Gladys was kneeling by her side now, with an arm about her. ‘Never mind, never mind, Mrs. Waverton. It’s awful, isn’t it, but it’ll all come right for you, you’ll see. Nothing’ll have happened to him. Your man can look after himself.’ They clung together, while through the dark, from behind the door, came tiny vague sounds, a mysterious thud-thudding. But neither of them wanted to listen any longer. They could only wait, comforting one another, until the door was opened again, to reveal their fate. Until that moment arrived, this was all their world, and they could only cling together in the darkness and cry to one another their hope and their despair.
‘It’s worn me down,’ said Margaret, brokenly. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s been like, for me, here. One thing after another. First, Miss Femm—telling me about her sister—then touching me—and that horrible room of hers. Then Morgan—he came after me—like a beast. And Philip had to fight him, upstairs. And then that strange old man—lying so still in his bed—whispering terrible things. And now this. All going on and on. Everything strange and dark and getting queerer and darker. No end to it. Until at last you begin to feel that all the safe and clean and sane things have gone for ever. You can’t hold on for ever. It’s been different for you perhaps; but don’t you see what I mean?’
Gladys murmured that she did and tightened her clasp. She didn’t understand it all, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except keeping close until that door opened.
‘I hated it at first,’ Margaret went on. ‘But then when we were talking round the table I liked it. And I thought Philip and I could easily find one another after that, because it seemed so easy to know and understand people, even strangers, so easy to be happy with someone you once loved.’
‘I felt that too, or something like it.’ Gladys was crying very quietly. ‘Oh, what am I crying for! It doesn’t matter though. But—it was better than that with me. It was really beginning, see? First, listening to all of you, then talking about myself. Then talking to him out there. And being able to laugh about everything together, and knowing as well that I could do a lot for him. He was absolutely fed up, didn’t care a damn about anything. And I was like that really. And then I thought, if it lasted, I wouldn’t be lonely any more, wouldn’t be going in at night sometimes wishing I was dead. And even if it didn’t last, I’d had something, you see, something different....’
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?’