Benighted Page 11

  ‘Look here,’ cried Sir William, heartily, ‘isn’t there anything else we could have, a lamp or something? Not much of a light this.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Miss Femm screamed, looking at her brother. He explained in his curious hissing voice that always contrived to reach her ears. Meanwhile, Margaret seemed to hear a faint knocking, but as no one else appeared to hear it, she thought she must be mistaken. Then Miss Femm’s voice drove all thought of it from her head. You couldn’t think of anything else the moment that woman opened her mouth.

  ‘Let them have the big lamp then,’ she was saying. Miss Femm always talked about them to her brother as if they weren’t there. ‘There’s oil in it. We used it the last time the lights went out. We must have some light down here, and not just to please them either. There’s Morgan, remember. Go and get the big lamp, Horace. You know the one.’

  He stared at her, his face an edge of bone in the candle-light. Then after a few moments’ hesitation he stammered: ‘Yes, I—I think so. I cannot remember where it is though. You get it, Rebecca.’

  ‘Not I!’ she cried. ‘Too big for me. And if you don’t know where it is, I’ll tell you; though you know as well as I do. It’s on the little table on the top landing.’ Her voice rose to a scream of savage derision. ‘You know where the top landing is, don’t you? You’ve heard of it, I dare say. You can perhaps believe there’s a top landing, even though you do believe so little. Well, it’s up there, next to the roof.’

  It was strange that Mr. Femm should seem so agitated. It wasn’t the mere screaming that was upsetting him; he frowned his resentment at that; yet he was still hesitant and disturbed. ‘I remember it now. Yes, the big lamp. It is very heavy, too heavy for me.’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t carry it down all those stairs.’

  ‘You mean you’re afraid to go up there alone,’ she screeched, pointing a finger at him. ‘Well, I’m not going up, I’ve enough to do. You go with him.’ And the finger was sharply turned until it pointed at Philip.

  Margaret jumped and felt like crying out that Philip shouldn’t go, but then suddenly realised she would be making a fool of herself. Why shouldn’t he go? Yet she was half alarmed, half annoyed, when he nodded across at Mr. Femm. ‘Yes, I’ll go with you, of course, and help to get it down.’

  ‘Get it myself, if you like,’ Sir William put in, looking from one to the other.

  Philip grinned at him. ‘No; I’ve been chosen, and I’ll go. We’d better have one of these candles, hadn’t we?’ He took up a candlestick, gave a smiling glance at Margaret, and moved a few paces forward. Mr. Femm joined him at the foot of the stairs, was given the candle, and then slowly led the way up. The others stared at them in silence, and it was not until both the men themselves and their jigging shadows had disappeared that anybody turned away or spoke.

  ‘I want this,’ cried Miss Femm, laying a hand on the remaining candle.

  Margaret exclaimed in protest against being left in the dark for even a moment. Philip’s queer little exit had somehow left her shaken, and now she regarded Miss Femm with positive hatred.

  ‘Must leave us a light, you know,’ Sir William shouted. And he gave Margaret a friendly glance, as if to suggest that he knew what she was feeling, a glance for which Margaret, who hadn’t expected it, was instantly grateful. ‘If you’re going,’ he went on, bellowing cheerfully, ‘you must leave us this. Can’t sit in the dark.’

  In reply to this, Miss Femm, surprisingly enough, produced from the grey fat folds of her face a kind of smile. ‘It would do you good to sit in the dark,’ she told him, ‘but I’ll see. I can’t go about in the dark and I’ll have to find another for myself.’ She fumbled in the bottom of the candlestick and found there an old candle-end, which she lit and held before her as she waddled away to the door that led into the corridor. The other two watched her for a moment and then settled themselves in front of the fire.

  ‘I think I’ll try a cigarette,’ said Sir William, producing his case. ‘Will you have one?’

