'I can feel her.
But if we can just get to the house, get into the house—' The drive seemed interminable.
He knew the place.
He had walked from the gate to the house as a child, a boy, when distances seem really long (so that to the man grown the long crowded mile of his boyhood becomes less than the throw of a stone) yet now it seemed to him that the house would never come in sight: so that presently he found himself repeating her words:
"If we can just get to the house, get inside the house," telling himself, recovering himself in that same breath:
"I am not afraid.
I just don't want to be here.
I just don't want to know about whatever it is she keeps hidden in it."
But they reached it at last.
It loomed, bulked, square and enormous, with jagged half-toppled chimneys, its roofline sagging a little; for an instant as they moved, hurried, toward it Quentin saw completely through it a ragged segment of sky with three hot stars in it as if the house were of one dimension, painted on a canvas curtain in which there was a tear; now, almost beneath it, the dead furnace-breath of air in which they moved seemed to reek in slow and protracted violence with a smell of desolation and decay as if the wood of which it was built were flesh.
She was trotting beside him now, her hand trembling on his arm yet gripping it still with that lifeless and rigid strength; not talking, not saying words, yet producing a steady whimpering, almost a moaning, sound.
Apparently she could not see at all now, so that he had to guide her toward where he knew the steps would be and then restrain her, whispering, hissing, aping without knowing it her own tense fainting haste: ' Wait.
This way.
Be careful, now.
They're rotten."
He almost lifted, carried, her up the steps, supporting her from behind by both elbows as you lift a child; he could feel something fierce and implacable and dynamic driving down the thin rigid arms and into his palms and up his own arms; lying in the Massachusetts bed he remembered how he thought, knew, said suddenly to himself,
"Why, she's not afraid at all.
It's something.
But she's not afraid," feeling her flee out of his hands, hearing her feet cross the gallery, overtaking her where she now stood beside the invisible front door, panting.
'Now what?" he whispered.
'Break it,' she whispered.
'It will be locked, nailed.
You have the hatchet.
Break it."
'But—' he began.
'Break it!" she hissed,
'It belonged to Ellen.
I am her sister, her only living heir.
Break it.
Hurry."
He pushed against the door.
It did not move.
She panted beside him.
'Hurry,' she said. ' Break it."
'Listen, Miss Rosa,' he said.
'Listen."
'Give me the hatchet."
'Wait,' he said.
'Do you really want to go inside?"
'I'm going inside,' she whimpered.
'Give me the hatchet."
'Wait,' he said.
He moved along the gallery, guiding himself by the wall, moving carefully since he did not know just where the floor planks might be rotten or even missing, until he came to a window.
The shutters were closed and apparently locked, yet they gave almost at once to the blade of the hatchet, making not very much sound—a flimsy and sloven barricading done either by an old feeble person—woman—or by a shiftless man; he had already inserted the hatchet blade beneath the sash before he discovered that there was no glass in it, that all he had to do now was to step through the vacant frame.
Then he stood there for a moment, telling himself to go on in, telling himself that he was not afraid, he just didn't want to know what might be inside.
'Well?" Miss Coldfield whispered from the door.
'Have you opened it?"
'Yes,' he said.
He did not whisper, though he did not speak overloud; the dark room which he faced repeated his voice with hollow profundity, as an unfurnished room will.
'You wait there.