I
IN those days James was never free from fever for long, despite the
German method of quinine prophylaxis to which, in defiance of Manson, he
had submitted. It seemed as if the tertian parasite—and there is none
more malignant than that which the M’ssente Swamp breeds—had rejoiced to
find a virgin blood in which it might flourish as long as life lasted.
Every ten days or so Eva would find herself called upon to face a new
attack. She became used to the succession of shivering and high fever;
she began to know exactly when James should be bullied and when he should
be left alone; to realise how the sweet submissiveness of the sick man
merged into the irritability of the convalescent. Symptoms that once
would have frightened her out of her life were now part of the day’s
work. She steadfastly determined that she would let nothing worry her.
It was just as well to have one equable person in the house.
Godovius still came to the mission from time to time. Eva was glad to
see him. She would have been glad to see almost any man; for the idea of
being quite alone in those savage solitudes was frightening. She was not
ignorant of the power of disease in that country. She knew perfectly
well that some day “something might happen” (as they say) to James, and
without definitely anticipating it she felt a little happier for having
the strength of Godovius behind her. For he was strong, whatever else he
might be. In his presence she was always conscious of that: and even if
his strength seemed at times a little sinister, there were moments in
which he struck her as wholly charming, almost boyish, particularly when
he smiled and his beautiful teeth showed white against the ruddy
swarthiness of his face. Seriously, too, he was ready to help her.
“Your brother is overworking,” he said. “Do you think the unfortunate
results to himself are balanced by any colossal success in his work? Do
you? I think he should take a little alcohol . . . a sundowner . . .
quite a good thing for Europeans.”
Eva smiled. “He’d have a fit if I told him that.”
“Would he? . . . In many ways your brother does not resemble the Good
Bullace. And yet in others I think he deserves a little of my name . . .
Sakharani.” He laughed. “I believe, Miss Eva, you are still rather
frightened of my name. Now how long is it since last you saw me drunk?”
Even though she protested, she wasn’t altogether sure that he was joking.
“But you never know when I may break out,” he said. “Now you witness
nothing but my admirable self-control.”
Every time that Godovius came to see her when James was in bed her
brother would question her narrowly as to what he had said. His
persistence annoyed her, because it seemed to her ungenerous that he
should not take Godovius as he found him.
“I sha’n’t tell you when next he comes,” she said one day.
“That would be no good. . . . I know. . . . I have a feeling in my
bones when he is here. It’s like some people who shiver when a cat comes
into the room even if they don’t see it.”
“I think it’s rather horrid of you,” she said. “Is it that you’re
jealous? . . . Or don’t you trust me?”
“Oh, I trust _you_ all right,” he said bitterly.
In the intervals between his attacks he brightened up wonderfully. It
was difficult to believe that he was the same man; but for all this he
had lost a great deal of weight, and his face showed a blue and yellow
pallor which alarmed her. And he was sleeping very badly. Eva became
accustomed to the sound of his footsteps walking up and down his room at
night, and to the whining voice in which he would recite long passages of
scripture. She knew that some day there must come a big breakdown. Yes
. . . it was good to have Godovius behind her.
II
Insidiously the occasion which she had looked for came. An ordinary
attack of malaria, one of her brother’s usual ten-daily diversions,
flamed suddenly into a condition which she could not understand. The
babble of a night of delirium died away, and in the morning, with cheeks
still flushed and all the signs of fever with which she was familiar, Eva
found him becoming drowsy and yet more drowsy. Usually in this stage of
the disease she knew him to be exacting and restlessly active. This time
when she came to give him food she had difficulty in rousing him. He lay
huddled on his side with his legs drawn up and his face turned away from
the light. Even when she had wakened him he fell asleep again. The warm
milk which she had brought him went cold under a yellowish scum at his
bedside. All that afternoon she did not once hear him praying.
She became anxious. Perhaps Godovius would come. She wished that he
would; for she knew that he could help her: all the Waluguru bore witness
how great a medicine-man he was. But Godovius did not come. “Just
because I want him,” she thought.
