Chapter One
The last drops of the thundershower had hardly
ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his
map into his pocket, settled his pack more
comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped
out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree
into the middle of the road. A violent yellow
sunset was pouring through a rift in the clouds
to westward, but straight ahead over the hills
the sky was the colour of dark slate. Every tree
and blade of grass was dripping, and the road
shone like a river. The Pedestrian wasted no
time on the landscape but set out at once with
the determined stride of a good walker who has
lately realised that he will have to walk
farther than he intended. That, indeed, was his
situation. If he had chosen to look back, which
he did not, he could have seen the spire of Much
Nadderby, and, seeing it, might have uttered a
malediction on the inhospitable little hotel
which, though obviously empty, had refused him a
bed. The place had changed hands since he last
went for a walking-tour in these parts. The
kindly old landlord on whom he had reckoned had
been replaced by someone whom the barmaid
referred to as "the lady," and the lady was
apparently a British innkeeper of that orthodox
school who regard guests as a nuisance. His only
chance now was Sterk, on the far side of the
hills, and a good six miles away. The map marked
an inn at Sterk. The Pedestrian was too
experienced to build any very sanguine hopes on
this, but there seemed nothing else within
range.
He walked fairly fast, and doggedly, without
looking much about him, like a man trying to
shorten the way with some interesting train of
thought. He was tall, but a little
round-shouldered, about thirty-five to forty
years of age, and dressed with that particular
kind of shabbiness which marks a member of the
intelligentsia on a holiday. He might easily
have been mistaken for a doctor or a
schoolmaster at first sight, though he had not
the man-of-the-world air of the one or the
indefinable breeziness of the other. In fact, he
was a philologist, and fellow of a Cambridge
college. His name was Ransom.
He had hoped when he left Nadderby that he might
find a night's lodging at some friendly farm
before he had walked as far as Sterk. But the
land this side of the hills seemed almost
uninhabited. It was a desolate, featureless sort
of country mainly devoted to cabbage and turnip,
with poor hedges and few trees. It attracted no
visitors like the richer country south of
Nadderby and it was protected by the hills from
the industrial areas beyond Sterk. As the
evening drew in and the noise of the birds came
to an end it grew more silent than an English
landscape usually is. The noise of his own feet
on the metalled road became irritating.
He had walked thus for a matter of two miles
when he became aware of a light ahead. He was
close under the hills by now and it was nearly
dark, so that he still cherished hopes of a
substantial farmhouse until he was quite close
to the real origin of the light, which proved to
be a very small cottage of ugly nineteenth-century
brick. A woman darted out of the open doorway as
he approached it and almost collided with him.
"I beg your pardon, sir," she said. "I thought
it was my Harry."
Ransom asked her if there was any place nearer
than Sterk where he might possibly get a bed.
"No, sir," said the woman. "Not nearer than
Sterk. I dare say as they might fix you up at
Nadderby."
She spoke in a humbly fretful voice as if her
mind were intent on something else. Ransom
explained that he had already tried Nadderby.
"Then I don't know, I'm sure, sir," she replied.
"There isn't hardly any house before Sterk, not
what you want. There's only The Rise, where my
Harry works, and I thought you was coming from
that way, sir, and that's why I come out when I
heard you, thinking it might be him. He ought to
be home this long time."
"The Rise," said Ransom. "What's that? A farm?
Would they put me up?"
"Oh no, sir. You see there's no one there now
except the Professor and the gentleman from
London, not since Miss Alice died. They wouldn't
do anything like that, sir. They don't even keep
any servants, except my Harry for doing the
furnace like, and he's not in the house."
"What's this professor's name?" asked Ransom,
with a faint hope.
"I don't know, I'm sure, sir," said the woman.
"The other gentleman's Mr. Devine, he is, and
Harry says the other gentleman is a professor.
He don't know much about it, you see, sir, being
a little simple, and that's why I don't like him
coming home so late, and they said they'd always
send him home at six o'clock. It isn't as if he
didn't do a good day's work either."
The monotonous voice and the limited range of
the woman's vocabulary did not express much
emotion, but Ransom was standing sufficiently
near to perceive that she was trembling and
nearly crying. It occurred to him that he ought
to call on the mysterious professor and ask for
the boy to be sent home: and it occurred to him
just a fraction of a second later that once he
were inside the house - among men of his own
profession - he might very reasonably accept
the offer of a night's hospitality. Whatever the
process of thought may have been, he found that
the mental picture of himself calling at The
Rise had assumed all the solidity of a thing
determined upon. He told the woman what he
intended to do.
