in this. For beauty was made for others. Her beauty belonged to the Director. It belonged to him so completely that he could even decide not to keep it for himself but to order that it be given to another, by an act of obedience lower, and therefore higher, more unconditional and therefore more delighting, than if he had demanded it for himself.
As the train came into Edgestow Station Jane was just deciding that she would not try to get a ’bus. She would enjoy the walk up to Sandown. And then—what on earth was all this? The platform, usually almost deserted at this hour, was like a London platform on a bank holiday. “Here you are, mate!” cried a voice as she opened the door, and half a dozen men crowded into her carriage so roughly that for a moment she could not get out. She found difficulty in crossing the platform. People seemed to be going in all directions at once—angry, rough, and excited people. “Get back into the train, quick!” shouted someone. “Get out of the station, if you’re not travelling,” bawled another voice. “What the devil?” asked a third just beside her, and then a woman’s voice said “Oh dear, oh dear! Why don’t they stop it!” And from outside, beyond the station came a great roaring noise like the noise of a football crowd. There seemed to be a lot of unfamiliar lights about.
IV
Hours later, bruised, frightened, and tired to death, Jane found herself in a street she did not even know, surrounded by N.I.C.E. policemen and a few of their females, the Waips. Her course had been like that of a man trying to get home along the beach when the tide is coming in. She had been driven out of her natural route along Warwick Street—they were looting shops and making bonfires there—and forced to take a much wider circle, up by the Asylum, which would have brought her home in the end. Then even that wider circle had proved impracticable, for the same reason. She had been forced to try a still longer way round: and each time the tide had got there before her. Finally she had seen Bone Lane, straight and empty and still, and apparently her last chance of getting home that night at all. A couple of N.I.C.E. police—one seemed to meet them everywhere except where the rioting was most violent—had shouted out, “You can’t go down there, miss.” But as they then turned their backs on her, and it was poorly lit, and because she was now desperate, Jane had made a bolt for it. They caught her. And that was how she found herself being taken into a lighted room and questioned by a uniformed woman with short grey hair, a square face, and an unlighted cheroot. The room was in disorder—as if a private house had been suddenly and roughly converted into a temporary police station. The woman with the cheroot took no particular interest until Jane had given her name. Then Miss Hardcastle looked her in the face for the first time, and Jane felt quite a new sensation. She was already tired and frightened, but this was different. The face of the other woman affected her as the face of some men—fat men with small greedy eyes and strange disquieting smiles—had affected her when she was in her ’teens. It was dreadfully quiet and yet dreadfully interested in her. And Jane saw that some quite new idea was dawning on the woman as she stared at her: some idea that the woman found attractive, and then tried to put aside, and then returned to dally with, and then finally, with a little sigh of contentment, accepted. Miss Hardcastle lit her cheroot and blew a cloud of smoke towards her. If Jane had known how seldom Miss Hardcastle actually smoked she would have been even more alarmed. The policemen and policewomen who surrounded her probably did. The whole atmosphere of the room became a little different.
“Jane Studdock,” said the Fairy. “I know all about you, honey. You’ll be the wife of my friend Mark.” While she spoke she was writing something on a green form.
“That’s all right,” said Miss Hardcastle. “You’ll be able to see Hubby again now. We’ll take you out to Belbury to-night. Now, just one question, dear. What were you doing down here at this time of night?”
“I had just come off a train.”
“And where had you been, honey?”
Jane said nothing.
“You hadn’t been getting up to mischief while Hubby was away, had you?”
“Will you please let me go,” said Jane. “I want to get home. I am very tired and it’s very late.”
“But you’re not going home,” said Miss Hardcastle. “You’re coming out to Belbury.”
“My husband has said nothing about my joining him there.”
Miss Hardcastle nodded. “That was one of his mistakes. But you’re coming with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s an arrest, honey,” said Miss Hardcastle, holding out the piece of green paper on which she had been writing. It appeared to Jane as all official forms always appeared—a mass of compartments, some empty, some full of small print, some scrawled with signatures in pencil, and one bearing her own name; all meaningless.
“O-oh!” screamed Jane suddenly, overcome with a sensation of nightmare, and made a dash for the door. Of course she never reached it. A moment later she came to her senses and found herself held by the two policewomen.
“What a naughty temper!” said Miss Hardcastle playfully. “But we’ll put the nasty men outside, shall we?” She said something and the policemen removed themselves and shut the door behind them. As soon as they were gone Jane felt that a protection had been withdrawn from her.
“Well,” said Miss Hardcastle, addressing the two uniformed girls. “Let’s see. Quarter to one . . . and all going nicely. I think, Daisy, we can afford ourselves a little stand-easy. Be careful, Kitty, make your top grip under her shoulder just a little tighter. That’s right.” While she was speaking Miss Hardcastle was undoing her belt, and when she had finished she removed her tunic and flung it on the sofa, revealing a huge torso, uncorseted (as Bill the Blizzard had complained), rank, floppy, and thinly clad; such things as Rubens might have painted in delirium. Then she resumed her seat, removed the cheroot from her mouth, blew another cloud of smoke in Jane’s direction, and addressed her.
“Where had you been by that train?” she said.
And Jane said nothing; partly because she could not speak, and partly because she now knew beyond all doubt that these were the enemies of the human race whom the Director was fighting against and one must tell them nothing. She did not feel heroic in making this decision. The whole scene was becoming unreal to her: and it was as if between sleeping and waking that she heard Miss Hardcastle say, “I think, Kitty dear, you and Daisy had better bring her round here.” And it was still only half real when the two women forced her round to the other side of the table, and she saw Miss Hardcastle sitting with her legs wide apart and settling herself in the chair as if in the saddle; long leather-clad legs projecting from beneath her short skirt. The women forced her on, with a skilled, quiet increase of pressure whenever she resisted, until she stood between Miss Hardcastle’s feet: whereupon Miss Hardcastle brought her feet together so that she had Jane’s ankles pinioned between her own. This proximity to the ogress affected Jane with such horror that she had no fears left for what they might be going to do with her. And for what seemed an endless time Miss Hardcastle stared at her, smiling a little and blowing smoke in her face.
“Do you know,” said Miss Hardcastle at last, “you’re rather a pretty little thing in your way.”
There was another silence.
“Where had you been by that train?” said Miss Hardcastle.
And Jane stared as if her eyes would start out of her head and said nothing. Then suddenly Miss Hardcastle leant forward and, after very carefully turning down the edge of Jane’s dress, thrust
