"That Hideous Strength" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lewis Clive Staples)

II

Long after sunrise there came into Jane’s sleeping mind a sensation which, had she put it into words, would have sung, “Be glad thou sleeper and thy sorrow offcast. I am the gate to all good adventure.” And after she had waked and found herself lying in pleasant languor with winter morning sunlight falling across her bed, the mood continued. “He must let me stay here now,” she thought. Sometime after this Mrs. Maggs came in and lit the fire and brought her breakfast. Jane winced as she sat up in bed for some of the burns had stuck to the strange nightdress (rather too large for her) in which she found herself clad. There was an indefinable difference in Mrs. Maggs’ behaviour.

“It’s ever so nice, us both being here, isn’t it, Mrs. Studdock?” she said, and somehow the tone seemed to imply a closer relation than Jane had envisaged between them. But she was too lazy to wonder much about it.

Shortly after breakfast came Miss Ironwood. She examined and dressed the burns, which were not serious.

“You can get up in the afternoon, if you like, Mrs. Studdock,” she said. “I should just take a quiet day till then. What would you like to read? There’s a pretty large library.”

“I’d like the Curdie books, please,” said Jane, “and Mansfield Park and Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”

Having thus been provided with reading matter for several hours, she very comfortably went to sleep again.

When Mrs. Maggs looked in at about four o’clock to see if Jane was awake, Jane said she would like to get up.

“All right, Mrs. Studdock,” said Mrs. Maggs, “just as you like. I’ll bring you along a nice cup of tea in a minute and then I’ll get the bathroom ready for you. There’s a bathroom next door almost, only I’ll have to get that Mr. Bultitude out of it. He’s that lazy, and he will go in and sit there all day when it’s cold weather.”

As soon as Mrs. Maggs had gone, however, Jane decided to get up. She felt that her social abilities were quite equal to dealing with the eccentric Mr. Bultitude, and she did not want to waste any more time in bed. She had an idea that if once she were “up and about” all sorts of pleasant and interesting things might happen. Accordingly she put on her coat, took her towel, and proceeded to explore; and that was why Mrs. Maggs, coming upstairs with the tea a moment later, heard a suppressed shriek and saw Jane emerge from the bathroom with a white face and slam the door behind her.

“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Maggs, bursting into laughter.

“I ought to have told you. Never mind. I’ll soon have him out of that.” She set the tea-tray down on the passage floor and turned to the bathroom.

“Is it safe?” asked Jane.

“Oh yes, he’s safe alright,” said Mrs. Maggs. “But he’s not that easy to shift. Not for you or me, Mrs. Studdock. Of course if it was Miss Ironwood or the Director it would be another matter.” With that she opened the bathroom door. Inside, sitting up on its hunkers beside the bath and occupying most of the room, was a great, snuffly, wheezy, beady-eyed, loose-skinned, gor- bellied brown bear, which, after a great many reproaches, appeals, exhortations, pushes, and blows from Mrs. Maggs, heaved up its enormous bulk and came very slowly out into the passage.

“Why don’t you go out and take some exercise that lovely afternoon, you great lazy thing?” said Mrs. Maggs.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sitting there getting in everyone’s way. Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Studdock. He’s as tame as tame. He’ll let you stroke him. Go on Mr. Bultitude. Go and say how do you do to the lady.”

Jane extended a hesitant and unconvincing hand to touch the animal’s back, but Mr. Bultitude was sulking and without a glance at Jane continued his slow walk along the passage to a point about ten yards away where he quite suddenly sat down. The tea things rattled at Jane’s feet, and everyone on the floor below must have known that Mr. Bultitude had sat down.

“Is it really safe to have a creature like that loose about the house?” said Jane.

“Mrs. Studdock,” said Ivy Maggs with some solemnity, “if the Director wanted to have a tiger about the house it would be safe. That’s the way he has with animals. There isn’t a creature in the place that would go for another or for us once he’s had his little talk with them. Just the same as he does with us. You’ll see.”

“If you would put the tea in my room . . .” said Jane rather coldly, and went into the bathroom.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Maggs, standing in the open doorway, “you might have had your bath with Mr. Bultitude sitting there beside you-though he’s that big and that human I don’t somehow feel it would be Nice myself.”

