BENIGHTED

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction
ADAM IN MOONSHINE

Essays, etc.
BRIEF DIVERSIONS
PAPERS FROM LILLIPUT
I FOR ONE
TALKING
OPEN HOUSE

Criticism
FIGURES IN MODERN LITERATURE
THE ENGLISH COMIC CHARACTERS
MEREDITH (English Men of Letters)
PEACOCK (English Men of Letters)

BENIGHTED

BY
J. B. PRIESTLEY

.....the bright day is done.

And we are for the dark.....

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.

First published ... 1927

Printed in Great Britain at The Ballantyne Press by
Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.
Colchester, London & Eton

BENIGHTED

CHAPTER I

Margaret was saying something, but he couldn’t hear a word. The downpour and the noise of the engine were almost deafening. Suddenly he stopped the car and leaned back, relieved, relaxed, free for a moment from the task of steering a way through the roaring darkness. He had always felt insecure driving at night, staring out at a little lighted patch of road and groping for levers and switches, pressing pedals, had always been rather surprised when the right thing happened. But to-night, on these twisting mountain roads, some of them already awash, with storm after storm bursting upon them and the whole night now one black torrent, every mile was a miracle. It couldn’t last. Their rattling little box of mechanical tricks was nothing but a piece of impudence. He turned to Margaret.

‘You needn’t have done that,’ she was saying now. She had had to raise her voice, of course, but it was as cool and clear as ever. She was still detached, but apparently, for once, not amused.

‘Done what?’ Philip returned, but his heart sank, for he knew what she meant. Then he felt annoyed. Couldn’t he stop the damned thing for a minute? He was easily the coldest and wettest of the three of them.

‘You needn’t have stopped the car,’ Margaret replied. ‘I was only saying that we ought to have turned back before. It’s simply idiotic going on like this. Where are we?’

He felt an icy trickle going down his back and shook himself. ‘Hanged if I know,’ he told her. ‘Somewhere in wildest Wales. That’s as near as I can get. I’ve never found my bearings since we missed that turning. But I think the direction’s vaguely right.’ He wriggled a little. He was even wetter than he had imagined. He had got wet when he had gone out to change the wheel and then later when she had stopped and he had had to look at the engine, and since then the rain had been coming in steadily. Not all the hoods and screens in the world could keep out this appalling downpour.

‘This is hopeless.’ Margaret was calmly condemning the situation. ‘What time is it?’

There was no light on the dashboard, so he struck a match and held it near the clock. Half-past nine. There was just time to catch a glimpse of Margaret’s profile before the tiny flame vanished. It was like overhearing a faintly scornful phrase about himself. He suddenly felt responsible for the whole situation, not only for the delay on the road and the missed turning, but for the savage hills and the black spouting night. Once again he saw himself fussing away, nervous, incompetent, slightly disordered, while she looked on, critical, detached, indulgent or contemptuous. When anything went wrong—and it was in the nature of things to go wrong—she always made him feel like that. Perhaps all wives did. It wasn’t fair. It was taking a mean advantage of the fact that you cared what they thought, for once you stopped caring the trick must fail.

‘We’d better go on and try and arrive somewhere,’ Margaret was saying. ‘Shall I drive now?’ He was expecting that. She always imagined that she was the better driver. And perhaps she was, though. Not really so skilful with the wheel, the gears, the brakes, but far cooler than he was simply because she never saw the risks. Her imagination didn’t take sudden leaps, didn’t see a shattered spine a finger’s breadth away, didn’t realise that we all went capering along a razor-edge. Unlike him, she blandly trusted everything, everything, that is, except human beings. Now they were not so bad, merely stupid—the thought came flashing as he shifted his position—it was only the outside things that were so devilish.

‘No, thanks. I’ll keep on. There’s no point in changing now. We’ll arrive somewhere soon.’ He was about to reach out to the switch when the light of a match at the back turned him round. Penderel, who had been dozing there for the last two hours, was now lighting a cigarette. ‘Hello!’ he shouted back. ‘You all right, Penderel? Not drowned yet?’ Penderel’s face, queerly illuminated, looked at once drawn and impish. A queer stick!—mad as a hatter some people thought, Margaret among them; but Philip wasn’t sure. He suddenly felt glad to see him there. Penderel wouldn’t mind all this.

Penderel blew out smoke, held up the lighted match, and leaned forward, as vivid as a newly painted portrait. He grinned. ‘Where are we?’ Then the match went out and he was nothing but a shadow.

‘We don’t know,’ Philip shouted back above the drumming rain. ‘We’ve missed the way. We’re somewhere in the Welsh mountains and it’s half-past nine. Sorry.’

‘Don’t mention it.’ Penderel seemed to be amused. ‘I say, this storm’s going on for ever. I believe it’s the end of the world. They’ve overheard the talk at the Ainsleys and have decided to blot us all out. What do you think?’

Philip felt Margaret stirring beside him. He knew that her body was stiffening with disapproval, partly because the Ainsleys, with whom they had all three been staying, were old friends of hers, but chiefly because she didn’t like Penderel, whose existence she had almost forgotten, and was only too ready to disapprove of everything he said or did. ‘We shan’t see even Shrewsbury to-night,’ Philip shouted back. A halt at Shrewsbury had been their modified plan, following upon their delay on the road and their slow progress in the torrential rain.

‘Shrewsbury!’ Penderel laughed. ‘Nor the Hesperides either. We’ll be lucky if we get anywhere, out of this. I’ll tell you what’—he hesitated a moment—‘I don’t want to frighten Mrs. Waverton——’

‘Go on, Mr. Penderel.’ Margaret was icy. ‘I’m not easily frightened.’

‘Aren’t you? I am,’ Penderel replied, loudly and cheerfully. He seemed to be for ever putting his foot in it, either didn’t know or didn’t care. ‘I was thinking that you’ll have to be careful here. We’ve had a week’s heavy rain, and thunderstorms for the last two days, and in this part of the world they’re always having landslides and whatnot. Don’t be surprised to find yourself driving into the middle of a lake, or the whole hillside coming down on you, or the road disappearing under the front wheels.’

The noise and the darkness made snubbing difficult, but Margaret did what she could. ‘I must say I should be very surprised indeed,’ she threw back. ‘Hurry on, Philip. Open the windscreen. We can’t be any wetter than we are now and I want to look out for any turnings or signposts.’

‘Not that I care, you know,’ Penderel called out. ‘I don’t want to go to Shrewsbury. I don’t particularly want to go anywhere. Something might happen here, and nothing ever happens in Shrewsbury, and nothing much on the other side of Shrewsbury. But here there’s always a chance.’

As Philip started the car again he wished himself a hundred miles the other side of Shrewsbury, moving sedately down some sensible main road towards a fire and clean sheets. The road they were on now seemed little better than a track, twisting its way along the hillside. There were no lights to be seen, nothing but the flashing rain and the jumping scrap of lighted road ahead, full of deep ruts and stones and shining with water. He moved cautiously forward, shaking the raindrops from his eyes and gripping the wheel as hard as he could. This ring of metal seemed his only hold upon security now that everything was black and sliding and treacherous, and even then it rattled uselessly in his hand at times. One silly twist and they were bogged for the night or even over the edge. Earlier it had been rather exhilarating rushing through this savagery of earth and weather, but now he felt tired and apprehensive. Penderel had been exaggerating, of course, perhaps trying to frighten Margaret. But no, he wouldn’t be doing that, though he probably knew that she didn’t like him and was against his returning from the Ainsleys’ with them. He exaggerated for his own good pleasure, being a wild youth who liked to see life as either a screaming buffoonery or a grand catastrophe, something Elizabethan in five acts. Yet there were landslides after heavy rain in this part of the world. There might be floods too. Philip saw them stuck somewhere on this hillside all night. And what a night too! He shivered and involuntarily pressed the accelerator.

The car roared forward, and though he immediately released the pressure it did not slacken speed because there was a sudden dip in the road. Just in front the hillside jutted into a sharp edge of rock and the road turned a blind corner. Philip had only time to touch the footbrake when this corner swung towards him. He gave the wheel a hard twist; for a second the car went sliding; and the next moment they were round the corner but apparently plunging into a river. The road had disappeared; there was nothing ahead but the gleam of water. In they went with a roar and a splash. Philip gripped the wheel harder than ever; he felt Margaret’s hand upon his left arm; he heard a shout from Penderel behind. Then the roaring and splashing filled the night, but the car seemed to be slowing down. He accelerated and the engine responded, with loud spasmodic bursts, but all to no purpose. The car swung forward, stopped, drummed, and then shook violently, swung forward again, then stopped.

‘Don’t stop.’ Margaret was crying in his ear.

‘Can’t help it,’ he shouted. What a damn silly remark! Did she think they were in a motor-boat! He must do something though. The engine was still running, trembling there under his feet, like a hunted beast. Hastily he shoved the lever into low gear and rammed down the accelerator. The car gave an agonised roar and seemed to shake itself like a dog, but for a moment or so nothing else happened. ‘Here for the night, here for the night,’ Philip heard himself chanting idiotically. Then slowly, almost painfully it seemed, the car moved forward, protesting every yard against the unfamiliar element. And now the road began to climb again; the worst was passed; the lights showed solid ground ahead, and a few minutes’ more splashing brought them out into earth and air. The little box of tricks had won. At least, Philip reminded himself, it had won so far; end of first round. But what was coming next? They were still climbing a little, and now the hillside to the right seemed less steep and rocky, but that to the left fell away more sharply. He could see nothing there but rain falling into a black gulf. It had the curiously vivid and dramatic quality of rain in a film.

Margaret was saying something and appeared to be fumbling in the pocket in the door. What was it she wanted? He caught the word ‘stop’ in her reply, and so once again brought the car to a standstill. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for the map,’ she replied. ‘We must find out where we are. We can’t go on like this.’

‘A good voyage, Waverton!’ Penderel shouted. ‘Have a cigarette?’ Philip found the open case under his nose when he turned, and lit up with Penderel. Then there was a little click and the whole car was illuminated, transformed into a queer tiny room. The night was banished, wind and rain and darkness disappearing behind the shining screen; Margaret had found the little observation lamp and had fixed it in the plug. She had also found the map and was now bending over it, the lamp in her hand. But it was only a flimsy affair of paper and the rain had played havoc with it. Philip, who was visited by a sudden feeling of cosiness, watched her turn it over and stare at it with wide grave eyes. Then he saw her shake her head; just like a child, he thought. He wanted to tell her so and give her a quick little hug, a sign across a thousand miles of desert; then rush away to the nearest shelter and talk everything out with her. What was she feeling? How odd it was that he didn’t know!

‘You look,’ she said, holding out the map. ‘I can’t see anything. It’s all a stupid puddle.’

He peered at the thing just to satisfy her. Roads and rivers and stout acres were now so many blotches. ‘It seems to me it represents this country very well, for everything here’s under water. The thing’s useless. Besides I can’t make out where we missed the turning.’ He followed a possible road with his forefinger, only to discover that it led him into a long blue smudge, under which some fifty square miles were submerged. Perhaps if they went there, everything would be different. Perhaps they were there. ‘I give it up,’ he told her. Then he turned to see Penderel’s tousled hair and bright eyes above the back of the seat. ‘Would you like to look at the map, Penderel? We can’t make anything of it.’

