Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  “Two passengers, as far as the church gate,” he said. “And wait there to take them back. I’ll square with you—it’s not their hire.”

  “Right you are, sir,” and H. Jones restarted his engine. Then Norris, bareheaded and just as Gees had left him, came along the garden path and out to the car, carrying his daughter in his arms. He had wrapped her in a blanket, and there were embroidered indoor slippers on her otherwise bare feet. Her tangled hair was uncovered, her face hidden against her father’s breast. Gees, out again, opened the rear door and closed it on them, and seated himself again beside the driver.

  “As I told you—go,” he said.

  There came no sound from behind him, and in a very little time the Daimler drew up close by the churchyard gate, with a sudden flurry of the dreary day’s rain beating on its roof and the windows of one side. Out again, hatless and heedless of the rain, Gees opened the door, and Norris backed out with the blanket-wrapped girl in his arms. As he faced toward the church she lifted her head and saw where they were, and instantly, with unnatural strength, began struggling to escape from her father’s hold. She made no sound, but tried to push herself free from him, and, strong man though he was, it took all his strength to prevent her from releasing herself.

  “You’ve got to be cruel to be kind,” Gees told him. “Straight in and up the aisle—he should be waiting. See that she faces him within touching distance—that’s all you have to do. Go on, man—go on!”

  His face white and contorted, Norris entered the churchyard. Once, as he went along the path, the girl almost got away from him—Gees picked up the blanket of which she had managed to rid herself and, following closely, dropped it in the porch and darted ahead to swing wide the heavy oaken west door. Then again he let Norris precede him. Once they had passed the portal, her struggles ceased altogether. Norris halted to peer down at her face, for only a dim light came through the little, heavily-leaded window panes on such a day as this, and all the chancel and choir, as well as the nave, were in deep gloom. Beyond, immediately before the altar, stood Perivale robed in a white surplice, a still, almost ghostly figure with his face quite in shadow, since all the light that revealed him fell downward from the east window behind him. And, when they neared him, Gees saw that he held in his right hand a little silver cross.

  “On, straight on!” Gees whispered desperately as Norris would have stopped outside the scrolled iron railing. The man obeyed him, still carrying the girl, and went on until he was close to Perivale.

  “Think you can stand on your feet, my dear?” he asked her, and the commonplace, practical sentence struck oddly on Gees’ ears, there. As the girl did not answer, Norris gently lowered her until she stood, but kept hold on her arm.

  “Let her stand quite alone,” Perivale bade quietly.

  Slowly, doubtfully, Norris withdrew his hand. The girl swayed, but kept her feet. Perivale held the silver cross aloft, and spoke—

  “In nomine Patri, Filii, et Sancti Spiritu” —his hand struck downward with lightning swiftness, and with the cross he touched the girl on her breast— ”Retro”

  No more, for with an inhuman shriek that volleyed and echoed about the church she flung up both arms—Norris caught and held her before she could quite fall. But Gees did not see him support her: he saw Perivale’s awestruck gaze go past him, and turned about to see what the rector saw. Something spun and twirled through the open gateway in the iron railing, went whirling, twisting, a misty, unreal shape, down the matted aisle, and when the echoes of May Norris’s shriek had ceased the two men heard as well as saw it.

  “Gluck—gluck—gluck—” it went, and—“Gluck—gluck—gluck!”

  Spinning like a dervish of the whirling cult, travelling with ever-increasing speed as if it gained strength in receding from the altar, changing direction by the font, spinning toward the door—gone! And Gees heard Norris’s voice,

  “If you’ve killed her with this”—fierce, denunciatory, grindingly determined—“I’ll kill you, you Gees!”

  “Silence, man!” Perivale bade sternly. “And pray God on your knees to forgive you such an utterance on His holy ground. Take her away.” For a moment he stretched out his hands over the girl.

  “Daughter, go hence in peace. In the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Norris took her up in his arms again and carried her out without another word, and Gees followed as far as the aisle, but faced about as he heard Perivale speak. Then he saw that, here in the chill of the church, beads of perspiration were dripping from the rector’s forehead.

  “Simple, you called it,” Perivale said shakily, like one released from a strain that had all but broken him. “But— did you see?”

  Gees nodded—for the moment he could not speak. Then he

  reached out his hand, and Perivale grasped it momentarily.

  “God bless you, padre,” he said. “No more, now. I—I’ve simply got to get outside.”

  “God bless you too,” Perivale said, and for a moment held up the little silver cross.

  The Daimler had gone when Gees reached the churchyard gate. Odd, he thought half-dazedly—Norris had forgotten his blanket.

