That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis Page A

Denniston. "The Pendragon wouldn't like that. Mrs. Studdock must come in freely. You forget she knows practically nothing at all about us. And we can't tell her much until she has joined. We are, in fact, asking her to take a leap in the dark." He turned to Jane. "It is like that," he said, " like getting married, or becoming a monk. You can't know what it's like until you take the plunge." He did not perhaps know the complicated resentments and resistances which his choice of illustrations awoke in Jane.
         "What exactly are you asking me to do?" she said.
         "To come and see our chief, first of all. And then-well, to join. It would involve making certain promises to him. By the way, what view would Mark take about it?"
         "Mark?" said Jane. "How does he come into it?"
         "Would he object to your joining-putting yourself under the Head's orders and making the promises and all that?"
         "Would he object?" asked Jane. "What on earth would it have to do with him?"
         "Well," said Denniston, hesitating a little, " the Head- or the authorities he obeys-have rather old-fashioned notions. He wouldn't like a married woman to come in, if it could be avoided, without her husband's-without consulting---"
         "Do you mean I'm to ask Mark's permission?" said Jane. The resentment which had been rising and ebbing for several minutes had now overflowed. All this talk of promises and obedience to an unknown Mr. Fisher-King had already repelled her. But the idea of this same person sending her back to get Mark's permission was the climax. For a moment she looked on Mr. Denniston with dislike. She saw him, and Mark, and the Fisher-King man simply as men-complacent, patriarchal figures making arrangements for women as if women were children or bartering them like cattle. ("And so the king promised that if anyone killed the dragon he would give him his daughter in marriage.") She was very angry.
         "Arthur," said Camilla, "I see a light over there. Do you think it's a bonfire. Let's go for a little walk and look at the fire."
         "Oh, do let's," said Jane.
         They got out. It was warmer in the open than it had by now become in the car. The fire was big and in its middle life. They stood round it and chatted of indifferent matters for a time.
         "I'll tell you what I'll do," said Jane presently. "I won't join your-your-whatever it is. But I'll promise to let you know if I have any more dreams of that sort."
         "That is splendid," said Denniston. "And I think it is as much as we had a right to expect."
    CHAPTER SIX
         FOG
         ANOTHER day dragged past before Mark was able to see the Deputy Director again. He went to him in a chastened frame of mind, anxious to get the job on almost any terms. "I have brought back the Form, sir," he said. "What Form?" asked the Deputy Director. Mark found he was talking to a new and different Wither. The absent-mindedness was still there, but the courtliness was gone. He said he had understood that Mark had already refused the job. He could not, in any event, renew the offer. He spoke vaguely and alarmingly of strains and frictions, of injudicious behaviour, of the danger of making enemies, of the impossibility that the N.I.C.E. could harbour a person who appeared to have quarrelled with all its members in the first week. After he had hinted and murmured Mark into a sufficient state of dejection he threw him, like a bone to a dog, the suggestion of an appointment for a probationary period at six hundred a year. And Mark took it. He attempted to get answers even then to some of his questions. From whom was he to take orders ? Was he to reside at Belbury ?
         Wither replied, "I think, Mr. Studdock, we have already mentioned elasticity as the keynote of the Institute. Unless you are prepared to treat membership as ... er ... a vocation rather than a mere appointment, I could not conscientiously advise you to come to us.