Penderel grinned and shook his head. ‘No map for me. I don’t believe we’re on a map. Drive on and we’ll arrive somewhere. Only don’t let it be water. We be land rats.’

Margaret made a slight gesture of impatience. ‘It’s absurd now trying to get to any particular place. We must stop at the first village we come to and ask for shelter. What’s that?’ There came a crack of thunder that rolled and clanged among the hills. Philip opened the door on his side, threw away his cigarette, looked out at the thick jigging wires of rain, and then hastily closed the door. ‘More rain and thunder,’ he said, then looked doubtfully at Margaret.

‘We’d better move on and, as you say, get in anywhere.’ There arrived with Margaret’s nod a savage assent from the sky, another roll and clanging of iron doors on the summits above.

Philip started the engine again. Margaret put out the little observation lamp and with it any fleeting sense of cosiness. The night invaded them once more; they were wet and numbed and maundering on towards a furious autumnal midnight, among cracking mountains, lost in a world of black water; they were sitting crazily behind two lamps that showed nothing but a streaming track, the flashing of the rain, and the gulf beyond. When they moved off, very cautiously hugging the right-hand side, he could hear Penderel’s voice raised above the din. He was singing or at least shouting some kind of song, like a man in his bath. The whole night was going to be one vast bath and so Penderel was singing. A queer youth!—Philip looked down on him from a great height, but then suddenly remembered that Penderel was only two years younger than himself. It was his daft drinking and shouting and singing that magnified these two years. Unlike him, Penderel didn’t seem’ to have escaped from the War yet, and every night with him was still the night before one moved up to the line. Why didn’t Margaret like him? He wanted to think about Margaret, but just now there wasn’t time.

There was another sharp bend in the road, not fifty yards away, and he decided to nose round it very cautiously. What a tremendous rumbling there was! Was it thunder? He shouted to the others. Margaret was leaning forward, peering out. ‘Look out, Waverton,’ he thought he heard Penderel shout. The bend was here, another corner as sharp as the last, and he pulled round and ran straight into roaring chaos. A torrent of water was pouring down upon the road and something struck the car, a large clod of earth or a rock, with a resounding jolt. The entire slope above seemed to be rumbling and shuttering. In another minute they would be buried or sent flying over the other side of the road. Dazed as he was, he realised that there was just a chance of escape, and he pressed down the accelerator while he kept the other foot trembling on the brake for fear the road in front should be blocked or should have fallen away. So far it seemed to be clear, though the whole hillside immediately behind them now seemed to be crashing down. The road ran back in a curve, probably between two spurs of the hill. Margaret was shrieking in his ear: ‘Lights! Look, Phil. Lights! Pull in there.’ He saw them not far in front, where the road seemed to bend back again, beyond the centre of its horseshoe curve. Without thinking, he began to slow down. There seemed to be some sort of gateway there, an entrance to a drive perhaps. Then the rumbling and crashing and tearing behind, growing in volume every moment, awakened him to the danger of the situation.

It was obvious now that there was a house in front, and he could see the open entrance to the drive. But what kind of place was this to stay in, with the whole hillside threatening to descend upon them and tons of water coming down from somewhere? ‘We’d better go on while we can,’ he shouted to Margaret. ‘It’s not safe here.’ But at the same time he clapped on the brakes and brought the car down to a walking pace. They were now only a few yards from the gateway, were actually sheltered by the high wall of the garden. He felt a vague sense of safety, the sight of that wall keeping at bay the terror of the water and the crumbling slope.

He caught Margaret’s ‘No, stop!’ and instantly obeyed the cry. He did it against his judgment, yet felt partly relieved to be free for a moment from wheels and brakes. She clutched his arm and he could feel her trembling a little. ‘Let’s stay here,’ she was gasping.

‘We ought to go on while the road’s still open.’ His voice was hoarse and he too was shaking.

‘Let’s get out and see what’s happening,’ Penderel chimed in. ‘I believe the whole damned hill’s going. Something’s burst up above.’ He was opening the door. Horribly cramped, Philip tumbled out and joined him in the black downpour. At least it was good to be on one’s legs again, and though the night was hideous, the situation seemed less precarious than it did when one was sitting in there, playing fantastic tricks with mechanism.

‘Are we going to push on,’ Penderel shouted, ‘or stay here and ask these people for shelter? We can’t go back, for that road’s completely done in. And the road in front may be done in too. I’m for staying here.’

‘But listen to that.’ The fury behind had not spent itself and even appeared to be gathering force. ‘We’re close to it,’ Philip went on, ‘and the whole place seems dangerous to me. It may be all washed away before morning. And really we ought to tell those people what’s happening.’

Penderel walked forward, peered through the entrance, and then returned. ‘They don’t seem to be bothering much about it. Lights on, but no signs of alarm.’

‘Perhaps they don’t know.’ Philip shivered. ‘For that matter there may not be anybody there. They may have cleared off.’

Margaret was looking out of the car. ‘Why are you standing there?’ For once she sounded forlorn. ‘I can’t stand much more of this. It’s a nightmare.’

‘Penderel thinks we ought to stay here,’ Philip told her. ‘But I feel inclined to go on. It isn’t safe here and the road in front seems to be still open.’ He looked forward as far as he could, and though the road was partly flooded it revealed no dangerous obstacle.

‘But is it open?’ Penderel asked the question, and Margaret, still peering out, seemed to echo him.

The next moment they were answered. There came a rumble and a following roar, this time in front of them, somewhere not far away in the darkness. It seemed as if a whole side of the hill was slipping or being washed away. The noise was deafening, terrifying, like a great buffeting of the ears; and even the ground beneath their feet seemed to tremble. The road in front had gone, and what was left of the horseshoe bend, the little stretch on which they stood, was now being rapidly flooded. ‘Bring her in here,’ Penderel shouted, and rushed to the drive, bent on leading the way. Philip hesitated long enough to feel the sudden chill wash of water round his legs, and then clambered back into the car. The rain was streaming down his face and he could hardly see; his hands were so numbed that they were like pieces of wood; but the engine was running and he contrived to jam in the gear and slip the clutch with only the loss of a few seconds. For a moment or two the car roared helplessly, but then it began to move slowly, with a prodigious splashing, and he turned it through the entrance and up the drive, which ran forward at a slight incline. He could see Penderel hurrying in front, a jerky and blurred figure in the rain, just like a man in a film. Now the house, surprisingly large to be in such an out-of-the-way place, towered above them. What was to be done with the car? Philip couldn’t decide, so merely turned it round the corner, where the drive curved towards the front door only a few yards away, and then came to a standstill. The head lamps shone upon the house and the door was strongly, dramatically, illuminated by their uncouth glare. It was a large door, stout enough for a little fortress, and three broad steps led up to it. Somehow it looked as if it were closed for ever.

Philip found Penderel looking in at him. ‘Benighted!—that’s the word,’ Penderel said. ‘I’ve been trying to remember it all the way from the gate. I’ll go and beg for shelter. What a night! What a place! I like this, though, don’t you?’

Philip stared after him as he walked forward to the door. The night was still a tumult, full of a distant rumbling and crashing and the ceaseless drumming of the rain, yet there seemed to fall in it now a sudden quietness. It was the house itself that was so quiet. Driving up like this, you expected a bustle, shadows hurrying across the blinds, curtains lifted, doors flung open. But so far this house hadn’t given the slightest sign, in spite of its lighted windows. It seemed strangely turned in upon itself, showing nothing but a blank face in the night. You could hardly imagine that great front door ever being opened at all.

And now Penderel was there at the door, darkening it with his shadow and groping for a knocker. Philip turned to Margaret, who was leaning back, exhausted perhaps. Once inside, out of the night, warmed and dry, eyes meeting eyes again in the light, they could perhaps talk everything out: now was their chance, before they reached home again and custom fell on them like weights of armour. He put out a reassuring hand, and though she didn’t meet it with her own, he seemed to catch a faint smile. Did she whisper something? He couldn’t tell. All he heard now was Penderel knocking at that door.

CHAPTER II

Penderel thought he would give them another and louder rap. ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller. That’s why poetry is so good, he told himself, his hand on the knocker; at such times odd bits of it come shooting up in the mind like rockets. Rattatta-tat-tat. Should he give them another and conclusive tat-tat, rounding off the phrase? No, that always sounded so complete that there was no urgency in it. That was loud enough anyhow, loud enough—as people said in their hellishly grim fashion—to waken the dead. Suppose the people inside were dead, all stretched out with the lights quietly burning above them. Suppose one of them was just dying or dead and the others were all crying or praying at the bedside, and he and the Wavertons marched in, ‘Can you put us up for the night, please?’ But most likely the owner of the house would be a fat little Welsh squire, and the place would be full of dogs and drinks. He could do with the drinks. Everything about him was soaking except his throat, which was Sahara itself. If people are to be sodden, let them be sodden inside, where all the real mischief’s done.

There was somebody at the other side of the door at last. He had a feeling that somebody was there, although he couldn’t really hear anything. This door, he was positive, would take some opening; you couldn’t imagine it flying open; it looked as if somehow it would have to be unscrewed. Yes, something was happening to it. It was creaking. It was moving. Now for it!—a neat little speech.

The door opened an inch or two, and Penderel saw an eye. There was no talking to an eye and so he waited. The eye withdrew and then the door was slowly pulled back. A huge lump of a man stood there, blankly staring at him; a shapeless man with a full black beard and matted hair over a low forehead. For a minute Penderel himself was all eyes and no tongue, staring blankly back. Then he recovered himself and rapidly plunged into speech.

‘We’ve come to ask for shelter,’ he began. ‘We got lost and now we’re absolutely cut off. We can’t go forward or back. The road seems to have gone on each side.’

He broke off for a moment to see if there was any response to his appeal. The man made neither sound nor movement; not a gleam of comprehension lit his face; he just stood there, so much humped flesh and staring eyes. It was as if the door had been opened into Siberia. The thought of the menacing night and the Wavertons waiting there behind him, the contrast between their situation and this senseless immobility suddenly angered him. He raised his voice: ‘The road here’s under water now. There are floods, landslides. All the mountain side’s coming down. We shall have to stay here. Don’t you understand?’

If the man did, he gave no sign, but stood there as if he were staring out of another world. Penderel had a sudden desire to pound the great senseless carcase. But then he remembered that they were now in a remote part of Wales, were really travellers in a foreign country, and that it was quite possible that this fellow, who was obviously some kind of servant, could hardly understand English. He might be the solitary surviving specimen of the original aborigines of this island. Penderel knew no Welsh and could only begin all over again, this time raising his voice and introducing some fine descriptive gestures. At the end, the man came to life, though only slowly. First, he lumbered forward a pace, looked towards the car, examined the night, then very laboriously and solemnly shook his head. After that, he tapped Penderel, who looked in silence and amazement as if he were watching the movements of some prehistoric monster, lightly on the chest, pointed indoors, tapped himself on the chest, and ended by producing from somewhere at the back of his throat, a very queer gurgling sound.

