Benighted Page 19

  ‘I hated you,’ said Gladys, very close and warm. ‘But that’s gone completely.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think I hated you really. I was frightened.’

  ‘Frightened?’ As soon as the word was out, however, Margaret realised what Gladys had meant. She too had been frightened of Penderel, alarmed by something unharnessed, mocking, anarchic in him that had called to its brother, usually safely hidden away, in Philip; and so she had decided that she detested him. And so people crept about, absurdly frightened of one another, pretending to hate, keeping it up even when they had to take shelter together in such a place as this.

  ‘Yes, I was frightened really,’ Gladys was whispering, ‘of the way you walked and talked and were dressed. I felt you despised me. But now it’s all right, isn’t it? Aren’t we women silly with one another? As if there wasn’t enough——!’

  There was a little silence between them, and Margaret’s mind returned to the world outside. ‘I can hear little noises all the time,’ she said, at last. ‘I feel sure something’s happening there. What’s that?’

  It was a kind of cracking sound, and they heard it repeated several times. Then it stopped and they could only catch the noises they had heard before. At last there came another crack, louder this time, and it seemed to them, as they listened, trembling in the dark, as if something were breaking.

  ‘What is it? What’s happening?’ Gladys cried. ‘My God, I can’t stand much more of this!’ Then her voice rose to a shriek. ‘Oh, what’s that?’

  The crash and splintering and heavy thud-thud still rang in their ears. They clung to one another in agony of apprehension. The moments passed, but there came no other sound. The silence, as if heavy with doom, weighed down upon them.

  ‘What was it?’ The words came from Margaret in a hollow whisper, like ghost talking to ghost.

  Gladys gave a choking little cry and Margaret felt the girl’s whole body relax and droop. For a few moments she remained passive, but then suddenly she sprang up and fell on the door in a fury, battering at it with her fists and even kicking it. The next minute her strength had left her and she was in Margaret’s arms, quietly sobbing. Holding her tight and murmuring over her as if she were a child, Margaret was now the comforter and immediately felt better. We’re being child and grown-up in turn, she was thinking; and if we always worked like that, we could all comfort one another through anything.

  Gladys was quiet now. At last she spoke, but it was only as if an odd thought here and there were slipping into words. ‘We said we’d have a little flat, somewhere high up, very little and cheap. . . . You wouldn’t think that much fun, I suppose?’

  ‘We had one once,’ Margaret told her, gently, ‘when we first began, and we thought it fun.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have been able to do much at first, but I’d have managed. I’d have liked that. I told him so. Even the little rows would have been a kind of fun. You understand, don’t you?’

  Margaret found that she couldn’t reply.

  ‘There’s a lot of fun in life, isn’t there?’ Gladys went on, very slowly, as if she were talking in her sleep. ‘I’ve had some. But not lately. Somehow if you start missing it, you go on missing it. And it’s so easy to get right off the track of it, just lose the way. We’d missed it, but we’d have found it together. I would anyhow . . .’

  ‘Oh, why are you talking like that?’ Margaret cried. ‘I can’t bear it. You sound—I don’t know—as if something’s broken—in you, I mean.’

  ‘I felt as if it had,’ said Gladys, ‘when something broke out there. You heard it.’

  ‘No, no.’ Margaret was desperate. ‘That’s all nonsense. Rouse yourself. We don’t really know what’s happened. It’s only waiting here, in the dark, not knowing anything, that’s wearing us down. If we give in, I don’t know what will happen. We can’t let these things drive us out of our senses, beat us down. That’s what they’re trying to do. We won’t have it, will we? Let’s do something. Bang on the door again.’

  ‘I did that,’ said Gladys, dully. ‘There’s nobody to let us out.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that! It sounds so horrible.’ And Margaret began pounding on the door. Then she stopped herself. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t, though,’ she faltered. She thought of that vague, gibbering figure on the stairs. Suppose he was at the other side of the door, alone, heard them knocking and opened it. Her hands fell helplessly to her side, and once more she saw life trembling on the edge of a pit, with unreason darkening the sky above it. If Philip didn’t come, it wouldn’t be long before she would be absolutely beaten down and everything would be lost.