  She didn’t really want to smoke, but she took one because it would help her to feel easy and companionable. Their being left alone together and the fire and the candle-light all combined to suggest, quite definitely if not strongly, a certain intimacy. You felt you ought to begin talking of something very personal and important almost at once.

  Sir William blew out a column of smoke, leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs, looked about him, and then remarked easily: ‘Not very cheerful, is it? What’s become of Gladys and that other chap, Penderel? Funny I never missed ’em. Are they wandering about the house somewhere?’

  She replied that she wasn’t sure. They might have gone out. He doesn’t seem to be bothering much about his Gladys, she told herself. What a queer relationship! She felt suddenly curious about it, about him too, and stared across at his heavy face.

  ‘We’re a bit dictatorial with these people, when you come to think of it,’ he mused. ‘Don’t know that I’d like it. Though we’ve every excuse, of course.’

  ‘I know. If they were ordinary sort of people, I should say we were behaving very badly. But they’re so queer, aren’t they?’ And then she suddenly thought how horrible it would be if he stared at her in surprise and blandly contradicted her. It would only need a touch like that, she felt, to throw her off her balance.

  He only smiled, however, and there was comfort in his hearty rejoinder, for there seemed to be a whole sensible world behind it. ‘A bit mad, I should say,’ he replied. ‘Both of ’em. They get like that, living in these places, miles from anywhere. Just imagine year after year, with many and many a night like this, and hardly seeing anybody. I know, because my own part of the world’s a bit like this.’

  She took the cigarette out of her mouth and looked her astonishment. ‘Why, I see you against a background of telephones and cars and express trains and offices and factories. Nothing like this.’

  ‘Now, yes. But not always. I came originally from a little village in East Lancashire on the edge of the moors. A few miles away from where I used to live it’s as wild as this, and you get some queer folk—people—up there.’ She seemed to hear the flat Lancashire accent creeping back into his voice. ‘I still go back sometimes. They tell me what they think of me up there. I’ve a brother and sister there yet, living in the same old way.’

  She didn’t know anything about these people, but she remembered certain Scots novels. ‘They don’t make a fuss of you, I suppose, because you’re now an important person and have made a lot of money?’

  He laughed. ‘Well, this is the way it works. They respect the money but not me. They care about money up there, know what it’s worth, and don’t pretend to despise it. Now in other places, particularly in the South of England, they pretend they don’t care about money and they also pretend to think a lot about me, who happen to have plenty. The other’s the best way, though I don’t think so when I’m there and they’re putting me through it.’

  Margaret couldn’t resist it, he seemed so willing, almost anxious, to be communicative. ‘How did you come to make such a lot of money? I mean, how did you begin?’

  He looked across at her with thick, raised brows. ‘That’s a queer question.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s rather a rude question, I know. But it’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask someone like you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not offended, don’t think that,’ he cried, leaning forward and then settling himself more comfortably in his chair. ‘It was queer because I happened to be thinking about the very same thing.’ He stopped and looked with half-closed eyes at the fire. Margaret, released from her curiosity for a moment, wondered what Philip was doing. He was a long time returning from that mysterious top landing. But was he though? No, he had only been gone a few minutes. She returned with a rush to her companion, who had suddenly lifted his head a
nd was now looking across at her. ‘Would you really like to know?’ he enquired.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I’m really curious.’ If it was to be a tale of high finance, Philip would be back before it had hardly got under way. But she couldn’t help feeling that it was going to be something more personal, for even in that dim light she seemed to recognise on his face that plunging look which men put on when they were about to unburden themselves.

