That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis

Author:C S Lewis [Lewis, C S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9781417748266
Google: g_2vngEACAAJ
Amazon: 0743234928
Barnesnoble: 0743234928
Goodreads: 100933
Publisher: San Val
Published: 1945-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BATTLE BEGUN

“I CAN’T see a thing,” said Jane.

“This rain is spoiling the whole plan,” said Dimble from the back seat. “Is this still Eaton Road, Arthur?”

“I think … yes, there’s the toll-house,” said Denniston, who was driving.

“I say!” said Jane suddenly. “Look! Look! What’s that? Stop.”

“I can’t see a white gate,” said Denniston.

“Oh, it’s not that,” said Jane. “Look over there.”

“Do you mean that light?” said Denniston.

“Yes, of course, that’s the fire.”

“What fire?”

“It’s the light,” she said, “ the fire in the hollow. Yes, I know: I never told Grace, or the Director. I’d forgotten that part of the dream till this moment. That was how it ended. It was the most important part. That was where I found him-Merlin, you know. Sitting by a fire in a little wood. After I came out of the place underground. Oh, come quickly!”

“What do you think, Arthur?” said Dimble.

“I think we must go wherever Jane leads,” answered Denniston.

“Oh, do hurry,” said Jane. “There’s a gate here. It’s only one field away.”

All three of them crossed the road and opened the gate and went into the field. Dimble said nothing. He had, perhaps, a clearer idea than the others of what sort of things might happen when they reached the place.

Jane, as guide, went first, and Denniston beside her, giving her his arm and showing an occasional gleam of his torch on the rough ground. Dimble brought up the rear.

The change from the road to the field was as if one had passed from a waking into a phantasmal world. They realised that they had not really believed in Merlin till now. They had thought they were believing the Director in the kitchen; but they had been mistaken. Out here, with only the changing red light ahead and the black all round, one began to accept as fact this tryst with something dead and yet not dead, something exhumed from that dark pit of history which lies between the ancient Romans and the beginning of the English. “The Dark Ages,” thought Dimble; how lightly one had read and written those words.

Suddenly all that Britain which had been so long familiar to him as a scholar rose up like a solid thing. He could see it all. Little dwindling cities where the light of Rome still rested-little Christian sites, Gamalodunum, Kaerleon, Glastonbury-a church, a villa or two, a huddle of houses, an earthwork. And then, beginning a stone’s-throw beyond the gates, the wet, tangled, endless woods; wolves slinking, beavers building, wide shallow marshes, dim horns and drummings, eyes in the thickets, eyes of men not only Pre-Roman but Pre-British, ancient creatures, unhappy and dispossessed, who became the elves and ogres and wood-wooses of the later tradition. But worse than the forests, the clearings. Little strongholds with unheard-of kings. Little colleges and covines of Druids. Houses whose mortar had been ritually mixed with babies’ blood.

Then came a check. They had walked right into a hedge. They had come to the end of a field. They went a long way out of their course before they found a gate.

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