by C. S. Lewis
On the same level with herself, but only to be reached by descending to a landing and ascending again, were shadowy regions which she recognised as leading to the Director’s room. A sort of solemnity seemed to her to emanate from them and she went down into the hall almost on tiptoes, and now, for the first time, her memory of that last and curious experience in the blue room came back to her with a weight which even the thought of the Director himself could not counteract. When she reached the hall she saw at once where the back premises of the house must lie–down two steps and along a paved passage, past a stuffed pike in a glass case and then past a grandfather clock, and then, guided by voices and other sounds, to the kitchen itself.
A wide, open hearth glowing with burning wood lit up the comfortable form of Mrs Dimble who was seated in a kitchen chair at one side of it, apparently, from the basin in her lap and other indications on a table beside her, engaged in preparing vegetables. Mrs Maggs and Camilla were doing something at a stove–the hearth was apparently not used for cooking–and in a doorway which doubtless led to the scullery a tall grizzle-headed man who wore gum-boots and seemed to have just come from the garden, was drying his hands.
‘Come in, Jane,’ said Mother Dimble, cordially. ‘We’re not expecting you to do any work today. Come and sit on the other side of the fire and talk to me. This is Mr MacPhee–who has no right to be here, but he’d better be introduced to you.’
Mr MacPhee, having finished the drying process and carefully hung the towel behind the door, advanced rather ceremoniously and shook hands with Jane. His own hand was very large and coarse in texture and he had a shrewd hard-featured face.
‘I am very glad to see you, Mrs Studdock,’ he said in what Jane took to be a Scotch accent, though it was really that of an Ulsterman.
‘Don’t believe a word he says, Jane,’ said Mother Dimble. ‘He’s your prime enemy in this House. He doesn’t believe in your dreams.’
‘Mrs Dimble!’ said MacPhee, ‘I have repeatedly explained to you the distinction between a personal feeling of confidence and a logical satisfaction of the claims of evidence. The one is a psychological event–’
‘And the other a perpetual nuisance,’ said Mrs Dimble.
‘Never mind her, Mrs Studdock,’ said MacPhee. ‘I am, as I was saying, very glad to welcome you among us. The fact that I have found it my duty on several occasions to point out that no experimentum crucis has yet confirmed the hypothesis that your dreams are veridical, has no connection in the world with my personal attitude.’
‘Of course,’ said Jane vaguely, and a little confused. ‘I’m sure you have a right to your own opinions.’
All the women laughed as MacPhee in a somewhat louder tone replied, ‘Mrs Studdock, I have no opinions–on any subject in the world. I state the facts and exhibit the implications. If everyone indulged in fewer opinions’ (he pronounced the word with emphatic disgust), ‘there’d be less silly talking and printing in the world.’
‘I know who talks most in this house,’ said Mrs Maggs, somewhat to Jane’s surprise. The Ulsterman eyed the last speaker with an unaltered face while producing a small pewter box from his pocket and helping himself to a pinch of snuff.
‘What are you waiting for anyway?’ said Mrs Maggs. ‘Women’s day in the kitchen today.’
‘I was wondering,’ said MacPhee, ‘whether you had a cup of tea saved for me.’
‘And why didn’t you come in at the right time, then?’ said Mrs Maggs. Jane noticed that she talked to him much as she talked to the bear.
‘I was busy,’ said the other seating himself at one end of the table; and added after a pause, ‘trenching celery. The wee woman does the best she can but she has a poor notion of what needs doing in a garden.’
‘What is “women’s day” in the kitchen?’ asked Jane of Mother Dimble.
‘There are no servants here,’ said Mother Dimble, ‘and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next. What? No, it’s a very sensible arrangement. The Director’s idea is that men and women can’t do housework together without quarrelling. There’s something in it. Of course, it doesn’t do to look at the cups too closely on the men’s day, but on the whole we get along pretty well.’