"Thank you very much, sir, I'm sure," she said.
"And if you would be so kind as to see him out
of the gate and on the road before you leave, if
you see what I mean, sir. He's that frightened
of the Professor and he wouldn't come away once
your back was turned, sir, not if they hadn't
sent him home themselves like."
Ransom reassured the woman as well as he could
and bade her good-bye, after ascertaining that
he would find The Rise on his left in about five
minutes. Stiffness had grown upon him while he
was standing still, and he proceeded slowly and
painfully on his way.
There was no sign of any lights on the left of
the road - nothing but the flat fields and a
mass of darkness which he took to be a copse. It
seemed more than five minutes before he reached
it and found that he had been mistaken. It was
divided from the road by a good hedge and in the
hedge was a white gate: and the trees which rose
above him as he examined the gate were not the
first line of a copse but only a belt, and the
sky showed through them. He felt quite sure now
that this must be the gate of The Rise and that
these trees surrounded a house and garden. He
tried the gate and found it locked. He stood for
a moment undecided, discouraged by the silence
and the growing darkness. His first inclination,
tired as he felt, was to continue his journey to
Sterk: but he had committed himself to a
troublesome duty on behalf of the old woman. He
knew that it would be possible, if one really
wanted, to force a way through the hedge. He did
not want to. A nice fool he would look,
blundering in upon some retired eccentric - the
sort of a man who kept his gates locked in the
country - with this silly story of a hysterical
mother in tears because her idiot boy had been
kept half an hour late at his work! Yet it was
perfectly clear that he would have to get in,
and since one cannot crawl through a hedge with
a pack on, he slipped his pack off and flung it
over the gate. The moment he had done so, it
seemed to him that he had not till now fully
made up his mind - now that he must break into
the garden if only in order to recover the pack.
He became very angry with the woman, and with
himself, but he got down on his hands and knees
and began to worm his way into the hedge.
The operation proved more difficult than he had
expected and it was several minutes before he
stood up in the wet darkness on the inner side
of the hedge smarting from his contact with
thorns and nettles. He groped his way to the
gate, picked up his pack, and then for the first
time turned to take stock of his surroundings.
It was lighter on the drive than it had been
under the trees and he had no difficulty in
making out a large stone house divided from him
by a width of untidy neglected lawn. The drive
branched into two a little way ahead of him - the
righthand path leading in a gentle sweep to
the front door, while the left ran straight
ahead, doubtless to the back premises of the
house. He noticed that this path was churned up
into deep ruts - now full of water - as if it
were used to carrying a traffic of heavy
lorries. The other, on which he now began to
approach the house, was overgrown with moss. The
house itself showed no light: some of the
windows were shuttered, some gaped blank without
shutter or curtain, but all were lifeless and
inhospitable. The only sign of occupation was a
column of smoke that rose from behind the house
with a density which suggested the chimney of a
factory, or at least of a laundry, rather than
that of a kitchen. The Rise was clearly the last
place in the world where a stranger was likely
to be asked to stay the night, and Ransom, who
had already wasted some time in exploring it,
would certainly have turned away if he had not
been bound by his unfortunate promise to the old
woman.
He mounted the three steps which led into the
deep porch, rang the bell, and waited. After a
time he rang the bell again and sat down on a
wooden bench which ran along one side of the
porch. He sat so long that though the night was
warm and starlit the sweat began to dry on his
face and a faint chilliness crept over his
shoulders. He was very tired by now, and it was
perhaps this which prevented him from rising and
ringing a third time: this, and the soothing
stillness of the garden, the beauty of the
summer sky, and the occasional hooting of an owl
somewhere in the neighbourhood which seemed only
to emphasize the underlying tranquillity of his
surroundings. Something like drowsiness had
already descended upon him when he found himself
startled into vigilance. A peculiar noise was
going on - a scuffing, irregular noise, vaguely
reminiscent of a football scrum. He stood up.
