That Hideous Strength

II

It seemed to last long, this standing, this wondering what to do, this effort to look natural and not to catch the eyes of strangers. The noise and the agreeable smells which came from the folding doors made it obvious that people were going to lunch. Mark hesitated, uncertain of his own status. In the end he decided that he couldn’t stand there looking like a fool any longer, and went in.

He had hoped that there would be several small tables at one of which he could have sat alone. But there was only a single long table, already so nearly filled that, after looking in vain for Feverstone, he had to sit down beside a stranger. “I suppose one sits where one likes?” he murmured as he did so; but the stranger apparently did not hear. He was a bustling sort of man who was eating very quickly and talking at the same time to his neighbour on the other side.

“That’s just it,” he was saying. “As I told him, it makes no difference to me which way they settle it. I’ve no objection to the I.J.P. people taking over the whole thing if that’s what the D.D. wants, but what I dislike is one man being responsible for it when half the work is being done by someone else. As I said to him, you’ve now got three H.D.s all tumbling over one another about some job that could really be done by a clerk. It’s becoming ridiculous. Look at what happened this morning.” Conversation on these lines continued throughout the meal.

Although the food and the drinks were excellent, it was a relief to Mark when people began getting up from table. Following the general movement, he recrossed the hall and came into a large room furnished as a lounge where coffee was being served. Here at last he saw Feverstone. Indeed it would have been difficult not to notice him, for he was the centre of a group and laughing prodigiously. Mark wished to approach him, if only to find out whether he were expected to stay the night and, if so, whether a room had been assigned to him. But the knot of men round Feverstone was of that confidential kind which it is difficult to join. He moved towards one of the many tables and began turning over the glossy pages of an illustrated weekly. Every few seconds he looked up to see if there were any chance of getting a word with Feverstone alone. The fifth time he did so, he found himself looking into the face of one of his own colleagues, a Fellow of Bracton, called William Hingest. The Progressive Element called him, though not to his face, Bill the Blizzard.

Hingest had not, as Curry anticipated, been present at the College meeting, and was hardly on speaking terms with Lord Feverstone. Mark realised with a certain awe that here was a man directly in touch with the N.I.C.E. one who started, so to speak, at a point beyond Feverstone. Hingest, who was a physical chemist, was one of the two scientists at Bracton who had a reputation outside England. I hope the reader has not been misled into supposing that the Fellows of Bracton were a specially distinguished body. It was certainly not the intention of the Progressive Element to elect mediocrities to fellowships, but their determination to elect “sound men” cruelly limited their field of choice and, as Busby had once said, “You can’t have everything.” Bill the Blizzard had an old-fashioned curly moustache in which white had almost, but not completely, triumphed over yellow, a large beak-like nose, and a bald head.

“This is an unexpected pleasure,” said Mark with a hint of formality. He was always a little afraid of Hingest.

“Huh?” grunted Bill. “Eh? Oh, it’s you, Studdock? Didn’t know they’d secured your services here.”

“I was sorry not to see you at the College meeting yesterday,” said Mark.

This was a lie. The Progressive Element always found Hingest’s presence an embarrassment. As a scientist-and the only really eminent scientist they had-he was their rightful property; but he was that hateful anomaly, the wrong sort of scientist. Glossop, who was a classic, was his chief friend in College. He had the air (the “affectation” Curry called it) of not attaching much importance to his own revolutionary discoveries in chemistry and of valuing himself much more on being a Hingest: the family was of almost mythical antiquity, “never contaminated” as its nineteenth century historian had said, “by traitor, placeman or baronetcy.” He had given particular offence on the occasion of de Broglie’s visit to Edgestow. The Frenchman had spent his spare time exclusively in Bill the Blizzard’s society, but when an enthusiastic junior Fellow had thrown out a feeler about the rich feast of science which the two savants must have shared, Bill the Blizzard had appeared to search his memory for a moment and then replied that he didn’t think they had got on to that subject. “Gassing Almanac de Gotha nonsense, I suppose,” was Curry’s comment, though not in Hingest’s presence.

“Eh? What’s that? College meeting?” said the Blizzard. “What were they talking about?”

“About the sale of Bragdon Wood.”

“All nonsense,” muttered the Blizzard.

“I hope you would have agreed with the decision we came to.”

“It made no difference what decision they came to.”

“Oh!” said Mark with some surprise.

“It was all nonsense. The N.I.C.E. would have had the Wood in any case. They had powers to compel a sale.”

“What an extraordinary thing! I was given to understand they were going to Cambridge if we didn’t sell.”

“Not a word of truth in it. As to its being an extraordinary thing, that depends on what you mean. There’s nothing extraordinary in the Fellows of Bracton talking all afternoon about an unreal issue. And there’s nothing extraordinary in the fact that the N.I.C.E. should wish, if possible, to hand over to Bracton the odium of turning the heart of England into a cross between an abortive American hotel and a glorified gas-works. The only real puzzle is why the N.I.C.E. should want that bit of land.”

“I suppose we shall find out as things go on.”

“You may. I shan’t.”

“Oh ? “said Mark interrogatively.

“I’ve had enough of it,” said Hingest, lowering his voice, “I’m leaving to-night. I don’t know what you were doing at Bracton, but if it was any good I’d advise you to go back and stick to it.”

“Really!” said Mark. “Why do you say that?”

