offers any information?’
‘Quite.’
‘Oh, and by the way, that reminds me of something else. How on earth did Curry get hold of the idea that I’m resigning my fellowship?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘I never had the faintest notion of resigning it.’
‘Really! I was told distinctly by the Fairy that you weren’t coming back.’
‘You don’t suppose I’d do it through her if I was going to resign?’
Feverstone’s smile brightened and widened. ‘It doesn’t make any odds, you know,’ he said. ‘If the NICE want you to have a nominal job somewhere outside Belbury, you’ll have one; and if they don’t, you won’t. Just like that.’
‘Damn the NICE. I’m merely trying to retain the fellowship I already had, which is no concern of theirs. One doesn’t want to fall between two stools.’
‘One doesn’t want to.’
‘You mean?’
‘Take my advice and get into Wither’s good books again as soon as you can. I gave you a good start but you seem to have rubbed him up the wrong way. His attitude has changed since this morning. You need to humour him, you know. And just between ourselves, I wouldn’t be too thick with the Fairy: it won’t do you any good higher up. There are wheels within wheels.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Mark, ‘I’ve written to Curry to explain that it’s all rot about my resignation.’
‘No harm if it amuses you,’ said Feverstone, still smiling.
‘Well, I don’t suppose College wants to kick me out simply because Curry misunderstood something Miss Hardcastle said to you.’
‘You can’t be deprived of a fellowship under any statute I know, except for gross immorality.’
‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean that. I meant not being re-elected when I come up for re-election next term.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘And that’s why I must rely on you to get that idea out of Curry’s head.’
Feverstone said nothing.
‘You will be sure,’ urged Mark against his own better judgment, ‘to make it quite clear to him that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.’
‘Don’t you know Curry? He will have got his whole wangling-machine going on the problem of your successor long ago.’
‘That’s why I am relying on you to stop him.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why me?’
‘Well–damn it all, Feverstone, it was you who first put the idea into his head.’
‘Do you know,’ said Feverstone, helping himself to a muffin, ‘I find your style of conversation rather difficult. You will come up for re-election in a few months. The College may decide to re-elect you; or, of course, it may not. As far as I can make out, you are at present attempting to canvass my vote in advance. To which the proper answer is the one I now give– go to Hell!’
‘You know perfectly well that there was no doubt about my re-election until you spoke a word in Curry’s ear.’
Feverstone eyed the muffin critically. ‘You make me rather tired,’ he said. ‘If you don’t know how to steer your own course in a place like Bracton, why come and pester me? I’m not a bucking nurse. And for your own good, I would advise you, in talking to people here, to adopt a more agreeable manner than you are using now. Otherwise your life may be, in the famous words, “nasty, poor, brutish, and short!”’
‘Short?’ said Mark. ‘Is that a threat? Do you mean my life at Bracton or at the NICE?’
‘I shouldn’t stress the distinction too much if I were you,’ said Feverstone.
‘I shall remember that,’ said Mark, rising from his chair. As he made to move away, he could not help turning to this smiling man once again and saying, ‘It was you who brought me here. I thought you at least were my friend.’
‘Incurable romantic!’ said Lord Feverstone, deftly extending his mouth to an even wider grin and popping the muffin into it entire.
And thus Mark knew that if he lost the Belbury job he would lose his fellowship at Bracton as well.
During these days Jane spent as little time as possible in the flat and kept herself awake reading in bed, as long as she could, each night. Sleep had become her enemy. In the day-time she kept on going to Edgestow–nominally in the attempt to find another ‘woman who would come in twice a week’ instead of Mrs Maggs. On one of these occasions she was delighted to find herself suddenly addressed by Camilla Denniston. Camilla had just stepped out of a car and next moment she introduced a tall dark man as her husband. Jane saw at once that both the Dennistons were the sort of people she liked. She knew that Mr Denniston had once been a friend of Mark’s but she had never met him; and her first thought was to wonder, as she had wondered before, why Mark’s present friends were so inferior to those he once had. Carey and Wadsden and the Taylors, who had all been members of the set in which she first got to know him, had been nicer than Curry and Busby, not to mention the Feverstone man–and this Mr Denniston was obviously much nicer indeed.
‘We were just coming to see you,’ said Camilla. ‘Look here, we have lunch with us. Let’s drive you up to the woods beyond Sandown and all feed together in the car. There’s lots to talk about.’
‘Or what about your coming to the flat and lunching with me?’ said Jane inwardly wondering how she could manage this. ‘It’s hardly a day for picnicking.’
‘That only means extra washing up for you,’ said Camilla. ‘Had we better go somewhere in town, Frank?–if Mrs Studdock thinks it’s too cold and foggy.’
‘A restaurant would hardly do, Mrs Studdock,’ said Denniston. ‘We want to be private.’ The ‘we’ obviously meant ‘we three’ and established at once a pleasant, business-like unity between them. ‘As well,’ he continued, ‘don’t you like a rather foggy day in a wood in autumn? You’ll find we shall be perfectly warm sitting in the car.’