For a few moments in the afternoon James brightened up. He complained to
her of the pain in his head, which he had clasped in his hands all day;
but even as he spoke to her his mind wandered, wandered back into the
Book of Kings and the story of the Shunammite’s son. “And he said unto
his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad: Carry him to his
mother,” he muttered. Then he was quiet for a little. Eva sat by his
side, watching. Now at last he seemed to be sleeping gently. She
expected that this was what he needed, but in the early evening, when
next she wanted to feed him, he would not wake. She spoke to him, and
gently shook him. A terror seized her lest he should have died. No . . .
he was still breathing. For so much she might be thankful.
Something must be done. In this extremity her mind naturally turned to
Godovius. At James’s desk she scribbled a note to him, and ran out into
the compound at the back of the house to the hut of galvanised iron in
which the boys slept. She called them both by name, but no answer came.
The mouth of their den was covered with an old piece of sacking, which
she pulled aside, releasing an air that stank of wood-smoke, and oil and
black flesh. Almost sickened, she peered inside. Only one of the boys
was sleeping there. He lay curled up in the corner, so that she could
not see which of them it was, his head and shoulders covered with a dirty
red blanket. She had to shake him before she could rouse him. He stared
at her out of the darkness with dazed eyes. Then he smiled, and she saw
by his filed cannibal teeth that it was Onyango, the M’kamba . . . just
the one whom she didn’t want. Hamisi, the Luguru, would have known the
way to Godovius’s house.
“Where is Hamisi?” she asked.
Onyango still rubbed his eyes. He did not know. She told him that
Hamisi must be found. He shook his head and smiled. Hamisi, he said,
could not be found. It was useless to try and find him.
Eva was irritated by his foolish, smiling face. Why had Hamisi gone
away, just when he was wanted most? she asked.
Onyango mumbled something which surpassed her knowledge of Swahili . . .
something about the new moon. What in the world had the new moon to do
with it? . . .
Very well, then, she decided—Onyango must take Godovius’s letter.
“You know the house of Sakharani?” she said. “Carry this _barua_ to
Sakharani himself . . . quickly . . . very quickly.” She gave him the
letter. Onyango shrank back into his corner. He wouldn’t take the
letter, he said. If he took the letter on this night the Waluguru would
kill him. She didn’t seem to understand, and he made the motion of a
violent spear-thrust, then clutched at his breast. Eva tried to laugh
him out of it, to make him ashamed at being afraid; but it was no good.
Why should the Waluguru kill him? she asked.
It was the night of the new moon, he said.
She saw that it was useless to waste time over him. While they had been
disputing the sun had set. It was a beautiful and very peaceful evening.
The crowns of the croton-trees were awakening that soft zodiacal glow.
She was very angry and worried, for she realised that she would have to
go herself.
“Very well, then, you must stay with the _bwana_,” she said: and Onyango,
who still wanted to be ingratiating and was ready to do anything but face
the new moon and the Waluguru, slunk into the house. She took a last
look at James. There was no difference in his condition except that now
he was obviously alive, breathing stertorously through his mouth, lying
there with his eyes half opened. She wondered for a moment if she dared
leave him. “Tell the _bwana_ when he wakes,” she said to Onyango, “where
I have gone. Say that I will come back again.” She feared to stay there
any longer, for in a little while it would be dark. She comforted
herself with the thought that the road through the forest to Njumba ja
Mweze must be fairly well defined, since Godovius used it so often. She
couldn’t disguise from herself the fact that the adventure was rather
frightening, but the thing had to be done, and there was an end of it.
So she took the forest road. In the open Park Steppe there were already
signs of night: most of all a silence in which no voices of birds were
heard, and other dry rustlings, which would have been submerged beneath
the noises of day, heralded the awakening of another kind of life. In
the branches of thorn-trees on every side the cicalas set up vibrations:
as rapid and intense as those of an electric spark: a very natural sound,
for it seemed to be an expression of that highly charged silence. In a
wide slade of grasses a herd of kongoni were grazing. When they caught
the scent of Eva they reached their heads above the grasses and after
following her for a little with their eyes one of them took fright, and
with one accord they flashed into the bordering bush, a flying streak of
brown. An aged wildebeeste bull, vanquished in some old duel and
banished from his own herd, stood sentinel to the kongoni, and when the
others disappeared he held his ground, standing with his enormous
shoulders firmly planted on his fore feet. Eva was rather frightened of
him, for she knew nothing of the nature or habits of big game. As she
passed across the opening of that glade he slowly turned, so that his
great shoulders and lowered head were always facing her. Some
unimaginable breeze must have been moving from her towards him, for he
suddenly threw up his head, snorting, and stamped the ground. Then she
picked up her skirts and ran, with his mighty breathing still in her
ears. She saw that this night journey of hers was going to be no joke.
