Philip stared after him as he walked forward to the door. The night was still a tumult, full of a distant rumbling and crashing and the ceaseless drumming of the rain, yet there seemed to fall in it now a sudden quietness. It was the house itself that was so quiet. Driving up like this, you expected a bustle, shadows hurrying across the blinds, curtains lifted, doors flung open. But so far this house hadn’t given the slightest sign, in spite of its lighted windows. It seemed strangely turned in upon itself, showing nothing but a blank face in the night. You could hardly imagine that great front door ever being opened at all.
And now Penderel was there at the door, darkening it with his shadow and groping for a knocker. Philip turned to Margaret, who was leaning back, exhausted perhaps. Once inside, out of the night, warmed and dry, eyes meeting eyes again in the light, they could perhaps talk everything out: now was their chance, before they reached home again and custom fell on them like weights of armour. He put out a reassuring hand, and though she didn’t meet it with her own, he seemed to catch a faint smile. Did she whisper something? He couldn’t tell. All he heard now was Penderel knocking at that door.
CHAPTER II
Penderel thought he would give them another and louder rap. ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller. That’s why poetry is so good, he told himself, his hand on the knocker; at such times odd bits of it come shooting up in the mind like rockets. Rattatta-tat-tat. Should he give them another and conclusive tat-tat, rounding off the phrase? No, that always sounded so complete that there was no urgency in it. That was loud enough anyhow, loud enough—as people said in their hellishly grim fashion—to waken the dead. Suppose the people inside were dead, all stretched out with the lights quietly burning above them. Suppose one of them was just dying or dead and the others were all crying or praying at the bedside, and he and the Wavertons marched in, ‘Can you put us up for the night, please?’ But most likely the owner of the house would be a fat little Welsh squire, and the place would be full of dogs and drinks. He could do with the drinks. Everything about him was soaking except his throat, which was Sahara itself. If people are to be sodden, let them be sodden inside, where all the real mischief’s done.
There was somebody at the other side of the door at last. He had a feeling that somebody was there, although he couldn’t really hear anything. This door, he was positive, would take some opening; you couldn’t imagine it flying open; it looked as if somehow it would have to be unscrewed. Yes, something was happening to it. It was creaking. It was moving. Now for it!—a neat little speech.
The door opened an inch or two, and Penderel saw an eye. There was no talking to an eye and so he waited. The eye withdrew and then the door was slowly pulled back. A huge lump of a man stood there, blankly staring at him; a shapeless man with a full black beard and matted hair over a low forehead. For a minute Penderel himself was all eyes and no tongue, staring blankly back. Then he recovered himself and rapidly plunged into speech.
‘We’ve come to ask for shelter,’ he began. ‘We got lost and now we’re absolutely cut off. We can’t go forward or back. The road seems to have gone on each side.’
He broke off for a moment to see if there was any response to his appeal. The man made neither sound nor movement; not a gleam of comprehension lit his face; he just stood there, so much humped flesh and staring eyes. It was as if the door had been opened into Siberia. The thought of the menacing night and the Wavertons waiting there behind him, the contrast between their situation and this senseless immobility suddenly angered him. He raised his voice: ‘The road here’s under water now. There are floods, landslides. All the mountain side’s coming down. We shall have to stay here. Don’t you understand?’
If the man did, he gave no sign, but stood there as if he were staring out of another world. Penderel had a sudden desire to pound the great senseless carcase. But then he remembered that they were now in a remote part of Wales, were really travellers in a foreign country, and that it was quite possible that this fellow, who was obviously some kind of servant, could hardly understand English. He might be the solitary surviving specimen of the original aborigines of this island. Penderel knew no Welsh and could only begin all over again, this time raising his voice and introducing some fine descriptive gestures. At the end, the man came to life, though only slowly. First, he lumbered forward a pace, looked towards the car, examined the night, then very laboriously and solemnly shook his head. After that, he tapped Penderel, who looked in silence and amazement as if he were watching the movements of some prehistoric monster, lightly on the chest, pointed indoors, tapped himself on the chest, and ended by producing from somewhere at the back of his throat, a very queer gurgling sound.
This noise made Penderel jump, it was so unexpected. ‘What’s that?’ he cried sharply. Even Welsh ought not to sound like that; it was as if a lump of earth had tried to make a remark.