  Gladys stirred. ‘I thought I heard something then. Yes, there you are. Voices.’

  ‘I can hear Philip,’ Margaret broke in, jubilantly. ‘I’m sure I can.’ Without thinking now, she rapped on the door. Then she stopped to listen again. ‘Yes, it is Philip. It’s all right now. I’m sure it is.’ She called out and rapped again.

  ‘Hello!’ Philip was very close now, just at the other side of the door. ‘Is that you, Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, here we are,’ she called back. ‘Let us out, Philip. Isn’t the key there?’

  ‘Yes it is. You’re all right, aren’t you?’ His voice sounded queer. ‘Well, wait a few minutes.’

  ‘We can’t wait. What’s the matter?’ But he had gone, and they were left to listen and wonder and whisper together a little longer in the darkness.

  ‘I’m frightened, I’m frightened,’ said Gladys at last, putting out a hand and coming close again.

  ‘So am I,’ replied Margaret. ‘But it’s really all right now, Gladys, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know.’

  Then they waited in silence for the door to open.

  CHAPTER XV

  It had seemed as if dawn were postponed for ever, yet it came at last. Philip noticed a vague trouble in the air and then a faint greying of things. He alone appeared to be awake now. He was sitting in a chair, and his arms were around Margaret, who was leaning against him, curled across another and lower chair. For some time he had been sitting there, quiet, unstirring, numbed, but with his thoughts going on and on, like a river flowing through a frozen land. He seemed to have been there a long time now. Already the events of the night had receded; the struggle with Morgan in the hall here, along the corridor, in the kitchen, and the final victory that sent him, cowed, beaten, into the cellar; the fantastic interview with Miss Femm, who would not surrender the key of the door into the hall at first and had to be stormed at; the discovery of the lifeless bodies of Penderel and Saul Femm, one with his neck broken and the other mysteriously killed, perhaps from shock and a weak heart; the huddling away of the bodies, the scenes that followed with Margaret and Gladys and the two Femms; already these events were receding, a haze was creeping over them, though the tale was hardly three hours old.

  He himself had not slept, though there was something hot and aching about his eyes and a weight upon their lids. He had been busy making Margaret comfortable, holding her securely, and now she slept. Not far away, Sir William, who had long been exhausted and had not easily recovered from the blow that Morgan had given him, was stretched out in the other armchair, dozing heavily. The rich baronet, Philip reflected, had come out of it all extraordinarily well. Brigand he might be, but he was certainly a man. He had shown courage and nerve during the fight with Morgan and later, and, what was even more surprising, he had been magnificent with Gladys afterwards, the ‘lass,’ as he had called her with a gruff tenderness that seemed to be part of the real North-country self he usually kept hidden away.

  Philip watched the grey light steal into the room and then begin to creep towards every corner. There was Gladys, the most tragic figure among them. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the floor, with her head against Si
r William’s knee and one arm flung across it. She, too, was sleeping peacefully at last, completely worn out after her long storm of sobbing. When she had first learned of Penderel’s death, she had been strangely quiet; and it was only afterwards, when in spite of all they could say to dissuade her she had gone to look at his body and had suddenly flung herself down upon it, that she had lost all her self-control. And now she was asleep, and when she wakened to the world again the night’s tragedy would have lost something of its stabbing power, would already be a memory, be softened, gauzed about with dream, and she would be ready to go quietly away, to complete—and how strange that seemed—her journey.

  His thoughts wandered on as he watched the room tremble between darkness and light. Penderel and poor crazed Saul Femm had only seemed to be sleeping, as if suddenly weary of their long wrestling bout, when they had found them, twisted on the floor beneath the broken banisters. And there had seemed, he remembered, to be a queer brotherhood between them. You felt they were going to awaken somewhere else and immediately shake hands and talk it all out together.