  The rain—where did that thing go?—the rain—Hunters’ Arms—the rain…

  He walked, rather unsteadily, toward the inn. It should be only a little way. Only a little way. That shriek, and—“Gluck—gluck—

  gluck!” Spinning faster, growing stronger, as it receded from holy ground. Shadowy, not of earth—the blanket—the rain... . He reached the inn, and got up to his bedroom unperceived. There, just as he was, he dropped down on the bed and lay, exhausted, spiritless. If Mrs. Churchill complained about spoilt bedclothes, he would pay for them. Spoilt bedclothes—the blanket in the church porch.

  Then he slept.

  CHAPTER IX

  DISMISSED

  AT THE SOUND of Nicholas Churchill’s voice Gees sat up hastily on the bed. Something about a blanket—then he was fully awake.

  “Chap wi’ a big black car, sir,” Nicholas told him. “By gum, t’

  bed’s i’ a mess, too! Yeahp, a big black car, an’ he said he’d wait to see t’ gent what druv t’ car under t’ chestnut—tha left it oot i’ t’ rain, sir. Waitin’ outside he is, sir—what’ll I tell him?”

  “Leave him to me,” Gees said. “I’ll go down.”

  He went, and beckoned H. Jones to come into the porch, for it was raining more heavily than ever. The man got down from his driving seat and scuttled across to shelter.

  “Thought I’d better settle up before goin’ home, sir,” he said.

  “Naturally,” Gees observed rather dryly. “How much do I owe you.”

  “I make it I owe you ten bob, sir, overpaid in advance.”

  “Well, of all the—and you waked me after only half an hour’s sleep to tell me that! Keep it, man—give it to the poor—buy an estate with it, and good luck to you. You got your passengers back safely?”

  “Thank you very much, sir—I did that. Only the girl was crying and seemed all upset, though I thought the man might have made her think he was more sorry for her than he did. It wasn’t—it wasn’t that Miss Norris that I heard got took away a while ago, was it, by any chance?”

  “No,” Gees improvised gravely. “This girl was going to see about the banns for her marriage, and I rather think her uncle—that was the man with her—I have an idea he’s persuading her into it against her will. So, you see, she would be a bit upset over it.”

  “I see. Yes, of course,” H. Jones agreed equally gravely, and ruminated, apparently about a girl going wrapped in a blanket and with no more than indoor slippers on her feet on such an errand—to a church, too. He gazed hard at Gees, and in the end smiled. “And you, sir—you don’t happen to be the President of the United States, do you?”

  “I do not,” Gees answered, very gravely indeed. “When I’m working, I sell beehives to Eskimos, but I’m on leave
just at present. Now, Mr. Jones, a still tongue may not make a wise head, but it may save the man who keeps it one hell of a lot of trouble. You get me?”

  “Perfectly, sir, and you can bet on me. I’m very much obliged indeed for your generosity over this little job, and if you do happen to want anything at all for that very nice car of yours there, you know where to find me. I’ll get along there right now, and—not a word!”

  He bolted back to the Daimler and drove off, and Gees, fully awake and himself again, now, went back to his room to change into the only other suit he had brought with him, after a satisfying wash and rub down. The Hunters’ Arms, as he already knew, did not run to a bathroom.

  He looked out at the dreary, sodden landscape. It was nearly five o’clock, but surely Hunter would not expect him to turn out on such an evening as this—the visit could be deferred till to-morrow. Even if he did take the car, probably there would be nobody to open those gates at the entrance to the drive, and he would have to get out and get wet again doing it himself. In fact, any excuse to put off the visit: he did not want to go to Denlandham House, and that was that. But he went down and out to the car to drive it round to the stable for the night. Nobody had closed the doors after he had gone out in the morning, and now the hens, deceived by the unduly early gloom of approaching evening, had already perched upon rails and partition tops to make a long night of it. Sundry kuk-kuk-kuk’s greeted his entry, but they ceased as he switched off the fog-lamp he had turned on for guidance through the double doorway. He left the birds alone; with hood and side-curtains up, they could not get at his upholstery, and they were settled for the night, evidently, and not likely to move on to his radiator top.

  Back in the inn he met Nicholas.

  “A nice drop o’ tea, now, sir. T’ missus just maade it.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Gees admitted. “Thank you very much.”

  “An’ she’s baaked some pikelets. A plaate o’ them, now, an’ a few hot bootered scoans, ’ll stay thee till sooper time.”

  “One scone, and one pikelet, whatever that is,” Gees amended severely, with a memory not only of the roast pork, but of two bloaters that had preceded it when he had meant to eat only one.

  “Eh, but th’art not i’ health, surely,” Nicholas protested gravely.

  “Tha must keep thy strength oop, runnin’ about on foot an’ i’ that car.”

