“No, Cam, don’t,” said Denniston. “The Pendragon-the Head, I mean, wouldn’t like us to do that. Mrs. Studdock must come in freely.”
“But,” said Jane, “I don’t know anything about all this. Do I? I don’t want to take sides in something I don’t understand.”
“But don’t you see,” broke in Camilla, “that you can’t be neutral? If you don’t give yourself to us, the enemy will use you.”
The words “give yourself to us” were ill chosen. The very muscles of Jane’s body stiffened a little: if the speaker had been anyone who attracted her less than Camilla she would have become like stone to any further appeal. Denniston laid a hand on his wife’s arm.
“You must see it from Mrs. Studdock’s point of view, dear,” he said. “You forget she knows practically nothing at all about us. And that is the real difficulty. We can’t tell her much until she has joined. We are, in fact, asking her to take a leap in the dark.” He turned to Jane with a slightly quizzical smile on his face which was, nevertheless, grave. “It is like that,” he said, “like getting married, or going into the Navy as a boy, or becoming a monk, or trying a new thing to eat. You can’t know what it’s like until you take the plunge.” He did not perhaps know, or again perhaps he did, the complicated resentments and resistances which his choice of illustrations awoke in Jane, nor could she herself analyse them. She merely replied in a colder voice than she had yet used:
“In that case it is rather difficult to see why one should take it at all.”
“I admit frankly,” said Denniston, “that you can only take it on trust. It all depends really, I suppose, what impression the Dimbles and Grace and we two have made on you: and, of course, the Head himself, when you meet him.”
Jane softened again.
“What exactly are you asking me to do?” she said.
“To come and see our chief, first of all. And then-well, to join. It would involve making certain promises to him. He is really a Head, you see. We have all agreed to take his orders. Oh-there’s one other thing. What view would Mark take about it?-he and I are old friends, you know.”
“I wonder,” said Camilla. “Need we go into that for the moment?”
“It’s bound to come up sooner or later,” said her husband.
There was a little pause.
“Mark?” said Jane. “How does he come into it? I can’t imagine what he’d say about all this. He’d probably think we were all off our heads.”
“Would he object, though?” said Denniston. “I mean, would he object to your joining us?”
“If he were at home, I suppose he’d be rather surprised if I announced I was going to stay indefinitely at St. Anne’s. Does ‘joining you’ mean that?”
“Isn’t Mark at home?” asked Denniston with some surprise.
“No,” said Jane. “He’s at Belbury. I think he’s going to have a job in the N.I.C.E.” She was rather pleased to be able to say this for she was well aware of the distinction it implied. If Denniston was impressed he did not show it.
“I don’t think,” he said, “that ‘joining us’ would mean, at the moment, coming to live at St. Anne’s: specially in the case of a married woman. Unless old Mark got really interested and came himself”
“That is quite out of the question,” said Jane. (“He doesn’t know Mark,” she thought.)
“Anyway,” continued Denniston, “that is hardly the real point at the moment. Would he object to your joining-putting yourself under the Head’s orders and making the promises and all that?”
“Would he object?” asked Jane.
“What on earth would it have to do with him?”
“Well,” said Denniston, hesitating a little, “the Head-or the authorities he obeys-have rather old-fashioned notions. He wouldn’t like a married woman to come in if it could be avoided, without her husband’s-without consulting--”
“Do you mean I’m to ask Mark’s permission?” said Jane with a strained little laugh. The resentment which had been rising and ebbing, but rising each time a little more than it ebbed, for several minutes, had now overflowed. All this talk of promises and obedience to an unknown Mr. Fisher-King had already repelled her. But the idea of this same person sending her back to get Mark’s permission-as if she were a child asking leave to go to a party-was the climax. For a moment she looked on Mr. Denniston with real dislike.
She saw him, and Mark, and the Fisher-King man and this preposterous Indian fakir simply as men-complacent, patriarchal figures making arrangements for women as if women were children or bartering them like cattle. (“And so the king promised that if anyone killed the dragon he would give him his daughter in marriage.”) She was very angry.
“Arthur,” said Camilla, “I see a light over there. Do you think it’s a bonfire?”
“Yes, I should say it was.”
“My feet are getting cold. Let’s go for a little walk and look at the fire. I wish we had some chestnuts.”
“Oh, do let’s,” said Jane.
They got out. It was warmer in the open than it had by now become in the car-warm and full of leavy smells, and dampness, and the small noise of dripping branches. The fire was big and in its middle life-a smoking hillside of leaves on one side and great caves and cliffs of glowing red on the other. They stood round it and chatted of indifferent matters for a time.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Jane presently. “I won’t join your-your-whatever it is. But I’ll promise to let you know if I have any more dreams of that sort.”
“That is splendid,” said Denniston. “And I think it is as much as we had a right to expect. I quite see your point of view. May I ask for one more promise?”
“What is that?”
“Not to mention us to anyone.”
“Oh, certainly.”
Later, when they had returned to the car and were driving back, Mr. Denniston said, “I hope the dreams will not worry you much, now, Mrs. Studdock. No: I don’t mean I hope they’ll stop: and I don’t think they will either. But now that you know they are not something in yourself but only things going on in the outer world, nasty things, no doubt, but no worse than lots you read in the papers, I believe you’ll find them quite bearable. The less you think of them as your dreams and the more you think of them-well, as news-the better you’ll feel about them.”
Six
I
A NIGHT (with little sleep) and half another day dragged past before Mark was able to see the Deputy Director again. He went to him in a chastened frame of mind, anxious to get the job on almost any terms.
“I have brought back the Form, sir,” he said.
“What Form?” asked the Deputy Director. Mark found he was talking to a new and different Wither. The absent-mindedness was still there, but the courtliness was gone. The man looked at him as if out of a dream, as if divided from him by an immense distance, but with a sort of dreamy distaste which might turn into active hatred if ever that distance were diminished. He still smiled, but there was something cat-like in the smile; an occasional alteration of the lines about the mouth which even hinted at a snarl. Mark in his hands was as a mouse. At Bracton the Progressive Element, having to face only scholars, had passed for very knowing fellows, but here at Belbury, one felt quite different. Wither said he had understood that Mark had already refused the job. He could not, in any event, renew the offer. He spoke vaguely and alarmingly of strains and frictions, of injudicious behaviour, of the danger of making enemies, of the impossibility that the N.I.C.E could harbour a person who appeared to have quarrelled with all its members in the first week. He spoke even more vaguely and alarmingly of conversations he had had with “your colleagues at Bracton” which entirely confirmed this view. He doubted if Mark were really suited to a learned career, but disclaimed any intention of giving advice. Only after he had hinted and murmured Mark into a sufficient state of dejection did he throw him, like a bone to a dog, the suggestion of an appointment for a probationary period at (roughly-he could not commit the Institute) six hundred a year. And Mark took it. He attempted to get answers even then to some of his questions. From whom was he to take orders? Was he to reside at Belbury?