The noise was unmistakable by now. People in
boots were fighting or wrestling or playing some
game. They were shouting too. He could not make
out the words but he heard the monosyllabic
barking ejaculations of men who are angry and
out of breath. The last thing Ransom wanted was
an adventure, but a conviction that he ought to
investigate the matter was already growing upon
him when a much louder cry rang out in which he
could distinguish the words, "Let me go. Let me
go," and then, a second later, "I'm not going in
there. Let me go home."
Throwing off his pack, Ransom sprang down the
steps of the porch, and ran round to the back of
the house as quickly as his stiff and footsore
condition allowed him. The ruts and pools of the
muddy path led him to what seemed to be a yard,
but a yard surrounded with an unusual number of
outhouses. He had a momentary vision of a tall
chimney, a low door filled with red firelight,
and a huge round shape that rose black against
the stars, which he took for the dome of a small
observatory: then all this was blotted out of
his mind by the figures of three men who were
struggling together so close to him that he
almost cannoned into them. From the very first
Ransom felt no doubt that the central figure,
whom the two others seemed to be detaining in
spite of his struggles, was the old woman's
Harry. He would like to have thundered out,
"What are you doing to that boy?" but the words
that actually came - in rather an unimpressive
voice - were, "Here! I say! ."
The three combatants fell suddenly apart, the
boy blubbering. "May I ask," said the thicker
and taller of the two men, "who the devil you
may be and what you are doing here?" His voice
had all the qualities which Ransom's had so
regrettably lacked.
"I'm on a walking-tour," said Ransom, "and I
promised a poor woman -"
"Poor woman be damned," said the other. "How did
you get in?"
"Through the hedge," said Ransom, who felt a
little ill-temper coming to his assistance. "I
don't know what you're doing to that boy, but -"
"We ought to have a dog in this place," said the
thick man to his companion, ignoring Ransom.
"You mean we should have a dog if you hadn't
insisted on using Tartar for an experiment,"
said the man who had not yet spoken. He was
nearly as tall as the other, but slender, and
apparently the younger of the two, and his voice
sounded vaguely familiar to Ransom.
The latter made a fresh beginning. "Look here,"
he said. "I don't know what you are doing to
that boy, but it's long after hours and it is
high time you sent him home. I haven't the least
wish to interfere in your private affairs, but -"
"Who are you?" bawled the thick man.
"My name is Ransom, if that is what you mean.
And -"
"By Jove," said the slender man, "not Ransom who
used to be at Wedenshaw?"
"I was at school at Wedenshaw," said Ransom.
"I thought I knew you as soon as you spoke,"
said the slender man. "I'm Devine. Don't you
remember me?"
"Of course. I should think I do!" said Ransom as
the two men shook hands with the rather laboured
cordiality which is traditional in such
meetings. In actual fact Ransom had disliked
Devine at school as much as anyone he could
remember.
"Touching, isn't it?" said Devine. "The
far-flung line even in the wilds of Sterk and
Nadderby. This is where we get a lump in our
throats and remember Sunday-evening Chapel in
the D.O.P. You don't know Weston, perhaps?"
Devine indicated his massive and loud-voiced
companion. "The Weston," he added. "You know.
The great physicist. Has Einstein on toast and
drinks a pint of Schrödinger's blood for
breakfast. Weston, allow me to introduce my old
schoolfellow, Ransom. Dr. Elwin Ransom. The
Ransom, you know. The great philologist. Has
Jespersen on toast and drinks a pint -"
"I know nothing about it," said Weston, who was
still holding the unfortunate Harry by the
collar. "And if you expect me to say that I am
pleased to see this person who has just broken
into my garden, you will be disappointed. I
don't care two-pence what school he was at nor
on what unscientific foolery he is at present
wasting money that ought to go to research. I
want to know what he's doing here: and after
that I want to see the last of him."
"Don't be an ass, Weston," said Devine in a more
serious voice. "His dropping in is delightfully
apropos. You mustn't mind Weston's little way,
Ransom. Conceals a generous heart beneath a grim
exterior, you know. You'll come in and have a
drink and something to eat of course?"
"That's very kind of you," said Ransom. "But
about the boy -"
Devine drew Ransom aside. "Balmy," he said in a
low voice. "Works like a beaver as a rule but
gets these fits. We are only trying to get him
into the wash-house and keep him quiet for an
hour or so till he's normal again. Can't let him
go home in his present state. All done by
kindness.
Continues.
