The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis

platform or table of stone, about three feet high. And on it? Did she dare to explore? But it would be worse not to. She began trying the surface of the stone table with her hand, and next moment bit her lip to save herself from screaming, for she had touched a human foot. It was a naked foot, and dead to judge by its coldness. To go on groping seemed the hardest thing she had ever done, but somehow she was impelled to do it. The corpse was clothed in some very coarse stuff which was also uneven, as though it were heavily embroidered, and very voluminous. It must be a very large man, she thought, still groping upwards towards his head. On his chest the texture suddenly changed—as if the skin of some hairy animal had been laid over the coarse robe. So she thought at first; then she realised that the hair really belonged to a beard. She hesitated about feeling the face; she had a fear lest the man should stir or wake or speak if she did so. She therefore became still for a moment. It was only a dream; she could bear it: but it was so dreary and it all seemed to be happening so long ago, as if she had slipped through a cleft in the present, down into some cold, sunless pit of the remote past. She hoped they wouldn’t leave her here long. If only someone would come quickly and let her out. And immediately she had a picture of someone, someone bearded but also (it was odd) divinely young, someone all golden and strong and warm coming with a mighty earth-shaking tread down into that black place. The dream became chaotic at this point. Jane had an impression that she ought to curtsey to this person (who never actually arrived though the impression of him lay bright and heavy on her mind) and felt great consternation on realising that some dim memories of dancing lessons at school were not sufficient to show her how to do so. At this point she woke.

      She went into Edgestow immediately after breakfast to hunt, as she now hunted every day, for someone who would replace Mrs. Maggs. At the top of Market Street something happened which finally determined her to go to St. Anne’s that very day and by the 10.23 train. She came to a place where a big car was standing beside the pavement, an N.I.C.E. car. Just as she reached it a man came out of a shop, cut across her path to speak to the chauffeur of the car, and then got in. He was so close to her that, despite the fog, she saw him very clearly, in isolation from all other objects: the background was all grey fog and passing feet and the harsh sounds of that unaccustomed traffic which now never ceased in Edgestow. She would have known him, anywhere: not Mark’s face, not her own face in a mirror, was by now more familiar. She saw the pointed beard, the pince-nez, the face which somehow reminded her of a waxworks face. She had no need to think what she would do. Her body, walking quickly past, seemed of itself to have decided that it was heading for the station and thence for St. Anne’s. It was something different from fear (though she was frightened, too, almost to the point of nausea) that drove her so unerringly forward. It was a total rejection of, or revulsion from, this man on all levels of her being at once. Dreams sank into insignificance compared with the blinding reality of the man’s presence. She shuddered to think that their hands might have touched as she passed him.

      The train was blessedly warm, her compartment empty, the fact of sitting down delightful. The slow journey through the fog almost sent her to sleep. She hardly thought about St. Anne’s until she found herself there: even as she walked up the steep hill she made no plans, rehearsed nothing that she meant to say, but only thought of Camilla and Mrs. Dimble. The childish levels, the undersoil of the mind, had been turned up. She wanted to be with Nice people, away from Nasty people—that nursery distinction seeming at the moment more important than any later categories of Good and Bad or Friend and Enemy.

      She was roused from this state by noticing that it was lighter. She looked ahead: surely that bend in the road was more visible than it ought to be in such a fog? Or was it only that a country fog was different from a town one? Certainly what had been grey was becoming white, almost dazzlingly white. A few yards farther and luminous blue was showing overhead, and trees cast shadows (she had not seen a shadow for days), and then all of a sudden the enormous spaces of the sky had become visible and the pale golden sun, and looking back, as she took the turn to the Manor, Jane saw that she was standing on the shore of a little green sunlit island looking down on a sea of white fog, furrowed and ridged yet level on the whole, which spread as far as she could see. There were other islands too. That dark one to the West was the wooded hills above Sandown where she had picnicked with the Dennistons; and the far bigger and brighter one to the North was the many-caverned hills—mountains one could nearly call them—in which the Wynd had its source. She took a deep breath. It was the size of this world above the fog which impressed her. Down in Edgestow all these days one had lived, even when out of doors, as if in a room, for only objects close at hand were visible. She felt she had come near to forgetting how big the sky is, how remote the horizon.

      Chapter Seven

       The Pendragon

       Table of Contents

      I

      Before she reached the door in the wall Jane met Mr. Denniston and he guided her into the Manor, not by that door but by the main gate which opened on the same road a few hundred yards farther on. She told him her story as they walked. In his company she had that curious sensation which most married people know of being with someone whom (for the final but wholly mysterious reason) one could never have married but who is nevertheless more of one’s own world than the person one has married in fact. As they entered the house they met Mrs. Maggs.

      “What? Mrs. Studdock! Fancy!” said Mrs. Maggs.

      “Yes, Ivy,” said Denniston, “and bringing great news. Things are beginning to move. We must see Grace at once. And is MacPhee about?”

      “He’s out gardening hours ago,” said Mrs. Maggs. “And Dr. Dimble’s gone into College. And Camilla’s in the kitchen. Shall I send her along?”

      “Yes, do. And if you can prevent Mr. Bultitude from butting in——”

      “That’s right. I’ll keep him out of mischief all right. You’d like a cup of tea, Mrs. Studdock, wouldn’t you? Coming by train and all that.”

      A few minutes later Jane found herself once more in Grace Ironwood’s room. Miss Ironwood and the Dennistons all sat facing her so that she felt as if she were the candidate in a viva voce examination. And when Ivy Maggs brought in the tea she did not go away again, but sat down as if she also were one of the examiners.

      “Now!” said Camilla, her eyes and nostrils widened with a sort of fresh mental hunger—it was too concentrated to be called excitement.

      Jane glanced round the room.

      “You need not mind Ivy, young lady,” said Miss Ironwood. “She is one of our company.”

      There was a pause. “We have your letter of the 10th,” continued Miss Ironwood, “describing your dream of the man with the pointed beard sitting making notes in your bedroom. Perhaps I ought to tell you that he wasn’t really there: at least, the Director does not think it possible. But he was really studying you. He was getting information about you from some other source which, unfortunately, was not visible to you in the dream.”

      “Will you tell us, if you don’t mind,” said Mr. Denniston, “what you were telling me as we came along.”

      Jane told them about the dream of the corpse (if it was a corpse) in the dark place and how she had met the bearded man that morning in Market Street: and at once she was aware of having created intense interest.

      “Fancy!” said Ivy Maggs. “So we were right about Bragdon Wood!” said Camilla. “It is really Belbury,” said her husband. “But in that case, where does Alcasan come in?”

      “Excuse me,” said Miss Ironwood in her level voice, and the others became instantly silent. “We must not discuss the matter here. Mrs. Studdock has not yet joined us.”

      “Am I to be told nothing?” asked Jane.

      “Young lady,” said Miss Ironwood, “you must excuse me. It would not be wise at the moment: indeed,