That Hideous Strength

‘Oh, I haven’t any doubt which is my side,’ said Mark. ‘Hang it all–the preservation of the human race–it’s a pretty rock-bottom obligation.’

‘Well, personally,’ said Feverstone, ‘I’m not indulging in any Busbyisms about that. It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too. Both can be explained psycho-analytically if they take that line. The practical point is that you and I don’t like being pawns, and we do rather like fighting–specially on the winning side.’

‘And what is the first practical step?’

‘Yes, that’s the real question. As I said, the interplanetary problem must be left on one side for the moment. The second problem is our rivals on this planet. I don’t mean only insects and bacteria. There’s far too much life of every kind about, animal and vegetable. We haven’t really cleared the place yet. First we couldn’t; and then we had aesthetic and humanitarian scruples; and we still haven’t short-circuited the question of the balance of nature. All that is to be gone into. The third problem is Man himself.’

‘Go on. This interests me very much.’

‘Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest–which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of. Quite.’

‘What sort of thing have you in mind?’

‘Quite simple and obvious things, at first–sterilisation of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no “take-it-or-leave-it” nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain…’

‘But this is stupendous, Feverstone.’

‘It’s the real thing at last. A new type of man: and it’s people like you who’ve got to begin to make him.’

‘That’s my trouble. Don’t think it’s false modesty, but I haven’t yet seen how I can contribute.’

‘No, but we have. You are what we need: a trained sociologist with a radically realistic outlook, not afraid of responsibility. Also, a sociologist who can write.’

‘You don’t mean you want me to write up all this?’

‘No. We want you to write it down–to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan’t have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We’ll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the NICE wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you’d have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end. Odd thing it is–the word “experiment” is unpopular, but not the word “experimental”. You musn’t experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the NICE and it’s all correct!’

‘You don’t mean that this–er–journalistic side would be my main job?’

‘It’s nothing to do with journalism. Your readers in the first instance would be Committees of the House of Commons, not the public. But that would only be a side line. As for the job itself–why, it’s impossible to say how it might develop. Talking to a man like you, I don’t stress the financial side. You’d start at something quite modest: say about fifteen hundred a year.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ said Mark, flushing with pure excitement.

‘Of course,’ said Feverstone, ‘I ought to warn you, there is the danger. Not yet, perhaps. But when things really begin to hum, it’s quite on the cards they may try to bump you off, like poor old Weston.’

‘I don’t think I was thinking about that either,’ said Mark.

‘Look here,’ said Feverstone. ‘Let me run you across tomorrow to see John Wither. He told me to bring you for the week-end if you were interested. You’ll meet all the important people there and it’ll give you a chance to make up your mind.’

‘How does Wither come into it? I thought Jules was the head of the NICE.’ Jules was a distinguished novelist and scientific populariser whose name always appeared before the public in connection with the new Institute.

‘Jules! Hell’s bells!’ said Feverstone. ‘You don’t imagine that little mascot has anything to say to what really goes on? He’s all right for selling the Institute to the great British public in the Sunday papers and he draws a whacking salary. He’s no use for work. There’s nothing inside his head except some nineteenth-century socialist stuff, and blah about the rights of man. He’s just about got as far as Darwin!’

‘Oh quite,’ said Mark. ‘I was always rather puzzled at his being in the show at all. Do you know, since you’re so kind, I think I’d better accept your offer and go over to Wither’s for the week-end. What time would you be starting?’

‘About quarter to eleven. They tell me you live out Sandawn way. I could call and pick you up.’

‘Thanks very much. Now tell me about Wither.’

‘John Wither,’ began Feverstone, but suddenly broke off. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Here comes Curry. Now we shall have to hear everything NO said and how wonderfully the arch-politician has managed him. Don’t run away. I shall need your moral support.’

The last bus had gone long before Mark left College and he walked home up the hill in brilliant moonlight. Something happened to him the moment he had let himself into the flat which was very unusual. He found himself, on the doormat, embracing a frightened, half-sobbing Jane–even a humble Jane–who was saying, ‘Oh Mark, I’ve been so frightened.’

There was a quality in the very muscles of his wife’s body which took him by surprise. A certain indefinable defensiveness had momentarily deserted her. He had known such occasions before, but they were rare. They were already becoming rarer. And they tended, in his experience, to be followed next day by inexplicable quarrels. This puzzled him greatly, but he had never put his bewilderment into words.