This noise made Penderel jump, it was so unexpected. ‘What’s that?’ he cried sharply. Even Welsh ought not to sound like that; it was as if a lump of earth had tried to make a remark.

By way of reply, the man pushed his face near to Penderel’s, opened his mouth very wide, and pointed to it with a long dark forefinger. Then he padded away, leaving Penderel to gape through the open door. He must have retired to fetch his master, for it could hardly be his own house, though he looked more like a performing bear than a butler. Penderel wondered whether to walk forward into the large hall visible through the door or to return for a moment to the Wavertons, who must be wondering what was happening. He turned, however, only to find them at his elbow.

‘This is absurd,’ Mrs. Waverton was declaring indignantly. ‘Keeping us here like this! What’s the matter?’

He determined to put an easy face upon it. ‘The matter has just disappeared, to find somebody, I think. Did you see him? I don’t think he’s real.’

‘What did he say?’ Waverton asked.

‘Nothing. I don’t believe he could say anything. I don’t think he knows English or anything else. Wait until you have a good look at him. He’s a huge troll who’s got all rusty inside.’

Mrs. Waverton, as usual, seemed to brush away this kind of talk. ‘Let’s go in, Philip. They couldn’t refuse to let us stay, an awful night like this. And it’s ridiculous standing here.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Penderel, heartily. ‘As if we were carol-singers and this were some kind of devilish Christmas, perhaps Lucifer’s birthday.’

‘We’ll go in then,’ said Waverton. ‘But what about the car?’

‘They’ll tell us where to put it later. I must sit down somewhere where there isn’t any rain. My head screams with it.’ And Mrs. Waverton marched in, followed by the two men.

The first thing that Penderel noticed was that the house had electric light. Somehow he hadn’t expected that: it was impossible to imagine the giant troll fingering the switches or going round the accumulators. But the lights weren’t behaving properly though; they were jumping and flickering, and they made the whole place jumpy, queerly uncertain. It was the kind of hall you rarely see except on the stage, being both entrance hall and lounge (and, if necessary, dining and drawing rooms), lofty and panelled, with a large open fireplace in the left-hand far corner, a broad staircase running up on the right and a gallery above, with a door immediately on the left and two more on the right. The fire was a smouldering old ruin; the table in the centre was very old; and all the chairs seemed to be faded and crazy. There was something ruinous about the whole place, and though it was gloriously snug after the howling misery of the night outside, it hardly suggested comfort and a warm hospitality. Penderel decided that it had a smell of mice and old newspapers.

They all stood bunched together and dripping near the door, and waited in silence for something to happen. After the first glance round, Penderel fixed his eyes on the staircase, down which—if life were what it ought to be—a lady with a long white train should come sweeping, with a great candlestick in each hand. He watched the stairs jump with the lights, and had a sudden daft desire to rush to the bottom of them, strike an attitude, and say something very romantic at the top of his voice. Enter the three wettest people in Christendom: one of them, obviously a tragic clown, approaches the jumping stairs. What a pity people didn’t really think of life as a play, taking care to come on properly, to say and do no more than was necessary, and then to make a good clean exit. If there were any drinks going later, he must point that out to Waverton: it was one of those things you can only say over a drink.

The first door on the right suddenly opened and a thin elderly man in black walked into the hall, halting when he was a few paces from them. He was followed by a waddling old woman who came up and looked them over curiously with eyes like tiny black buttons. At the back was the huge creature, who stood lumpishly near the door.

‘My name is Femm,’ said the thin man, ‘Horace Femm. I cannot understand what is the matter. Our servant, Morgan there, is dumb.’ His voice was as thin as he was, very dry and harsh, and he spoke with a curious and disconcerting precision.

Penderel cleared his throat, but Mrs. Waverton cut in before him, hastily giving their names and declaring their errand.

‘Shelter?’ Mr. Femm looked dubious and put his long hand to his chin. You seemed to hear bone rubbing bone.

‘What is it?’ the old woman suddenly screamed, making them all jump.

Mr. Femm pushed out his neck, bringing his mouth nearer to the hand she held to her ear. Instead of raising his voice he contrived to make it extraordinarily penetrating by hissing his words. The effect was strangely sinister, and indeed he seemed to turn a malignant eye upon the woman. ‘Shelter,’ he hissed. ‘They want to stay here all night.’ It sounded rather like the villain of old-fashioned melodrama.

The other shook her head. ‘They can’t. We can’t have them here.’ Although she had examined them so thoroughly, she talked as if they weren’t really there.

‘You see how it is,’ said Mr. Femm, in his ordinary tones. ‘My sister, Rebecca here, is somewhat deaf. Morgan, as I have already pointed out, is dumb. My brother, Sir Roderick Femm, the master of this house, is confined to his bed upstairs, very old, very weak, and may not live long. Though not, I beg to assure you, without hospitable instincts, I myself am as rusty as an old file. This house is partly a barn and partly a ruin and could not accommodate you even for a night. I advise you, for your own sakes, to look elsewhere. There is, I believe, an inn about twelve miles from here.’

These people might have been living in another world; they didn’t seem to know what was happening all round them; it was time now to make them understand the situation. All three began explaining at once. Mrs. Waverton went up to Miss Femm and shouted in her ear. Penderel and Waverton hustled the uncomprehending Mr. Femm to the open door and confronted him with the black and torrential night itself, through which there still came a menacing roar.

‘The road’s gone on each side of this house,’ cried Waverton, waving a hand to left and right. ‘We can’t go half a mile, let alone twelve miles. We’re cut off from everywhere. Even the road below’s under water.’

‘For that matter,’ Penderel added, determined to show Mr. Femm what sort of world he was living in, ‘this place may be under water soon or even buried. The hill’s crumbling on each side, and it looks as if something above here, a lake or a reservoir, has burst its banks. Listen to that.’ He held up his hand impressively. The roaring really did seem louder than ever. Penderel thought he could hear the distant crashing of rocks.

Mr. Femm retreated a step, his eyes two pin-points in a crumpled sheet of paper. Penderel hadn’t seen a man look so frightened for years. What an oddity!—dense at first, and then flying into a panic. A man so thin, with so little flesh and so much shining bone ought to be braver than that; he was almost a skeleton, and skeletons, jangling and defiant, are brave enough. It’s our flesh, Penderel told himself, the jellied-stuff that rots so easily, which quivers and creeps, goes goosey with fright; but our bones stand up and don’t give a damn. This fellow was a fraud.

Mr. Femm had now turned and gone hissing towards his sister. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked her. ‘They say there’s been a landslide on each side of us, and floods too. The lake has burst its banks. We are trapped. We shall have to go. Do you hear?’ His voice had almost risen to a scream.

She was now as quiet as he was noisy. She looked him up and down contemptuously, clasped her little fat hands in front of her, and said: ‘Yes, I heard. I’ve expected it after all this rain and rain and rain. It will all come tumbling down again. God is not mocked.’ She gloated over this, and looked at her brother triumphantly, her suety face alight with malice. ‘You’re afraid, Horace. You don’t believe in God. Oh, no! But you’re afraid to die. You don’t believe in His mercy, but now you can believe in His wrath.’ She looked at him steadily, and then when he opened his mouth to reply she went on again, more vehemently. ‘You’ve seen His anger in the sky. You’ve heard Him in the night. And you’re afraid. Where’s your mocking now?’ She stopped, and nobody spoke or stirred for a moment. ‘Well, your time hasn’t come yet. This house is safe enough. This has happened before, before you came back, Horace, and we were never touched.’ She turned her head. ‘Morgan, come here,’ she shrieked, and when he came towering above her, she screamed up at him: ‘You remember the great storm, when we were cut off once before, and there were floods and landslides and the road down there was all washed away? This house was safe then, wasn’t it?’

Morgan nodded and made a noise in his beard. Then he made a sweeping gesture to include the whole house, and pointed impressively to the floor.

‘Morgan remembers,’ cried Miss Femm. ‘He means that the house was safe because it stands on a great rock.’

He nodded his head affirmatively again, pointed to the back of the house, raised his finger, and then clenched his fist, grinning trollishly throughout the dumb show.

‘He means that this rock comes out at the back of the house and shields it,’ Miss Femm explained, ‘Morgan remembers the last time we had storms like these, when this was the only place left untouched. And so you see, Horace, we can stay where we are.’

Mr. Femm had now recovered himself. ‘It is obvious,’ he said, looking at Mrs. Waverton, ‘that you will have to remain here for the night. The misfortune is yours, not ours. I am afraid we can promise you very little.’

‘No beds,’ screamed his sister, with that terrifying unexpectedness of hers. Penderel had begun to cherish an intense dislike of her, and longed to bellow in return, particularly when she gave another screech: ‘They can’t have beds.’

‘As my sister hints,’ said Mr. Femm, smoothly, ‘there are no beds, I am afraid, at your disposal. Indeed, this is the last house in Britain I should choose to be either a guest or a host in. But please remember that it is not mine.’

‘We really don’t need beds or anything, thank you. We quite understand,’ Mrs. Waverton told him.

‘Just a roof,’ added Waverton.

‘And a fire,’ Penderel put in. And for the love of Mike, he whispered to himself, a drink too. A brief tussle with floods and landslides was sufficiently heartening in itself, but an acquaintance with this house, these people, was not to be undertaken feeling all cold and dark inside, without a drink.

A faint suggestion of geniality, like a leaden and watery gleam of November sunshine, crept into Mr. Femm’s manner. ‘Of course, of course! We can offer you a roof and a fire and some food and drink. You can spend the night sitting round the fire here, perhaps the best place a night like this. I am not sure that I want to go to bed myself to-night. Morgan, attend to the fire. You must make yourselves as comfortable as you can.’ He bent forward again and hissed: ‘Perhaps we could have supper soon, Rebecca.’

‘I’ll see that they have some supper, Horace,’ cried his sister. ‘Don’t give yourself airs. You’re not the master here.’

‘What about the car?’ Waverton asked. ‘Is there anywhere I could put it where it would be safe all night?’

‘Your motor car? You have it outside there?’ Mr. Femm twisted his long dry fingers and called Morgan from the fire. ‘There are out-houses, round the corner there, on the left, where we only keep a horse and a trap now. There might be room for a motor car there. Morgan will know. Morgan, go with this gentleman and see if there is room for his motor car in the stables or coach-house.’ Morgan nodded sullenly and lurched towards the door.

‘What about the bags?’ Waverton looked at both his wife and Penderel.

‘We’ll get them in,’ Penderel replied.

Mrs. Waverton was emphatic. ‘I simply must have mine, Philip. I’m soaked to the skin and must change my things. Bring the bags in now.’

Darkness and rain and a vague tumult still held the night. ‘Thank God I’m now seeing the last of this car to-night,’ Waverton said, as they tugged at the straps round the luggage grid. ‘We’re well out of this, though I must say this is a queer house.’

‘A very queer house and very queer people,’ Penderel replied, pulling at the swollen leather. ‘I now know the real meaning of the phrase, “Cherchez les Femms.” I’ve taken this old bag of mine into some damned odd places, but I have a feeling this is going to be about the oddest.’