  Margaret stirred and his arm tightened about her, but she didn’t waken. Nothing much had happened between them; they hadn’t had it out in the old cool and clever way; but they had exchanged a glance or two, a few broken sentences; and it looked as if everything might be different yet. ‘I’m so lonely,’ she had whispered once; and then: ‘It’s unbearable without love.’ But that was in the last long terror of the dark, and perhaps he ought to forget it now. Still, the sun would set again, and the darkness would come again. And he had said once, when she was burying her face in his coat: ‘Let’s make another start’; and he had felt an answering grip upon his arm. But the real moment which might change everything for them, had been one of silence, just a clasp of hands. That was when they were standing together on the landing upstairs. Mr. Femm had come and gone like a shaking ghost; Miss Femm had departed to pray by the body of her dead brother; Gladys, growing calmer at last, had been handed over to Sir William; and it was then they had remembered old Sir Roderick upstairs, lying there wondering and helpless in the dark. Nobody could have visited him because Philip himself still had the key. Together they had returned there, haunted by a curiously poignant memory of that room, that last little outpost of sanity, and together they had crept in, carrying the remaining inch of lighted candle, to whisper the end of the story to him who had begun it for them in a whisper or two. It was a strange errand, with a conclusion stranger still. Not a sound nor a movement had come from that shadowy bed, and when they crept forward to look at the old man, it had seemed as if he too had died. Then they had noticed his faint breathing, the very lightest sigh of life, and had seen that he was calmly sleeping. Probably he had slept through everything. They left him undisturbed, but when they had closed the door behind them, they stood very close together, in silence, and hand had reached out for hand. Something had united them at that moment, little more than a breath perhaps, and yet it brought them so close, so close. Surely they could begin again now?

  Somebody moved and grunted. That was Sir William. ‘Hello!’ Philip called softly. ‘You awake?’

  ‘Yes, worse luck,’ Sir William replied, in a very hoarse, uncertain voice. ‘Can’t either sleep or keep awake. I’m sore all over. Keep thinking, too.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Philip, companionably, and then waited.

  ‘Tell you what keeps coming into my mind,’ the other went on, after a pause. ‘Remember when we took hold of that poor devil, the lunatic? Well, I noticed something lying on the floor on my side, just by his coat. It was a couple of cards. I can tell you what they were. Seven of clubs and five of diamonds. I shan’t ever forget ’em either. Seven of clubs and five of diamonds. And then some more came tumbling out of his pocket when we lifted the body. He’d a pack in his pocket. Must have played patience up there sometimes, poor devil. That got me somehow. Don’t know how it is, but can’t forget those cards.’

  Philip made a little answering noise that showed he was listening, but said nothing. He hoped Sir William would go on talking, but he didn’t much want to talk himself. There was silence for a few minutes.

  ‘I liked that lad Penderel, you know,’ Sir William remarked at last, as if musing aloud. ‘He wasn’t my sort and I don’t suppose he liked me, but I liked him. I’d have done something for him too. He was going to get a job, you know. About the last thing he talked about.’

  ‘What was he going to do?’ Philip found he could talk about Penderel quite calmly now.

  ‘God knows! He probably wouldn’t have done it long, whatever it was. He’d got guts all right—we know that—and I fancy he’d brains, but I don’t see him fitting in anywhere, I mean I didn’t see him. You never know, of course, you never know. But this is no way to talk about the poor lad, is it? I liked him, liked him from the first, when he was talking about himself. I thought it seemed damned unfair, somehow. I dunno. What can you do? And it seems a damned sight worse now. Won’t bear thinking about, will it? Gladys here’s sleeping like a three-year-old now. Well, I’ll see she’s all right. Made up my mind about that.’

