That Hideous Strength Read Free Page B

Fellow of Northumberland, had been Jane's tutor for her last years as a student, and Mrs. Dimble (one tended to call her "Mother Dimble") had been a kind of universal aunt to all the girls of her year. A liking for the female pupils of one's husband is not, perhaps, so common as might be wished among dons' wives: but Mrs. Dimble appeared to like all Dr. Dimble's pupils.
         They drove over the bridge to the north of Bracton and then south along the bank of the Wynd to the Dimbles' front door.
         "How lovely it's looking!" said Jane as she got out of the car. The Dimbles' garden was famous.
         "You'd better take a good look at it then," said Dr. Dimble.
         "What do you mean?" asked Jane.
         "Haven't you told her?" said Dr. Dimble to his wife.
         "I haven't screwed myself up to it yet," said Mrs. Dimble. "Anyway, I expect she knows. Your own college is being so tiresome, dear. They're turning us out. They won't renew the lease."
         "Oh, Mrs. Dimble!" exclaimed Jane. "And I didn't even know this was Bracton property. Mark never talks about College business."
         "Good husbands never do," said Dr. Dimble. "At least only about the business of other people's colleges. Is no one coming in to have lunch?"
         Dimble guessed that Bracton was going to sell the Wood and everything else it owned on that side of the river, and felt too strongly on the subject to wish to talk about it before the wife of one of the Bracton men.
         "You'll have to wait for your lunch till I've seen Jane's new hat," said Mother Dimble, and forthwith hurried Jane upstairs. Then followed some minutes of conversation which was strictly feminine in the old-fashioned sense. Jane, while preserving a certain sense of superiority, found it indefinably comforting. When the hat was being put away again Mrs. Dimble suddenly said:
         "There's nothing wrong, is there?"
         "Wrong," said Jane. "Why? What should there be?"
         "You're not looking yourself."
         "Oh, I'm all right," said Jane, aloud. Mentally she added: "She's dying to know whether I'm going to have a baby. That sort of woman always is."
         "Do you hate being kissed?" said Mrs. Dimble unexpectedly.
         "Do I hate being kissed?" thought Jane to herself. "That indeed is the question. Hope not for mind in women---" She had intended to reply "Of course not," but inexplicably, and to her great annoyance, found herself crying instead. And then, for a moment, Mrs. Dimble became simply a grown-up as grown-ups had been when one was a very small child. Not to detest being petted and pawed was contrary to her whole theory of life: yet before they went downstairs she had told Mrs. Dimble that she was not going to have a baby but was a bit depressed from being very much alone and from a nightmare.
         During lunch Dr. Dimble talked about the Arthurian legend. "It's really wonderful," he said, "how the whole thing hangs together, even in a late version like Malory's. You've noticed how there are two sets of characters? There's Guinevere and Lancelot and all those, all very courtly and nothing particularly British about them. But then in the background there are all those dark people like Morgan and Morgawse, who are very British indeed and-usually more or less hostile. Mixed up with magic. Merlin too, of course, is British. Doesn't it look very like a picture of Britain as it must have been on the eve of the invasion?"
         "How do you mean, Dr. Dimble?" said Jane. "Well, wouldn't there have been one section of society that was almost purely Roman ? People talking a Celticised Latin-something that would sound to us rather like Spanish: and fully Christian. But farther up country, in the out-of-the-way places, there would have been little courts ruled by real old British under-kings, talking something like Welsh, and practising a certain amount of the Druidical religion."
         "And which would Arthur