Waverton grunted. ‘It’s better than capering in the dark along roads that aren’t there, anyhow. It’s safe and there’s a roof and a fire.’

‘Nothing’s safe,’ said Penderel, swinging out two bags. ‘Perhaps this is the fire, and we’re merely taking the bags out of the frying-pan.’ He hurried round to the door and did not hesitate to jostle Morgan, who had been standing in the doorway all the time. If the man didn’t like it, he could lump it, and lumping it seemed to be all he could do. A gorilla would have been a little more amiable and helpful: the man overdid his dumbness and his part as giant troll.

They all began bustling about now, just as if the hall had been suddenly turned into a railway station, Penderel thought. Mrs. Waverton, looking less like a superior person than usual (she was really rather pretty), shed her sodden hat and coat, pounced upon one of the bags, and was now exchanging confidential little shrieks with Miss Femm. Waverton had gone out again, accompanied by Morgan, and was now steering his car round the corner into the coach-house or shed or whatever it was. Mr. Femm had gone creaking away somewhere. Penderel did his best to join in the bustle, but when he had taken off his heavy dripping coat and had flung it over his bag near the door, there was nothing left for him to do. He lit a cigarette, sat down near the fire, and dreamily regarded his steaming outstretched legs and enjoyed the creeping warmth. He was tired. Images of his companions came floating by like spectral ships: Mrs. Waverton, one of those pale and clear and terrifically educated women who knew everything and who knew nothing, never actually breaking through into the real world; Philip Waverton himself, crammed with shy sense and honest-to-God feeling, but too anxious, too married, too well broken-in; the Femms here, the string-and-bone dithering male and the fat and somehow obscene female, with her revivalist God, and that tongueless hulk of a Morgan. And there was another somewhere, upstairs in bed. What was his name? Sir Roderick—that was it. Old Sir Roderick, the master of the house, doomed to be for ever upstairs silent and unseen. Did he ever give any orders? Perhaps Rebecca brought them down—what was it?—written on tables of stone.

The next moment Penderel could have groaned aloud. Suddenly that old feeling had returned. It came, as usual, without warning. A grey tide, engulfing all colour and shape of things that had been or were to be, rushed across his mind, sweeping the life out of everything and leaving him all hollow inside. Once again he sat benumbed in a shadow show. Yet as ever—and this was the cruel stroke—there was something left, left to see that all the lights were being quenched, left to cry out with a tiny crazed voice in the grey wastes. This was what mattered, this was the worst, and black nights and storms and floods and crumbling hills were not to be compared with this treachery from within. It wasn’t panic nor despair, he told himself, that made so many fellows commit suicide; it was this recurring mood, draining the colour out of life and stuffing one’s mouth with ashes. One crashing bullet and there wasn’t even anything left to remember what had come and gone, to cry in the mind’s dark hollow; life could then cheat as it liked, for it did not matter; you had won the last poor trick.

Having conjured the malady into a phrase or two, Penderel felt better, came out of his reverie and looked about for entertainment. He found it in the person of Mr. Femm, who was bearing down upon him, carrying a small tray. There was a bottle on the tray, and Penderel felt like breaking into applause. Flourish of trumpets: enter Bottle.

‘Now do you think, Mr.—er——’ Mr. Femm put down the tray and hesitated.

‘Penderel,’ he told him promptly—told the bottle too.

‘Mr. Penderel, of course,’ said Mr. Femm. ‘Do you think you could join me in a drink?’

‘Mr. Femm, I feel that I could, with pleasure, join you in a drink.’ They were like two old club cronies.

Mr. Femm stood over the bottle. ‘It is not whisky, which all you young men drink now, I believe. This is gin, which I prefer to all the other spirits, except, of course, the very old brandies. With some lemon, a little sugar perhaps, some hot water if you care for it, gin is excellent, and, remember, the purest of the spirits.’

‘I do remember,’ said Penderel, heartily. ‘Gin for me, with pleasure. I used to drink it with the sea-dogs. The Navy, at least the commissioned part of it, has a passion for gin. After it gave up rum, it went straight to gin. The brave fellows sit round all night, dropping remarks about turbines and torpedoes, the coast of Manchuria, and beautiful blue-eyed girls, and drinking gin with admirable steadiness and ease.’ He watched the other pour out the liquor, accepted lemon and sugar, refused water, and then, glass in hand, remarked: ‘We must have a toast.’

Mr. Femm looked thoughtful, even philosophic, with the faint ghost of conviviality hovering about him. ‘Mr. Penderel, I give you a toast that you will not appreciate, being young. I give you—Illusion!’ And he lifted his glass.

‘I’m all for it. Illusion!’ He gasped a little for it was unusually strong stuff. But that was better. A few more such toasts and illusion would be something more than a wistful sentiment. ‘But don’t imagine that I’m too young to appreciate the value of illusion. I’m just the right age. I was born too late or too early to escape the rotten truth, and I’ve been stubbing my toes against flinty facts ever since I left school.’

Mr. Femm smiled grimly. He was about to say that that itself was one of youth’s illusions. Penderel could see it coming: he had heard it before. But then Mr. Femm surprised him by not speaking at all; he merely stared on after the smile had vanished and took a sip from his glass. The next moment his eyes seemed to be looking out into horrible space, and his face was twitching. He appeared to be listening. ‘A dreadful night,’ he muttered at last. ‘It seems to be getting worse.’

‘It’s a brute, certainly,’ Penderel replied, ‘but apparently there’s no danger here. Miss Femm and your man seem to be positive that this house is safe enough.’

‘But even if it is, we may be completely cut off, shut in here.’ The man seemed to be talking to himself rather than to Penderel.

‘We might, of course, and that would be a nuisance for you.’ Penderel tried to look polite and anxious and sorry, though he did not care a fig if he had to stay there. He was as well off there as anywhere else. He had nowhere to go, nowhere he even wanted to go, now. Good God!—what a thing to admit to oneself at twenty-nine! ‘What I mean is,’ he went on, ‘that it’s a nuisance your having us here like this, besieged with you.’

Mr. Femm looked at him with real terror in his face. There was no mistaking it now. He lashed himself into a kind of anger as frightened men frequently do. ‘But to go running out there,’ and he pointed shakily at the door, still open to the night, ‘in the dark, with the floods there, the rocks tumbling down, everything cold and black and pitiless. And nowhere else to go, no escape!’ And he clashed together his bony hands.

Penderel stared at him. ‘A bad business, certainly, if one had to go. But one hasn’t, you know. Even if we have to go, you won’t have to. You can stay comfortably here.’ And as he said this, he looked Mr. Femm in the eyes.

Mr. Femm met the look for a second and then quickly glanced round the room. He was obviously taking hold of himself. Finally he leaned forward. ‘As you can probably see,’ he whispered, ‘I am nervous at the thought of our being shut in here. The fact is that Morgan, who is an old servant of my brother’s, is an uncivilised brute. Occasionally he drinks heavily—a night like this would set him going—and once he is drunk he is very dangerous. He is as strong as in ox and could batter a door in with ease. You can imagine that I dread being compelled to remain here, with no means of escape, with such a savage.’

Penderel nodded reassuringly. ‘We must try to keep the drink away from him. As a drunk and disorderly, he’d be no joke.’ But he had been observing Mr. Femm very narrowly throughout his speech. All this about Morgan might be true, it probably was true, for obviously the man was almost a savage, but nevertheless Penderel was convinced that his companion was lying. It wasn’t the thought of Morgan that had terrified him. There was something else; some more fearful image had haunted him when he had so suddenly and strangely cried out against remaining in the house. Perhaps there was something here even worse than a drunk and half-crazed Morgan battering doors in. Perhaps too it was only some maggot of the brain. These Femms, perched remotely on their hill, seemed to have gone queer, all maggot-brained. For a moment he stared at the one before him as if he were staring at a creature from an unknown continent.

The door behind them closed. Morgan was bolting it, and Waverton, doffing his coat, was at their elbow. ‘I’ve put the car away,’ he told Penderel. ‘Just round the corner in a kind of open shed. It seems safe enough there.’ He glanced round. ‘Where’s my wife?’

Penderel jerked a thumb to the far door on the right. ‘Gone to change, I think.’ Mr. Femm, still looking somewhat shaken, rose and indicated the bottle and glasses. ‘Have some gin, Waverton?’ Penderel suggested. ‘It’s jolly good.’

Waverton smiled and shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I don’t like the stuff. Are you drinking it, Penderel? Neat, too? It’ll make you feel desperately melancholy.’

‘Gin is saddening,’ Penderel admitted, ‘but it’s not so saddening as no gin.’ Mr. Femm began to fill the glasses again. His hand was still trembling, and he seemed as jumpy as the daft lights, though indeed these were so bad now that they made everything seem jumpy. Such lights were crazier than darkness itself; they were like a man doing a witch-doctor’s dance in a top hat and frock coat. Penderel noticed that Waverton, now no longer a manipulator of brakes and gears but a human being, was looking about him curiously and stealing an odd glance or two at friend Femm. And well he might, Penderel told himself, and suddenly felt unreasonably sorry for Waverton. Somehow he felt that Waverton ought not to be there. Waverton wasn’t like him, a man without a load, almost outlawed, naked, but a fellow who had given—what was it?—yes, hostages to fortune. He had, for example, a wife there, now changing her clothes. How odd women were, always either not quite human or too human! She had gone off to change, accompanied by a little fat deaf monster. There was something curiously pathetic about this going off and changing. In a minute she would come tripping back, all dressed up and smiling, just as if it were a party, perhaps somebody’s birthday. Penderel had an odd impulse to shake Waverton by the hand, but he restrained it and stretched out his hand for the glass instead. He must, though, talk to Waverton about Mr. Femm.

CHAPTER III

Margaret felt relieved at the very sight of her bag. Five minutes with it in private and she would be herself again. Dry clothes and a comb through her hair would settle everything. The last ten minutes had been dreadful. She felt all wet round her shoulders and knees, and so bedraggled, so effaced by rain and rushing darkness, that she could hardly think of herself as having the outward appearance of a complete real person. It was like being a tattered ghost; you couldn’t possibly face anything. It had been worse coming in here, meeting these people, than it was in the actual danger outside. The moment you were less than yourself, people were the worst of all. There had been one awful second, when this queer creature, Miss Femm, had been screaming at her brother, when she had suddenly wanted to scream herself, to clutch at Philip, to drag him to the door, back to the car. It was absurd. But she was wet and tired; the storm had got on her nerves. Once neat outside, cosy within, she would be ready to face anything. Now for some dry things at last.

She picked up her bag and walked up to Miss Femm. ‘I’m dreadfully wet,’ she said, producing a splendid woman-to-woman smile. ‘May I go and change my things?’

‘What?’ the woman screamed at her. Of course, she was deaf. How annoying deaf people were, and how queer: they seemed scarcely human. Margaret repeated her request in a loud voice, but this time without the smile. She felt like a ridiculous little girl.

Miss Femm nodded. ‘You look wet. You go and change your clothes.’

‘A bathroom perhaps?’ Margaret shouted. How silly she sounded! ‘Will you please show me where to go?’