It is doubtful whether he could have understood her feelings even if they had been explained to him; and Jane, in any case, could not have explained them. She was in extreme confusion. But the reasons for her unusual behaviour on this particular evening were simple enough. She had got back from the Dimbles at about half-past four, feeling much exhilarated by her walk, and hungry, and quite sure that her experiences on the previous night and at lunch were over and done with. She had had to light up and draw the curtains before she had finished tea, for the days were getting short. While doing so, the thought had come into her mind that her fright at the dream and at the mere mention of a mantle, an old man, an old man buried but not dead, and a language like Spanish, had really been as irrational as a child’s fear of the dark. This had led her to remember moments when she had feared the dark as a child. Perhaps, she allowed herself to remember them too long. At any rate, when she sat down to drink her last cup of tea, the evening had somehow deteriorated. It never recovered. First, she found it rather difficult to keep her mind on her book. Then, when she had acknowledged this difficulty, she found it difficult to fix on any book. Then she realised that she was restless. From being restless, she became nervous. Then followed a long time when she was not frightened, but knew that she would be very frightened indeed if she did not keep herself in hand. Then came a curious reluctance to go into the kitchen to get herself some supper, and a difficulty–indeed, an impossibility–of eating anything when she had got it. And now, there was no disguising the fact that she was frightened. In desperation she rang up the Dimbles. ‘I think I might go and see the person you suggested, after all,’ she said. Mrs Dimble’s voice came back, after a curious little pause, giving her the address. Ironwood was the name–Miss Ironwood, apparently. Jane had assumed it would be a man and was rather repelled. Miss Ironwood lived out at St Anne’s on the Hill. Jane asked if she should make an appointment. ‘No,’ said Mrs Dimble, ‘they’ll be–you needn’t make an appointment.’ Jane kept the conversation going as long as she could. She had rung up not chiefly to get the address but to hear Mother Dimble’s voice. Secretly she had had a wild hope that Mother Dimble would recognise her distress and say at once, ‘I’ll come straight up to you by car.’ Instead, she got the mere information and a hurried ‘Good-night.’ It seemed to Jane that there was something queer about Mrs Dimble’s voice. She felt that by ringing up she had interrupted a conversation about herself–or no–not about herself but about something else more important, with which she was somehow connected. And what had Mrs Dimble meant by, ‘They’ll be–’ ‘They’ll be expecting you?’ Horrible, childish night-nursery visions of They ‘expecting her’ passed before her mind. She saw Miss Ironwood, dressed all in black, sitting with her hands folded on her knees and then someone leading her into Miss Ironwood’s presence and saying, ‘She’s come,’ and leaving her there.

‘Damn the Dimbles!’ said Jane to herself, and then unsaid it, more in fear than in remorse. And now that the life-line had been used and brought no comfort, the terror, as if insulted by her futile attempt to escape it, rushed back on her with no possibility of disguise, and she could never afterwards remember whether the horrible old man and the mantle had actually appeared to her in a dream or whether she had merely sat there, huddled and wild eyed, hoping, hoping, hoping (even praying, though she believed in no one to pray to) that they would not.

And that is why Mark found such an unexpected Jane on the doormat. It was a pity, he thought, that this should have happened on a night when he was so late and so tired and, to tell the truth, not perfectly sober.

‘Do you feel quite all right this morning?’ said Mark.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jane shortly.

Mark was lying in bed and drinking a cup of tea. Jane was seated at the dressing table, partially dressed, and doing her hair. Mark’s eyes rested on her with indolent, early-morning pleasure. If he guessed very little of the mal-adjustment between them, this was partly due to our race’s incurable habit of ‘projection’. We think the lamb gentle because its wool is soft to our hands: men call a woman voluptuous when she arouses voluptuous feelings in them. Jane’s body, soft though firm and slim though rounded, was so exactly to Mark’s mind that it was all but impossible for him not to attribute to her the same sensations which she excited in him.

‘You’re quite sure you’re all right?’ he asked again.

‘Quite,’ said Jane more shortly still.

Jane thought she was annoyed because her hair was not going up to her liking and because Mark was fussing. She also knew, of course, that she was deeply angry with herself for the collapse which had betrayed her last night, into being what she most detested–the fluttering, tearful ‘little woman’ of sentimental fiction running for comfort to male arms. But she thought this anger was only in the back of her mind, and had no suspicion that it was pulsing through every vein and producing at that very moment the clumsiness in her fingers which made her hair seem intractable.

‘Because,’ continued Mark, ‘if you felt the least bit uncomfortable, I could put off going to see this man Wither.’

Jane said nothing.

‘If I did go,’ said Mark, ‘I’d certainly have to be away for the night, perhaps two.’

Jane closed her lips a little more firmly and still said nothing.

‘Supposing I did,’ said Mark, ‘you wouldn’t think of asking Myrtle over to stay?’

‘No thank you,’ said Jane emphatically, and then, ‘I’m quite accustomed to being alone.’

‘I know,’ said Mark in a rather defensive voice. ‘That’s the devil of the way things are in College at present. That’s one of the chief reasons I’m thinking of another job.’

Jane was still silent.

‘Look here, old thing,’ said Mark, suddenly sitting up and throwing his legs out of bed. ‘There’s no good beating about the bush. I don’t feel comfortable about going away while you’re in your present state–’

‘What state?’ said Jane, turning round and facing him for the first time.

‘Well–I mean–just a bit nervy–as anyone may be temporarily.’

‘Because I happened to be having a nightmare when you came home last night–or rather this morning–there’s no need to talk as if I was a neurasthenic.’ This was not in the least what Jane had intended or expected to say.

‘Now there’s no good going on like that…’ began Mark.