In the night so many savage beasts were abroad. She remembered that less
than a week before Godovius had shot a leopard on the edge of the forest.
He had told her how the creature had been lying along the low branch of a
tree, and how it had sprung into the midst of a herd of goats which a
Waluguru boy was driving along the track. Godovius had been near and his
second shot had killed it. He had offered her the skin. Now, for the
very first time, she realised the savagery of that land. In the mission
there had always dwelt a sense of homeliness and protection. She
realised, too, the conditions in which James had been working. Poor
James. . . . She couldn’t help feeling that she herself was better
qualified to deal with that sort of thing than her brother. She pulled
all her courage together.
She had come to the edge of the forest. Black and immense it lay before
her. If she made haste she might still borrow a little courage from the
light. The sky above the tree-tops was now deepening to a dusky blue.
As yet no stars appeared; but over the crown of that sudden hill a
slender crescent of the new moon was soaring. A lovely slip of a thing
she seemed sailing in that liquid sky. A memory of Eva’s childhood
reminded her that if she had been carrying money in her pocket she should
have turned it for luck and wished. . . . What would she have wished?
It gave her a new assurance to find that under the leaves the path was
well defined. She reckoned that she had at the most no more than three
miles to go. At the end of three miles she would see the lights of
Godovius’s house and not be frightened any longer. She made up her mind
to travel as fast as she could, looking neither to left nor right, for
fear of eyes which might be watching her from the thickets. She
comforted herself with the thought that it was here that the Waluguru
lived; that they had lived here for centuries and were as unprotected as
herself; that there were actually women and children living there in the
heart of the forest. In the silence she heard the soft cooing of a dove,
and a minute later a couple of small grey birds fluttered up from the
path. “As harmless as doves,” she thought. “You beautiful little
creatures . . .” And she smiled.
As she penetrated farther into the forest the light failed her, and it
was very still. The little fluttering doves were the last creatures that
she saw for a long time. Of the people of the forest there was no sign,
and she would have thought that there were no beasts abroad either but
for an occasional distant sound of crashing branches made by some body
bigger and more powerful than that of a man. By the time that the light
of day had wholly faded from the sky she had come to a zone of the forest
in which the trees were more thinly scattered: between their high
branches stars appeared, in front of her a blurred outline, which she
took to be that of Kilima ja Mweze, above which the crescent moon now
whitely shone. A little later she found that the track was ascending.
It had reached the slopes of the conical hill on which she knew that
Godovius’s house was placed. Here under a brighter starlight she could
see that the whole hill-side was cut into terraces, like the stages of a
wedding cake, along the face of which the track climbed obliquely. It
reassured her to find that she was now within a definite sphere of human
influence, that the most savage part of her pilgrimage was past: but the
road made stiff climbing: the mantle of forest had concealed the lower
slopes of the hill so completely that she had never realised how abruptly
it rose from the swamp.
Suddenly, in the half light, she saw upon the terrace above her a
building of stone. She stopped for a moment to regain her breath, for
this must surely be one of the outbuildings of the House of the Moon.
When she came abreast of it she was puzzled to find that it was nothing
but a circular wall of rough stones piled one upon the other. All around
it the forest trees had been cut down; and this seemed to her a great
waste of labour, for the building could obviously be no more than a stone
kraal for the protection of cattle. Now it was empty. The track which
she was following passed close to the only breach in the circle of stone.
She peered inside, and saw that the wall was double. In the centre of
the circular space within rose a strange tower, shaped like a conical
lime-kiln of the kind which she had known at home but more slender, and
fashioned of the same rough stone as the double walls outside. As she
looked within her presence disturbed another flight of doves, fluttering
pale in the moonlight. She wondered whatever could be the meaning of
this building, for the doves would not nest there if it were used by men
and cattle; but her curiosity was overborne by her disappointment at
finding that her journey was not yet over. From that clearing she passed
once more into denser forest, under the shadow of which she climbed
perhaps a dozen more of those steep terraces. Once more the forest trees
gave way to an open space. A wave of sweet but over-heavy perfume came
to meet her. Pale in the moonlight she saw the ghost of a long white
house.