‘You’ll have to go in my bedroom. That’s all there is.’ There was no note of apology in this. Miss Femm seemed to be enjoying herself. ‘There’s no bathroom, not now. It’s all in ruins. You couldn’t get inside the door. We’re all in ruins here. You’ll have to put up with it.’ Only the tiny snapping eyes were alive in that doughy face of hers. They went travelling over Margaret like two angry little exiles in a hateful country.

‘I quite understand. It’s very good of you to have us here.’ Margaret made a movement to show that she was tired of standing there with the bag in her hand.

‘Come with me then.’ Miss Femm turned and went waddling away. Margaret, following behind, expected her to make for the staircase and was surprised to find her going towards a door on the left. They passed through this door and walked down a very dimly lit corridor that had an uncarpeted stone floor. Margaret shivered: the place was like a cellar. There was a big window on the left, without curtains, brightly slashed with rain until she came up to it, and then it was all black, with the night roaring outside. This must be the back of the house then. A little further on, however, they came to a door on the same side as the window. Miss Femm halted, her hand on the knob. It flashed upon Margaret that if this door were opened the wind and the rain and the darkness would come in, and they would walk through it back into the night. But she must be sensible; this wasn’t the place for silly fancies; there must be a little wing, of course, jutting out here.

‘You came yourselves, didn’t you?’ cried Miss Femm, still standing at the door. ‘You thought it better to be here than out there, eh? Well, you’ll have to put up with it. We’re all going to pieces here. You’d have been proud to come here once; you’d have thought my brother, Sir Roderick, a great man then; and so he was, in a way. But not in God’s way. None of them were that. And now they’re all rotting, going to pieces, choked with dust, like this house. We’ve done with life here, what you’d call life.’ Her voice had risen to a scream again.

There was no reply to this and Margaret didn’t try to make any. With someone else she might have ventured some soothing meaningless remark, but you couldn’t do that at the top of your voice. The woman was obviously a little mad, probably touched with religious mania, and if she had lived here all her life there was some excuse for her. After all, there was no reason to be alarmed. These were only the old apologies (I’m afraid you’ll find us all upset, Mrs. Waverton) in a new fantastic shape. So she said nothing, but nodded sympathetically. There was something comforting in the very weight of the bag she was holding.

Miss Femm opened the door. ‘I’ve none of this electric light. I won’t have it. You’ll have to wait till I’ve lit the candles.’ She went in and Margaret waited in the doorway. The room was not quite dark for a sullen glow of firelight crept about in it. Margaret took heart. A fire was more than she had expected. It was all going to be quite pleasant. Two candles were alight now, one on a rather high mantelshelf and the other on a little dressing-table. ‘Come in,’ Miss Femm shouted, ‘and shut the door.’

The room was not very large; it seemed to be crowded with heavy furniture; and it was closely shuttered. You couldn’t imagine it ever having had an open window. The place was muggy and stale, smelling as if it were buried deep in dirty old blankets. On the left was a big bed, piled suffocatingly high with clothes, and an enormous wardrobe so top-heavy that, it seemed to be falling forward. A wood fire smouldered in a little iron grate. On the other side of the fireplace were a massive chest of drawers, looking as if they bulged with folded alpaca and flannel and moth-balls, the little dressing-table, which had a tiny cracked mirror on it, and a dismal wash-hand stand. The walls seemed to be crowded with old-fashioned oleographs and steel engravings of an hysterically religious kind, full of downy-bearded and ringleted Saviours, and with ornamented texts about the Prince of Love and the Blood of the Lamb. Having once glanced round, Margaret kept her eyes away from the walls. Next week, to-morrow even, these things would probably seem funny; the whole room would be a remembered joke; but at the moment it was all rather horrible. It was all so thick and woolly and smelly.

There was a chair near the fire and Margaret promptly took possession of it. She felt rather sick. Miss Femm, a thick little image, stood watching her at the other side of the fireplace. Why didn’t the creature go? Margaret pulled the bag towards her and began to unfasten it. ‘Thank you,’ she called, looking up. ‘I can manage quite well now.’ It was a relief to see her own things, so familiar, so sensible, snugly waiting her in the open bag.

Miss Femm suddenly shattered the silence. I stay down here,’ she shrieked, ‘because it’s less trouble and it’s quiet. My sister Rachel had this room once, after she’d hurt her spine. She died here. I was only young then, but she was younger than I was, only twenty-two when she died. That was in ninety-three—before you were born, eh?’

Margaret nodded and kicked off a shoe. She hoped this wasn’t opening a chapter of reminiscence. She wanted to change and get out of this place. The very thought of the hall, with Philip and the others there, seemed pleasant now.

‘Rachel was a handsome girl, wild as a hawk, always laughing and singing, tearing up and down the hills, going out riding. She was the great favourite. My father and Roderick worshipped her and let her have all her own way. All the young men that came followed her about. Then it was all Rachel, Rachel, with her big brown eyes and her red cheeks and her white neck. She found a young man to please her at last, but one day she went out riding and they brought her back in here. She was six months on that bed, and many an hour I spent listening to her screaming. I’d sit there by the bedside and she’d cry out for me to kill her, and I’d tell her to turn to Jesus. But she didn’t, even at the end. She was godless to the last.’ With both shoes off now, Margaret was waiting impatiently for the woman to go. She didn’t want to listen, but there was no escape from that screeching voice nor from the image it called up of the long-dead Rachel Femm, who would remain with her like a figure from a bad dream. Somehow she felt as if the broad road of life were rapidly narrowing to a glittering wire. She must hurry, hurry. She stood up, pointedly turned her back on her companion, and began taking things out of the bag.

But Miss Femm did not stir. In another minute she was talking again, this time, it would seem, more to herself than to Margaret. ‘They were bad enough before here, but after Rachel died they were worse. There was no end to their mocking and blaspheming and evil ways. They were all accursed, whether they stayed here or went away. I see that now. They were all branded. They were marked down one by one. I see His hand in it now. And it’s not finished yet. Sometimes He will reveal his great plan to the least of His servants. He’s out there to-night. He’s out there now.’

This was awful. In despair, Margaret sat down and began peeling off her stockings. She knew that the woman’s eyes were now fixed upon her; she could feel their beady stare.

Miss Femm was quieter now that her interest had narrowed to Margaret. ‘You’re married, aren’t you?’

Margaret reached out for her towel so that she could dry her feet. ‘Yes. My husband’s out there in the hall.’ Philip turned into something different, something intangible and yet substantial, like a big account in a bank, as soon as she called him my husband. This thing was not to be confused with the exciting personal adventure called Philip.

‘Which one?’ Miss Femm was asking. ‘The quiet dark one or the other?’

‘Yes, the quiet dark one.’ Margaret rubbed away and suddenly felt proud of Philip for being a quiet dark one.

‘The other’s a godless lad. I saw him. There isn’t much I don’t see. He’s got wild eyes, and he’s one of Satan’s own. I’ve seen too many of them, coming here laughing and singing and drinking and bringing their lustful red and white women here, not to know. He’ll come to a quick bad end. If I’d have known, he wouldn’t have set foot in this house.’ Miss Femm was screaming again and she had now moved forward a pace or two. But it was quite evident that she had no intention of going, so Margaret did not hesitate any longer but continued changing hastily. The room was horribly oppressive; you seemed to breathe dirty old wool. As she pulled on dry stockings she was annoyed to find that her hands were trembling.

‘Yes, they’d even bring their women here.’ Miss Femm’s voice was edged with hate. ‘This house was filled with sin. Nobody took any notice of me, except to laugh. Even the women, brazen lolling creatures, smothered in silks and scents, would laugh. They went years ago, and they’re not laughing now, wherever they are. And you don’t hear any laughing here. If I came among them—my own father and brothers, my own blood—they’d tell me to go away and pray, though they never used to tell Rachel to go away and pray. Yes, and I went away and prayed Oh yes, I prayed.’

This was poor crazed stuff, but Margaret seemed to hear those prayers, terribly freighted. She stood up now, before pulling off her dress, and saw, so vividly in the candle-light from the mantelshelf, one side of the swollen face, a fungus cheek. It looked like grey seamed fat, sagging into putrefaction. The woman’s whole figure seemed so much dead matter, something that would just stay there and rot. Only her voice and her little eyes were alive, but these were dreadfully alive; and they would remain, screeching and cursing, staring and snapping, when everything else had rotted. Oh, what nonsense was this? The poor old creature was infecting her. She must be sensible, she told herself, and found relief in pulling off her dress.

After the last outburst, Miss Femm’s mood seemed to change. ‘I’ve kept myself free from all earthly love, which is nothing but vanity and lusts of the flesh. You’ll come to see that in time, and then it may be too late to give yourself, as I’ve done, to the Lord. Just now, you’re young and handsome and silly, and probably think of nothing but your long straight legs and white shoulders and what silks to put on and how to please your man; you’re revelling in the joys of fleshly love, eh?’

Margaret was only too glad that she was busy rubbing her shoulders with the towel, for this talk made her want to rub and rub, to wipe every word away as soon as it reached her. This stuff was even worse than the other. She towelled away at her bared arms and shoulders and made no reply.

Miss Femm didn’t seem to care. She went on staring, and said at last: ‘Have you given him a child?’

That, at least, could be answered. ‘Yes, we’ve one child,’ Margaret told her, ‘a girl, four years old. Her name’s Betty.’ How queer to think of Betty now! She suddenly saw her asleep in that nursery, far away, not merely in Hampstead, in another world. But no, Betty wasn’t in another world—that was the awful thing—she had come into the same world as this Femm woman, yes, and that other, Rachel, who had once screamed on that bed. Her heart shook. She wanted to rush back to Betty at once.

‘Betty,’ Miss Femm began. ‘I once knew a Betty.’

‘I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to hear,’ Margaret repeated to herself, and somehow contrived to beat off the words that followed as she picked up the blue dress she had taken out of her bag. It was a lovely dress—almost new, and Philip and Muriel Ainsley had both admired it—and it might conquer everything, make this night all clean and sensible again at a stroke. Lovingly she unfolded it.

When she looked up again, she was surprised to find that Miss Femm, now silent, was much nearer than she had been before. The eyes in that swollen, grey, fatty mask were now fixed upon her. She shivered, suddenly feeling as if she were standing there naked.

Miss Femm came nearer, stretched out a hand and touched the dress. ‘That’s fine stuff, but it’ll rot. And that’s finer stuff still, but it’ll rot too in time.’

‘What’s finer stuff?’ Margaret was looking down at her dress as she asked the question.

‘That is.’ And the hand that had been fingering the dress was suddenly pushed flatly and coldly against the bare skin, just above her right breast.

Margaret sprang back, sick and dazed, all her skin shuddering from that toad-like touch. ‘Don’t!’ she gasped. She was going to fall, to faint; the room was slithery with beastliness, dark with swarming terrors. Then anger came shooting up like a rocket, and cleared the air. She felt herself towering. ‘How dare you!’ she blazed at her. She made a sudden movement, shaking herself, and Miss Femm retreated, mumbling.