‘But why should they quarrel?’ asked Jane.
‘Different methods, my dear. Men can’t help in a job, you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you’re doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.’
‘The cardinal difficulty,’ said MacPhee, ‘in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, “Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.” The female for this is, “Put that in the other one in there.” And then if you ask them, “in where?” they say, “in there, of course.” There is consequently a phatic hiatus.’ He pronounced this so as to rhyme with ‘get at us.’
‘There’s your tea now,’ said Ivy Maggs, ‘and I’ll go and get you a piece of cake, which is more than you deserve. And when you’ve had it you can go upstairs and talk about nouns for the rest of the evening.’
‘Not about nouns: by means of nouns,’ said MacPhee, but Mrs Maggs had already left the room. Jane took advantage of this to say to Mother Dimble in a lower voice, ‘Mrs Maggs seems to make herself very much at home here.’
‘My dear, she is at home here.’
‘As a maid, you mean?’
‘Well, no more than anyone else. She’s here chiefly because her house has been taken from her. She had nowhere else to go.’
‘You mean she is–one of the Director’s charities.’
‘Certainly that. Why do you ask?’
‘Well–I don’t know. It did seem a little odd that she should call you Mother Dimble. I hope I’m not being snobbish…’
‘You’re forgetting that Cecil and I are another of the Director’s charities.’
‘Isn’t that rather playing on words?’
‘Not a bit. Ivy and Cecil and I are all here because we were turned out of our homes. At least Ivy and I are. It may be rather different for Cecil.’
‘And does the Director know that Mrs Maggs talks to everyone like that?’
‘My dear child, don’t ask me what the Director knows.’
‘I think what’s puzzling me is that when I saw him he said something about equality not being the important thing. But his own house seems to be run on–well, on very democratic lines indeed.’
‘I never attempt to understand what he says on that subject,’ said Mother Dimble. ‘He’s usually talking either about spiritual ranks–and you were never goose enough to think yourself spiritually superior to Ivy–or else he’s talking about marriage.’
‘Did you understand his views on marriage?’
‘My dear, the Director is a very wise man. But he is a man, after all, and an unmarried man at that. Some of what he says, or what the Masters say, about marriage does seem to me to be a lot of fuss about something so simple and natural that it oughtn’t to need saying at all. But I suppose there are young women now-a-days who need to be told it.’
‘You haven’t got much use for young women who do, I see.’
‘Well, perhaps I’m unfair. Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book. We always intended to love, honour and obey, and we had figures and we wore petticoats and we liked waltzes…’
‘Waltzes are ever so nice,’ said Mrs Maggs who had just returned and given MacPhee his slab of cake, ‘so old fashioned.’
At that moment the door opened and a voice from behind it said, ‘Well, go in then, if you’re going.’ Thus admonished, a very fine jackdaw hopped into the room, followed firstly by Mr Bultitude and secondly by Arthur Denniston.
‘I’ve told you before, Arthur,’ said Ivy Maggs, ‘not to bring that bear in here when we’re cooking the dinner.’ While she was speaking Mr Bultitude, who was apparently him
self uncertain of his welcome, walked across the room in what he believed (erroneously) to be an unobtrusive manner and sat down behind Mrs Dimble’s chair.
‘Dr Dimble’s just come back, Mother Dimble,’ said Denniston. ‘But he’s had to go straight to the Blue Room. And the Director wants you to go to him too, MacPhee.’
