That Hideous Strength Page 8

  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.”

  IV

  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 manhandled 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 N.I.C.E.; 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 to-night 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 that sentiment that still attaches to the small man, but when you come to study the reality as I have had 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 cross-roads 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 step into 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 N.I.C.E.-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 treetops. 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.

  V

  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 farther 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 good-bye. 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.”

  Four

  THE LIQUIDATION OF ANACHRONISMS

  I

  Almost before Jane had finished putting clean sheets on Mark’s bed, Mrs. Dimble, with a great many parcels, arrived. “You’re an angel to have me for the night,” she said. “We’d tried every hotel in Edgestow I believe. This place is going to become unendurable. The same answer everywhere! All full up with the hangers-on and camp followers of this detestable N.I.C.E. Secretaries here-typists there-commissioners of works-the thing’s outrageous. If Cecil hadn’t had a room in College I really believe he’d have had to sleep in the waiting-room at the station. I only hope that man in College has aired the bed.”

  “But what on earth’s happened?” asked Jane.

  “Turned out, my dear!”

  “But it isn’t possible, Mrs. Dimble. I mean, it can’t be legal.”

  “That’s what Cecil said . . . Just think of it, Jane. The first thing we saw when we poked our heads out of the window this morning was a lorry on the drive with its back wheels in the middle of the rose bed, unloading a small army of what looked like criminals with picks and spades. Right in our own garden! There was an odious little man in a peaked cap who talked to Cecil with a cigarette in his mouth, at least it wasn’t in his mouth but seccotined onto his upper lip-you know-and guess what he said? He said they’d have no objection to our remaining in possession (of the house, mind you, not the garden) till eight o’clock to-morrow morning. No objection!”

  “But surely-surely-it must be some mistake.”

  “Of course Cecil rang up your Bursar. And of course your Bursar was out. That took nearly all morning ringing up again and again, and by that time the big beech that you used to be so fond of had been cut down, and all the plum trees. If I hadn’t been so angry I’d have sat down and cried my eyes out. That’s what I felt like. At last Cecil did get on to your Mr. Busby, who was perfectly useless. Said there must be some misunderstanding, but it was out of his hands now and we’d better get on to the N.I.C.E. at Belbury. Of course it turned out to be quite impossible to get them. But by lunch-time we saw that one simply couldn’t stay there for the night, whatever happened.”

  “Why not?”

  “My dear, you’ve no conception what it was like. Great lorries and traction engines roaring past all the time, and a crane on a thing like a railway truck. Why, our own tradesmen couldn’t get through it. The milk didn’t arrive till eleven o’clock. The meat never arrived at all; they rang up in the afternoon to say their people hadn’t been able to reach us by either road. We’d the greatest difficulty in getting into town ourselves. It took us half an hour from our house to the bridge. It was like a nightmare. Flares and noise everywhere and the road practically ruined and a sort of great tin camp already going up on the Common. And the people! Such horrid men. I didn’t know we had workpeople like that in England. Oh, horrible, horrible!” Mrs. Dimble fanned herself with the hat she had just taken off.

  “And what are you going to do?” asked Jane.

  “Heaven knows!” said Mrs. Dimble. “For the moment we have shut up the house and Cecil has been at Rumbold the solicitors, to see if we can at least have it sealed and left alone until we’ve got our things out of it. Rumbold doesn’t seem to know where he is. He keeps on saying the N.I.C.E. are in a very peculiar position legally. After that, I’m sure I don’t know. As far as I can see there won’t be any houses in Edgestow. There’s no question of trying to live on the far side of the river any longer, even if they’d let us. What did you say? Oh, indescribable. All the poplars are going down. All those nice little cottages by the church are going down. I found poor Ivy-that’s your Mrs. Maggs, you know-in tears. Poor things! They do look dreadful when they cry on top of powder. She’s being turned out too. Poor little woman; she’s had enough troubles in her life without this. I was glad to get away. The men were so horrible. Three big brutes came to the back door asking for hot water and went on so that they frightened Martha out of her wits and Cecil had to go and speak to them. I thought they were going to strike Cecil, really I did. It was most horribly unpleasant. But a sort of special constable sent them away. What
? Oh yes, there are dozens of what look like policemen all over the place, and I didn’t like the look of them either. Swinging some kind of truncheon things, like what you’d see in an American film. Do you know, Jane, Cecil and I both thought the same thing: we thought, it’s almost as if we’d lost the war. Oh, good girl, tea! That’s just what I wanted.”

  “You must stay here as long as you like, Mrs. Dimble,” said Jane. “Mark’ll just have to sleep in College.”

  “Well, really,” said Mother Dimble, “I feel at the moment that no Fellow of Bracton ought to be allowed to sleep anywhere! But I’d make an exception in favour of Mr. Studdock. As a matter of fact, I shan’t have to behave like the sword of Siegfried-and, incidentally, a nasty fat stodgy sword I should be! But that side of it is all fixed up. Cecil and I are to go out to the Manor at St. Anne’s. We have to be there so much at present, you see.”

  “Oh,” said Jane, involuntarily prolonging the exclamation as the whole of her own story flowed back on her mind.

  “Why, what a selfish pig I’ve been,” said Mother Dimble. “Here have I been chattering away about my own troubles and quite forgetting that you’ve been out there and are full of things to tell me. Did you see Grace? And did you like her?”

  “Is ‘Grace’ Miss Ironwood?” asked Jane.

  “Yes.”

  “I saw her. I don’t know if I liked her or not. But I don’t want to talk about all that. I can’t think about anything except this outrageous business of yours. It’s you who are the real martyr, not me.”

  “No, my dear,” said Mrs. Dimble, “I’m not a martyr. I’m only an angry old woman with sore feet and a splitting head (but that’s beginning to be better) who’s trying to talk herself into a good temper. After all, Cecil and I haven’t lost our livelihood as poor Ivy Maggs has. It doesn’t really matter leaving the old house. Do you know, the pleasure of living there was in a way a melancholy pleasure, (I wonder, by the bye, do human beings really be happy? A little melancholy, yes. All those big upper rooms which we thought we should want because we thought we were going to have lots of children, and then we never had. Perhaps I was getting too fond of mooning about them on long afternoons when Cecil was away. Pitying oneself. I shall be better away from it, I dare say. I might have got like that frightful woman in Ibsen who was always maundering about dolls. It’s really worse for Cecil. He did so love having all his pupils about the place. Jane. that’s the third time you’ve yawned. You’re dropping asleep and I’ve talked your head off. It comes of being married for thirty years. Husbands were made to be talked to. It helps them to concentrate their minds on what they’re reading-like the sound of a weir. There!-you’re yawning again.”