“Did you understand his views on marriage?”

“My dear, the Director is a very wise man. But he is a man, after all, and an unmarried man at that. Some of what he says, or what the Masters say, about marriage does seem to me to be a lot of fuss about something so simple and natural that it oughtn’t to need saying at all. But I suppose there are young women nowadays who need to be told it.”

“You haven’t got much use for young women who do, I see.”

“Well, perhaps I’m unfair. Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book. We always intended to love, honour, and obey, and we had figures and we wore petticoats and we liked waltzes . . .”

“Waltzes are ever so nice,” said Mrs. Maggs-who had just returned and given MacPhee his slab of cake “so old-fashioned.”

At that moment the door opened and a voice from behind it said, “Well, go in then, if you’re going.” Thus admonished, a very fine jackdaw hopped into the room, followed firstly by Mr. Bultitude and secondly by Arthur Denniston.

“I’ve told you before, Arthur,” said Ivy Maggs, “not to bring that bear in here when we’re cooking the dinner.” While she was speaking Mr. Bultitude, who was apparently himself uncertain of his welcome, walked across the room in what he believed (erroneously) to be an unobtrusive manner and sat down behind Mrs. Dimble’s chair.

“Dr. Dimble’s just come back, Mother Dimble,” said Denniston. “But he’s had to go straight to the Blue Room. And the Director wants you to go to him, too, MacPhee.”

III

Mark sat down to lunch that day in good spirits. Everyone reported that the riot had gone off most satisfactorily, and he had enjoyed reading his own accounts of it in the morning papers. He enjoyed it even more when he heard Steele and Cosser talking about it in a way which showed that they did not even know how it had been engineered, much less who had written it up in the newspapers. And he had enjoyed his morning, too. It had involved a conversation with Frost, the Fairy, and Wither himself, about the future of Edgestow. All were agreed that the government would follow the almost unanimous opinion of the nation (as expressed in the newspapers) and put it temporarily under the control of the Institutional Police. An emergency governor of Edgestow must be appointed. Feverstone was the obvious man. As a member of Parliament he represented the Nation, as a Fellow of Bracton he represented the University, as a member of the Institute he represented the Institute. All the competing claims that might otherwise have come into collision were reconciled in the person of Lord Feverstone; the articles on this subject which Mark was to write that afternoon would almost write themselves! But that had not been all. As the conversation proceeded it had become clear that there was really a double object in getting this invidious post for Feverstone. When the time came, and the local unpopularity of the N.I.C.E. rose to its height, he could be sacrificed. This, of course, was not said in so many words, but Mark realised perfectly clearly that even Feverstone was no longer quite in the Inner Ring. The Fairy said that old Dick was a mere politician at heart and always would be. Wither, deeply sighing, confessed that his talents had been perhaps more useful at an earlier stage of the movement than they were likely to be in the period on which they were now entering. There was in Mark’s mind no plan for undermining Feverstone nor even a fully formed wish that he should be undermined: but the whole atmosphere of the discussion became somehow more agreeable to him as he began to understand the real situation. He was also pleased that he had (as he would have put it) “got to know” Frost. He knew by experience that there is in almost every organisation some quiet, inconspicuous person whom the small fry suppose to be of no importance but who is really one of the mainsprings of the whole machine. Even to recognise such people for what they are shows that one has made considerable progress. There was, to be sure, a cold fish-like quality about Frost which Mark did not like and something even repulsive about the regularity of his features. But every word he spoke (he did not speak many) went to the root of what was being discussed, and Mark found it delightful to speak to him . . . The pleasures of conversation were becoming, for Mark, to have less and less connection with his spontaneous liking or disliking of the people he talked to. He was aware of this change-which had begun when he joined the Progressive Element in college-and welcomed it as a sign of maturity.

Wither had thawed in a most encouraging manner. At the end of the conversation he had taken Mark aside, spoken vaguely but paternally of the great work he was doing, and finally asked after his wife. The D.D. hoped there was no truth in the rumour which had reached him that she was suffering from-er-some nervous disorder.

“Who the devil has been telling him that?” thought Mark. “Because,” said Wither, “it had occurred to me, in view of the great pressure of work which rests on you at present and the difficulty, therefore, of your being at home as much as we should all (for your sake) wish, that in your case the Institute might be induced . . . I am speaking in a quite informal way . . . that we should all be delighted to welcome Mrs. Studdock here.”

Until the D.D. had said this Mark had not realised that there was nothing he would dislike so much as having Jane at Belbury. There were so many things that Jane would not understand: not only the pretty heavy drinking which was becoming his habit but-oh, everything from morning to night. For it is only justice both to Mark and to Jane to record that he would have found it impossible to conduct in her hearing any one of the hundred conversations which his life at Belbury involved. Her mere presence would have made all the laughter of the Inner Ring sound metallic, unreal; and what he now regarded as common prudence would seem to her, and through her, to himself, mere flattery, back-biting, and toad eating. Jane in the middle of Belbury would turn the whole of Belbury into a vast vulgarity, flashy and yet furtive. His mind sickened at the thought of trying to teach Jane that she must help to keep Wither in a good temper and must play up to Fairy Hardcastle. He excused himself vaguely to the D.D . . . with profuse thanks, and got away as quickly as he could.

That afternoon, while he was having tea, Fairy Hardcastle came and leaned over the back of his chair and said in his ear:

“You’ve torn it, Studdock.”

“What’s the matter now, Fairy?” said he.

“I can’t make out what’s the matter with you, young Studdock, and that’s a fact. Have you made up your mind to annoy the Old Man? Because it’s a dangerous game, you know.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well, here we’ve all been working on your behalf and soothing him down and this morning we thought we’d finally succeeded. He was talking about giving you the appointment originally intended for you and waiving the probationary period. Not a cloud in the sky: and then you have five minutes’ chat with him-barely five minutes in fact-and in that time you’ve managed to undo it all. I begin to think you’re mental.”

“What the devil’s wrong with him this time?”

“Well you ought to know! Didn’t he say something about bringing your wife here?”

“Yes he did. What about it?”

“And what did you say?”

“I said not to bother about it . . . and, of course, thanked him very much and all that.” The Fairy whistled.

“Don’t you see, honey,” she said, gently rapping Mark’s scalp with her knuckles, “that you could hardly have made a worse bloomer? It was a most terrific concession for him to make. He’s never done it to anyone else. You might have known he’d be offended if you coldshouldered him. He’s burbling away now about lack of confidence. Says he’s ‘hurt’: which means that somebody else soon will be! He takes your refusal as a sign that you are not really ‘settled’ here.”