That Hideous Strength (19 page)

     "He probably is by now," said the Director. "Tell him what it was like, Jane."

     "It was the same place," said Jane. "The slab of stone was there, but no one lying on it; this time it wasn't quite cold. Then I dreamed about this tunnel . . . sloping up from the souterrain. And there was a man in the tunnel. A big man. Breathing heavily. At first I thought it was an animal. It got colder as we went up the tunnel. It seemed to end in a pile of loose stones. He was pulling them about just before the dream changed. Then I was outside, in the rain, at the white gate."

     "It looks, you see," said Ransom, “as if they had not yet-or not then-established contact with him. Our only chance now is to meet this creature before they do."

     "Bragdon is very nearly water-logged," put in MacPhee. "Where you'll find a dry cavity is a question."

     "That's the point," said the Director. "The chamber must be under the high ground-the gravelly ridge on the south, where it slopes up to the Eaton Road. That's where you'll have to look for Jane's white gate. I suspect it opens on the Eaton Road. Or else that other road-the yellow one that runs up into the Y of Cure Hardy."

     "We can be there in half an hour," said Dimble. "I suppose it must be to-night?" said Mrs. Dimble shamefacedly.

     "I am afraid it must, Margaret," said the Director. "Every minute counts."

     "Of course. I see. I'm sorry," said Mrs. Dimble. "And what is our procedure, sir?" said Dimble. "The first question is whether he's out," said the Director. "He may take hours getting out."

     "You'll need at least two strong men with picks--" began MacPhee.

     "It's no good, MacPhee," said the Director. "I'm not sending you. But he may have powers we don't know. If he's out, you must look for tracks. Thank God it's a muddy night."

     "If Jane is going, sir," said Camilla, " couldn't I go too?"

     "Jane has to go because she is the guide," said Ransom. "You must stay at home. We in this house are all that is left of Logres. You carry its future in your body. As I was saying, Dimble, you must hunt. I do not think he can get far. The country will be quite unrecognisable to him, even by daylight."

     "And . . . if we do find him, sir?"

     "That is why it must be you, Dimble. Only you know the Great Tongue. Even if he does not understand it he will, I think, recognise it. That will teach him he is dealing with Masters. There is a chance that he will think you are the Belbury people. In that case you will bring him here at once."

     "And if not?"

     "That is the moment when the danger comes. We do not know what the powers of the old Atlantean circle were: some kind of hypnotism probably covered most of it. Don't be afraid: but don't let him try any tricks. Keep your hand on your revolver. You too, Denniston."

     "I'm a good hand with a revolver myself," said MacPhee. "And why--?"

     "You can't go, MacPhee," said the Director. "He'd put you to sleep in ten seconds. The others are heavily protected and you are not. You understand, Dimble ? Your revolver in your hand, a prayer on your lips. Then, if he stands, conjure him."

     "What shall I say in the Great Tongue?"

     "Say that you come in the name of God and all angels and in the power of the planets from one who sits today in the seat of the Pendragon, and command him to come with you. Say it now."

     And Dimble raised his head, and great syllables of words came out of his mouth. Jane felt her heart leap and quiver; it was as if the words spoke themselves through him from some strong place at a distance-or as if they were not words at all but present operations of God, the planets, and the Pendragon. For this was the language spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon. Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil's bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the star called Mercury on Earth, but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven.

     "Thank you," said the Director. "And if he comes with you, all is well. If he does not-why then, Dimble, say your prayers and keep your will fixed in the will of Maleldil. I don't know what he will do. You can't lose your soul, whatever happens; at least, not by any action of his."

     "Yes," said Dimble. "I understand."

     "You are all right, Jane?"

     "I think so, sir," said Jane.

     "Do you place yourself in the obedience," said the Director, " in obedience to Maleldil?"

     "Sir," said Jane, "I know nothing of Maleldil. But I place myself in obedience to you."

     "It is enough for the present," said the Director. "This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven: that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew. It will not be enough for always. He is very jealous. He will have you for no one but Himself in the end. But for to-night, it is enough."

     "This is the craziest business ever I heard of," said MacPhee.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

     BATTLE BEGUN

     "I CAN'T see a thing," said Jane.

     "This rain is spoiling the whole plan," said Dimble from the back seat. "Is this still Eaton Road, Arthur?"

     "I think . . . yes, there's the toll-house," said Denniston, who was driving.

     "I say!" said Jane suddenly. "Look! Look! What's that? Stop."

     "I can't see a white gate," said Denniston.

     "Oh, it's not that," said Jane. "Look over there."

     "Do you mean that light?" said Denniston.

     "Yes, of course, that's the fire."

     "What fire?"

     "It's the light," she said, " the fire in the hollow. Yes, I know: I never told Grace, or the Director. I'd forgotten that part of the dream till this moment. That was how it ended. It was the most important part. That was where I found him-Merlin, you know. Sitting by a fire in a little wood. After I came out of the place underground. Oh, come quickly!"

     "What do you think, Arthur?" said Dimble.

     "I think we must go wherever Jane leads," answered Denniston.

     "Oh, do hurry," said Jane. "There's a gate here. It's only one field away."

     All three of them crossed the road and opened the gate and went into the field. Dimble said nothing. He had, perhaps, a clearer idea than the others of what sort of things might happen when they reached the place.

     Jane, as guide, went first, and Denniston beside her, giving her his arm and showing an occasional gleam of his torch on the rough ground. Dimble brought up the rear.

     The change from the road to the field was as if one had passed from a waking into a phantasmal world. They realised that they had not really believed in Merlin till now. They had thought they were believing the Director in the kitchen; but they had been mistaken. Out here, with only the changing red light ahead and the black all round, one began to accept as fact this tryst with something dead and yet not dead, something exhumed from that dark pit of history which lies between the ancient Romans and the beginning of the English. "The Dark Ages," thought Dimble; how lightly one had read and written those words.

     Suddenly all that Britain which had been so long familiar to him as a scholar rose up like a solid thing. He could see it all. Little dwindling cities where the light of Rome still rested-little Christian sites, Gamalodunum, Kaerleon, Glastonbury-a church, a villa or two, a huddle of houses, an earthwork. And then, beginning a stone's-throw beyond the gates, the wet, tangled, endless woods; wolves slinking, beavers building, wide shallow marshes, dim horns and drummings, eyes in the thickets, eyes of men not only Pre-Roman but Pre-British, ancient creatures, unhappy and dispossessed, who became the elves and ogres and wood-wooses of the later tradition. But worse than the forests, the clearings. Little strongholds with unheard-of kings. Little colleges and covines of Druids. Houses whose mortar had been ritually mixed with babies' blood.

     Then came a check. They had walked right into a hedge. They had come to the end of a field. They went a long way out of their course before they found a gate. It would not open, and as they came down on the far side, after climbing it, they went ankle-deep into water.

     Hitherto Jane had scarcely attempted to think of what might lie before them. As they went on, the real meaning of that scene in the kitchen began to dawn on her. He had told the men to bid goodbye to their wives. He had blessed them all. It was likely, then, that this-this stumbling walk on a wet night across a ploughed field- meant death. Jane was trying to see death in the new light of all she had heard since she left Edgestow. She had long ceased to feel any resentment at the Director's tendency, as it were, to dispose other-to give her, at one time or in one sense, to Mark, and in another to Maleldil; never in any sense to keep her for himself. But Maleldil. Up to now she had not thought of Maleldil either. She did not doubt that the eldils existed; nor did she doubt the existence of this stronger and more obscure being whom they obeyed . . . whom the Director obeyed, and through him the whole household, even MacPhee. If it had ever occurred to her to question whether all these things might be the reality behind what she had been taught at school as " religion ", she had put the thought aside. But this time, if it was really to be death, the thought would not be put aside. Because it now appeared that almost anything might be true. One might be in for anything. Maleldil might be, quite simply and crudely, God. There might be a life after death: a Heaven: a Hell. "But . . . this is unbearable," she thought, "I should have been told."

     "Look out, Jane," said Denniston. "That's a tree."

     "I-I think it's a cow," said Jane.

     "No. It's a tree. Look. There's, another."

     "Hush," said Dimble. "This is Jane's little wood. We are very close now."

