The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis
in things he found dull and of knowledge he did not possess, the almost heroic sacrifice of nearly every person and thing he actually enjoyed, the miserable attempt to pretend that one could enjoy Grip, or the Progressive Element, or the N.I.C.E.—all this came over him with a kind of heartbreak. When had he ever done what he wanted? Mixed with the people whom he liked? Or even eaten and drunk what took his fancy? The concentrated insipidity of it all filled him with self-pity.
In his normal condition, explanations that laid on impersonal forces outside himself the responsibility for all this life of dust and broken bottles would have occurred at once to his mind and been at once accepted. It would have been “the system” or “an inferiority complex” due to his parents, or the peculiarities of the age. None of these things occurred to him now. His “scientific” outlook had never been a real philosophy believed with blood and heart. It had lived only in his brain, and was a part of that public self which was now falling off him. He was aware, without even having to think of it, that it was he himself—nothing else in the whole universe—that had chosen the dust and broken bottles, the heap of old tin cans, the dry and choking places.
An unexpected idea came into his head. This—this death of his—would be lucky for Jane. Myrtle long ago, Pearson at school, Denniston while they were undergraduates, and lastly Jane had been the four biggest invasions of his life by something from beyond the dry and choking places. Myrtle he had conquered by becoming the clever brother who won scholarships and mixed with important people. They were really twins, but after a short period in childhood during which she had appeared as an elder sister, she had become more like a younger sister and had remained so ever since. He had wholly drawn her into his orbit: it was her large wondering eyes and naïf answers to his accounts of the circle he was now moving in which had provided at each stage most of the real pleasure of his career. But for the same reason she had ceased to mediate life from beyond the dry places. The flower, once safely planted among the tin cans, had turned into a tin can itself. Pearson and Denniston he had thrown away. And he now knew, for the first time, what he had secretly meant to do with Jane. If all had succeeded, if he had become the sort of man he hoped to be, she was to have been the great hostess—the secret hostess in the sense that only the very esoteric few would know who that striking-looking woman was and why it mattered so enormously to secure her good will. Well . . . it was lucky for Jane. She seemed to him, as he now thought of her, to have in herself deep wells and knee-deep meadows of happiness, rivers of freshness, enchanted gardens of leisure, which he could not enter but could have spoiled. She was one of those other people—like Pearson, like Denniston, like the Dimbles—who could enjoy things for their own sake. She was not like him. It was well that she should be rid of him. Of course she would get over it. She had tried to do her best, but she didn’t really care for him. Nobody ever had, much.
At that moment came the sound of a key turning in the lock of the cell-door. Instantly all these thoughts vanished; mere physical terror of death, drying the throat, rushed back upon him. He scrambled to his feet and stood with his back against the farthest wall, staring as hard as if he could escape hanging by keeping whoever entered steadily in sight.
It was not a policeman who came in. It was a man in a grey suit whose pince-nez, as he glanced towards Mark and towards the light, became opaque windows concealing his eyes. Mark knew him at once and knew that he was at Belbury. It was not this that made him open his own eyes even wider and almost forget his terror in his astonishment. It was the change in the man’s appearance—or rather the change in the eyes with which Mark saw him. In one sense everything about Professor Frost was as it had always been—the pointed beard, the extreme whiteness of forehead, the regularity of features, and the bright Arctic smile. But what Mark could not understand was how he had ever managed to overlook something about the man so obvious that any child would have shrunk away from him and any dog would have backed into the corner with raised hackles and bared teeth. Death itself did not seem more frightening than the fact that only six hours ago he would in some measure have trusted this man, welcomed his confidence, and even made believe that his society was not disagreeable.
Chapter Twelve
Wet and Windy Night
I
“Well,” said Dimble, “there’s no one here.”
“He was here a moment ago,” said Denniston.
“You’re sure you did see someone?” said Dimble.
“I thought I saw someone,” said Denniston. “I’m not positive.”
“If there was anyone he must still be quite close,” said Dimble.
“What about giving him a call?” suggested Denniston.
“Hush! Listen!” said Jane. They were all silent for a few moments.
“That’s only the old donkey,” said Dimble presently, “moving about at the top.”
There was another silence.
“He seems to have been pretty extravagant with his matches,” said Denniston presently, glancing at the trodden earth in the firelight. “One would expect a tramp——”
“On the other hand,” said Dimble, “one would not expect Merlin to have brought a box of matches with him from the Fifth Century.”
“But what are we to do?” said Jane.
“One hardly likes to think what MacPhee will say if we return with no more success than this. He will at once point out a plan we ought to have followed,” said Denniston with a smile.
“Now that the rain’s over,” said Dimble, “we’d better get back to the car and start hunting for your white gate. What are you looking at, Denniston?”
“I’m looking at this mud,” said Denniston, who had moved a few paces away from the fire and in the direction of the path by which they had descended into the dingle. He had been stooping and using his torch. Now he suddenly straightened himself. “Look,” he said, “there have been several people here. No, don’t walk onto it and mess up all the tracks. Look. Can’t you see, sir?”
“Aren’t they our own footprints?” said Dimble.
“Some of them are pointing the wrong way. Look at that—and that.”
“Might they be the tramp himself?” said Dimble. “If it was a tramp.”
“He couldn’t have walked up that path without our seeing him,” said Jane.
“Unless he did it before we arrived,” said Denniston.
“But we all saw him,” said Jane.
“Come,” said Dimble. “Let’s follow them up to the top. I don’t suppose we shall be able to follow them far. If not, we must get back to the road and go on looking for the gate.”
As they reached the lip of the hollow, mud changed into grass under foot and the footprints disappeared. They walked twice round the dingle and found nothing: then they set out to return to the road. It had turned into a fine night: Orion dominated the whole sky.
II
The Deputy Director hardly ever slept. When it became absolutely necessary for him to do so, he took a drug, but the necessity was rare, for the mode of consciousness he experienced at most hours of day or night had long ceased to be exactly like what other men call waking. He had learned to withdraw most of his consciousness from the task of living, to conduct business, even, with only a quarter of his mind. Colours, tastes, smells, and tactual sensations no doubt bombarded his physical senses in the normal manner: they did not now reach his ego. The manner and outward attitude to men which he had adopted half a century ago were now an organisation which functioned almost independently,