“Jules! Hell’s bells! “said Feverstone. “You don’t imagine that little mascot has anything to say to what really goes on? He’s all right for selling the Institute to the great British public in the Sunday papers and he draws a whacking salary. He’s no use for work. There’s nothing inside his head except some nineteenth-century socialist stuff, and blah about the rights of man. He’s just about got as far as Darwin!”
“Oh quite,” said Mark. “I was always rather puzzled at his being in the show at all. Do you know, since you’re so kind, I think I’d better accept your offer and go over to Withers for the week-end. What time would you be starting?”
“About quarter to eleven. They tell me you live out Sandown way. I could call and pick you up.”
“Thanks very much. Now tell me about Wither.”
“John Wither,” began Feverstone, but suddenly broke off. “Damn!” he said. “Here comes Curry. Now we shall have to hear everything N.O. said and how wonderfully the arch-politician has managed him. Don’t run away. I shall need your moral support.”
II
The last bus had gone long before Mark left College, and he walked home up the hill in brilliant moonlight. Something happened to him the moment he had let himself into the flat which was very unusual. He found himself, on the door-mat, embracing a frightened, half sobbing Jane-even a humble Jane, who was saying, “Oh, Mark, I’ve been so frightened.”
There was a quality in the very muscles of his wife’s body which took him by surprise. A certain indefinable defensiveness had momentarily deserted her. He had known such occasions before, but they were rare. They were already becoming rarer. And they tended, in his experience, to be followed next day by inexplicable quarrels. This puzzled him greatly, but he had never put his bewilderment into words.
It is doubtful whether he could have understood her feelings even if they had been explained to him; and Jane, in any case, could not have explained them. She was in extreme confusion. But the reasons for her unusual behaviour on this particular evening were simple enough.
She had got back from the Dimbles at about half past four, feeling much exhilarated by her walk and hungry, and quite sure that her experiences on the previous night and at lunch were over and done with. She had had to light up and draw the curtains before she had finished tea, for the days were getting short. While doing so the thought had come into her mind that her fright at the dream and at the mere mention of a mantle, an old man, an old man buried but not dead, and a language like Spanish, had really been as irrational as a child’s fear of the dark. This had led her to remember moments when she had feared the dark as a child. Perhaps she allowed herself to remember them too long. At any rate, when she sat down to drink her last cup of tea, the evening had somehow deteriorated. It never recovered. First she found it rather difficult to keep her mind on her book. Then, when she had acknowledged this difficulty, she found it difficult to fix on any book. Then she realised that she was restless. From being restless she became nervous. Then followed a long time when she was not frightened, but knew that she would be very frightened indeed if she did not keep herself in hand. Then came a curious reluctance to go into the kitchen to get herself some supper, and a difficulty-indeed an impossibility-of eating anything when she had got it. And now there was no disguising the fact that she was frightened. In desperation she rang up the Dimbles. “I think I might go and see the person you suggested, after all,” she said. Mrs. Dimble’s voice came back, after a curious little pause, giving her the address. Ironwood was the name, Miss Ironwood, apparently. Jane had assumed it would be a man and was rather repelled. Miss Ironwood lived out at St. Anne’s on the Hill. Jane asked if she should make an appointment. “No,” said Mrs. Dimble, “they’ll be-you needn’t make an appointment.” Jane kept the conversation going as long as she could. She had rung up not chiefly to get the address but to hear Mother Dimble’s voice. Secretly she had had a wild hope that Mother Dimble would recognise her distress and say at once, “I’ll come straight up to you by car.” Instead, she got the mere information and a hurried “Good night.” It seemed to Jane that there was something queer about Mrs. Dimble’s voice. She felt that by ringing up she had interrupted a conversation about herself: or no-not about herself but about something else more important, with which she was somehow connected. And what had Mrs. Dimble meant by “They’ll be.” “They’ll be expecting you?” Horrible childish night-nursery visions of They “expecting her” passed before her mind. She saw Miss Ironwood, dressed all in black, sitting with her hands folded on her knees and then someone leading her into Miss Ironwood’s presence and saying “She’s come” and leaving her there.
“Damn the Dimbles!” said Jane to herself, and then 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 door-mat. 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.
III
“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 maladjustment 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.”