     The ground rose in front of them for about twenty yards and there made an edge against the firelight. They walked slowly and quietly up to the edge and stopped. Below them a big fire of wood was burning at the bottom of a little dingle. There were bushes all about, whose changing shadows, as the flames rose and fell, made it difficult to see clearly. Beyond the fire there seemed to be some rude kind of tent made out of sacking and an upturned cart. In the foreground there was a kettle.

     "Is there anyone here?" whispered Dimble to Denniston.

     "Look!" said Jane suddenly. "There! When the flame blew aside."

     "What?" said Dimble.

     "Didn't you see him?"

     "I thought I saw a man," said Denniston.

     "I saw an ordinary tramp," said Dimble. "A man in modern clothes."

     "What did he look like?"

     "I don't know."

     "We must go down," said Dimble.

     "Can one get down?" said Denniston.

     "Not this side," said Dimble. "It looks as if a sort of path came into it over there to the right."

     Cautiously they began to skirt the lip of the hollow, stealing from tree to tree.

     "Stop!" whispered Jane suddenly.

     "What is it?"

     "There's something moving."

     "Where?"

     "In there. Quite close."

     "Wait a moment," said Denniston. "It's just there. Look!-damn it, it's only an old donkey!"

     "That's what I said," said Dimble. _"The man's a gypsy; a tinker or something. This is his donkey. Still, we must go down."

     And in less than a minute all three walked down into the dingle and past the fire. And there was the tent, and a few miserable attempts at bedding inside it, and a tin plate, and some matches on the ground, and the dottle of a pipe, but they could see no man.

     "What I can't understand, Wither," said Fairy Hardcastle, " is why you don't let me try my hand on the young pup. All these ideas of yours are so halfhearted keeping him on his toes about the murder, arresting him, leaving him all night in the cells to think it over. Twenty minutes of my treatment would turn his mind inside out. I know the type."

     Miss Hardcastle was talking, at about ten o'clock that same wet night, to the Deputy Director in his study. There was a third person present-Professor Frost.

     "I assure you, Miss Hardcastle," said Wither, fixing his eyes not on her but on Frost's forehead, " you need not doubt that your views on this, or any other matter, will always receive the fullest consideration. But you must excuse me for reminding you-not, of course, that I assume you are neglecting the point-that we need the woman-I mean, that it would be of the greatest value to welcome Mrs. Studdock among us-chiefly on account of the remarkable psychical faculty she is said to possess. In using the word psychical, I am not, you understand, committing myself to any particular theory."

     "You mean these dreams?"

     "It is very doubtful," said Wither, " what effect it might l have on her if she were brought here under compulsion and then found her husband-ah-in the markedly, though no doubt temporarily, abnormal condition which we should have to anticipate as a result of your scientific methods of examination. One would run the risk of a profound emotional disturbance on her part."

     "We have not yet had Major Hardcastle's report," said Professor Frost quietly.

     "No good," said the Fairy. "He was shadowed into Northumberland. Only three possible people left the College after him-Lancaster, Lyly, and Dimble. I put them in that order of probability. Lancaster is a Christian, and a very influential man. He's in the Lower House of Convocation. He had a lot to do with the Repton "Conference". He has a real stake in their side. Lyly is rather the same type, but less of an organiser. Both are dangerous men. Dimble is quite a different type. Except that he's a Christian, there isn't much against him. He's purely academic. Impractical . . . he'd be too full of scruples to be much use to them."

     "You should tell Major Hardcastle that we have access to most of these facts already," said Professor Frost.

     "Perhaps," said Wither, " in view of the late hour---"

     "Well," said the Fairy, "I had to follow all three. With the resources I had at the moment. You'll realise young Studdock was seen setting off for Edgestow only by good luck. It was a bomb-shell. Half my people were already busy. I had to lay my hands on anyone I could get. I posted a sentry and had six others out of sight of the College, in plain clothes. As soon as Lancaster came out I told off the three best to keep him in sight. We may be on to something there. I sent the next two of my lads to deal with Lyly. Dimble came out last. I would have sent my last man to follow him, but a call came through at that moment from O'Hara, who wanted another car. So I sent my man up with the one he had. Dimble can be got any time. He comes into college pretty regularly; and he's a nonentity."