Jane said she’d never heard of anyone liking fogs before but she didn’t mind trying. All three got in.
‘That’s why Camilla and I got married,’ said Denniston as they drove off. ‘We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It’s a useful taste if one lives in England.’
‘How ever did you learn to do that, Mr Denniston?’ said Jane. ‘I don’t think I should ever learn to like rain and snow.’
‘It’s the other way round,’ said Denniston. ‘Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children–and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.’
‘I’m sure I hated wet days as a child,’ said Jane.
‘That’s because the grown-ups kept you in,’ said Camilla. ‘Any child loves rain if it’s allowed to go out and paddle about in it.’
Presently, they left the unfenced road beyond Sandown and went bumping across grass and among trees and finally came to rest in a sort of little grassy bay with a fir thicket on one side and a group of beeches on the other. There were wet cobwebs and a rich autumnal smell all round them. Then all three sat together in the back of the car and there was some unstrapping of baskets, and then sandwiches and a little flask of sherry and finally hot coffee and cigarettes. Jane was beginning to enjoy herself.
‘Now!’ said Camilla.
‘Well,’ said Denniston, ‘I suppose I’d better begin. You know of course where we’ve come from, Mrs Studdock?’
‘From Miss Ironwood’s,’ said Jane.
‘Well, from the same house. But we don’t belong to Grace Ironwood. She and we both belong to someone else.’
‘Yes?’ said Jane.
‘Our little household, or company, or society, or whatever you like to call it is run by a Mr Fisher-King. At least that is the name he has recently taken. You might or might not know his original name if I told it to you. He is a great traveller but now an invalid. He got a wound in his foot, on his last journey,
which won’t heal.’
‘How did he come to change his name?’
‘He had a married sister in India, a Mrs Fisher-King. She has just died and left him a large fortune on condition that he took the name. She was a remarkable woman in her way; a friend of the great native Christian mystic whom you may have heard of–the Sura. And that’s the point. The Sura had reason to believe, or thought he had reason to believe, that a great danger was hanging over the human race. And just before the end–just before he disappeared–he became convinced that it would actually come to a head in this island. And after he’d gone–’
‘Is he dead?’ asked Jane.
‘That we don’t know,’ answered Denniston. ‘Some people think he’s alive, others not. At any rate he disappeared. And Mrs Fisher-King more or less handed over the problem to her brother, to our chief. That in fact was why she gave him the money. He was to collect a company round him to watch for this danger, and to strike when it came.’
‘That’s not quite right, Arthur,’ said Camilla. ‘He was told that a company would in fact collect round him and he was to be its Head.’
‘I don’t think we need go into that,’ said Arthur. ‘But I agree. And now, Mrs Studdock, this is where you come in.’
Jane waited.
‘The Sura said that when the time came we should find what he called a seer: a person with second sight.’
‘Not that we’d get a seer, Arthur,’ said Camilla, ‘that a seer would turn up. Either we or the other side would get her.’
‘And it looks,’ said Denniston to Jane, ‘as if you were the seer.’
‘But, please,’ said Jane smiling, ‘I don’t want to be anything so exciting.’
‘No,’ said Denniston. ‘It’s rough luck on you.’ There was just the right amount of sympathy in his tone.
Camilla turned to Jane and said, ‘I gathered from Grace Ironwood that you weren’t quite convinced you were a seer. I mean you thought it might be just ordinary dreams. Do you still think that?’
‘It’s all so strange and–beastly,’ said Jane. She liked these people, but her habitual inner prompter was whispering, ‘Take care. Don’t get drawn in. Don’t commit yourself to anything. You’ve got your own life to live.’ Then an impulse of honesty forced her to add:
‘As a matter of fact, I’ve had another dream since then. And it turns out to have been true. I saw the murder–Mr Hingest’s murder.’
‘There you are,’ said Camilla. ‘Oh, Mrs Studdock, you must come in. You must, you must. That means we’re right on top of it now. Don’t you see? We’ve been wondering all this time exactly where the trouble is going to begin, and now your dream gives us a clue. You’ve seen something within a few miles of Edgestow. In fact, we are apparently in the thick of it already–whatever it is. And we can’t move an inch without your help. You are our secret service, our eyes. It’s all been arranged long before we were born. Don’t spoil everything. Do join us.’
‘No, Cam, don’t,’ said Denniston. ‘The Pendragon–the Head, I mean, wouldn’t like us to do that. Mrs Studdock must come in freely.’
‘But,’ said Jane, ‘I don’t know anything about all this. Do I? I don’t want to take sides in something I don’t understand.’
‘But don’t you see,’ broke in Camilla, ‘that you can’t be neutral? If you don’t give yourself to us, the enemy will use you.’
The words ‘give yourself to us’ were ill-chosen. The very muscles of Jane’s body stiffened a little: if the speaker had been anyone who attracted her less than Camilla she would have become like stone to any further appeal. Denniston laid a hand on his wife’s arm.
