That Hideous Strength. C. S. Lewis

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      ‘You mean this?’ said Cosser glancing round the room. ‘I should have thought it was just the sort of thing we wanted to get rid of. No sunlight, no ventilation. Haven’t much use for alcohol myself (read the Miller Report) but if people have got to have their stimulants, I’d like to see them administered in a more hygienic way.’

      ‘I don’t know that the stimulant is quite the whole point,’ said Mark, looking at his beer. The whole scene was reminding him of drinks and talks long ago–of laughter and arguments in undergraduate days. Somehow one had made friends more easily then. He wondered what had become of all that set–of Carey and Wadsden and Denniston, who had so nearly got his own Fellowship.

      ‘Don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Cosser, in answer to his last remark. ‘Nutrition isn’t my subject. You’d want to ask Stock about that.’

      ‘What I’m really thinking about,’ said Mark, ‘is not this pub, but the whole village. Of course, you’re quite right: that sort of thing has to go. But it had its pleasant side. We’ll have to be careful that whatever we’re building up in its place will really be able to beat it on all levels–not merely in efficiency.’

      ‘Oh, architecture and all that,’ said Cosser. ‘Well, that’s hardly my line, you know. That’s more for someone like Wither. Have you nearly finished?’

      All at once it came over Mark what a terrible bore this little man was, and in the same moment he felt utterly sick of the NICE. But he reminded himself that one could not expect to be in the interesting set at once; there would be better things later on. Anyway, he had not burnt his boats. Perhaps he would chuck up the whole thing and go back to Bracton in a day or two. But not at once. It would be only sensible to hang on for a bit and see how things shaped.

      On their way back Cosser dropped him near Edgestow station, and as he walked home Mark began to think of what he would say to Jane about Belbury. You will quite misunderstand him if you think he was consciously inventing a lie. Almost involuntarily, as the picture of himself entering the flat, and of Jane’s questioning face, arose in his mind, there arose also the imagination of his own voice answering her, hitting off the salient features of Belbury in amusing, confident phrases. This imaginary speech of his own gradually drove out of his mind the real experiences he had undergone. Those real experiences of misgivings and of uneasiness, indeed, quickened his desire to cut a good figure in the eyes of his wife. Almost without noticing it, he had decided not to mention the affair of Cure Hardy; Jane cared for old buildings and all that sort of thing. As a result, when Jane, who was at that moment drawing the curtains, heard the door opening and looked round and saw Mark, she saw a rather breezy and buoyant Mark. Yes, he was almost sure he’d got the job. The salary wasn’t absolutely fixed, but he’d be going into that tomorrow. It was a very funny place: he’d explain all that later. But he had already got onto the real people there. Wither and Miss Hardcastle were the ones that mattered. ‘I must tell you about the Hardcastle woman,’ he said. ‘She’s quite incredible.’

      Jane had to decide what she would say to Mark much more quickly than he had decided what he would say to her. And she decided to tell him nothing about the dreams or St Anne’s. Men hated women who had things wrong with them, specially queer, unusual things. Her resolution was easily kept for Mark, full of his own story, asked her no questions. She was not, perhaps, entirely convinced by what he said. There was a vagueness about all the details. Very early in the conversation she said in a sharp, frightened voice (she had no idea how he disliked that voice), ‘Mark, you haven’t given up your fellowship at Bracton?’ He said, No, of course not, and went on. She listened only with half her mind. She knew he often had rather grandiose ideas, and from something in his face she divined that during his absence he had been drinking much more than he usually did. And so, all evening, the male bird displayed his plumage and the female played her part and asked questions and laughed and feigned more interest than she felt. Both were young, and if neither loved very much, each was still anxious to be admired.

      That evening the Fellows of Bracton sat in Common Room over their wine and dessert. They had given up dressing for dinner, as an economy during the war, and not yet resumed the practice, so that their sports coats and cardigans struck a somewhat discordant note against the dark Jacobean panels, the candle light, and the silver of many different periods. Feverstone and Curry were sitting together. Until that night for about three hundred years this Common Room had been one of the pleasant quiet places of England. It was in Lady Alice, on the ground floor beneath the soler, and the windows at its eastern end looked out on the river and on Bragdon Wood, across a little terrace where the Fellows were in the habit of taking their dessert on summer evenings. At this hour and season these windows were of course shut and curtained. And from beyond them came such noises as had never been heard in that room before–shouts and curses and the sound of lorries heavily drumming past or harshly changing gear, rattling of chains, drumming of mechanical drills, clanging of iron, whistles, thuddings, and an all pervasive vibration. Saeva sonare verbera, tum stridor ferri tractaeque catenae, as Glossop, sitting on the far side of the fire, had observed to Jewel. For beyond those windows, scarcely thirty yards away on the other side of the Wynd, the conversion of an ancient woodland into an inferno of mud and noise and steel and concrete was already going on apace. Several members even of the Progressive Element–those who had rooms on this side of College –had already been grumbling about it. Curry himself had been a little surprised by the form which his dream had taken now that it was a reality, but he was doing his best to brazen it out, and though his conversation with Feverstone had to be conducted at the top of their voices, he made no allusion to this inconvenience.

      ‘It’s quite definite, then,’ he bawled, ‘that young Studdock is not coming back?’

      ‘Oh quite,’ shouted Feverstone. ‘He sent me a message through a high official to tell me to let the College know.’

      ‘When will he send a formal resignation?’

      ‘Haven’t an earthly! Like all these youngsters, he’s very casual about these things. As a matter of fact, the longer he delays the better.’

      ‘You mean it gives us a chance to look about us?’

      ‘Quite. You see, nothing need come before the College till he writes. One wants to have the whole question of his successor taped before that.’

      ‘Obviously. That is most important. Once you present an open question to all these people who don’t understand the field and don’t know their own minds, you get anything happening.’

      ‘Exactly. That’s what we want to avoid. The only way to manage a place like this is to produce your candidate–bring the rabbit out of a hat–two minutes after you’ve announced the vacancy.’

      ‘We must begin thinking about it at once.’

      ‘Does his successor have to be a sociologist? I mean is the fellowship tied to the subject?’

      ‘Oh, not in the least. It’s one of those Paston fellowships. Why? Had you any subject in mind?’

      ‘It’s a long time since we had anyone in Politics.’

      ‘Um–yes. There’s still a considerable prejudice against Politics as an academic subject. I say, Feverstone, oughtn’t we to give this new subject a leg up?’

      ‘What new subject?’

      ‘Pragmatometry.’

      ‘Well now, it’s funny you should say that, because the man I was beginning to think of is a Politician who has also been going in a СКАЧАТЬ