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.