Джон Пристли - Benighted

Margaret had been mechanically telling herself that it was all very sudden and strange, this love affair of her companion"s. But when Gladys's voice trailed away, there came, flowing up through the silence, the thought that it was not strange at all, that it was as simple and natural as the breath in their bodies. Now it seemed strange that people whose hearts were empty could meet on such a night and talk through this darkness without loving. "I see," she said, after a long pause. Then she added: "You know, I didn't like you at first, but I do now."

"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.

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.