That Hideous Strength

V

In the great drawing-room at Belbury a singularly uncomfortable party was by now assembled. Horace Jules, Director of the N.I.C.E . . . had arrived about half an hour before. They had shown him to the Deputy Director’s study, but the Deputy Director was not there. Then they had shown him to his own rooms and hoped he would take a long time settling in. He took a very short time. In five minutes he was downstairs again and on their hands, and it was still much too early for anyone to go and dress. He was now standing with his back to the fire drinking a glass of sherry and the principal members of the Institute were standing round him. Conversation was hanging fire.

Conversation with Mr. Jules was always difficult, because he insisted on regarding himself not as a figure-head but as the real director of the Institute, and even as the source of most of its ideas. And since, in fact, any science he knew was that taught him at the University of London over fifty years ago, and anything else he knew had been acquired from writers like Haeckel and Joseph McCabe and Winwood Reade, it was not, in fact, possible to talk to him about most of the things the Institute was really doing. One was always engaged in inventing answers to questions which were actually meaningless and expressing enthusiasm for ideas which were out of date and had been crude even in their prime. That was why the absence of the Deputy Director in such interviews was so disastrous, for Wither alone was master of a conversational style that exactly suited Jules.

Jules was a cockney. He was a very little man, whose legs were so short that he had unkindly been compared to a duck. He had a turned-up nose and a face in which some original bonhomie had been much interfered with by years of good living and conceit. His novels had first raised him to fame and affluence; later, as editor of the weekly called We want to Know he had become such a power in the country that his name was really necessary to the N.I.C.E.

“And as I said to the Archbishop,” observed Jules, “you may not know, my lord, said I, that modern research shows the temple at Jerusalem to have been about the size of an English village church.”

“God!” said Feverstone to himself, where he stood silent on the fringes of the group.

“Have a little more sherry, Director,” said Miss Hardcastle.

“Well, I don’t mind if I do,” said Jules. “It’s not at all bad sherry, though I think I could tell you of a place where we could get something better. And how are you getting on, Miss Hardcastle, with your reforms of our penal system?”

“Making real headway,” she replied. “I think some modification of the Pellotoff method”

“What I always say,” remarked Jules, interrupting her, “is, why not treat crime like any other disease? I’ve no use for punishment. What you want to do is to put the man on the right lines-give him a fresh start-give him an interest in life. It’s all perfectly simple if you look at it from that point of view. I dare say you’ve been reading a little address on the subject I gave at Northampton.”

“I agreed with you,” said Miss Hardcastle.

“That’s right,” said Jules. “I tell you who didn’t, though. Old Hingest-and by the by, that was a queer business. You never caught the murderer, did you? But though I’m sorry for the old chap, I never did quite see eye to eye with him. Very last time I met him one or two of us were talking about juvenile offenders, and do you know what he said? He said, ‘The trouble with these courts for young criminals nowadays is that they’re always binding them over when they ought to be bending them over.’ Not bad, was it? Still, as Wither said-and, by the way, where is Wither?”

“I think he should be here any moment now,” said Miss Hardcastle; “I can’t imagine why he’s not.”

“I think,” said Filostrato, “he have a breakdown with his car. He will be very desolated, Mr. Director, not to have given you the welcome.”

“Oh, he needn’t bother about that,” said Jules, “I never was one for any formality, though I did think he’d be here when I arrived. You’re looking very well, Filostrato. I’m following your work with great interest. I look upon you as one of the makers of mankind.”

“Yes, yes,” said Filostrato, “that is the real business. Already we begin”

“I try to help you all I can on the non-technical side,” said Jules. “It’s a battle I’ve been fighting for years. The whole question of our sex-life. What I always say is that once you get the whole thing out into the open, you don’t have any more trouble. It’s all this Victorian secrecy which does the harm. Making a mystery of it. I want every boy and girl in the country-”

“God!” said Feverstone to himself.

“Forgive me,” said Filostrato, who, being a foreigner, had not yet despaired of trying to enlighten Jules. “But that is not precisely the point.”

“Now, I know what you’re going to say,” interrupted Jules, laying a fat forefinger on the Professor’s sleeve.

“And I dare say you don’t read my little paper. But, believe me, if you looked up the first number of last month you’d find a modest little editorial which a chap like you might overlook because it doesn’t use any technical terms. But I ask you just to read it and see if it doesn’t put the whole thing in a nutshell and in a way that the man in the street can understand.”

At this moment the clock struck a quarter.

“I say,” asked Jules, “what time is this dinner at?”

He liked banquets, and specially banquets at which he had to speak.

“At quarter to eight,” said Miss Hardcastle.

“You know,” said Jules, “this fellow Wither really ought to be here. I mean to say. I’m not particular, but I don’t mind telling you, between you and me, that I’m a bit hurt. It isn’t the kind of thing a chap expects is it?”