There was a knock at the door. Margaret jumped and looked round, then turned to Miss Femm, who was still mumbling. ‘There’s someone at the door,’ she shouted. ‘You’d better see who it is.’ The other looked across, and then, without a word, took the candle from the mantelshelf and went slowly to the door, opened it an inch or two and peeped out. The next moment it had shut behind her.

The room darkened and grew as soon as Miss Femm had left it. But of course there was only one candle now; it sent Margaret’s shadow sprawling gigantically across the foot of the bed. She turned her eyes away. She did not want to look at that bed. It was growing ghostly; the whole room was filling with ghosts. If she looked at that bed long enough she might see a wasted hand thrust out of it, and meet the eyes of that girl, Rachel Femm. She had heard Rebecca Femm, perhaps it was time now for her to hear Rachel Femm. No, no; things were not really like that; they kept their sanity even if people didn’t; it was only yourself that pushed you over the edge, where the horrors began. She wouldn’t look again, but she’d be sensible inside and busy herself with the familiar comforting things.

But she couldn’t put on that dress yet: she didn’t feel clean; she wouldn’t feel really clean for days, but something could be done to wipe away that hand. She could feel it yet. There was some water in a jug on the wash-hand stand. She stared at it for a moment, disliking the thought of using it, but finally dipped her towel in it and then rubbed herself hard. She was very tired now and still trembling a little, but the rubbing made her feel better. After she had put on her dress she sat down in front of the little cracked mirror (turning a twitching back to the ghosts) and hastily, shakily, tidied her hair. The familiar reflection brought comfort to her; its peeping blue eyes and lifted mouth sent a message to say that she was Margaret Waverton, that Philip was waiting for her a few yards away, that the car was only round the corner, that they were merely taking shelter in a funny old house among the Welsh mountains. After that message she had time to powder her nose. Then she put away all the things she had taken off and fastened the bag. I’m treating you now, she told the house, as if you were a railway station; you’re not worthy of having an open bag in you and some stockings left to dry.

She could go now, walk out of this horrible room for ever. (How did she know she could? What if she were brought back in here, to lie in that bed and scream, like Rachel Femm?) She took up the candle and her eye fell on a text just above: The Lord is my Shepherd. She suddenly saw a vast herd of Rebecca Femms. What was their shepherd like? And somewhere behind all that was a beautiful idea, something to do with Betty snuggled into her pillow or with Philip smoking his pipe in the garden on summer nights; and it was all buried, suffocated. The very air of this room, atmosphere made out of dirty wool, would suffocate anything. Well, it was her turn now: she would show this room something, however badly she might be behaving. So she put down her candle, drew back the heavy curtains from the window, jerked up the blind, and, after a struggle with the rusty fastenings and the stiff cord, opened the window. The night came roaring in with a sweep of wind and rain, but the air was unbelievably fresh and sweet. She stood there for a moment, lifting her face towards the now friendly darkness, and strangely she felt the tears gathering in her eyes. A gust of wind blew out the candle. She turned away, found her bag, and walked to the door. When she came to close it from outside she could see nothing of the room, for now all was darkness there, but she seemed to hear the rain, blown in through the window, faintly pattering on the floor.

As she went back along the corridor she decided that she wouldn’t tell Philip what had happened. She wanted to tell him, but that would have to wait; she couldn’t tell him until things were absolutely dead right between them again, when they would begin once more to share everything, halving thoughts and swapping dreams. Things ought to be like that now, this very minute, she told herself; it would make all the difference here, in this place, where one was so lonely, lost. If she had known this was going to happen—but then of course she hadn’t. She never thought of things like this, and Philip did—it had been one of her complaints, that silly anxiousness of his—and he ought to have made the move. They could have walked into this together then, just a dark night’s adventure. She had had an impulse to say something too, earlier, but you couldn’t break the months of smooth politeness (Did you sleep well? Very well, thanks. Did you?) with a few words shouted in a car during an incessant downpour. And now she couldn’t begin. It would be nothing but humiliating surrender, with Philip pretending elaborately to her that it wasn’t. No, this night at least she must see it through in silence.

She had probably seen the worst of it, though, and everything would ‘now become sensible again instead of getting more and more out of hand, opening pits under your feet. (Though nerves accounted for most of it; and days and nights of rain and Penderel’s company—he loved to make the simplest thing seem sinister and unmanageable, even his stupid jokes were wild, unpleasant—would account for nerves.) The rest would be merely discomfort and the writhing memory of that room. But if there were only another woman there (not that horror), someone of her own kind who would understand a word or a glance, it would be better.

Yes, everything was all right, she told herself as she pushed open the door into the hall. The men were there, looking comfortable enough. And there were signs of supper on the table. Food—even if that woman had a hand in it—would make a difference. She walked across to them, smiling. Would they notice that something had happened to her? Philip might, and he was looking at her, smiling too, though rather vaguely. Now that she saw him again, that room seemed miles away, shrank to a pin-point of terror.

She put down the bag and walked up to Philip. ‘You must have wondered what had become of me,’ she told him.

‘No, they told me you’d gone to change.’ He was surprisingly casual.

‘Didn’t you think I’d been a long time?’ she asked, hoping that he wouldn’t think she was fishing for a compliment as she used to do in the old days.

He shook his head and smiled. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon. You’ve been quicker than usual.’

It was astonishing. She felt as if she had been away for hours, just because she had gone through that adventure, been jammed into all manner of queer horrible lives for a few minutes, while they had smoked a cigarette or two and chatted by the fire. ‘I seem to have been away a long time,’ she replied lamely. It was rather frightening, this difference in the point of view, leaving you so lonely.

‘Good for you, Mrs. Waverton!’ Penderel called out to her from the other side of the fireplace. ‘You make it look like a party. I knew you would. And there’s supper coming, though of course it’s not polite to mention it.’

It was one of his silly remarks, but for once he did not irritate her and she smiled across at him. But, strangely enough, instead of giving her his usual grin in return, he gave her a curiously unsmiling but kind, even sympathetic, glance. It was just as if he knew what had been happening. That, of course, was absurd, but still there was something very strange in his look.

‘Supper will be ready in a few minutes, Mrs. Waverton,’ said a harsh voice at her elbow. This was that long bony creature, Mr. Femm. She had forgotten his existence, but now she looked at him with a new and rather creepy interest. ‘We have very little to offer you, I am afraid,’ he went on, ‘but you will understand that we were not expecting company. We have to live very simply here.’ He moved forward to help Morgan, who had just entered, to unload a tray. Morgan too she had almost forgotten, and now she looked curiously at his bearded sullen face and gigantic bulk. For one moment he raised his heavy head and his eyes met hers and some kind of intelligence seemed to dawn in them. Then, from behind him, a third figure appeared, to busy itself at the table. It was Miss Femm.

Philip was asking her if she was hungry. ‘I am; just about ready for anything,’ he added. ‘And by the way, we’re probably entirely cut off by this time. It’s just possible, I understand, that soon we couldn’t get out of the house even if we wanted to do. Not that it matters, of course, for a few hours, an odd night. We’re not too badly off here, though probably there won’t be much sleep for us.’ It was just the kind of thing she had wanted to avoid doing, but somehow it was done before she could think. She had slipped a hand through his arm and was now pressing it close.

CHAPTER IV

Penderel left his chair, and the three of them, making a little group in front of the fire, talked in whispers. Margaret had released Philip’s arm and was now feeling rather foolish. She had just caught sight of a loaf of bread and a large piece of cheese, and the solid ordinariness of them had suggested to her that she was in danger of behaving like a tired hysterical woman.

‘It’s absurd,’ said Penderel, ‘that we should have to be so secretive about food. Why should we have to pretend it isn’t there until our hosts point it out to us? I’d like to live in a country where all guests gathered round the table and were expected to make comments as each dish appeared. They’d say: “What’s this you’re putting on the table? Oh, yes, splendid! We all like that”; or “Don’t bring that cabbage in for us. We never touch it.” What do you think?’

‘It would suit me,’ said Philip. ‘But I don’t know how hostesses would like it.’

‘They wouldn’t,’ Margaret replied for them. ‘It would be beastly.’ She liked the glance that Philip had given her; it wasn’t so blank; there was friendliness, a hint of long intimacy, in it. She smiled at him.

Philip returned the smile. ‘You don’t understand hostesses, Penderel. I suspect you’ve never really been behind the scenes.’ But his thoughts were with Margaret. She was different somehow. She was thawing. He wished there was time and opportunity to talk, really to talk, with all cards quietly set out on the table. Perhaps there would be, later. This would be just the place for it, so remote, so strange, where, so to speak, you couldn’t hide any cards as you could at home.

Penderel thought he would keep on, though really he had nothing to say. He was like a hostess himself. But they seemed to like it, and it eased the situation. ‘Now that’s not true,’ he cried. ‘I have imagination, and we imaginative fellows are always behind the scenes, and so we suffer with all our hosts and hostesses but must only smile and smile, like true guests. Women don’t suffer like that, do they, Mrs. Waverton, because though they know what’s going on when they are guests, they don’t identify themselves with it, but stand on their dignity as guests and are as aloof as High Court judges.’

‘No, they don’t, Mr. Penderel.’ She was sharp but very friendly. She liked him much better here than she had done in the outside world, in civilisation. ‘They only appear to do. It’s no use: you can’t deceive us. You don’t understand women at all. You don’t know anything about them.’

‘That’s true,’ Penderel confessed. ‘I don’t understand ’em. I don’t even pretend to. Another thing, I don’t like the fellows who do.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Philip. ‘It’s a funny thing, but the men who write little books about women, or lecture about them, or pretend to specialise in them in their novels are always complete bounders. You must have noticed that, Penderel?’ He had said this before—he could almost read the number of times in Margaret’s glance, demure, amused, tolerant—but he spoke with conviction. The thought of those greasy experts suddenly annoyed him.

‘I have noticed it.’ Penderel was very emphatic. ‘They’re nasty, crawly lads, who’d be better employed selling lipsticks. Why women themselves can’t see it, I don’t know. They seem to love ’em.’

‘There you go again!’ Margaret was amused by the pair of them, so intolerant and self-righteous, so young mannish. ‘I believe the secret of your hostility is simple jealousy. You’re both jealous because these men seem to be so attractive.’ They instantly denied the charge, but let her continue. ‘And anyhow, sensible women don’t like them very much, probably don’t like them at all in their heart of hearts. But one can’t help being interested and curious, of course.’

‘One can,’ said Philip, gloomily, ‘or one ought to try. Too many people are interested and curious nowadays. We’re all becoming tasters. We sit at the back of our minds watching our sensations like people at a music hall, and we find ourselves yawning between the turns. It’s impossible to be happy, or even cheerful, that way. I’m no better than anybody else; we seem to be all alike. But I do draw the line somewhere. If some silly bounder of a woman became a Man expert, and wrote little books or went round lecturing on Man, I wouldn’t waste a minute reading her or go a yard to hear her talk. Very few men would.’

‘No, and simply because you are all so conceited,’ Margaret told him. She was beginning to enjoy this, and for the moment had even forgotten where they were. ‘We’re so anxious to have men’s opinion because we’re not conceited, though, thank goodness, we’re beginning to lose our silly humility. You are convinced that no woman could tell you anything worth hearing about yourselves; but even if you thought she could, you’d still take care to keep out of the way so that your complacency shouldn’t be disturbed.’