Mark sat down to lunch that day in good spirits. Everyone reported that the riot had gone off most satisfactorily and he had enjoyed reading his own accounts of it in the morning papers. He enjoyed it even more when he heard Steele and Cosser talking about it in a way which showed that they did not even know how it had been engineered, much less who had written it up in the newspapers. And he had enjoyed his morning too. It had involved a conversation with Frost, the Fairy, and Wither himself, about the future of Edgestow. All were agreed that the government would follow the almost unanimous opinion of the nation (as expressed in the newspapers) and put it temporarily under the control of the Institutional Police. An emergency governor of Edgestow must be appointed. Feverstone was the obvious man. As a member of Parliament he represented the Nation, as a Fellow of Bracton he represented the University, as a member of the Institute he represented the Institute. All the competing claims that might otherwise have come into collision were reconciled in the person of Lord Feverstone; the articles on this subject which Mark was to write that afternoon would almost write themselves! But that had not been all. As the conversation proceeded it had become clear that there was really a double object in getting this invidious post for Feverstone. When the time came, and the local unpopularity of the NICE rose to its height, he could be sacrificed. This of course was not said in so many words, but Mark realised perfectly clearly that even Feverstone was no longer quite in the Inner Ring. The Fairy said that old Dick was a mere politician at heart and always would be. Wither, deeply sighing, confessed that his talents had been perhaps more useful at an earlier stage of the movement than they were likely to be in the period on which they were now entering. There was in Mark’s mind no plan for undermining Feverstone nor even a fully formed wish that he should be undermined; but the whole atmosphere of the discussion became somehow more agreeable to him as he began to understand the real situation. He was also pleased that he had (as he would have put it) ‘got to know’ Frost. He knew by experience that there is in almost every organisation some quiet, inconspicuous person whom the small fry suppose to be of no importance but who is really one of the mainsprings of the whole machine. Even to recognise such people for what they are shows that one had made considerable progress. There was, to be sure, a cold fish-like quality about Frost which Mark did not like and something even repulsive about the regularity of his features. But every word he spoke (he did not speak many) went to the root of what was being discussed, and Mark found it delightful to speak to him. The pleasures of conversation were coming, for Mark, to have less and less connection with his spontaneous liking or disliking of the people he talked to. He was aware of this change–which had begun when he joined the Progressive Element in College–and welcomed it as a sign of maturity.
Wither had thawed in a most encouraging manner. At the end of the conversation he had taken Mark aside, spoken vaguely but paternally of the great work he was doing, and finally asked after his wife. The DD hoped there was no truth in the rumour which had reached him that she was suffering from–er–some nervous disorder. ‘Who the devil has been telling him that?’ thought Mark. ‘Because,’ said Wither, ‘it had occurred to me, in view of the great pressure of work which rests on you at present and the difficulty, therefore, of your being at home as much as we should all (for your sake) wish, that in your case the Institute might be induced…I am speaking in a quite informal way…that we should all be delighted to welcome Mrs Studdock here.’
Until the DD had said this Mark had not realised that there was nothing he would dislike so much as having Jane at Belbury. There were so many things that Jane would not understand: not only the pretty heavy drinking which was becoming his habit but–oh, everything from morning to night. For it is only justice both to Mark and to Jane to record that he would have found it impossible to conduct in her hearing any one of the hundred conversations which his life at Belbury involved. Her mere presence would have made all the laughter of the Inner Ring sound metallic, unreal; and what he now regarded as common prudence would seem to her, and through her to himself, mere flattery, back-biting and toad-eating. Jane in the middle of Belbury would turn the whole of Belbury into a vast vulgarity, flashy and yet furtive. His mind sickened at the thought of trying to teach Jane that she must help to keep Wither in a good temper and must play up to Fairy Hardcastle. He excused himself vaguely to the DD, with profuse thanks, and got away as quickly as he could.
That afternoon, while he was having tea, Fairy Hardcastle came and leaned over the back of his chair and said in his ear,
‘You’ve torn it, Studdock.’
‘What’s the matter now, Fairy?’ said he.
‘I can’t make out what’s the matter with you, young Studdock, and that’s a fact. Have you made up your mind to annoy the Old Man? Because it’s a dangerous game, you know.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Well, here we’ve all been working on your behalf and soothing him down and this morning we thought we’d finally succeeded. He was talking about giving you the appointment originally intended for you and waiving the probationary period. Not a cloud in the sky: and then you have five minutes’ chat with him–barely five minutes, in fact–and in that time you’ve managed to undo it all. I begin to think you are mental.’