“Doesn’t matter for an old fellow like me,” said Hingest, “but they could play the devil with you. Of course it all depends on what a man likes.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Mark, “I haven’t fully made up my mind.” He had been taught to regard Hingest as a warped reactionary. “I don’t even know yet what my job would be if I stayed.”

“What’s your subject?”

“Sociology.”

“Huh!” said Hingest. “In that case I can soon point you out the man you’d be under. A fellow called Steele. Over there by the window, do you see?”

“Perhaps you could introduce me.”

“You’re determined to stay then?”

“Well, I suppose I ought at least to see him.”

“All right,” said Hingest. “No business of mine.” Then he added in a louder voice, “Steele!”

Steele turned round. He was a tall, unsmiling man with that kind of face which, though long and horse-like, has nevertheless rather thick and pouting lips.

“This is Studdock,” said Hingest. “The new man for your department. “Then he turned away.

“Oh,” said Steele. Then after a pause, “Did he say my department?”

“That’s what he said,” replied Mark with an attempt at a smile. “But perhaps he’s got it wrong. I’m supposed to be a sociologist-if that throws any light on it.”

“I’m H.D. for sociology all right,” said Steele. “But this is the first I’ve heard about you. Who told you you were to be there?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Mark, “the whole thing is rather vague. I’ve just had a talk with the Deputy Director but we didn’t actually go into any details.”

“How did you manage to see him?”

“Lord Feverstone introduced me.”

Steele whistled. “I say, Cosser,” he called out to a freckle-faced man who was passing by, “listen to this. Feverstone has just unloaded this chap on our department. Taken him straight to the D.D. without saying a word to me about it. What do you think of that?”

“Well I’m damned!” said Cosser, hardly glancing at Mark but looking very hard at Steele.

“I’m sorry,” said Mark, a little more loudly and a little more stiffly than he had yet spoken. “Don’t be alarmed. I seem to have been put in rather a false position. There must have been some misunderstanding. As a matter of fact I am, at the moment, merely having a look round. I’m not at all certain that I intend to stay in any case.”

Neither of the other two took any notice of this last suggestion.

“That’s Feverstone all over,” said Cosser to Steele.

Steele turned to Mark. “I shouldn’t advise you to take much notice of what Lord Feverstone says here,” he remarked. “This isn’t his business at all.”

“All I object to,” said Mark, wishing that he could prevent his face from turning so red, “is being put in a false position. I only came over as an experiment. It is a matter of indifference to me whether I take a job in the N.I.C.E. or not.”

“You see,” said Steele to Cosser, “there isn’t really any room for a man in our show-specially for someone who doesn’t know the work. Unless they put him on the U.L.”

“That’s right,” said Cosser.

“Mr. Studdock, I think,” said a new voice at Mark’s elbow, a treble voice which seemed disproportionate to the huge hill of a man whom he saw when he turned his head. He recognised the speaker at once. His dark, smooth face and black hair were unmistakable, and so was the foreign accent. This was Professor Filostrato, the great physiologist, whom Mark had sat next to at a dinner about two years before. He was fat to that degree which is comic on the stage, but the effect was not funny in real life. Mark was charmed that such a man should have remembered him.

“I am very glad you have come to join us,” said Filostrato, taking hold of Mark’s arm and gently piloting him away from Steele and Cosser.

“To tell you the truth,” said Mark, “I’m not sure that I have. I was brought over by Feverstone but he has disappeared, and Steele-I’d have been in his department I suppose-doesn’t seem to know anything about me.”

“Bah! Steele!” said the Professor. “That is all a bagatelle. He get too big for his boots. He will be put in his place one of these days. It may be you who will put him. I have read all your work, si si. Do not consider him.”

“I have a strong objection to being put in a false position” began Mark.

“Listen, my friend,” interrupted Filostrato. “You must put all such ideas out of your head. The first thing to realise is that the N.I.C.E. is serious. It is nothing less than the existence of the human race that depends on our work: our real work, you comprehend? You will find frictions and impertinences among this canaglia, this rabble. They are no more to be regarded than your dislike of a brother officer when the battle is at his crisis.”

“As long as I’m given something to do that is worth doing,” said Mark, “I shouldn’t allow anything of that sort to interfere with it.”

“Yes, yes, that is right. The work is more important than you can yet understand. You will see. These Steeles and Feverstones-they are of no consequence. As long as you have the good will of the Deputy Director you snap your fingers at them. You need listen to no one but him, you comprehend? Ah-and there is one other, Do not have the Fairy for your enemy. For the rest-you laugh at them.”

“The Fairy?”

“Yes. Her they call the Fairy. Oh, my God, a terrible Inglesaccia! She is the head of our police, the Institutional Police. Ecco, she come. I will present you. Miss Hardcastle, permit that I present to you Mr. Studdock.”

Mark found himself writhing from the stoker’s or carter’s hand-grip of a big woman in a black, short-skirted uniform. Despite a bust that would have done credit to a Victorian barmaid, she was rather thickly built than fat and her iron-grey hair was cropped short. Her face was square, stern, and pale, and her voice deep. A smudge of lip-stick laid on with violent inattention to the real shape of her mouth was her only concession to fashion, and she rolled or chewed a long black cheroot, unlit, between her teeth. As she talked she had a habit of removing this, staring intently at the mixture of lip-stick and saliva on its mangled end, and then replacing it more firmly than before. She sat down immediately in a chair close to where Mark was standing, flung her right leg over one of the arms, and fixed him with a gaze of cold intimacy.