The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis
on your chest. Got all you want?”
When Jane had washed and had tea and dressed herself with as much care as strange hairbrushes and a strange mirror allowed, she set out to look for the inhabited rooms. She passed down one long passage, through that silence which is not quite like any other in the world—the silence upstairs, in a big house, on a winter afternoon. Presently she came to a place where two passages met, and here the silence was broken by a faint irregular noise . . . pob . . . pob . . . pob-pob. Looking to her right she saw the explanation, for where the passage ended in a bay window stood Mr. Bultitude, this time on his hind legs, meditatively boxing a punch-ball. Jane chose the way to her left and came to a gallery whence she looked down the staircase into a large hall where daylight mixed with firelight. 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. “We’re not expecting you to do any work to-day. 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 heed 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 to-day.”
“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 had 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 about marriage.”