Wordy Wednesday: Open Hearth Glowing

I enjoyed reading That Hideous Strength.

The evil was really evil: 

The NICE was the first-fruits of that
constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory on which so
many thoughtful people base their hopes of a better world. It was to be
free from almost all the tiresome restraints—“red tape” was the word its
supporters used—which have hitherto hampered research in this country.
It was also largely free from the restraints of economy, for, as it was
argued, a nation which can spend so many millions a day on a war can
surely afford a few millions a month on productive research in
peacetime.

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to
do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But
the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there
was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a
time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their
gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons
to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of
laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which
of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before
they are yet, individually, very bad men. A few moments later he was
trotting upstairs with the Fairy. They passed Cosser on the way and
Mark, talking busily to his companion, saw out of the corner of his eye
that Cosser was watching them. To think that he had once been afraid of
Cosser!

The meaning of all the ups and downs he had
experienced at Belbury now appeared to him perfectly plain. They were
all his enemies, playing upon his hopes and fears to reduce him to
complete servility, certain to kill him if he broke away, and certain to
kill him in the long run when he had served the purpose for which they
wanted him. It appeared to him astonishing that he could ever have
thought otherwise. How could he have supposed that any real conciliation
of these people could be achieved by anything he did?

 The good was really good:
  

“I often wonder,” said Dr. Dimble, “whether
Merlin doesn’t represent the last trace of something the later tradition
has quite forgotten about—something that became impossible when the
only people in touch with the supernatural were either white or black,
either priests or sorcerers.”

She wanted to be with Nice people, away from
Nasty people—that nursery distinction seeming at the moment more
important than any later categories of Good and Bad or Friend and Enemy.

She was really thinking simply of hugeness. Or
rather, she was not thinking of it. She was, in some strange fashion,
experiencing it. Something intolerably big, something from Brobdingnag
was pressing on her, was approaching, was almost in the room. She felt
herself shrinking, suffocated, emptied of all power and virtue. She
darted a glance at the Director which was really a cry for help, and
that glance, in some inexplicable way, revealed him as being, like
herself, a very small object. The whole room was a tiny place, a mouse’s
hole, and it seemed to her to be tilted aslant—as though the
insupportable mass and splendor of this formless hugeness, in
approaching, had knocked it askew.   

A wide, open hearth glowing with burning wood
lit up the comfortable form of Mrs. Dimble who was seated in a kitchen
chair at one side of it, apparently, from the basin in her lap and other
indications on a table beside her, engaged in preparing vegetables.
Mrs. Maggs and Camilla were doing something at a stove—the hearth was
apparently not used for cooking—and in a doorway which doubtless led to
the scullery a tall grizzle-headed man who wore gumboots and seemed to
have just come from the garden, was drying his hands.

Finally:

The Hideous Strength holds all this Earth in its
fist to squeeze as it wishes. But for their one mistake, there would be
no hope left. If of their own evil will they had not broken the
frontier and let in the celestial Powers, this would be their moment of
victory. Their own strength has betrayed them. They have gone to the
gods who would not have come to them, and pulled down Deep Heaven on
their heads. Therefore, they will die. For though you search every
cranny to escape, now that you see all crannies closed, you will not
disobey me.”

In fighting those who serve devils one always
has this on one’s side; their Masters hate them as much as they hate us.
The moment we disable the human pawns enough to make them useless to
Hell, their own Masters finish the work for us. They break their tools.”

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