  ‘Unless you’re very lucky,’ he began, ‘you only make money by wanting to make it, wanting hard all the time, not bothering about a lot of other things. And there’s usually got to be something to start you off, to give you the first sharp kick. After you’ve got really started, brought off a few deals and begun to live in the atmosphere of big money, the game gets hold of you and you don’t want any inducement to go on playing—d’you follow me? It’s the first push that’s so hard, when you’re still going round with your cap in your hand. It’s my experience there’s always something keeps a man going through that, puts an edge on him and starts him cutting, and it may be some quite little thing. A man I knew, a Lancashire man too, was an easy-going youngster, thought more about cricket than his business, until one day, having to see the head of a firm, he was kept waiting two hours, sitting there in the general office with the clerks cocking an eye at him every ten minutes. He’s told me this himself. “All right,” he said to himself, “I’ll show you.” He walked out when the two hours were up, and that turned him, gave him an edge. He did show ’em, too. I don’t say, of course, that every man who says something like that to himself brings it off, but some do. Well, it was the same with me.’

  ‘What was it then that made you so ambitious?’ And Margaret looked at him speculatively.

  ‘It was a cotton frock,’ he said quietly.

  She stared and hastily smothered a laugh; obviously he was in grim earnest. He reminded her of a big brooding schoolboy. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said softly.

  ‘All right, I will, though I don’t know why I should,’ he remarked. Then he changed his tone. ‘Just after I left school, I got a job in a cotton office in Manchester. I met a girl when I was twenty and very soon we were engaged. Couldn’t get married for a year or two because I hadn’t enough to do it on. At last they told me to leave my desk and start going on ’Change, in other words promoted me and gave me a good rise. That was enough for us, we got married. We hadn’t much money, but what we had gave us a very good time. I was in love and very happy then. I wanted to do well at my job and kept my nose down to it during working hours, but forgot all about it at night and at the week-end. Still, I wanted to get on, and my wife encouraged me. Well, I was promoted again, this time to the London office, with more responsible work and another rise. We were excited about that, I can tell you. I can see us now, getting all our things packed—not that that took us long—ready for the great move. We found a little flat, very cheap, near Swiss Cottage, and Lucy—my wife—slaved away cleaning it up and I helped her when I came home at night, and we enjoyed ourselves I can tell you, though we’d no friends and nobody hardly spoke to us for months. But it was London and we felt we were getting on and we were happy together. We managed to spread the money out, and we’d have dinner in Soho once or twice a week and go to the theatre, in the pit. It was a bit lonely for her, but she didn’t mind it at first. We’d soon find our feet, move up in fact. I bought a dress-suit, my first.’ He stopped, stared at her, and cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose you want to hear all this. Don’t know why I’m bothering you with it.’

  ‘Go on, go on. I want to hear it,’ she told him.

  ‘Well, I’ll make it as short as I can,’ he went on. ‘One of the directors gave a party, and we were invited. This was the great event. We felt everything was beginning for us. They were taking us up. You can just hear us talking it over, Lucy all nervous and excited, hoping to make a good impression for my sake. Well, I put on my dress-suit and she made herself as pretty as a picture. During the evening I didn’t see much of her. I was among the men most of the time, talking business, making the most of the opportunity. Once or twice I looked across and gave her a smile and she smiled back, but I thought she looked a bit forlorn. I was full of it all going home, but she was very quiet, tired I thought. Then when we got to bed I pretended to go to sleep, but I heard her crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she was tired, got a headache. As a matter of fact she hadn’t been feeling too well, so I left it at that. But I noticed she never mentioned that party. There was another a month or two afterwards, but she wouldn’t go. She’d a good excuse then because by that time she was really ill. Within a year she was dead. But I found out what was the matter that night. She let it slip. She’d only had a cheap cotton frock on (it looked pretty enough to me, and I knew a bit about dress goods) and the other women there had let her know it. She was a little provincial nobody in a cotton frock and they didn’t forget to let her see it. She’d had a wretched evening, had felt snubs and sneers in the air all the time. It kept coming out later, when she was weak, half delirious. I remember sitting by her bedside. . . .’ He stopped and looked down into the fire.

  Margaret waited, afraid of marching briskly into that reverie of his. At last she moved a little in her chair and he looked up. There was just light enough for her to see his face tightening.