  Then Sir William struggled with a series of yawns. ‘Nearly dead for want of sleep,’ he confessed. ‘How about you? But then you’re still young. I’m getting on, and if I didn’t know it before, I know it now.’ He yawned again. ‘There’ll be something to do about this business. Just thought of that. Inquests and God knows what else, keeping us dodging about for days. Damned nuisance, eh? Lot to do to-morrow—to-day I mean—if we’re not still cut off. Well, we’ll have to get busy. But must have some sleep first.’ His voice sank to a mere grunt and in another minute he had dozed off again.

  Daylight itself was at the windows, suddenly chilling the place. Philip shivered a little, feeling cold now and very hungry. The arm that held Margaret was cramped and aching and very gently he tried to move it. She stirred, turned her head, and he saw that her eyes were wide open though still vague with sleep. Something caught at his heart as he stared down at her face, for she looked different, at once dreamy and curiously fragile, yet he remembered her looking like that once before. Was it when Betty was born?

  For some little time she remained like that, and neither stirred again nor spoke. He leaned forward and watched her eyes clear themselves of sleep and then slowly move this way and that, up to his face, towards the windows. ‘It’s nearly daylight,’ she said at last, very softly.

  ‘Yes, it’s dawn,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been watching it arrive.’ He saw her eyes close again and waited a moment. Then he added: ‘It’s been a long time coming.’

  Her only reply was a little murmuring sound from her closed lips. It seemed as if she were falling asleep again. The next moment, however, her eyes were wide open once more and looked up at him. ‘You’ve not been asleep, Phil, have you?’ she said.

  ‘Not yet. I suppose I’ve been thinking in a numbed sort of fashion. I must say I’m tired.’

  ‘You look tired,’ she whispered. ‘Try to go to sleep. Don’t bother about anything any more.’ Her eyes closed again, but she raised her head a little and he bent forward and kissed her, very gently.

  Now holding her lightly at arms length, he half raised himself from the chair and gingerly tried his legs. ‘I’m horribly cramped,’ he said softly. ‘You must be too. Try this big chair while I work this stiffness off.’ She nodded, and he moved to one side and helped her into the arm-chair.

  ‘Is Gladys asleep?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes; she’s never moved.’

  ‘I’m glad. We mustn’t waken her.’ She sank back and he bent over her and seemed to see her eyes cloud over with sleep again.

  ‘I think I’ll go over to the window,’ he remarked, ‘just to see what it’s like outside.’

  She looked at him and tried to smile. ‘It’s different now, isn’t it?’ she whispered, and saw him n
od and then creep away. Vaguely she thought how it had seemed once as if it would never be daylight again, as if it would just go on getting darker and darker, more and more horrible, as if she too would soon be lost in madness. Then, she couldn’t have imagined the daylight coming into the house. But it hadn’t, not into that house. This was a different house.

  She was very tired and sleepy, and she had to sink down and close her eyes again. But her mind went groping about and at last stumbled back through the night. It seemed different now; something had vanished from it; that huge background of nightmare, horror mounting in the dark, all that had gone. They had come running out of the rain, the black night, into this house, clamouring for shelter, and had found here some people like themselves, only twisted, crazed, with loneliness, age, some weakness of blood or brain. Their figures came swaying before her, and now for a moment she could look into each face steadily and pitifully. Last night she had been sick, terrified, despairing; to-morrow, looking back, she might be angry; but just now she could only be sorry. She thought of the five of them coming in here, saw them a long way off, dim little figures, and then vaguely tried to remember the talk they had had, what they had said. She heard Penderel’s voice again. Something about a snag, the great snag. Had he got round it now, leaped over it, gone on his way? But what was it? About being taken in or being piggy, was that it? She could remember thinking it all rather young and silly, and that’s all she could remember, she was so sleepy, just sorry and very sleepy.

  The window showed Philip no red flares and rising ball of fire, no sudden triumph of day. It was a chill misty dawn, a landscape in smoke and steel. It held out no large promises of sunlight and the blue; yet there was a touch of kindness in its level sober light, which moved so slowly in that room to which he turned now, and dealt so gently with the eyes it found there. The morning’s truth would not be proclaimed with insolent haste. It would be revealed very slowly and quietly.