‘What the devil’s wrong with him this time?’
‘Well you ought to know! Didn’t he say something about bringing your wife here?’
‘Yes, he did. What about it?’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said not to bother about it–and, of course, thanked him very much and all that.’ The Fairy whistled.
‘Don’t you see, Honey,’ she said, gently rapping Mark’s scalp with her knuckles, ‘that you could hardly have made a worse bloomer? It was a most terrific concession for him to make. He’s never done it to anyone else. You might have known he’d be offended if you cold-shouldered him. He’s burbling away now about lack of confidence. Says he’s “hurt”: which means that somebody else soon will be! He takes your refusal as a sign that you are not really “settled” here.’
‘But that is sheer madness. I mean…’
‘Why the blazes couldn’t you tell him you’d have your wife here?’
‘Isn’t that my own business?’
‘Don’t you want to have her? You’re not very polite to little wifie, Studdock. And they tell me she’s a damned pretty girl.’
At that moment the form of Wither, slowly sauntering in their direction, became apparent to both and the conversation ended.
At dinner he sat next to Filostrato. There were no other members of the inner circle within earshot. The Italian was in good spirits and talkative. He had just given orders for the cutting down of some fine beech trees in the grounds.
‘Why have you done that, Professor?’ said a Mr Winter who sat opposite. ‘I shouldn’t have thought they did much harm at that distance from the house. I’m rather fond of trees myself.’
‘Oh, yes, yes,’ replied Filostrato. ‘The pretty trees, the garden trees. But not the savages. I put the rose in my garden, but not the brier. The forest tree is a weed. But I tell you I have seen the civilised tree in Persia. It was a French attaché who had it because he was in a place where trees do not grow. It was made of metal. A poor, crude thing. But how if it were perfected? Light, made of aluminium. So natural, it would even deceive.’
‘It would hardly be the same as a real tree,’ said Winter.
‘But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess.’
‘I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing.’
‘Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forests, for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.’
‘Do you mean,’ put in a man called Gould, ‘that we are to have no vegetation at all?’
‘Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.’
‘I wonder what the birds will make of it?’
‘I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.’
‘It sounds,’ said Mark, ‘like abolishing pretty well all organic life.’
‘And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, “Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,” and then drop it?’
‘Go on,’ said Winter.
‘And you, especially you English, are you not hostile to any organic life except your own on your own body? Rather than permit it you have invented the daily bath.’
‘That’s true.’
‘And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt. But the real filth is what comes from organisms–sweat, spittles, excretions. Is not your whole idea of purity one huge example? The impure and the organic are interchangeable conceptions.’
‘What are you driving at, Professor?’ said Gould. ‘After all we are organisms ourselves.’
‘I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mould–all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course. Slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.’
‘I don’t think that would be much fun,’ said Winter.
‘My friend, you have already separated the Fun, as you call it, from fertility. The Fun itself begins to pass away. Bah! I know that is not what you think. But look at your English women. Six out of ten are frigid, are they not? You see? Nature herself begins to throw away the anachronism. When she has thrown it away, then real civilisation becomes possible. You would understand if you were peasants. Who would try to work with stallions and bulls? No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.’
This brought them to the end of dinner and as they rose from the table Filostrato whispered in Mark’s ear, ‘I would not advise the Library for you tonight. You understand? You are not in favour. Come and have a little conversation with me in my room.’
Mark rose and followed him, glad and surprised that in this new crisis with the DD Filostrato was apparently still his friend. They went up to the Italian’s sitting-room on the first floor. There Mark sat down before the fire, but his host continued to walk up and down the room.
‘I am very sorry, my young friend,’ said Filostrato, ‘to hear of this new trouble between you and the Deputy Director. It must be stopped, you