‘There’s something in that,’ Philip admitted, and immediately thought how complacent he sounded. Was he really? Margaret was waking up delightfully, suddenly flowering in this darkness.

Penderel was staring about him. ‘I suppose this counts as dining-out. In a day or two we shall be able to say: “The other night when I dined with the Femms.” That brings it down to commonplace, lets the daylight in, with a crash. I don’t know why it should, but it does.’

‘I’m glad it does,’ said Philip. ‘I like the commonplace. It’s the little trim lighted bit of life, with God-knows-what waiting for you if you just go over the edge. Some people I know say they hate waking in the morning and leaving their dreams, but it seems to me that either they must lead a ghastly waking life or they must be crazy. I’m always glad to wake in the morning and find myself out of my dreams, which always turn me into a poor shaking barbarian wandering in the dark, compelled to do some idiotic thing with terror all round me. Ordinary life’s bad enough, but it’s a prince to the stuff we spin out of our rotten unconsciousnesses every night. Don’t you think so?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Penderel stopped to consider the question. ‘I think I must be one of the other people. I often have a splendid time in dreams, and hate waking up. Perhaps when I wake up, I land into one of your dreams. It sounds like it from your description of them, which seems to me a fair account of life on some days. Perhaps we’re all mixed up, your dreams are my waking life, and so on.’

‘Just like Alice, in “Through the Looking Glass,” you know,’ said Margaret. ‘She was told she was only part of the King’s dreams—was it the Red King or the White one?—and didn’t she begin to cry? I remember how I used to be awfully sorry for her.’

‘Yes. Supposing that Mr. Femm there was dreaming us!’ And then Penderel was sorry he had spoken. He thought Mrs. Waverton looked startled, as if she had suddenly remembered something that had been forgotten during their prattle. But what could she have remembered? Simply that they were here. Or had she learned something while she was out of the room with the queer Miss Femm? Perhaps she knew what he did not know, namely, why Mr. Femm was so frightened. How strange if she were harbouring, behind that bright face, some fearful piece of knowledge, the image of some terrifying shape!

‘More likely that we’re dreaming them.’ Philip lowered his voice. ‘Not Femm himself perhaps, though he’s queer enough. But the other two. They’re just the kind of people I might dream about, particularly that great dumb fellow—what’s his name?—Morgan. He’s the worst.’

Margaret could not resist it. ‘The other one, Phil, Miss Femm——’ she whispered.

He lowered his head. ‘What about her?’

‘She’s a horror.’

Philip looked at her quickly, then pretended indignation. ‘Well, that’s a fine thing to say about your hostess.’

‘No, I mean it, Phil. She’s a horror. She makes me feel sick. I don’t want to go near her.’

Philip was serious now. ‘Why, what’s she been doing?’

‘Oh nothing, really. It’s not that, it’s just what she is. I’ll tell you later.’ Margaret turned round to find Mr. Femm almost at her elbow. Supper was ready, he told them.

The coldest of cold suppers awaited them on the table. There was the red ruin of a great joint of beef, a dish of cold potatoes, and plenty of bread, butter and cheese. Miss Femm, with her eyes narrowed and her mouth folded away, was already seated on the left-hand side. Philip and Margaret sat down on the near side; Mr. Femm seated himself opposite his sister; and Penderel marched round to the other side and sat down with his back to the front door. Morgan, looking more sullen than ever, hung about behind Miss Femm.

Philip looked round the table and fell to wondering. When he had first taken leave of the car and the rain and the darkness, his senses had been blunted and he had merely enjoyed, in a numb fashion, the shelter and the warmth and the feeling of security. Now his senses were sharp again and he began to tease himself with questions. Penderel caught his eye and grinned. This was Penderel’s idea of a night, he told himself. It wasn’t his. And then he suddenly admitted to himself that he didn’t like this house and the people in it. These people had lived too long away from everybody and were now half crazy, and the house was musty with their mutual suspicion and resentment. Even Femm himself, who was at least civilised, was unsavoury in some queer way. Fine thoughts, these, for an uninvited guest about to diminish these people’s small store of food.

‘Tell me, Philip,’ Margaret said, ‘why these lights are so jumpy. They’re getting on my nerves. They make everything look so unreal.’

‘Evidently they make their own light here,’ he told her, pleasantly matter-of-fact. ‘And there’s something wrong with the batteries or the wiring. You can’t be surprised, a night like this, whatever they do. So don’t be alarmed if they go out altogether.’

Margaret nodded in silence. The thought of being left in total darkness filled her mind. Her skin tightened and shrank again from a clammy touch. If those lights did go out, she wouldn’t move a yard from the fire and Philip until morning.

Mr. Femm, who had exchanged a remark with Penderel, now remembered his duties as a host and stretched a hand towards the dish of potatoes.

‘Stop!’ screamed his sister, making them all jump. ‘What are you doing? We’re not all heathens.’

He brought back his hand, folded his arms, and looked across at her with a sneer on his face. Then he glanced at the others and spoke to them in a voice that was out of reach of her ears. ‘I had forgotten that my sister, who is nothing if not a good Christian, would want to ask a blessing. We shall enjoy our food so much more once she has called the attention of her tribal deity to us.’

‘Horace Femm,’ she cried across the table, ‘you’re blaspheming. If I can’t hear, I can see. There’s blasphemy written across your face.’

He leaned forward and used that curious hissing voice which they had noticed before. ‘My dear Rebecca, I was merely telling your guests, who were wondering why they were not being served, that you were about to ask a blessing, to thank God for His bounty and His mercy, for this ample and delectable supper——’

‘That will do,’ she screamed at him. ‘I know your mocking, lying tongue.’

‘——For the health and prosperity and happiness granted to this family, for these years of peace and plenty, for all our pleasant days and quiet nights. Thank Him not only for yourself but for me, and for Roderick, and for Saul——’

‘Stop, you fool!’ She threw out her hand as she yelled and glared at him across the table, and immediately the spirit, which had made his voice drop wormwood, died out of him. He looked confused and frightened, and sank back into his chair. There followed a moment’s silence. They were all little frozen figures. Then Miss Femm bent her head and gabbled a grace.

‘You think you’re safe now, Horace, and you’ve had something to drink.’ She was busy filling the plates at her side with slices of beef, and she spoke more quietly. ‘And now you think you can afford to let that bad tongue of yours wag again. You’ll be sorry you didn’t keep it still.’

He roused himself. ‘I am sorry I have had a hand in this ridiculous scene,’ he told her. Then he turned to Margaret and showed her the ghost of a smile. ‘I must apologise for these exhibitions of—what shall I say?—rural eccentricities. We have lived so long alone here that we have forgotten how to behave in front of visitors. Even I, who only returned here during the War and have known the world, have forgotten my manners. We are old and rusty mountain hermits. You must excuse us.’

This was as embarrassing as the rest of it, and Margaret was glad to busy herself with the potatoes that he somewhat fantastically proffered with his apology. Philip and Penderel, having exchanged glances across the width of the table, said nothing but tried to be bustling with plates and slices of bread and the cruet. Good old eating, thought Penderel, it’ll carry anything off. Not that he minded these little family quarrels of the Femms, he told himself; he rather enjoyed them. They were like a passage from a new kind of morality play; a short scene for the sneering bone and the screaming flesh.

Nobody spoke. It was one of those silences not easily broken; their strength is tested by a tap or two of words tried over in the mind, and then they are left alone. Margaret bent over her plate. Philip was idly watching Miss Femm, who was heaping red meat on the plate that Morgan held out to her. The man looked so huge and savage that it seemed strange to see him with a plate at all. He ought to have taken the joint itself in his hairy hands and retired mumbling into a corner to gnaw it. Philip turned to his supper, and wondered who would speak next.

In another moment he was answered. The whole world spoke next. What happened was the last thing that any of them expected to happen. They all jumped and looked towards the door, now clamourous with repeated and urgent rappings.

‘What’s that?’ cried Miss Femm. ‘The door?’

‘Yes,’ roared Penderel, enjoying the sound of his own voice. ‘There’s someone outside.’

‘They can’t come in,’ she shrieked.

‘Who can it be?’ Mr. Femm looked from one to the other and his voice quavered.

Penderel answered him. ‘More visitors. Benighted, like us.’ He looked across at Waverton and grinned.

‘They can’t come in,’ Miss Femm shrieked again.

This angered Philip and he found his voice. ‘That’s what they are, I expect,’ he told Mr. Femm. ‘You’ll have to let them in, of course. It’s probably dangerous to be out now.’

The knocking had stopped now. There was a faint sound of voices. Mr. Femm glanced rapidly from Philip to his sister. Then the knocking began again.

Penderel stood up. ‘The poor beggars must be half drowned. We can’t keep them waiting there.’

‘No, we shall have to let them in.’ Mr. Femm bent forward and looked at his sister. ‘Of course they will have to come in, if they want shelter. Morgan, go and open the door.’

Miss Femm pushed back her chair and looked up at Morgan. ‘Go on then,’ she cried, pointing to the door. ‘And I’ll come with you and see who they are.’ Morgan lumbered forward and very slowly drew back the bolts. When he had opened the door an inch or two so that Miss Femm might peer out, it was unexpectedly thrown wide open and someone came in, pushing past the two at the door. It was a girl, all wet and muddy. She came further into the room, stopped to draw a long breath, then threw herself into the nearest chair and cried: ‘My God! What a night!’

She was followed by a bulky middle-aged man, equally wet and muddy. For a moment he stood there looking about him and gasping for breath. Then he removed his dripping hat and showed them a ruddy face with a heavy shaven jowl. ‘Thought you were never going to open that door. Never knew such a night. There’s a reservoir burst or something and a big landslide. Smashed my car and only just got away with our lives. Doubt if you’re safe here. Phew!’ He mopped his face and then looked from one to another of them. ‘Sorry to barge in like this, but you see how it is. Who’s the owner here?’

Philip suddenly recognised the man. ‘Why,’ he cried, stepping forward, ‘surely you’re Sir William Porterhouse? I thought so. I’m Waverton, of Treffield and Waverton, architects. You once called to see us about something.’

‘So I did.’ Sir William extended a hand. ‘I remember you now. This your place?’

Philip explained the situation and everybody was introduced. The girl was presented to them as Miss Gladys Du Cane. She had now taken off her hat and coat and stood revealed as a very pretty girl in her early twenties. She was slightly below medium height (an inch or two shorter than Margaret) and squarely though finely built. Her hair was thick and dark and crisp, and she had full hazel eyes, and a wide-lipped scarlet mouth setting off a rather pale face. Margaret decided at once that the girl belonged to a type that she detested. It was curious to see her here, so far from Shaftesbury Avenue and the lights and the dance bands and the theatres and the film agencies that were her obvious background. It was just as if an electric sign had found its way into the room. But these two people, insufferable though they might be in other circumstances, were not unwelcome. They made everything seem less fantastic and mysterious and unbearable.