Jane made to shut the door.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” said Mrs. Maggs without moving.

“Thank you,” said Jane.

“Sure you got everything you want?” said Mrs. Maggs.

“Quite sure,” said Jane.

“Well, I’ll be getting along, then,” said Mrs. Maggs turning as if to go, but almost instantly turning back again to say, “You’ll find us in the kitchen, I expect, Mother Dimble and me and the rest.”

“Is Mrs. Dimble staying in the house?” asked Jane with a slight emphasis on the Mrs.

“Mother Dimble we all call her here,” said Mrs. Maggs.

“And I’m sure she won’t mind you doing the same. You’ll get used to our ways in a day or two, I’m sure. It’s a funny house really, when you come to think of it. Well, I’ll be getting along, then. Don’t take too long or your tea won’t be worth drinking. But I dare say you’d better not have a bath, not with those nasty places on your chest. Got all you want?”

When Jane had washed and had tea and dressed herself with as much care as strange hairbrushes and a strange mirror allowed, she set out to look for the inhabited rooms. She passed down one long passage, through that silence which is not quite like any other in the world-the silence upstairs, in a big house, on a winter afternoon. Presently she came to a place where two passages met, and here the silence was broken by a faint irregular noise . . . pob . . . pob . . . pob . . . pob. Looking to her right she saw the explanation, for where the passage ended in a bay window stood Mr. Bultitude, this time on his hind legs, meditatively boxing a punch-ball. Jane chose the way to her left and came to a gallery whence she looked down the staircase into a large hall where daylight mixed with firelight. On the same level with herself, but only to be reached by descending to a landing and ascending again, were shadowy regions which she recognised as leading to the Director’s room. A sort of solemnity seemed to her to emanate from them and she went down into the hall almost on tiptoes, and now, for the first time, her memory of that last and curious experience in the blue room came back to her with a weight which even the thought of the Director himself could not counteract. When she reached the hall she saw at once where the back premises of the house must lie-down two steps and along a paved passage, past a stuffed pike in a glass case and then past a grandfather clock, and then, guided by voices and other sounds, to the kitchen itself.

A wide, open hearth glowing with burning wood lit up the comfortable form of Mrs. Dimble who was seated in a kitchen chair at one side of it, apparently, from the basin in her lap and other indications on a table beside her, engaged in preparing vegetables. Mrs. Maggs and Camilla were doing something at a stove-the hearth was apparently not used for cooking-and in a doorway, which doubtless led to the scullery, a tall grizzle-headed man, who wore gum-boots and seemed to have just come from the garden, was drying his hands.

“Come in, Jane,” said Mother Dimble. “We’re not expecting you to do any work to-day. Come and sit on the other side of the fire and talk to me. This is Mr. MacPhee-who has no right to be here, but he’d better be introduced to you.”

Mr. MacPhee, having finished the drying process and carefully hung the towel behind the door, advanced rather ceremoniously and shook hands with Jane. His own hand was very large and coarse in texture, and he had a shrewd hard-featured face.

“I am very glad to see you, Mrs. Studdock,” he said in what Jane took to be a Scotch accent, though it was really that of an Ulsterman.

“Don’t believe a word he says, Jane,” said Mother Dimble. “He’s your prime enemy in this house. He doesn’t believe in your dreams.”

“Mrs. Dimble,” said MacPhee, “I have repeatedly explained to you the distinction between a personal feeling of confidence and a logical satisfaction of the claims of evidence. The one is a psychological event “

“And the other a perpetual nuisance,” said Mrs. Dimble.

“Never heed her, Mrs. Studdock,” said MacPhee.

“I am, as I was saying, very glad to welcome you among us. The fact that I have found it my duty on several occasions to point out that no experimentum crucis has yet confirmed the hypothesis that your dreams are veridical, has no connection in the world with my personal attitude.”

“Of course,” said Jane vaguely, and a little confused.

“I’m sure you have a right to your own opinions.” All the women laughed as MacPhee in a somewhat louder tone replied, “Mrs. Studdock, I have no opinions-on any subject in the world. I state the facts and exhibit the implications. If everyone indulged in fewer opinions “(he pronounced the word with emphatic disgust) “there’d be less silly talking and printing in the world.”

“I know who talks most in this house,” said Mrs. Maggs, somewhat to Jane’s surprise.