III
A length of white-washed stoep supported on slender pillars faced her,
and from the stoep a flight of wide steps descended to the sandy path
over which she had climbed out of the forest. There was no fence or
_boma_ to mark the transition from the desert to the sown; so that the
House of the Moon was really set like any Waluguru village in a sudden
clearing of the forest; and this seemed strange to Eva, for she had
imagined that the house of Godovius would be more in keeping with his
wealth and power. She had expected to find a garden carefully tended, an
oasis of urbanity and fragrance. Fragrance indeed there was. The wave
of perfume which had met her emerging from the forest path eddied gently
in the garden space about the open cups of many moon-pale blossoms,
blooms of the white moon-flower from which the scent named frangipani is
distilled: and although she was happily unaware of this perfume’s
associations, Eva felt that she hated it, that its cloying sweetness
robbed the air of life. Very pale and ghostly the flowers hung there in
the faint moonlight, in so great a congregation that one was aware of
their life, and thought of them as verily living creatures, silent only
because they were entranced with their own sweetness. In the gloom of
the long verandah no light shone. The windows within were unlighted.
The long house seemed as empty as the building of circular stone which
she had passed below.
Eva mounted the steps. Over the floor of white stone a big lizard moved
noiselessly. There was a fluttering sound in the masses of bougainvillea
above the porch, a clapping of wings, and a little flight of doves
fluttered out above the moon-flower blossoms and vanished into the
forest. “This place is full of doves,” she thought. It was so quiet
that she began to wonder if they were the only tenants.
She remembered that in Africa people do not wait for an invitation to
enter the houses of their friends, nor for servants to announce their
coming. No doubt Godovius would have expected her to open the door and
walk into the house, and yet she hardly liked to do this, for the whole
place seemed to be sleeping under some spell which it might be rash to
break. For a moment she stood waiting on the threshold. It was a double
door massively made, with panels of fine mosquito netting instead of
glass. Inside it she imagined there must be a wide flagged passage,
smelling of damp. She saw that the pillars supporting the lintel were of
a different kind of stone from that of which the rest of the house was
built: they were smooth, and their capitals were carved into the shape of
the head of some bird of prey with hooked beak and staring eyes. While
she hesitated she remembered the pitiful room of James, down at the
mission, and the last that she had seen of James himself, lying on his
back, with his mouth open, breathing stertorously, and clutching at his
head with unconscious hands . . . thin, incapable hands.
She tried to open the door, and found it locked. So this was the end of
her adventure. . . . An end so pathetic to the courage which she had
screwed up that she wouldn’t accept it. She beat upon the door with the
palms of her hands.
A light appeared. Through the mosquito gauze she saw a small figure
approaching, swathed in a white cloth and carrying a blizzard lamp. She
thought it was that of a child, but a hand fumbled with the key in the
lock and she saw that the lantern-bearer was an old and shrivelled woman
who stared at her but did not speak.
Eva stammered over her Swahili. Was this the house of Godovius? . . .
Was the _bwana_ in?
The old woman only stared. Then, she remembered the name that she had
been wanting—Sakharani. She repeated her question in that form. The old
woman nodded. She opened wide her mouth and pointed with her finger.
Eva saw a collection of hideous teeth and a purple stump that once had
been a tongue. It was very horrible. And then the creature led her
along the passage and pushed open the door of a long, low room. On the
open hearth a wood fire flickered, from which she carried a light to a
copper lamp that swung from the ceiling. When this was done she shuffled
out of the room. The hanging lamp with its reflectors of copper shed a
mellow light, and when Eva’s first bewilderment was past she began to
appreciate the embellishments of Godovius’s room. It resembled no room
which she had ever seen before: nor, for that matter, was it in the least
like what she had imagined the room of Godovius would be. To begin with,
the floor was covered with a soft carpet in the pattern of which the
lamplight illumined warm colours. On either side of the fireplace an
immense divan upholstered in crimson lay. One of them was half covered
with a barbarous kaross of leopard skins, the other piled deep with
cushions of silk. The door by which she had entered was covered by a
portière of heavy velvet of the same crimson colour with a wide hem of
tarnished gold. Everywhere there were cushions, big, soft cushions. And
there were no books. The air of the room seemed in keeping with its
furniture, for even here the cloying scent of the moon-flowers had
penetrated. Eva had an impulse to open the window, or at any rate to
draw the crimson curtains; but the atmosphere of the place suggested that
liberties must not be taken with it. She wondered why on earth they had
lit a fire . . .