‘You must see it from Mrs Studdock’s point of view, dear,’ he said. ‘You forget she knows practically nothing at all about us. And that is the real difficulty. We can’t tell her much until she has joined. We are in fact asking her to take a leap in the dark.’ He turned to Jane with a slightly quizzical smile on his face which was, nevertheless, grave. ‘It is like that,’ he said, ‘like getting married, or going into the Navy as a boy, or becoming a monk, or trying a new thing to eat. You can’t know what it’s like until you take the plunge.’ He did not perhaps know (or again perhaps he did) the complicated resentments and resistances which his choice of illustrations awoke in Jane, nor could she herself analyse them. She merely replied in a colder voice than she had yet used:
‘In that case, it is rather difficult to see why one should take it at all.’
‘I admit frankly,’ said Denniston, ‘that you can only take it on trust. It all depends really, I suppose, what impression the Dimbles and Grace and we two have made on you: and, of course, the Head himself, when you meet him.’
Jane softened again.
‘What exactly are you asking me to do?’ she said.
‘To come and see our chief, first of all. And then–well, to join. It would involve making certain promises to him. He is really a Head, you see. We have all agreed to take his orders. Oh–there’s one other thing. What view would Mark take about it?–he and I are old friends, you know.’
‘I wonder,’ said Camilla. ‘Need we go into that for the moment?’
‘It’s bound to come up sooner or later,’ said her husband.
There was a little pause.
‘Mark?’ said Jane. ‘How does he come into it? I can’t imagine what he’d say about all this. He’d probably think we were all off our heads.’
‘Would he object, though?’ said Denniston. ‘I mean, would he object to your joining us?’
‘If he were at home, I suppose he’d be rather surprised if I announced I was going to stay indefinitely at St Anne’s. Does “joining you” mean that?’
‘Isn’t Mark at home?’ asked Denniston with some surprise.
‘No,’ said Jane. ‘He’s at Belbury. I think he’s going to have a job in the NICE.’ She was rather pleased to be able to say this for she was well aware of the distinction it implied. If Denniston was impressed he did not show it.
‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that “joining us” would mean, at the moment, coming to live at St Anne’s, specially in the case of a married woman. Unless old Mark got really interested and came himself–’
‘That is quite out of the question,’ said Jane.
(‘He doesn’t know Mark,’ she thought.)
‘Anyway,’ continued Denniston, ‘that is hardly the real point at the moment. Would he object to your joining–putting yourself under the Head’s orders and making the promises and all that?’
‘Would he object?’ asked Jane. ‘What on earth would it have to do with him?’
‘Well,’ said Denniston, hesitating a little, ‘the Head–or the authorities he obeys–have rather old-fashioned notions. He wouldn’t like a married woman to come in, if it could be avoided, without her husband’s–without consulting–’
‘Do you mean I’m to ask Mark’s permission?’ said Jane with a strained little laugh. The resentment which had been rising and ebbing, but rising each time a little more than it ebbed, for several minutes, had now overflowed. All this talk of promises and obedience to an unknown Mr Fisher-King had already repelled her. But the idea of this same person sending her back to get Mark’s permission–as if she were a child asking leave to go to a party–was the climax. For a moment she looked on Mr Denniston with real dislike. She saw him, and Mark, and the Fisher-King man and this preposterous Indian fakir simply as Men–complacent, patriarchal figures making arrangements for women as if women were children or bartering them like cattle. (‘And so the king promised that if anyone killed the dragon he would give him his daughter in marriage.’) She was very angry.
‘Arthur,’ said Camilla, ‘I see a light over there. Do you think it’s a bonfire?’
‘Yes, I should say it was.’
‘My feet are getting cold. Let’s go for a little walk and look at the fire. I wish we had some chestnuts.’
‘Oh, do let’s,’ said Jane.
They got out. It was warmer in
the open than it had by now become in the car–warm and full of leavy smells, and dampness, and the small noise of dripping branches. The fire was big and in its middle life–a smoking hillside of leaves on one side and great caves and cliffs of glowing red on the other. They stood round it and chatted of indifferent matters for a time.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ said Jane presently. ‘I won’t join your–your–whatever it is. But I’ll promise to let you know if I have any more dreams of that sort.’
‘That is splendid,’ said Denniston. ‘And I think it is as much as we had a right to expect. I quite see your point of view. May I ask for one more promise?’
‘What is that?’
‘Not to mention us to anyone.’
‘Oh, certainly.’
Later, when they had returned to the car and were driving back, Mr Denniston said, ‘I hope the dreams will not worry you much, now, Mrs Studdock. No: I don’t mean I hope they’ll stop: and I don’t think they will either. But now that you know they are not something in yourself but only things going on in the outer world (nasty things, no doubt, but no worse than lots you read in the papers), I believe you’ll find them quite bearable. The less you think of them as your dreams and the more you think of them–well, as News–the better you’ll feel about them.’
6
Fog