Because of her, I tried to skirt the larger towns, but it was impossible to avoid many unpleasant sights in the country. After a while I gave up pretending that they did not exist. Susan regarded them with the same detached interest as she gave to the normal scenery. They did not alarm her, though they puzzled her and prompted questions. Reflecting that the world in which she was going to grow up would have little use for the overniceties and euphemisms that I had learned as a child, I did my best to treat the various horrors and curiosities in the same objective fashion. That was really very good for me too.
By midday the clouds had gathered and rain began once more. When, at five o’clock, we pulled up on the road just short of Pulborough, it was still pouring hard.
“Where do we go now?” inquired Susan.
“That,” I acknowledged, “is just the trouble. It’s somewhere over there.” I waved my arm toward the misty line of the Downs, to the south.
I had been trying hard to recall just what else Josella had said of the place, but I could remember no more than that the house stood on the north side of the hills, and I had the impression that it faced across the low, marshy country that separated them from Pulborough. Now that I had come so far, it seemed a pretty vague instruction: the Downs stretched away for miles to the east and to the west.
“Maybe the first thing to do is to see if we can find any smoke across there,” I suggested.
“It’s awfully difficult to see anything at all in the rain,” Susan said practically, and quite rightly.
Half an hour later the rain obligingly held off for a while. We left the truck and sat on a wall side by side. We studied the lower slopes of the hills carefully for some time, but neither Susan’s sharp eyes nor my field glasses could discover any trace of smoke or signs of activity. Then it started to rain again.
“I’m hungry,” said Susan.
Food was a matter of trifling interest to me just then. Now that I was so near, my anxiety to know whether my guess had been right overcame everything else. While Susan was still eating I took the truck a little way up the hill behind us to get a more extensive view. In between showers, and in a worsening light, we scanned the opposite hills again, without result. There was no life or movement in the whole valley, save for a few cattle and sheep and an occasional triffid lurching across the fields below.
An idea came to me, and I decided to go down to the village. I was reluctant to take Susan, for I knew the place would be unpleasant, but I could not leave her where she was. When we got there I found that the sights affected her less than they did me: children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at. The depression was all mine. Susan found more to interest than to disgust her. Any somberness was quite offset by her delight in a scarlet silk macintosh with which she equipped herself in spite of its being several sizes too large. My search, too, was rewarding. I returned to the truck laden with a head lamp like a minor searchlight, which we had found upon an illustrious-looking Rolls-Royce.
I rigged the thing up on a kind of pivot beside the cab window and made it ready to plug in. When that was ready there was nothing to do but wait for darkness and hope that the rain would let up.
By the time it was fully dark the raindrops had become a mere spatter. I switched on, and sent a magnificent beam piercing the night. Slowly I turned the lamp from side to side, keeping its ray leveled toward the hills, while I anxiously tried to watch the whole line of them simultaneously for an answering light. A dozen times or more I traversed it steadily, switching off for a few seconds at the end of each sweep while we sought the least flicker in the darkness. But each time the night over the hills remained pitchy black. Then the rain came on more heavily again. I set the beam full ahead and sat waiting, listening to the drumming of the drops on the roof of the cab while Susan fell asleep leaning against my ann. An hour passed before the drumming dwindled to a patter, and ceased.
Susan woke up as I started the beam taking across again. I had completed the sixth travel when she called out:
“Look, Bill! There it is! There’s a light!”
She was pointing a few degrees left of our front. I switched
off our lamp and followed the line of her finger. It was difficult to be sure. If it were not a trick of our eyes, it was something as dim as a distant glowworm. And even as we were looking at it the rain came down on us again in sheets. By the time I had my glasses in my hand there was no view at all. I hesitated to move. It might be that the light, if it had been a light, would not be visible from lower ground. Once more I trained our light forward and settled down to wait with as much patience as I could manage. Almost another hour passed before the rain cleared again. The moment it did, I switched off our lamp.
“It is!” Susan cried excitedly. “Look! Look!”
It was. And bright enough now to banish any doubts, though the glasses showed me no details.
I switched on again, and gave the V sign in Morse-it is the only Morse I know except 5 0 S, so it had to do. While we watched the other light it blinked and then began a series of slow, deliberate longs and shorts which unfortunately meant nothing to me. I gave a couple more Vs for good measure, drew the approximate line of the far light on our map, and switched on the driving lights.
“Is that the lady?” asked Susan.
“It’s got to be,” I said. “It’s got to be.”
That was a poorish trip. To cross the low marshland it was necessary to take a road a little to the west of us and then work back to the east along the foot of the hills. Before we had gone more than a mile something cut off the sight of the light from us altogether, and to add to the difficulty of finding our way in the dark lanes, the rain began again in earnest. With no one to care for the drainage sluices, some fields were already flooded, and the water was over the road in places.
I had to drive with a tedious care when all my urge was to put my foot flat down.
Once we reached the farther side of the valley we were free of floodwater, but we made little better speed, for the lanes were full of primitive wanderings and improbable turns. I had to give the wheel all my attention while the child peered up at the hills beside us, watching for the reappearance of the light. We reached the point where the line on my map intersected with what appeared to be our present road without seeing a sign of it. I tried the next uphill turning.
It took about half an hour to get back to the road again from the chalk pit into which it led us.
We ran on farther along the lower road. Then Susan caught a glimmer between the branches to our right. The next turning was luckier. It took us back at a slant up the side of the hill until we were able to see a small, brilliantly lit square of window half a mile or more along the slope.
Even then, and with the map to help, it was not easy to find the lane that led to it. We lurched along, still climbing in low gear, but each time we caught sight of the window again it was a little closer. The lane had not been designed for ponderous trucks. In the narrower parts we had to push our way along it between bushes and brambles which scrabbled along the sides as though they tried to pull us back.
But at last there was a lantern waving in the road ahead. It moved on, swinging to show us the turn through a gate.
Then it was set stationary on the ground. I drove to within a yard or two of it and stopped.
As I opened the door a flashlight shone suddenly into my eyes. I had a glimpse of a figure behind it in a raincoat shining with wetness.