By this time, her eyes being more accustomed to the mild light, she began
to regard the room in greater detail. She saw that the mantelpiece above
the fireplace had been made out of the same smooth soapstone which she
had noticed in the lintel of the outer door, and that the ends of the
beams were carved with the same conventional figure of a bird’s head. On
the mantelpiece itself stood other pieces of soapstone carving: two
small, quern-shaped cylinders chased with rings of rosettes; three
smaller and more elementary versions of the original bird pattern. She
supposed that they were curios of the country, but was rather puzzled to
find the one symbol so often repeated. She decided that she would ask
James about them. From these she passed to an examination of the
pictures, in heavy frames of gold, which decorated the walls. They were
not easily seen; for the copper reflector of the hanging lamp cast its
rays downwards, leaving a colder light for the upper part of the room.
The first that she came to was a painting in oils of the bust and
shoulders of a Masai girl, her head thrown back, her lips smiling and
eyes closed. From her ears hung crescent-shaped ornaments of gold, and a
big golden crescent was bound across her forehead: a clever painting,
with the suggestion of a shimmer of moonlight on her smooth shoulders.
Eva wondered why her eyes were closed, and why she smiled. Would
Godovius never come? . . .
On the opposite wall hung a large framed photograph. Eva stood on tiptoe
to examine it. When she saw what it was, she was overwhelmed with a
sudden and awful feeling of shame. She had never felt so ashamed in her
life. She found herself betrayed into a funny childish gesture: she put
her hands to her eyes. “Now I can never look at him again,” she thought.
. . . “Oh, dear, how terrible . . .”
But the Godovius of the picture was obviously not ashamed. He was
younger than the Godovius that she knew: the face smooth and unlined, the
full lips smiling. In this presentation, despite the German colonial
uniform of white duck which he wore, one could not help seeing that he
was of Jewish extraction. One hand clasped the hilt of his sword, the
other arm was linked through that of a woman, a white woman with a
stolid, eminently Teuton face. And the woman was naked . . . stark
naked. To any English eyes the photograph would have come as a shock.
And Eva was a simple country girl, who knew no more of life than the
little shop at Far Forest had shown her. She couldn’t get over it. She
sat down among the downy cushions on the scarlet settee and blushed. She
thought: “I must go. I can’t stay in this dreadful house. I should die
if I met him now. I can’t. . . . I can’t.”
And then she thought once more of James.
Only it was all so difficult, so horrible, that she could have cried.
Even as she sat with her back to it she was conscious of that photograph,
of the lips of Godovius and that poor cow-like creature. The thing was
subtly in keeping with the rest of the room, the soft carpet and the
cushions, the lavish crimson and gold, the sickly scent of frangipani.
She shuddered. In another moment she would have gone precipitately. She
had even risen to her feet when the velvet portière swung back and
Godovius himself entered the room.
He smiled and held out his hand: “At last, Miss Eva.”
His smile resembled that of the man in the photograph; his cheeks were
flushed; he looked far younger than usual. She forced herself to speak.
“James is ill . . . that is why I came. I can’t understand him. I’m
terribly distressed.”
“At any rate you have come at last. . . . What is your brother’s
trouble?”
To Eva it was a tremendous relief to talk of it. She told him how she
had left James; implored him to let her know if the condition were
serious. He listened, a thought impatiently. “Quinine? He has had
plenty of quinine? Then you can do nothing more. This cerebral type of
malaria is not uncommon. To-morrow it is possible he will be better.
To-morrow . . .”
“Then you can’t do anything?” she asked. “Oh, can’t you help me at all?”
“No . . . there is no other treatment,” he said.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you. I was so distressed. I must get back
quickly. Perhaps you will spare me one of your boys to show me the way.”
“It was plucky of you to come alone . . . at this time of the day.”
“There was moonlight . . .”
“Ah, yes . . . the new moon. You are a brave girl, Miss Eva. Why then
are you frightened now?”
“I’m not frightened,” she cried. “What made you think so?”
And of course she was horribly frightened. She couldn’t quite say why.
