That Hideous Strength

by Clive Staples Lewis

  “To tell you the truth,” said Mark, “I’m not sure that I have. I was brought over by Feverstone but he has disappeared, and Steele-I’d have been in his department I suppose-doesn’t seem to know anything about me.”

  “Bah! Steele!” said the Professor. “That is all a bagatelle. He get too big for his boots. He will be put in his place one of these days. It may be you who will put him. I have read all your work, si si. Do not consider him.”

  “I have a strong objection to being put in a false position” began Mark.

  “Listen, my friend,” interrupted Filostrato. “You must put all such ideas out of your head. The first thing to realise is that the N.I.C.E. is serious. It is nothing less than the existence of the human race that depends on our work: our real work, you comprehend? You will find frictions and impertinences among this canaglia, this rabble. They are no more to be regarded than your dislike of a brother officer when the battle is at his crisis.”

  “As long as I’m given something to do that is worth doing,” said Mark, “I shouldn’t allow anything of that sort to interfere with it.”

  “Yes, yes, that is right. The work is more important than you can yet understand. You will see. These Steeles and Feverstones-they are of no consequence. As long as you have the good will of the Deputy Director you snap your fingers at them. You need listen to no one but him, you comprehend? Ah-and there is one other, Do not have the Fairy for your enemy. For the rest-you laugh at them.”

  “The Fairy?”

  “Yes. Her they call the Fairy. Oh, my God, a terrible Inglesaccia! She is the head of our police, the Institutional Police. Ecco, she come. I will present you. Miss Hardcastle, permit that I present to you Mr. Studdock.”

  Mark found himself writhing from the stoker’s or carter’s hand-grip of a big woman in a black, short-skirted uniform. Despite a bust that would have done credit to a Victorian barmaid, she was rather thickly built than fat and her iron-grey hair was cropped short. Her face was square, stern, and pale, and her voice deep. A smudge of lip-stick laid on with violent inattention to the real shape of her mouth was her only concession to fashion, and she rolled or chewed a long black cheroot, unlit, between her teeth. As she talked she had a habit of removing this, staring intently at the mixture of lip-stick and saliva on its mangled end, and then replacing it more firmly than before. She sat down immediately in a chair close to where Mark was standing, flung her right leg over one of the arms, and fixed him with a gaze of cold intimacy.

  III

  Click-clack, distinct in the silence, where Jane stood waiting, came the tread of the person on the other side of the wall. Then the door opened and Jane found herself facing a tall woman of about her own age. This person looked at her with keen, non-committal eyes.

  “Does a Miss Ironwood live here ? “said Jane.

  “Yes,” said the other girl, neither opening the door any further nor standing aside.

  “I want to see her, please,” said Jane.

  “Have you an appointment?” said the tall woman.

  “Well, not exactly,” said Jane. “I was directed here by Dr. Dimble who knows Miss Ironwood. He said I shouldn’t need an appointment.”

  “Oh, if you’re from Dr. Dimble that is another matter.” said the woman. “Come in. Now wait a moment while attend to this lock. That’s better. Now we’re all right. There’s not room for two on this path so you must excuse me if I go first.”

  The woman led her along a brick path beside a wall on which fruit trees were growing, and then to the left along a mossy path with gooseberry bushes on each side. Then came a little lawn with a see-saw in the middle of it, and beyond that a greenhouse. Here they found themselves in the sort of hamlet that sometimes occurs in the purlieus of a large garden-walking in fact down a little street which had a barn and a stable on one side and, on the other, a second greenhouse, and a potting shed and a pigstye-inhabited, as the grunts and the not wholly disagreeable smell informed her. After that were narrow paths across a vegetable garden that seemed to be on a fairly steep hillside and then rose bushes, all stiff and prickly in their winter garb. At one place they were going along a path made of single planks. This reminded Jane of something. It was a very large garden. It was like . . . like . . . yes, now she had it: it was like the garden in Peter Rabbit. Or was it like the garden in the Romance of the Rose? No, not in the least like really. Or like Klingsor’s garden? Or the garden in Alice? Or like the garden on the top of some Mesopotamian ziggurat which had probably given rise to the whole legend of Paradise? Or simply like all walled gardens? Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man’s point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women’s dreams. Or did they ? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way. A sentence rose to her memory. “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.” Where on earth had she read that? And, incidentally, what frightful nonsense she had been thinking for the last minute or so! She shook off all these ideas about gardens and determined to pull herself together. A curious feeling that she was now on hostile, or at least alien, ground warned her to keep all her wits about her. At that moment they suddenly emerged from between plantations of rhododendron and laurel and found themselves at a small side door, flanked by a water butt, in the long wall of a large house. Just as they did so a window clapped shut upstairs.

