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.