“Take my advice, Studdock,” he said, “or at least think it over. I don’t believe in sociology myself, but you’ve got quite a decent career before you if you stay at Bracton. You’ll do yourself no good by getting mixed up with the N.I.C.E.-and, by God, you’ll do nobody else any good either.”
“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark.
“Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one. But it’s no affair of mine. Good night.”
“Good night, Hingest,” said Mark. The other started up the car and drove off.
There was a touch of frost in the air. The shoulder of Orion, though Mark did not know even that earnest constellation, flamed at him above the treetops. He felt a hesitation about going back into the house. It might mean further talk with interesting and influential people: but it might also mean feeling once more an outsider hanging about and watching conversations which he could not join. Anyway, he was tired. Strolling along the front of the house he came presently to another and smaller door by which, he judged, one could enter without passing through the hall or the public rooms. He did so, and went upstairs for the night immediately.
V
Camilla Denniston showed Jane out-not by the little door in the wall at which she had come in, but by the main gate which opened on the same road about a hundred yards farther on. Yellow light from a westward gap in the grey sky was pouring a short-lived and chilly brightness over the whole landscape. Jane had been ashamed to show either temper or anxiety before Camilla: as a result both had in reality been diminished when she said good-bye. But a settled distaste for what she called “all this nonsense” remained. She was not indeed sure that it was nonsense: but she had already resolved to treat it as if it were. She would not get “mixed up in it,” would not be drawn in. One had to live one’s own life. To avoid entanglements and interferences had long been one of her first principles. Even when she had discovered that she was going to marry Mark if he asked her, the thought “But I must still keep up my own life” had arisen at once and had never for more than a few minutes at a stretch been absent from her mind. Some resentment against love itself, and therefore against Mark, for thus invading her life, remained. She was at least very vividly aware how much a woman gives up in getting married. Mark seemed to her insufficiently aware of this. Though she did not formulate it, this fear of being invaded and entangled was the deepest ground of her determination not to have a child-or not for a long time yet. One had one’s own life to live.
Almost as soon as she got back to the flat the telephone went. “Is that you, Jane?” came a voice. “It’s me, Margaret Dimble. Such a dreadful thing’s happened. I’ll tell you when I come. I’m too angry to speak at the moment. Have you a spare bed by any chance? What? Mr. Studdock’s away? Not a bit, if you don’t mind. I’ve sent Cecil to sleep in College. You’re sure it won’t be a nuisance? Thanks most awfully. I’ll be round in half an hour.”
Four
I
Almost before Jane had finished putting clean sheets on Mark’s bed, Mrs. Dimble, with a great many parcels, arrived. “You’re an angel to have me for the night,” she said. “We’d tried every hotel in Edgestow I believe. This place is going to become unendurable. The same answer everywhere! All full up with the hangers-on and camp followers of this detestable N.I.C.E. Secretaries here-typists there-commissioners of works-the thing’s outrageous. If Cecil hadn’t had a room in College I really believe he’d have had to sleep in the waiting-room at the station. I only hope that man in College has aired the bed.”
“But what on earth’s happened?” asked Jane.
“Turned out, my dear!”
“But it isn’t possible, Mrs. Dimble. I mean, it can’t be legal.”
“That’s what Cecil said . . . Just think of it, Jane. The first thing we saw when we poked our heads out of the window this morning was a lorry on the drive with its back wheels in the middle of the rose bed, unloading a small army of what looked like criminals with picks and spades. Right in our own garden! There was an odious little man in a peaked cap who talked to Cecil with a cigarette in his mouth, at least it wasn’t in his mouth but seccotined onto his upper lip-you know-and guess what he said? He said they’d have no objection to our remaining in possession (of the house, mind you, not the garden) till eight o’clock to-morrow morning. No objection!”
“But surely-surely-it must be some mistake.”
“Of course Cecil rang up your Bursar. And of course your Bursar was out. That took nearly all morning ringing up again and again, and by that time the big beech that you used to be so fond of had been cut down, and all the plum trees. If I hadn’t been so angry I’d have sat down and cried my eyes out. That’s what I felt like. At last Cecil did get on to your Mr. Busby, who was perfectly useless. Said there must be some misunderstanding, but it was out of his hands now and we’d better get on to the N.I.C.E. at Belbury. Of course it turned out to be quite impossible to get them. But by lunch-time we saw that one simply couldn’t stay there for the night, whatever happened.”
“Why not?”
“My dear, you’ve no conception what it was like. Great lorries and traction engines roaring past all the time, and a crane on a thing like a railway truck. Why, our own tradesmen couldn’t get through it. The milk didn’t arrive till eleven o’clock. The meat never arrived at all; they rang up in the afternoon to say their people hadn’t been able to reach us by either road. We’d the greatest difficulty in getting into town ourselves. It took us half an hour from our house to the bridge. It was like a nightmare. Flares and noise everywhere and the road practically ruined and a sort of great tin camp already going up on the Common. And the people! Such horrid men. I didn’t know we had workpeople like that in England. Oh, horrible, horrible!” Mrs. Dimble fanned herself with the hat she had just taken off.
“And what are you going to do?” asked Jane.
“Heaven knows!” said Mrs. Dimble. “For the moment we have shut up the house and Cecil has been at Rumbold the solicitors, to see if we can at least have it sealed and left alone until we’ve got our things out of it. Rumbold doesn’t seem to know where he is. He keeps on saying the N.I.C.E. are in a very peculiar position legally. After that, I’m sure I don’t know. As far as I can see there won’t be any houses in Edgestow. There’s no question of trying to live on the far side of the river any longer, even if they’d let us. What did you say? Oh, indescribable. All the poplars are going down. All those nice little cottages by the church are going down. I found poor Ivy-that’s your Mrs. Maggs, you know-in tears. Poor things! They do look dreadful when they cry on top of powder. She’s being turned out too. Poor little woman; she’s had enough troubles in her life without this. I was glad to get away. The men were so horrible. Three big brutes came to the back door asking for hot water and went on so that they frightened Martha out of her wits and Cecil had to go and speak to them. I thought they were going to strike Cecil, really I did. It was most horribly unpleasant. But a sort of special constable sent them away. What? Oh yes, there are dozens of what look like policemen all over the place, and I didn’t like the look of them either. Swinging some kind of truncheon things, like what you’d see in an American film. Do you know, Jane, Cecil and I both thought the same thing: we thought, it’s almost as if we’d lost the war. Oh, good girl, tea! That’s just what I wanted.”
“You must stay here as long as you like, Mrs. Dimble,” said Jane. “Mark’ll just have to sleep in College.”
“Well, really,” said Mother Dimble, “I feel at the moment that no Fellow of Bracton ought to be allowed to sleep anywhere! But I’d make an exception in favour of Mr. Studdock. As a matter of fact, I shan’t have to behave like the sword of Siegfried-and, incidentally, a nasty fat stodgy sword I should be! But that side of it is all fixed up.
