The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis
I was there myself? Do you both think I am a murderer?”
“Please!” said the Deputy Director, “please, Mr. Studdock, you really must not shout. Quite apart from the indiscretion of it, I must remind you that you are in the presence of a lady. As far as I can remember, nothing has been said on our side about murder, and no charge of any sort had been made. My only anxiety is to make perfectly clear what we are all doing. There are, of course, certain lines of conduct and a certain mode of procedure which it would be theoretically possible for you to adopt and which would make it very difficult for us to continue the discussion. I am sure Miss Hardcastle agrees with me.”
“It’s all one to me,” said the Fairy. “Why Studdock should start bellowing at us because we are trying to keep him out of the dock, I don’t know. But that’s for him to decide. I’ve got a busy day and don’t want to hang about here all morning.”
“Really,” said Mark, “I should have thought it was excusable to——”
“Pray compose yourself, Mr. Studdock,” said Wither. “As I said before, we look upon ourselves as one family and nothing like a formal apology is required. We all understand one another and all dislike—er—scenes. I might perhaps be allowed to mention, in the friendliest possible manner, that any instability of temperament would be viewed by the Committee as—well, as not very favourable to the confirmation of your appointment. We are all speaking, of course, in the strictest confidence.”
Mark was far past bothering about the job for its own sake: but he realised that the threat of dismissal was now a threat of hanging.
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” he said at last. “What do you advise me to do?”
“Don’t put your nose outside Belbury, Studdock,” said the Fairy.
“I do not think Miss Hardcastle could have given you better advice,” said Wither. “And now that Mrs. Studdock is going to join you here this temporary captivity—I am using that word, you will understand, in a metaphorical sense—will not be a serious hardship. You must look upon this as your home, Mr. Studdock.”
“Oh . . . that reminds me, sir,” said Mark. “I’m not really quite sure about having my wife here. As a matter of fact she’s not in very good health——”
“But surely, in that case, you must be all the more anxious to have her here?”
“I don’t believe it would suit her, sir.”
The D.D.’s eyes wandered and his voice became lower.
“I had almost forgotten, Mr. Studdock,” he said, “to congratulate you on your introduction to our Head. It marks an important transition in your career. We all now feel that you are really one of us in a deeper sense. I am sure nothing is further from your intention than to repell the friendly—the almost fatherly—concern he feels about you. He is very anxious to welcome Mrs. Studdock among us at the earliest opportunity.”
“Why?” said Mark suddenly.
Wither looked at Mark with an indescribable smile.
“My dear boy,” he said. “Unity, you know. The family circle. She’d—she’d be company for Miss Hardcastle!” Before Mark had recovered from this staggeringly new conception, Wither rose and shuffled towards the door. He paused with one hand on the handle and laid the other on Mark’s shoulder.
“You must be hungry for your breakfast,” he said. “Don’t let me delay you. Behave with the greatest caution. And—and”—here his face suddenly changed. The widely opened mouth looked all at once like the mouth of some enraged animal: what had been the senile vagueness of the eyes became an absence of all specifically human expression. “And bring the girl. Do you understand? Get your wife,” he added. “The Head . . . he’s not patient.”
II
As Mark closed the door behind him he immediately thought “Now! They’re both in there together. Safe for a minute at least.” Without even waiting to get his hat he walked briskly to the front door and down the drive. Nothing but physical impossibility would stop him from going to Edgestow and warning Jane. After that he had no plans. Even the vague idea of escaping to America which, in a simpler age, comforted so many a fugitive, was denied him. He had already read in the papers the warm approval of the N.I.C.E. and all its works which came from the United States and from Russia. Some poor tool just like himself had written them. Its claws were embedded in every country: on the liner, if he should ever succeed in sailing, on the tender, if he should ever make some foreign port, its ministers would be waiting for him.
Now he was past the road; he was in the belt of trees. Scarcely a minute had passed since he had left the D.D.’s office and no one had overtaken him. But yesterday’s adventure was happening over again. A tall, stooped, shuffling, creaking figure, humming a tune, barred his way. Mark had never fought. Ancestral impulses lodged in his body—that body which was in so many ways wiser than his mind—directed the blow which he aimed at the head of this senile obstructor. But there was no impact. The shape had suddenly vanished.
Those who know best were never fully agreed as to the explanation of this episode. It may have been that Mark, both then and on the previous day, being over-wrought, saw a hallucination of Wither where Wither was not. It may be that the continual appearance of Wither which at almost all hours haunted so many rooms and corridors of Belbury was, in one well-verified sense of the word, a ghost—one of those sensory impressions which a strong personality in its last decay can imprint, most commonly after death but sometimes before it, on the very structure of a building, and which are removed not by exorcism but by architectural alterations. Or it may, after all, be that souls who have lost the intellectual good do indeed receive in return, and for a short period, the vain privilege of thus reproducing themselves in many places as wraiths. At any rate the thing, whatever it was, vanished.
The path ran diagonally across a field in grass, now powdered with frost, and the sky was hazy blue. Then came a stile: after that the path ran for three fields along the edge of a spinney. Then a little to the left, past the back parts of a farm, then along a ride through a wood. After that the spire of Courthampton was in sight; Mark’s feet had now got warm and he was beginning to feel hungry. Then he went across a road, through a herd of cattle that put down their heads and snorted at him, across a stream by a foot-bridge, and so into the frozen ruts of the lane that led him into Courthampton.
The first thing he saw as he came into the village street was a farm-cart. A woman and three children sat beside the man who was driving it, and in the cart were piled chests of drawers, bedsteads, mattresses, boxes, and a canary in a cage. Immediately after it came a man and woman and child on foot wheeling a perambulator: it also was piled with small household property. After that came a family pushing a hand-cart, and then a heavily loaded trap, and then an old car, blowing its horn incessantly but unable to get out of its place in the procession. A steady stream of such traffic was passing through the village. Mark had never seen war: if he had he would have recognised at once the signs of flight. In all those plodding horses and men and in all those loaded vehicles he would have read clearly the message “Enemy behind.”
The traffic was so continuous that it took him a long time to get to the cross-road by the pub where he could find a glazed and framed table of buses. There would not be one to Edgestow till 12.15. He hung about, understanding nothing of what he saw, but wondering; Courthampton was normally a very quiet village. By a happy, and not uncommon, illusion he felt less endangered now that Belbury was out of sight, and thought surprisingly little about his future. He thought sometimes about Jane, and sometimes about bacon and eggs, and fried fish, and dark, fragrant streams of coffee pouring into large cups. At 11.30 the pub opened. He went in and ordered a pint and some bread and cheese.
The bar was at first empty. During the next half-hour men dropped in one by one till about four were present. They did not at first talk about the unhappy procession which continued all this time to pass the windows. For some time indeed they did not talk at all. Then a very little man with a face like an old