“I hope nothing’s gone wrong with him,” said Miss Hardcastle.

“You’d hardly have thought he’d have gone out anywhere, not on a day like this,” said Jules.

“Ecco,” said Filostrato. “Someone come.” It was indeed Wither who entered the room, followed by a company whom Jules had not expected to see, and Wither’s face had certainly good reason to look even more chaotic than usual. He had been bustled round his own institute as if he were a kind of footman. He had not even been allowed to have the supply of air turned on for the Head when they made him take them into the Head’s room. And “Merlin” (if it was Merlin) had ignored it. Worst of all, it had gradually become clear to him that this intolerable incubus and his interpreter fully intended to be present at dinner. No one could be more keenly aware than Wither of the absurdity of introducing to Jules a shabby old priest who couldn’t speak English, in charge of what looked like a somnambulist chimpanzee dressed up as a Doctor of Philosophy. To tell Jules the real explanation-even if he knew which was the real explanation-was out of the question. For Jules was a simple man to whom the word “medieval” meant only “savage” and in whom the word “magic” roused memories of The Golden Bough. It was a minor nuisance that ever since their visit to the Objective Room he had been compelled to have both Frost and Studdock in attendance. Nor did it mend matters that as they approached Jules, and all eyes were fixed upon them, the pseudo-Merlin collapsed into a chair, muttering, and closed his eyes.

“My dear Director,” began Wither, a little out of breath, “this is one of the happiest moments of my life. I hope your comfort has been in every way attended to. It has been most unfortunate that I was called away at the very moment when I was expecting your arrival. A remarkable coincidence . . . another very distinguished person has joined us at the very same moment. A foreigner . . .”

“Oh,” interrupted Jules in a slightly rasping voice, “who’s he?”

“Allow me,” said Wither, stepping a little to one side.

“Do you mean that?” said Jules. The supposed Merlin sat with his arms hanging down on each side of the chair, his eyes closed, his head on one side, and a weak smile on his face. “Is he drunk? Or ill? And who is he anyway?”

“He is, as I was observing, a foreigner,” began Wither.

“Well, that doesn’t make him go to sleep the moment he is introduced to me, does it?”

“Hush!” said Wither, drawing Jules a little out of the group and lowering his voice. “There are circumstances-it would be very difficult to go into it here-I have been taken by surprise and would, if you had not been here already, have consulted you at the first possible moment. Our distinguished guest has just undertaken a very long journey and has, I admit, certain eccentricities and . . .”

“But who is he?” persisted Jules.

“His name is . . . er . . . Ambrosius. Dr. Ambrosius, you know.”

“Never ’eard of him,” snapped Jules. At another time he might not have made this admission, but the whole evening was turning out differently from his expectations and he was losing his temper.

“Very few of us have heard of him yet,” said Wither.

“But everyone will have heard of him soon. That is why, without in the least . . .”

“And who’s that?” asked Jules, indicating the real Merlin. “He looks as if he were enjoying himself.”

“Oh, that is merely Dr. Ambrosius’s interpreter.”

“Interpreter? Can’t he talk English?”

“Unfortunately not. He lives rather in a world of his own.”

“And can’t you get anyone except a priest to act for him? I don’t like the look of that fellow. We don’t want that sort of thing here at all. Hullo! And who are you?”

The last question was addressed to Straik, who had at this moment thrust his way up to the Director. “Mr. Jules,” he said, fixing the latter with a prophetic eye, “I am the bearer of a message to you which you must hear. I--”

“Shut up,” said Frost to Straik.

“Really, Mr. Straik, really,” said Wither. Between them they shouldered him aside.

“Now look ’ere, Mr. Wither,” said Jules, “I tell you straight I’m very far from satisfied. Here’s another parson. I don’t remember the name of any such person coming before me, and it wouldn’t have got past me if it had done see? You and I’ll have to have a very serious conversation. It seems to me you’ve been making appointments behind my back and turning the place into a kind of seminary. And that’s a thing I won’t stand. Nor will the British people.”

“I know. I know,” said Wither. “I understand your feelings exactly. You can rely on complete sympathy. I am eager and waiting to explain the situation to you. In the meantime perhaps as Dr. Ambrosius seems slightly overcome and the dressing-bell has just sounded . . . oh, I beg your pardon. This is Dr. Ambrosius.”

The tramp, to whom the real magician had recently turned, was now risen from his chair, and approaching.

Jules held out his hand sulkily. The other, looking over Jules’s shoulder and grinning in an inexplicable fashion, seized it and shook it, as if absent-mindedly, some ten or fifteen times. His breath, Jules noticed, was strong and his grip horny. He was not liking Dr. Ambrosius. And he disliked even more the massive form of the interpreter towering over them both.