VI

Cosser-the freckle-faced man with the little wisp of black moustache-approached Mark as he was coming away from the committee.

“You and I have a job to do,” he said. “Got to get out a report about Cure Hardy.”

Mark was very relieved to hear of a job. But he was a little on his dignity, not having liked Cosser much when he had met him yesterday, and he answered:

“Does that mean I am to be in Steele’s department after all?”

“That’s right,” said Cosser.

“The reason I ask,” said Mark, “is that neither he nor you seemed particularly keen on having me. I don’t want to push myself in, you know. I don’t need to stay at the N.I.C.E. at all if it comes to that.”

“Well, don’t start talking about it here,” said Cosser.

“Come upstairs.”

They were talking in the hall and Mark noticed Wither pacing thoughtfully towards them. “Wouldn’t it be as well to speak to him and get the whole thing thrashed out?” he suggested. But the Deputy Director, after coming within ten feet of them, had turned in another direction. He was humming to himself under his breath and seemed so deep in thought that Mark felt the moment unsuitable for an interview. Cosser, though he said nothing, apparently thought the same, and so Mark followed him up to an office on the third floor.

“It’s about the village of Cure Hardy,” said Cosser, when they were seated. “You see, all that land at Bragdon Wood is going to be little better than a swamp once they get to work. Why the hell we wanted to go there I don’t know. Anyway, the latest plan is to divert the Wynd: block up the old channel through Edgestow altogether. Look. Here’s Shillingbridge, ten miles north of the town. It’s to be diverted there and brought down an artificial channel-here, to the east, where the blue line is-and rejoin the old bed down here.”

“The university will hardly agree to that,” said Mark.

“What would Edgestow be without the river?”

“We’ve got the university by the short hairs,” said Cosser. “You needn’t worry about that. Anyway it’s not our job. The point is that the new Wynd must come right through Cure Hardy. Now look at your contours. Cure Hardy is in this narrow little valley. Eh? Oh, you’ve been there, have you? That makes it all the easier. I don’t know these parts myself. Well, the idea is to dam the valley at the southern end and make a big reservoir. You’ll need a new water supply for Edgestow now that it’s to be the second city in the country.”

“But what happens to Cure Hardy?”

“That’s another advantage. We build a new model village (it’s to be called Jules Hardy or Wither Hardy) four miles away. Over here, on the railway.”

“I say, you know, there’ll be the devil of a stink about this. Cure Hardy is famous. It’s a beauty spot. There are the sixteenth-century almshouses, and a Norman church, and all that.”

“Exactly. That’s where you and I come in. We’ve got to make a report on Cure Hardy. We’ll run out and have a look round to-morrow, but we can write most of the report to-day. It ought to be pretty easy. If it’s a beauty spot, you can bet it’s insanitary. That’s the first point to stress. Then we’ve got to get out some facts about the population. I think you’ll find it consists almost entirely of the two most undesirable elements-small rentiers and agricultural labourers.”

“The small rentier is a bad element, I agree,” said ’Mark. “I suppose the agricultural labourer is more controversial.”

“The Institute doesn’t approve of him. He’s a very recalcitrant element in a planned community, and he’s always backward. We’re not going in for English agriculture. So, you see, all we have to do is to verify a few facts. Otherwise the report writes itself.”

Mark was silent for a moment or two.

“That’s easy enough,” he said. “But before I get down to it I’d just like to be a bit clearer about my own position. Oughtn’t I to go and see Steele? I don’t fancy settling down to work in this department if he doesn’t want to have me.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Cosser.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, Steele can’t prevent you if the D.D. backs you up, as he seems to be doing for the moment. For another, Steele is rather a dangerous man. If you just go quietly on with the job, he may get used to you in the end: but if you go and see him it might lead to a bust up. There’s another thing, too.” Cosser paused, picked his nose thoughtfully, and proceeded. “Between ourselves, I don’t think things can go on indefinitely in this department in the way they are at present.”

The excellent training which Mark had had at Bracton enabled him to understand this. Cosser was hoping to get Steele out of the department altogether. He thought he saw the whole situation. Steele was dangerous while he lasted, but he might not last.

“I got the impression yesterday,” said Mark, “that you and Steele hit it off together rather well.”

“The great thing here,” said Cosser, “is never to quarrel with anyone. I hate quarrels myself. I can get on with anybody-s long as the work gets done.”

“Of course,” said Mark. “By the way, if we go to Cure Hardy to-morrow I might as well run in to Edgestow and spend the night at home.”

For Mark a good deal hung on the answer to this. He might find out whether he were actually under orders from Cosser. If Cosser said “you can’t do that” he would at least know where he stood. If Cosser said that Mark couldn’t be spared, that would be better still. Or Cosser might reply that he’d better consult the D.D. That also would have made Mark feel surer of his position. But Cosser merely said “Oh,” leaving Mark in doubt whether no one needed leave of absence or whether Mark was not sufficiently established as a member of the Institute for his absence to be of any consequence. Then they went to work on their report.

It took them the rest of the day, so that Cosser and he came in to dinner late and without dressing. This gave Mark a most agreeable sensation. And he enjoyed the meal, too. Although he was among men he had not met before, he seemed to know everyone within the first five minutes and to be joining naturally in the conversation. He was learning how to talk their shop.

“How lovely it is!” said Mark to himself next morning as the car left the main road at Duke’s Eaton and began descending the bumpy little lane into the long valley where Cure Hardy lay. Mark was not as a rule very sensitive to beauty: but Jane, and his love for Jane, had already awakened him a little in this respect. Perhaps the winter morning sunlight affected him all the more because he had never been taught to regard it as specially beautiful and it therefore worked on his senses without interference. The earth and sky had the look of things recently washed. The brown fields looked as if they would be good to eat, and those in grass set off the curves of the little hills as close-clipped hair sets off the body of a horse. The sky looked farther away than usual, but also clearer, so that the long, slender streaks of cloud (dark slate colour against the pale blue) had edges as clear as if they were cut out of cardboard. Every little copse was black and bristling as a hairbrush, and when the car stopped in Cure Hardy itself the silence that followed the turning-off of the engine was filled with the noise of rooks that seemed to be calling

“Wake! Wake!”

“Bloody awful noise those birds make,” said Cosser.

“Got your map? Now . . .” He plunged at once into business.

They walked about that village for two hours and saw with their own eyes all the abuses and anachronisms they came to destroy. They saw the recalcitrant and backward labourer and heard his views on the weather. They met the wastefully supported pauper in the person of an old man shuffling across the courtyard of the alms-houses to fill a kettle, and the elderly rentier (to make matters worse she had a fat old dog with her) in earnest conversation with the postman. It made Mark feel as if he were on a holiday, for it was only on holidays that he had ever wandered about an English village. For that reason he felt pleasure in it. It did not quite escape him that the face of the backward labourer was rather more interesting than Cosser’s and his voice a great deal more pleasing to the ear. The resemblance between the elderly rentier and Aunt Gilly (when had he last thought of her? Good Lord, that took one back . . .) did make him understand how it was possible to like that kind of person. All this did not in the least influence his sociological convictions. Even if he had been free from Belbury and wholly unambitious, it could not have done so, for his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural labourers were the substance: any real ditcher ploughman, or farmer’s boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use such words as “man” or “woman.” He preferred to write about “vocational group,” “elements,” “classes,” and “populations”: for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen.