Benighted

by J. B. Priestley

  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 an 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 th
ese 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.