The Ulsterman eyed the last speaker with an unaltered face while producing a small pewter box from his pocket and helping himself to a pinch of snuff.

“What are you waiting for, anyway?” said Mrs. Maggs.

“Women’s day in the kitchen to-day.”

“I was wondering,” said MacPhee, “whether you had a cup of tea saved for me.”

“And why didn’t you come in at the right time, then?” said Mrs. Maggs. Jane noticed that she talked to him much as she had talked to the bear.

“I was busy,” said the other, seating himself at one end of the table; and added after a pause, “trenching celery. The wee woman does the best she can, but she has a poor notion of what needs doing in a garden.”

“What is ‘women’s day’ in the kitchen?” asked Jane of Mother Dimble.

“There are no servants here,” said Mother Dimble “and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next . . . What ? . . . No, it’s a very sensible arrangement. The Director’s idea is that men and women can’t do housework together without quarrelling. There’s something in it. Of course it doesn’t do to look at the cups too closely on the men’s day, but on the whole we get along pretty well.”

“But why should they quarrel?” asked Jane.

“Different methods, my dear. Men can’t help in a job you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you’re doing it. At least it makes them grumpy.”

“The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them ‘in where?’ they say ‘in there of course.’ There is consequently a phatic hiatus.” He pronounced this so as to rhyme with “get at us.”

“There’s your tea now,” said Ivy Maggs, “and I’ll go and get you a piece of cake, which is more than you deserve. And when you’ve had it you can go upstairs and talk about nouns for the rest of the evening.”

“Not about nouns: by means of nouns,” said MacPhee but Mrs. Maggs had already left the room. Jane took advantage of this to say to Mother Dimble in a lower voice, “Mrs. Maggs seems to make herself very much at home here.”

“My dear, she is at home here.”

“As a maid, you mean?”

“Well, no more than anyone else. She’s here chiefly because her house has been taken from her. She had nowhere else to go.”

“You mean she is . . . one of the Director’s charities. ?”

“Certainly that. Why do you ask?”

“Well . . . I don’t know. It did seem a little odd that she should call you Mother Dimble. I hope I’m not being snobbish . . .”

“You’re forgetting that Cecil and I are another of the Director’s charities.”

“Isn’t that rather playing on words?”

“Not a bit. Ivy and Cecil and I are all here because we were turned out of our homes. At least Ivy and I are. It may be rather different for Cecil.”

“And does the Director know that Mrs. Maggs talks to everyone like that?”

“My dear child, don’t ask me what the Director knows.”

“I think what’s puzzling me is that when I saw him he said something about equality not being the important thing. But his own house seems to be run on . . . well on very democratic lines indeed.”

“I never attempt to understand what he says on that subject,” said Mother Dimble. “He’s usually talking either about spiritual ranks-and you were never goose enough to think yourself spiritually superior to Ivy-or else about marriage.”

“Did you understand his views on marriage?”

“My dear, the Director is a very wise man. But he is a man, after all, and an unmarried man at that. Some of what he says, or what the Masters say, about marriage does seem to me to be a lot of fuss about something so simple and natural that it oughtn’t to need saying at all. But I suppose there are young women nowadays who need to be told it.”

“You haven’t got much use for young women who do, I see.”

“Well, perhaps I’m unfair. Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book. We always intended to love, honour, and obey, and we had figures and we wore petticoats and we liked waltzes . . .”

“Waltzes are ever so nice,” said Mrs. Maggs-who had just returned and given MacPhee his slab of cake “so old-fashioned.”

At that moment the door opened and a voice from behind it said, “Well, go in then, if you’re going.” Thus admonished, a very fine jackdaw hopped into the room, followed firstly by Mr. Bultitude and secondly by Arthur Denniston.

“I’ve told you before, Arthur,” said Ivy Maggs, “not to bring that bear in here when we’re cooking the dinner.” While she was speaking Mr. Bultitude, who was apparently himself uncertain of his welcome, walked across the room in what he believed (erroneously) to be an unobtrusive manner and sat down behind Mrs. Dimble’s chair.

“Dr. Dimble’s just come back, Mother Dimble,” said Denniston. “But he’s had to go straight to the Blue Room. And the Director wants you to go to him, too, MacPhee.”