On other occasions the dread or distaste, or whatever the feeling might
be, which the thought of him inspired had always vanished in his bodily
presence. This time she felt it more acutely than ever, and since it was
now reinforced by his physical imminence, it seemed harder to bear. It
came to her suddenly that if he were once assured that she was really
frightened of him it would be all up with her. That was why she lied so
eagerly.
He stood leisurely surveying her, with the same smile on his flushed
face. He took no notice of her denial. He was big and dark and smiling;
and all the time she was appallingly conscious of the contrast of her own
physical weakness, wondering how, if anything dreadful should happen, she
might escape. It was as bad as that. He gave her an exaggerated bow.
“Very good, then. We will agree that you are not frightened. In that
case there is really no reason why you shouldn’t sit down and give me the
pleasure, for a little, of your society. I beg you to be seated.”
She thought: “If I sit down I sha’n’t have a ghost of a chance; I shall
feel he’s right on the top of me. If I _don’t_ sit down he’ll know just
how frightened I am.” As a compromise she placed herself on the arm of
the long sofa. At this elevation she didn’t feel quite so helpless. She
made a determined effort to escape.
She began: “My brother . . .”
“Ah, yes . . . your brother . . .” He began to prowl up and down the
room. “Your brother. . . . You need not worry yourself too much about
him, Miss Eva. It is unkind of you to be so sparing of your devotion.
Your brother is lonely? Well, there are other people as lonely as your
brother. Do you remember my saying that my eyes hadn’t rested on a white
woman for more than five years? There are varieties of loneliness.
Spiritual loneliness . . .”
All the while she was thinking of the photograph on the wall behind him.
He checked himself. The little flicker of passion which had found its
way into his speech and made a mess of the last of his quite admirable
English fell. Again he became polite. She would almost have preferred
the other manner.
“But it appears you are not interested, Miss Eva. At least you will
allow me to treat you as an ordinary guest . . . an honoured guest. You
will taste my coffee: perhaps you will even permit me the pleasure of
showing you my poor house. Visitors are so rare . . . so very rare. And
there was some music that I had promised myself to play for you . . . the
tenderest music that the noble mind of a man ever made: Eva’s music . . .”
And all the time she felt that he was spinning words; that his quiet,
caressing manners didn’t in the least represent what was passing in the
man’s mind; that he was talking to gain time, and, while he talked,
forming some plan or other which threatened her peace. She had an awful
feeling that there was something mad and sinister forming within his
mind. In what other wise could she explain the cool unreason with which
he had almost ignored her appeal for help? It seemed as if he had put
the question of James’ illness aside from the first as something that
didn’t really matter; as if he wouldn’t accept it as the reason for her
coming. The illogical nature of the thing frightened her. And she, too,
was not listening to what he said. She was thinking: “That woman in the
picture . . . how did she come to be so degraded? What, in the end,
became of her?”
He went on talking in the same smoothly persuasive tones. She didn’t
listen to him. She heard him laugh softly in the middle of what he was
saying. She wondered if perhaps he were drunk. He came and stood close
above her, putting his hand on her upper arm just below the shoulder.
Through her cotton blouse she could feel the heat of it. It would have
been less disturbing if it had been deadly cold.
“You are tired, you must rest a little,” he said. “I would not have you
tired. You will be quiet a little. Why shouldn’t you sit down? The
room is not uncomfortable. You will wait while I bring you some hot
coffee. You should know how good my coffee is . . .”
He was still holding her arm. The fingers of his hand moved gently. She
felt that he was permitting himself to caress it. She obeyed him. She
let herself sink into the crimson cushions of the sofa. He seemed
pleased with her acquiescence. “I shall not leave you for long,” he
said. “Then perhaps I will see you home.”
He was gone.
She could not believe that he had left her. Somehow she had felt that
she was cornered, that nothing but some extraordinary chance could save
her from whatever might be the sequel of his suave, possessive manner.
The opportunity of escape was presented to her so suddenly that she
couldn’t grasp its significance. She sat there, on the sofa, as lacking
in volition as if the heavy perfume of the place had drugged her. If she
were not drugged or hallucinated it was strange that Godovius should have
left her. A moment of incredible length passed. “If I don’t go now . . .”
she thought. She lifted the heavy portière. In the passage all was
dank and sepulchrally quiet. She moved swiftly towards the outer door.
A wave of perfume rose to meet her. Then she found herself running: the
white ghost of that low house watching her from behind . . .