  A minute or two later Jane was sitting waiting in a large sparely furnished room with a shut stove to warm it. Most of the floor was bare, and the walls, above the waist-high wainscotting, were of greyish-white plaster, so that the whole effect was faintly austere and conventual. The tall woman’s tread died away in the passages and the room became very quiet when it had done so. Occasionally the cawing of rooks could be heard. “I’ve let myself in for it now,” thought Jane, “I shall have to tell this woman that dream and she’ll ask all sorts of questions.” She considered herself, in general, a modern person who could talk without embarrassment of anything: but it began to look quite different as she sat in that room. All sorts of secret reservations in her programme of frankness-things which, she now realised, she had set apart as never to be told-came creeping back into consciousness. It was surprising that very few of them were connected with sex.

  “In dentists,” said Jane, “they at least leave illustrated papers in the waiting-room.” She got up and opened the one book that lay on the table in the middle of the room. Instantly her eyes lit on the following words: “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the.”

  At that moment the door was suddenly opened. Jane turned crimson as she shut the book and looked up. The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that-so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on a horse, and so divinely tall.

  “Is . . . is Miss Ironwood in?” said Jane.

  “Are you Mrs. Studdock?” said the girl.

  “Yes,” said Jane.

  “I will bring you to her at once,” said the other. “We have been expecting you. My name is Camilla-Camilla Denniston.”

  Jane followed her. From the narrowness and plainness of the passages Jane judged that they were still in the back parts of the house, and that, if so, it must be a very large house indeed. They went a lon
g way before Camilla knocked at a door and stood aside for Jane to enter, after saying in a low, clear voice (“like a servant,” Jane thought), “She has come.” And Jane went in; and there was Miss Ironwood dressed all in black and sitting with her hands folded on her knees, just as Jane had seen her when dreaming-if she were dreaming-last night in the flat.

  “Sit down, young lady,” said Miss Ironwood.

  The hands which were folded on her knees were very big and boney though they did not suggest coarseness; and even when seated Miss Ironwood was extremely tall. Everything about her was big-the nose, the unsmiling lips, and the grey eyes. She was perhaps nearer sixty than fifty. There was an atmosphere in the room which Jane found uncongenial.

  “What is your name, young lady?” said Miss Ironwood, taking up a pencil and a note-book.

  “Jane Studdock.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does your husband know you have come to us?”

  “No.”

  “And your age, if you please?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “And now,” said Miss Ironwood, “what have you to tell me?”

  Jane took a deep breath. “I’ve been having bad dreams and-and feeling depressed lately,” she said.

  “What were the dreams?” asked Miss Ironwood. Jane’s narrative-she did not do it very well-took some time. While she was speaking she kept her eyes fixed on Miss Ironwood’s large hands and her black skirt and the pencil and the note-book. And that was why she suddenly stopped. For as she proceeded she saw Miss Ironwood’s hand cease to write and the fingers wrap themselves round the pencil: immensely strong fingers they seemed. And every moment they tightened, till the knuckles grew white and the veins stood out on the backs of the hands, and at last, as if under the influence of some stifled emotion, they broke the pencil in two. It was then that Jane stopped in astonishment and looked up at Miss Ironwood’s face. The wide grey eyes were still looking at her with no change of expression.

  “Pray continue, young lady,” said Miss Ironwood. Jane resumed her story. When she had finished, Miss Ironwood put a number of questions. After that she became silent for so long that Jane said:

  “Is there, do you think, anything very serious wrong with me?”

  “There is nothing wrong with you,” said Miss Ironwood.

  “You mean it will go away?”

  “I have no means of telling. I should say probably not.”

  “Then-can’t anything be done about it? They were horrible dreams-horribly vivid, not like dreams at all.”

  “I can quite understand that.”

  “Is it something that can’t be cured?”

  “The reason you cannot be cured is that you are not ill.”

  “But there must be something wrong. It’s surely not natural to have dreams like that.”

  There was a pause. “I think,” said Miss Ironwood, “I had better tell you the whole truth.”

  “Yes, do,” said Jane in a strained voice. The other’s words had frightened her.

  “And I will begin by saying this,” continued Miss Ironwood. “You are a more important person than you imagine.”

  Jane said nothing, but thought inwardly, “She is humouring me. She thinks I am mad.”

  “What was your maiden name?” asked Miss Ironwood.

  “Tudor,” said Jane. At any other moment she would have said it rather self consciously, for she was very anxious not to be supposed vain of her ancient ancestry.

  “The Warwickshire branch of the family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever read a little book-it is only forty pages long-written by an ancestor of yours about the battle of Worcester?”

  “No. Father had a copy-the only copy, I think he said. But I never read it. It was lost when the house was broken up after his death.”

  “Your father was mistaken in thinking it the only copy. There are at least two others: one is in America, and the other is in this house.”

  “Well?”

  “Your ancestor gave a full and, on the whole, correct account of the battle, which he says he completed on the same day on which it was fought. But he was not at it. He was in York at the time.”

