‘Well; I’m damned!’ said O’Hara aloud; and turned back towards the road.
The blue mist was dimming the woods, and he thought, as he ran, of the hotel to which he was going; of the pleasures of a bath and a change of clothes—for the team had sent baggage on ahead of them and some were staying the night and would remain over Sunday in the seaside town, spending the morning swimming and the afternoon perhaps sailing on the bay. He groaned, half-humorously, and tried to quicken his pace.
‘Lucky if I get to Welsea in time for breakfast!’ he thought, as he eyed the deepening evening.
The road made a right-angle bend to pass by the side of the house. Four trees stood in a clearing among some rhododendron and holly bushes. There were an elm, a beech, an oak and a hornbeam. The trees were dead. Their stark branches, paper-grey, stuck out like the ribs of skeletons. They might have been gibbets, thought O’Hara, each with its dead man hanging and keeping the sheep by moonlight. The late afternoon was chilly. The young man shivered and ran on.
The road crossed a little stone bridge, and led past the lodge of the house, which was situated, curiously, at what seemed a secondary entrance. Behind the house was a paddock, but beyond it, and as far as O’Hara could see, the countryside, lonely and vast in the dusk which was now descending, stretched like an unmapped continent, uninviting, hilly, and sad.
His ankle was stiffening badly and hurt a good deal. His only object now was to reach his destination, and that as soon as he could. He was certain, by this time, that he had been misdirected, and he cursed himself for having taken any notice of the information given by the man in the car.
Of the golf-course, to which at one time his thoughts had been directed, there was now no promise, for he had left it far away to the west. Beside him there loomed a hill; beyond him there rose another. The road had the horrid unendingness of a dream of frustration and longing, but there seemed nothing to do except follow it to its end, and hope to find a village or a farm at which he could ask the way. Even a lift would not be out of the question. He was doing his ankle no good by keeping on his feet for so long.
Suddenly from the clouds which had rested on the hills and of which he had become increasingly conscious as they blotted out the last of the daylight, great drops of rain began to fall.
‘That’s the last straw,’ thought O’Hara. ‘I don’t mind getting wet, and I don’t much mind being lost, but the two together are too much. Why the devil did I listen to that fellow? I might have been in Welsea by now!’
As he indulged in these thoughts the road began to drop fairly steeply and to become much narrower. Far from being perturbed by these signs, he felt a sense of relief.
‘A farm,’ he thought. ‘They can put me upon my way.’ The road now entered a gloomy route between hedges, and trailed out into a wood. O’Hara decreased his pace and dropped into a walk. The rain came down fairly fast but he was saved from the worst of the downpour by the overhanging trees.
At last the road bent to the left and he saw some buildings. Behind them the trees were thick, and a round-roofed hut of military pattern seemed to shoulder its way in amongst them. A little beyond it was a cottage, but this was in ruins. In the dusk O’Hara had been about to knock when he saw that the cottage had no door.
‘Oh, well, where’s the farm?’ he thought; and, as though to answer the question, further on, and among the trees, a light sprang up.
Chapter Two
—«♦»—
‘… but all was dark, and he could find no clue to this strange business.’
Ibid. (Peter the Goatherd)
« ^ »
The house from which the light shone was about twenty yards back from the road. The room from which the light came was empty. So much O’Hara could see at once as he galloped up the drive and glanced in at the uncurtained window before he knocked at the door.
There was a long pause. Then he could hear someone moving about upstairs. He knocked again, a little more confidently this time. Footsteps descended, and the door was opened. No light was switched on in the hall and the occupant of the house carried no candle. It was a woman who stood there. She opened the door wide and stood well back from it.
‘Who is it?’ she asked. O’Hara deduced from her voice that she was fairly young.
‘I beg your pardon for troubling you,’ he replied, ‘but I’m out on a cross-country run and I’ve lost my way.’
‘Which way do you want?’ she enquired.
‘Welsea Beaches or Abbots Ingham would do.’
‘You’re a long way from either.’
‘How far?’
‘Ten miles, by the nearest road, from Welsea.’
‘As much as that? Oh, Lord! Well, I suppose…’
‘You’d better go through the farm,’ she went on, ‘and up and over the Seven Acre. Then you go left by the Barrows and up past the Druids. I’m afraid you’ll never find your way in the dark, and I… and I don’t see how I can come with you to show you the road. You’ll strike it quite soon past the Druids. I’ve got a sick man in the house. I ought to send for the doctor… I don’t quite know what to do. It’s getting so late.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said O’Hara. ‘Is he bad?’
‘It’s getting so late,’ she repeated. ‘And I’m afraid it’s a hospital case. I don’t know what to do.’ She retreated and began to close the front door.
‘Where does the doctor live? Perhaps I could go?’ said O’Hara. ‘And it isn’t so awfully late.’
‘Oh, no, no, thank you. You’d never find it in the dark. And I couldn’t trouble you. That isn’t what you’re here for.’ A new note had entered her voice.
‘Well, look here, then, would you care to let me have a look at him? I’m not a doctor, of course, but it might be better than nothing.’
‘You’re a medical student? Oh, but…’ Her voice sounded frightened.
‘Oh, no, I’m not a medical student,’ said O’Hara. ‘I know a bit about massage and First Aid, and that sort of thing. That’s all.’
‘I’m afraid it’s infectious,’ she said hastily, ‘and I couldn’t expose you to the risk. Please go. I’m sorry I can’t help you. That’s your way, look, through the cartshed and over the hill. Or—wait a minute! Perhaps you could go in the car. Come with me. I’ll soon find out.’
‘But…’ O’Hara began to protest. The woman would not let him continue. It seemed that she had made up her mind.
‘Please come,’ she said. She came out into the porch and caught his arm, but shrank away at once at the touch of the naked skin. ‘Oh, you’re… Oh, you’re…’
‘I’m in running togs,’ he said, smiling. He could discern her face, pale in the darkness, but merely as a paper-like blur.
‘Of course. It’s this way.’ She clutched his bare arm and almost hustled him down the path and through the gate. ‘Watch your step. I mean, it’s rough and rather muddy out here. And hurry, please! I really mustn’t leave him more than a minute!’
They went side by side along the road and then through the open cartshed which seemed to straddle it. Beyond the cart-shed were barns, and to the right of these were what O’Hara took to be stables, for he could hear the movements of horses and could smell their odour.
At the end of the stable block was another large barn. It seemed as though the woman had not expected to find it locked, for she exclaimed something under her breath and began to hammer at the door.
‘Let me,’ said O’Hara. He set his shoulder to the door and gave it a shove, but it did not budge, nor even rattle. ‘It’s locked, I’m afraid. Haven’t you the key?’