  “Two pikelets, then,” Gees amended recklessly, “but only one scone.”

  Nicholas shook his head with deep concern, but let it go at that, and Gees went to the dining-room and took out The Golden Bough as means of killing time. He made his first essay on pikelets, invoked a benison on the good soul who invented them, and had settled to the book again and got deep in the Isis cult when Nicholas appeared again.

  “Mr. Norris’d like to see thee, sir,” he announced.

  “Pikelets,” said Gees, “are grateful and comforting. Throw him in.”

  By the light of the lamp he had already been compelled to light he saw Norris in the doorway of the dining-room, big, resolute, gloomy-looking. Gees stood up to face the man.

  “Come in, won’t you, Mr. Norris?” he asked, friendly-wise. Norris advanced far enough into the room to close the door after Nicholas had gone out with the tea tray, and there stood, a grim figure.

  “I told you I’d kill you if it killed her, you remember,” he said.

  “I do remember your saying something of the sort,” Gees admitted.

  “But”—he took another step forward—“I didn’t say what I’d do if you cured her.”

  “Since I didn’t cure her, it doesn’t matter if you did say anything about it,” Gees told him. “I didn’t hear it if you did, but there was so much else going on, just then. How is she now?”

  Norris disregarded the question. “I’ve taken a farm, over near the Lancashire boundary, to go in at Michaelmas. Nightmare was one of the best farms in the county. I treated it well, and it treated me well. In farming, as in most other things, you’ve got to give to get. Since my daughter was born, too, I’ve been careful, and though I started with very little, and lose by leaving Nightmare as I did, I’ve got about three thousand pounds. It won’t cost me that to go into this place I’m taking at Michaelmas, by a considerable sum.”

  “Depends on the size of the new place, of course,” Gees observed.

  “And I’m here to ask you, Mr. Gees,” Norris pursued, as if he had carefully rehearsed all he meant to say—“how much can I give you in return for what you’ve done for me?”

  “Ah, don’t be a fool, man!” Gees exclaimed. “The help that was given your daughter to-day was past any money’s buying—come and sit down and tell me all about it, and let’s have a drink.” He backed to the fireplace and pressed the bell-push. “What’s yours?”

  “Anything—whatever you’re having,” Norris said. “But you mean—”

  “Forget it,” Gees interrupted him. “Two pint tankards of bitter” this to Nicholas in the doorway.

  “Now do sit down, Mr. Norris, and tell me how she is. I didn’t even see you go away from the church.”

  “She’s terribly exhausted, but her old self,” Norris said as he seated himself. “I left her with her mother, and not a sign of—of what’s been for the last seven months, nearly. To come straight to you, to see if there’s any way of repaying you.”

  “There might be, yet,” Gees admitted thoughtfully, taking in the strength evident in the other man’s face and figure. “I don’t know.”

  “Whatever it is, you’ve only to ask,” Norris told him.

  “I’m sure of that. But not in money—don’t think of it.

  Yet—even that. I’m sending Perivale a cheque for fifty pounds to use on whatever he likes, and I hope he uses some of it on himself and his family. If you care to do something in that line—”

  “I’ll double it, gladly,” Norris interposed.

  “On your own—you needn’t know I’m doing anything of the sort.”

  Nicholas, entering, put down two tankards, and retired. Gees handed one to his guest and took the other himself.

  “Here’s to temperance,” he said. “No, though—to the little lady who begins her life again to-day, and may it be a happy one.”

  “Amen to that, and to you for saving her,” Norris added. Gees, put his tankard down, half-emptied. “But I did not save her!” he exclaimed emphatically. “Get that out of your head, man!”

  “If it hadn’t been for you, she wouldn’t be herself again,” Norris insisted. “But would you mind telling me—that car at the gate all ready—you didn’t know you’d be able to persuade me, did you? I mean, it was no ordinary thing to ask me to do.”

  “I did not know,” Gees admitted, “but I had an idea that if I didn’t rush you into it there and then, before you could think it over and see what a preposterous suggestion it was from a material standpoint, I’d never have got her there. Which was why I fixed Perivale beforehand, asked him to be all ready when the car stopped at the gate.”

  “One other thing, Mr. Gees,” Norris said. “My wife, and May too, want to see you and—and thank you, though that sounds rather feeble, I know. But could you find time for it, while you’re here?”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Gees said slowly. “If you’ll give my best wishes to Mrs. Norris, and—and your daughter, though she doesn’t know me, and probably—”

  “But she does!” Norris interrupted. “She’s asked me to ask you. Big hands and big feet, she said—excuse me for repeating it. She’s just as anxious as her mother to see you.”