  Jane, who had not really been following this, looked at Miss Ironwood.

  “If he was speaking the truth,” said Miss Ironwood, “and we believe that he was, he dreamed it. Do you understand?”

  “Dreamed about the battle?”

  “Yes. But dreamed it right. He saw the real battle in his dream.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “Vision-the power of dreaming realities-is sometimes hereditary,” said Miss Ironwood.

  Something seemed to be interfering with Jane’s breathing. She felt a sense of injury-this was just the sort of thing she hated: something out of the past, something irrational and utterly uncalled for, coming up from its den and interfering with her.

  “Can it be proved?” she asked. “I mean, we have only his word for it.”

  “We have your dreams,” said Miss Ironwood. Her voice, always grave, had become stern. A fantastic thought crossed Jane’s mind. Could this old woman have some idea that one ought not to call even one’s remote ancestors liars?

  “My dreams?” she said a little sharply.

  “Yes,” said Miss Ironwood.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My opinion is that you have seen real things in your dreams. You have seen Alcasan as he really sat in the condemned cell: and you have seen a visitor whom he really had.”

  “But-but-oh, this is ridiculous,” said Jane. “That part was a mere coincidence. The rest was just nightmare. It was all impossible. He screwed off his head, I tell you. And they . . . dug up the horrible old man. They made him come to life.”

  “There are some confusions there, no doubt. But in my opinion there are realities behind even those episodes.”

  “I am afraid I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” said Jane coldly.

  “Your upbringing makes it natural that you should not,” replied Miss Ironwood. Unless, of course, you have discovered for yourself that you have a tendency to dream real things.”

  Jane thought of the book on the table which she had apparently remembered before she saw it: and then there was Miss Ironwood’s own appearance-that, too, she had seen before she saw it. But it must be nonsense.

  “Can you, then, do nothing for me?”

  “I can tell you the truth,” said Miss Ironwood. “I have tried to do so.”

  “I mean, can you not stop it-cure it?”

  “Vision is not a disease.”

  “But I don’t want it,” said Jane passionately. “I must stop it. I hate this sort of thing.” Miss Ironwood said nothing.

  “Don’t you even know of anyone who could stop it?” said Jane. “Can’t you recommend anyone?”

  “If you go to an ordinary psychotherapist,” said Miss Ironwood, “he will proceed on the assumption that the dreams merely reflect your own subconscious. He would try to treat you. I do not know what would be the results of treatment based on that assumption. I am afraid they might be very serious. And-it would certainly not remove the dreams.”

  “But what is this all about?” said Jane. “I want to lead an ordinary life. I want to do my own work. It’s unbearable! Why should I be selected for this horrible thing?”

  “The answer to that is known only to authorities much higher than myself.”

  There was a short silence. Jane made a vague movement and said, rather sulkily, “Well, if you can do nothing for me, perhaps I’d better be going . . .” Then suddenly she added, “But how can you know all this? I mean . . . what realities are you talking about?”

  “I think,” said Miss Ironwood, “that you yourself have probably more reason to suspect the truth of your dreams than you have yet told me. If not, you soon will have. In the meantime I will answer your question. We know your dreams to be partly true because they fit in with informat
ion we already possess. It was because he saw their importance that Dr. Dimble sent you to us.”

  “Do you mean he sent me here not to be cured but to give information?” said Jane. The idea fitted in with things she had observed in his manner when she first told him.

  “Exactly.”

  “I wish I had known that a little earlier,” said Jane coldly, and now definitely getting up to go. “I’m afraid it has been a misunderstanding. I had imagined Dr. Dimble was trying to help me.”

  “He was. But he was also trying to do something more important at the same time.”

  “I suppose I should be grateful for being considered at all,” said Jane dryly. “And how, exactly, was I to be helped by-by all this sort of thing?” The attempt at icy irony collapsed as she said these last words and red, undisguised anger rushed back into her face. In some ways she was very young.

  “Young lady,” said Miss Ironwood. “You do not at all realise the seriousness of this matter. The things you have seen concern something compared with which the happiness, or even the life, of you and me is of no importance. I must beg you to face the situation. You cannot get rid of your gift. You can try to suppress it, but you will fail, and you will be very badly frightened. On the other hand, you can put it at our disposal. If you do so, you will be much less frightened in the long run and you will be helping to save the human race from a very great disaster. Or thirdly, you may tell someone else about it. If you do that, I warn you that you will almost certainly fall into the hands of other people who are at least as anxious as we to make use of your faculty and who will care no more about your life and happiness than about those of a fly. The people you have seen in your dreams are real people. It is not at all unlikely that they know you have, involuntarily, been spying on them. And if so, they will not rest till they have got hold of you. I would advise you, even for your own sake, to join our side.”

  “You keep on talking of we and us. Are you some kind of company?”

  “Yes. You may call it a company.”