  ‘That did it for me,’ he cried. ‘Up to then I’d been the nice honest decent little servant of the Company. Well, that was finished. They couldn’t give a poor little nobody in a cotton frock, all eyes and smiles and nervousness, a friendly word or look, couldn’t they! I told myself I’d put them all in rags. I was mad, but it put an edge on me, strung me up as if I was a fiddle-string. Going home to that empty little flat night after night during the first year, I swore to myself I’d spend the rest of my life beggaring every woman who’d been to that party. Couldn’t do it, of course, but I did what I could. Before I’d done, I took a lot of cotton away from some of those fellows and piled it on the backs of their women. Within three years I’d wrecked that company and walked over to its biggest competitor. That started me. You wouldn’t think I was sentimental, would you? But that began it. And it wasn’t hard because there was nothing for me to do but to make money. I didn’t even want to spend it at first, nobody to spend it on, and didn’t want to enjoy myself or take it easy, not with that cotton frock stuck in my throat.’

  He rose from his chair and kicked a log back into its place on the fire. Then he stood looking down at her, his massive face very clear in the candle-light.

  ‘You’ll hear some tales of me, probably heard ’em already. I’m one of the rudest of the rude self-made men. I’ve no respect for charming hostesses, nice ladies whose husbands could do with a bit of capital, or dainty aristocratic girls who wouldn’t be above marrying a man twice their age if he happened to have bought a title and owned a few factories and ships and a newspaper. They’ll tell you that, and they’re right. I keep my respect for the young men’s wives who turn up in cheap frocks. I suppose a man’s got to be sentimental about something, and that’s how it takes me. I’ve slipped many a year’s dress allowance into an envelope. Queer, isn’t it?’

  Margaret murmured something, but she hardly knew what it was, for she was troubled by a vision of factories and ships and crowded offices, and against this background there stood out the figure of this man, no, this huge resentful boy with his oddly commonplace little romance, someone lost, now smiling, now crying, in a tiny flat, one of thousands, nearly thirty years ago. She stared at him. He had never really grown up. Were they all like that, these men who grabbed power, who wrecked whole countrysides, who sent other men flying all over the world? Once again she seemed to ache beneath the sudden pressure of life. It was time Philip returned. Why didn’t he come, bringing the lamp? She felt lost herself in this queer light. The very look of that single candle, pointing at the shadows, made her ache.

 
CHAPTER VIII

  ‘What’s that?’ Sir William held up his hand. ‘Didn’t you hear something?’

  Margaret leaned forward in her chair. ‘I thought I heard a noise, a kind of distant rumbling.’ She rose to her feet, and they stood together, listening. Their eyes were empty, but in their ears was the whole vague tumult of the night.

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Sir William at last. ‘Storm’s still going on, I suppose.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets, and began whistling softly.

  There had been so many things to think about that Margaret had almost forgotten the storm, the crumbling hills and the floods outside, the old menace of the night. Their journey through it, their arrival here, these events had crept away from the foreground of her mind, had thinned and faded a little. Now they returned, conquering her mind in one savage rush; the walls and the roof became mere eggshell; and the night was about to pour in its rain and darkness. She stood there pressing down so heavily upon one foot that the whole leg was taut and dully aching, and still she listened.

  There was more distant rumbling, then at last a huge crash, coming from somewhere above and behind the house. ‘I wonder what that was,’ she said, looking at her companion.

  ‘Something went then,’ he exclaimed. ‘More water coming down now, I suppose.’ He went over to the window, rubbed it with his forefinger, and tried to peer through. ‘Can’t see a thing. It’s as black as pitch.’ He continued to stand there, with his face close to the window. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, after a minute had passed, ‘I can hear something though. Sounds like rushing water, tons and tons of it. Come here and listen.’

  She joined him at the window, which looked out at the back of the house. There was a noise of rushing water coming from somewhere, not a loud noise yet very disturbing, suggesting the presence of a gigantic hostile power. ‘Is it coming down on us?’ she asked.