‘No telephone here, I suppose?’ Sir William had turned to Mr. Femm.

‘No telephone or any other sign and mark of civilisation,’ Mr. Femm told him. ‘You are now completely cut off from the world, sir, but apparently this house will not suffer from the floods and the landslides.’

‘The road must have gone completely at each side now, said Philip. He remembered how he had resented the magnate’s super-man airs in town, and found a certain malicious pleasure now in the sight of his helplessness. It would do him good. ‘It was impassable when we came here, three-quarters of an hour ago. I can’t imagine how you got here at all.’

‘We must have been just behind you.’ Sir William found a chair and drew up to the table. ‘Think I saw your lights once. I pressed on, no good going back, and found myself in a devil of a situation. Car was nearly under water, stopped, started again, stopped again, then ran into a landslide or something of that sort. The bonnet was hit by a flying rock, the wheels were stuck, and in a minute the car was half buried. Took us all our time to get out.’

‘How did you find this place?’ Philip asked him.

‘Left, the car there. It’s there now if it hasn’t been washed into the valley—damn shame, too—it’s a little Hispano I had made specially, to drive myself—only car I ever cared about. Always the same though, care about a thing and it’s done in before you can say “knife.” Well, we crawled out and didn’t know where we were. Pitch black and raining like fury and water spouting all over the place. Had to leave everything, bags and all. No use going back, I said, we hadn’t passed a light or signs of a house for miles. We went on, sloshing in mud, up to the knees in water, climbing over rocks. We’d an electric torch, but that wasn’t much good. Then we saw a light and made for it as best we could. And here we are, and here we’ll have to stay, at least till morning and perhaps longer. It’s getting worse out there. You’d think it was the end of the world after being out in it for ten minutes; I don’t mind telling you I thought I was nearly through. Can I use this glass?’ He produced a flask from his pocket, emptied it into the glass, and promptly swallowed the inch of whisky in one gulp.

‘Hello!’ his late companion called across. ‘You’ve not finished it, have you?’

‘Afraid I have, Gladys.’ And he showed her the flask.

‘Well, I must say, Bill, you are a pig.’ And the girl made a face when he threw her a rather perfunctory ‘Sorry.’ She was now sitting close to the fire and, having pulled off the high boots she had been wearing, was holding out one steaming silk-stockinged foot after another near the blaze.

‘I’ve got a pair of slippers with me that I had in the car,’ she confided to Margaret, ‘and that’s all I have got. What a night! I’ll bet you had it pretty rough, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, it was very bad,’ Margaret answered indifferently.

‘Well, we’re out of it now all right unless this place is swamped during the night.’ Then she lowered her voice. ‘Any beds going?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘No, we shall have to stay in here all night.’ Her voice sounded stiff, unfriendly, and that was a pity perhaps, but really she couldn’t help it. She had spent years disliking the type at a distance and she couldn’t change in a few minutes just because this obvious week-ending chorus girl had chanced to come under the same roof, out of the same wild night. The man was different. She didn’t mind him. Indeed, his very bluffness and vulgarity would be useful here, breeding a coarse sanity in this queer situation.

They were returning to supper now. Morgan had lurched off with his plate, and the others were settling down again at the table. The baronet confessed that he was ready for some cold meat and bread and cheese, and had found a place between Margaret and Mr. Femm. ‘Come along, Gladys,’ he called, ‘if you want something to eat. We interrupted this little supper party and we’ve been asked to join it.’

‘Righto,’ she cried. ‘I’m coming.’ And Penderel brought up a chair for her and she sat down by his side. He noticed that she met the long stare of Miss Femm, now so much folded and silent fat, with a smile that was deliciously near a grin. It wasn’t mere cheek either. This girl was all right.

She looked at him frowningly. ‘What’s your name? Sorry, but I can never remember.’

‘Penderel.’ And that’s the worst of being nobody in particular, he thought, for you always feel a fool when you bring out your name.

She frowned at him again. ‘What else? ’Scuse me asking.’

‘Roger,’ he told her, and thought it sounded rusty. It was some time since he heard it.

‘Roger Penderel.’ She was obviously turning it over in her mind. ‘Look here, don’t you know a boy called Ranger, Dick Ranger?’

‘Lord, yes. I know young Ranger. His elder brother, Tom, used to be a great pal of mine. He’s somewhere in the Sudan now, being done to a turn. Dick’s not been down long from Oxford and has developed into a tremendous West Ender. He knows all the places, stops out late, and is as cynical as a taxi driver. He quite frightens me, makes me feel old and simple.’

‘I know him too,’ she said. ‘He’s rather a nice boy really, bit young and silly of course. I asked because I’m sure I saw you with him once. I knew I’d seen you somewhere and I couldn’t think where, but now I remember. Weren’t you with him one night—three or four months ago—at the “Rats and Mice”?’

‘The “Rats and Mice”?’ Then he remembered the place, one of the smaller night clubs. ‘Yes, I did go there one night with Dick Ranger. It’s a little place, isn’t it, with everything and everybody jammed together. There was a band all squashed in a balcony, just like sardines in a half-opened tin. I remember the name of the place because I told Ranger it was like being inside a cheese. I hated it. The drinks were about the worst and the dearest I’ve ever known.’

‘Pretty rotten, yes, but not quite so bad if you’re in with the crowd who are running it. I go there a lot, though it’s not my favourite haunt.’

‘Haunt’s a good word, isn’t it?’ He grinned at her and she—perhaps mechanically, he didn’t know—wrinkled her nose in reply. ‘We have to go somewhere, haven’t we?’

‘That’s just it. That’s what I always say.’ She was quite eager about this. ‘You can have a dance or two and a drink with some of the girls and boys you know, and the band’s making a cheerful row and the lights are nice and bright, and so you turn in there night after night and hang on, not wanting to turn out and crawl home to your rotten digs.’

‘I know. Once down the steps and outside the door, it’s dark and raining probably and to-morrow’s begun. So you put it off.’

‘You’ve hit it in one,’ she told him. And then, after a moment’s reflection, she went on: ‘It’s like being in here after that.’ She jerked her head towards the door. Then she lowered her voice. ‘This seems a funny, dingy sort of hole—funny people here too—but it’s the Ritz itself after being out there.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ He didn’t want to sound dubious, but he couldn’t help wondering. He turned his glance on the impassive Miss Femm for a moment, then looked across at her brother, who was talking to Porterhouse.

‘You surprise me, sir,’ Mr. Femm was remarking, though there was no surprise but something quite different flickering in his eyes. ‘But then, I have been out of the world, you might say, for at least ten years. I never even see a newspaper now.’

‘You wouldn’t know it, then. Take my word for that,’ said Porterhouse. ‘You couldn’t come back into it. It’s a different world altogether. I’ve kept pace with it, so to speak; might even say I’ve been in front; but it’s taken me all my time.’

‘The world will be very different,’ said Mr. Femm, slowly, ‘when all the people have been cleared out of it, and not before. Men and women do not change. Their silly antics are always the same. There will always be a few clever ones, who can see a yard or two in front of their noses, and a host of fools who can see nothing, who are all befuddled, who pride themselves on being virtuous because they are incompetent or short-sighted.’

‘Something in that, p’r’aps,’ the other admitted, after a stare.

Margaret Waverton was talking to her husband. Her rather clipped and very clear voice found its way across the table. ‘But you’ll never get Muriel Ainsley to see that, Philip. It’s really astonishing how people, people with brains too, can know so little about themselves. The more I see of life, the more I’m convinced that onlookers really do see most of the game.’

‘So they do.’ Philip’s voice, dropping into a meditative bass, could be heard distinctly. ‘Only life isn’t a game, you know, and you never really feel it is except where you yourself are not concerned. That’s where the smart saying breaks down; nearly all smart sayings do break down badly. Anyhow, we ought to stop talking about life, because what we say doesn’t mean anything. What’s the use of saying it’s like this or means that, when obviously it includes both this and that and their opposites.’

‘Don’t be sententious, Philip,’ she told him. ‘You’ve said that before, too. Besides, I was talking about Muriel Ainsley.’

But they were all sententious, Penderel reflected, himself included. They were settling down very cosily. They would all start boasting soon, and if he wasn’t careful, he would be the first, though as usual he would do it topsy-turvily. It was odd how what you might call the Femmishness of the place had suddenly vanished—no, not vanished but retreated. He thought of the girl at his side. Certainly it didn’t stand much of a chance with her, this Femmishness. But perhaps it hadn’t fairly begun yet. He had a feeling that there was more to come. There was a whole night before them and it was early yet. Why, the little band wouldn’t have arrived yet at the ‘Rats and Mice.’

CHAPTER V

They had finished eating now and had somehow drifted into silence. Throughout supper, all six of them (Miss Femm had never spoken a word) had chatted easily, though there had been no general burst of talk; but now they were quiet. They might have been waiting for a signal, they were so curiously still. Then suddenly they were given one, for Miss Femm, who had begun to seem a mere object, turned herself into a real person again by rising from her chair and waddling away. She said nothing, gave no meaning glances, did not hesitate, but simply arose and departed. From her manner, they might have been as unreal to her as she had been to them. They stared after her in silence. If they were waiting for a signal, it was not this.

There came a second one, this time out of the encompassing night, which they had almost forgotten. It might have been thunder rolling among the hills, the bursting of a bank above, or another landslide; the noise was distant and indeterminate, and yet it was full of menace. Sharply, dramatically, it pointed to their situation, like a pin stuck into a map. The roof and walls were no longer another sky and horizon but were roof and walls and nothing more. A little box held them all, tiny creatures crouching in a dot of light. Thus dwarfed and huddled together in body, their spirits first shrank to a point and then expanded in concert. They awoke to share a common mood. The change in them was as decisive as Miss Femm’s exit, but it had to struggle through to the surface, into speech, and so it seemed gradual, as if curtain after curtain of gauze were being raised between them.

Philip made the first remark, and all he said was: ‘If nobody objects, I think I’ll have a pipe.’ That was nothing, yet by addressing the whole company as he did, he made it easier for the others to speak to the whole table. He brought out his pipe, Sir William found a cigar, and Penderel and the two women lit cigarettes. Mr. Femm contented himself with gin-and-water.

‘You know,’ said Penderel, ‘we ought to play a game.’

‘Good idea,’ cried Sir William, very hearty and masterful behind his cigar. ‘Can’t sleep yet. What about bridge?’

Margaret jumped at this. ‘I’d love a game.’ She thought how comforting the familiar faces of the kings and queens would be. No wonder old people, surrounded by strange faces and passing Death every night on the stairs, became so passionately fond of cards.

‘But I’ve no cards,’ Sir William went on. He turned to Mr. Femm. ‘Expect you’ve got a pack of cards you could lend us, eh?’

‘I have none myself,’ Mr. Femm began, ‘but I have seen a pack here——’ He stopped short, something came and went in his eyes, then he shook his head hastily. ‘No, there are none here. I am sorry.’ It was very queer. Penderel, remembering, looked at him curiously and began to wonder again. Sir William appealed to the Wavertons, but they had none.

‘We’ll play Truth,’ said Penderel. ‘It’s just the moment for it.’