That Hideous Strength. C. S. Lewis

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