she said. “He’ll show you the ropes.” That was how Mark came to spend most of his working hours with her second in command, Captain O’Hara, a big white-haired man with a handsome face, talking in what English people called a Southern brogue and Irish people “a Dublin accent you could cut with a knife.” He claimed to be of ancient family and had a seat at Castlemortle. Mark did not really understand his explanations of the dossier, the Q Register, the Sliding File system, and what the Captain called “weeding.” But he was ashamed to confess this and so it came about that the whole selection of facts really remained in O’Hara’s hands and Mark found himself working merely as a writer. He did his best to conceal this from O’Hara and to make it appear that they were really working together: this naturally made it impossible for him to repeat his original protests against being treated as a mere journalist. He had, indeed, a taking style (which had helped his academic career much more than he would have liked to acknowledge) and his journalism was a success. His articles and letters about Alcasan appeared in papers where he would never have had the entree over his own signature: papers read by millions. He could not help feeling a little thrill of pleasurable excitement.

  He also confided to Captain O’Hara his minor financial anxieties. When was one paid? And in the meantime he was short of petty cash. He had lost his wallet on his “very first night at Belbury and it had never been recovered. O’Hara roared with laughter. “Sure you can have any money you like by asking the Steward.”

  “You mean it’s then deducted from one’s next cheque?” asked Mark.

  “Man,” said the Captain, “once you’re in the Institute God bless it, you needn’t bother your head about that. Aren’t we going to take over the whole currency question? It’s we that make money.”