That Hideous Strength Read Online Free PDF Page B

"Here comes Curry."
         Mark walked home. Something happened to him the moment he had let himself into the flat which was very unusual. He found himself, on the door-mat, embracing a frightened, half-sobbing Jane-even a humble Jane, who was saying, "Oh, Mark, I've been so frightened."
         There was a quality in the very muscles of his wife's body which took him by surprise. A certain indefinable defensiveness had momentarily deserted her. He had known such occasions before, but they were rare. And they tended, in his experience, to be followed next day by inexplicable quarrels.
         But the reasons for her unusual behaviour on this particular evening were simple enough. She had got back from the Dimbles at about four, and had had to light up and draw the curtains before she had finished tea. The thought had come into her mind that her fright at the dream, at the mention of a mantle, an old man, an old man buried but not dead, and a language like Spanish, had been as irrational as a child's fear of the dark. This had led her to remember moments when she had feared the dark. She allowed herself to remember them too long. The evening somehow deteriorated. She was restless. From being restless she became nervous. Then came a curious reluctance to go into the kitchen to get herself some supper. And now there was no disguising the fact that she was frightened. In desperation she rang up the Dimbles. "I think I might go and see the person you suggested, after all," she said. Mrs. Dimble's voice came back, after a curious little pause, giving her the address. Ironwood was the name, Miss Ironwood, who lived out at St. Anne's on the Hill. Jane asked if she should make an appointment.      
         "No," said Mrs. Dimble, "they'll be-you needn't make an appointment." Jane kept the conversation going as long as she could. Secretly she had had a wild hope that Mother Dimble would recognise her distress and say at once, "I'll come straight up to you by car. "Instead, she got the mere information and a hurried "Good night."It seemed to Jane that by ringing up she had interrupted a conversation about herself: or about something else more important, with which she was somehow connected. And what had Mrs. Dimble meant by "They'll be--"
         "They'll be expecting you"?
         "Damn the Dimbles!" said Jane to herself. And now that the life-line had been used and brought no comfort, the terror, as if insulted by her futile attempt to escape it, rushed back on her and she could never afterwards remember whether the horrible old man and the mantle had actually appeared to her in a dream or whether she had merely sat there hoping that they would not.
         And that is why Mark found such an unexpected Jane on the door-mat. It was a pity, he thought, that this should have happened on a night when he was so late and so tired and, to tell the truth, not perfectly sober.
         "Do you feel quite all right this morning?" said Mark.
         "Yes, thank you," said Jane shortly.
         Mark was lying in bed and drinking a cup of tea. Jane was seated at the dressing-table, partially dressed, and doing her hair.
         Jane thought she was annoyed because her hair was not going up to her liking and because Mark was fussing. She also knew, of course, that she was angry with herself for the collapse which had betrayed her last night into being what she detested-the "little woman" of sentimental fiction running for comfort to male arms. But she thought this anger was only in the back of her mind, and had no suspicion that it was pulsing through every vein and producing the clumsiness in her fingers which made her hair seem intractable.
         "Because," continued Mark, " if you felt the least bit uncomfortable, I could put off going to see this man Wither." Jane said nothing.
         "Supposing I did," said Mark, " you wouldn't think of asking Myrtle over to stay?"
         "No thank you," said Jane