Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  “Inevitable,” Gees observed. “And this Hallam—a good sort?”

  “One of the best. If she’s got to go, I’d trust her to him as soon as to anyone I know. And she’ll make him a good wife, too. She’s fond of pretty things—and I like to see that in a woman, within reason—but she’s got horse-sense, as you might call it, as well. Not mere cleverness, but something that goes deeper. If she marries Hallam, she’ll complete him, if you know what I mean. Give him what her mother has given me, the drive to make the best of my life, and just that spice of fun and—I was going to say devilry, but it’s not quite the right word. Sense of adventure in common things—d’you know?”

  “Get on with that beef and don’t talk so much,” Gees advised.

  “And I thought you’d piled me too much, but if I might have a leetle bit—”

  “Hand me that plate, Mr. Green. Y’know, I can’t quite realise what an extraordinary experience we’ve had. It’ll come to me by degrees, I expect. I don’t want to think about it too much now, else it’d spoil my appetite. The way he as you might say melted away—.”

  “Stop carving and give me that plate back,” Gees interrupted him. “This beef’s melted away some since we started on it, and I’m going in for the melting championship, if there is one. A spot more of that horseradish sauce, and the King is not my uncle.”

  When, satisfied as to food, they pushed their chairs back, Norris took a cigarette from Gees’ case and accepted a light.

  “We say nothing about—about him,” he suggested.

  “Say what you like—I’m keeping quiet,” Gees answered.

  “Squire Hunter might go fishing for bones and raise the devil’s own hullabaloo,” Norris mused. “I’ll follow your example.”

  He smoked on it for awhile, thoughtfully.

  “And what happens to those—those things?” he asked at last. “I mean—you seem to know a lot about them—what happens to them now?”

  Gees shook his head. “Nobody knows much,” he answered. “It’s unexplored territory, for the most part. Very low in intelligence, but strong just now through—through a chance to gain strength, call it. Strong, anyhow—remember how they turned us both cold, and left us exhausted. That one that came out at us did, I mean. Strong enough to drain vitality from us two—for their own use, of course. And as I see it, Nightmare itself was not their centre—their home, as you might call it. What held them to that place was what we found there—what I threw into the mere as bones. That was their home, not the house.”

  “And now they’ve lost it,” Norris suggested.

  “I’d say that the bones I threw in the mere are no more to them than—than the bone on that joint of beef,” Gees answered. “It was the shape and form and likeness, capable, though you may not think it, of being brought back to life as”—he glanced toward the doorway—“Robert Hunter of nearly two centuries age. Destroyed, now—their home.”

  “But they’re not destroyed,” Norris said reflectively.

  Gees shook his head. “Impossible to destroy them,” he concurred. “What we’ve done to-day—well, take it this way. Consider those three as the mechanism of a watch. We’ve smashed the case of the watch, and maybe ripped off its hands as well. But the mainspring and hairspring arc still untouched—the watch is still ticking away, somewhere, and I don’t see any chance of getting at either mainspring or hairspring—any chance of stopping that mechanism and rendering them powerless.”

  Norris thought it over, and his cigarette shortened to not much more than a stub before he spoke again.

  “Well, Mr. Green, what do you make the mainspring and hairspring that keep them going? Why can’t you get at those springs as you got at what was hidden in Nightmare till you came along?”

  Gees shook his head and glanced at his wrist watch.

  “I can’t,” he said. “D’you know, we’ve been stuffing ourselves and getting all contented over it, and I ought to have been at the rectory a good hour and a half ago? Too late, now—I’ll roll along and see if Perivale’s free for a talk after dinner—and heaven help me to face Churchill after missing the lunch he probably tried to keep hot for me!”

  “The rectory, eh?” Norris observed. “Well, the rector is one of the best, but—just between ourselves, Mr. Green—nobody in the place can stand that new wife of his. Infatuation, I’d call it, on his part.”

  “But there’s nothing to be said against her?” Gees urged. Norris shook his head. “If my daughter went about painted and powdered like that woman, she’d feel the flat of my hand, grown-up though she may be,” he said. “No, nothing definite to be said, but—well! The man’s blind. Must be, or he’d tell her what any ordinary country village must think of a woman like her. Like—like a gorgeous poppy in a good crop of corn, and you know when you see it that if you don’t root it out, it’s going to seed and rob the goodness out of the soil. That’s the present Mrs. Perivale—nothing against her, but herself.”

  “The soil being?” Gees asked.

  “His family,” Norris answered. “Seven of ’em. Miss Celia—salt of the earth, that girl, clever, good-hearted, and might be as good-looking as May if she had half a chance to make the best of herself. No more than servant to the rest of ’em, and her father can’t see that she’s using up her best years for them while that woman”—he stood up—“Ah! let’s stop talking about it, Mr. Green, because neither you nor I can do anything. But tell me—have you had enough to eat?”

  “Heaven help anyone who tries to make me eat any more,” Gees answered fervently. “One more glass of that excellent cider, I think.”

  Norris poured it for him. “Why I asked—it’s just on tea time,” he said. “You say it’s too late to go to the rectory—you’ll stop and have a cup with us, won’t you?”

  “Let me go outside and walk about a bit,” Gees pleaded. “I’ll think about it, then. And it’ll give a chance to clear this table of the wreckage we’ve left, too. Oh, you’re good people up this way!”

  He finished the glass of cider, and stood up too, grinning at Norris and shaking his head while he held out his cigarette case again.

  “Not just now, thank you all the same, sir,” Norris said. “I’d better have a bit of a talk with my wife, I think, but if you feel like a bit of air before tea, there’s the orchard out at the back—Cosham goes in for fruit far more than I would—and it’s pleasant there with the sun out as it is now. I’m glad you’ll stay on for tea with us.”

  Gees found his way out. Passing the farm buildings, he looked into the shed in which he had milked Cosham’s forty-pound cow, and saw her lying down and chewing the cud contentedly enough. Then he went on, lighting himself another cigarette, and found an apple orchard of young trees with whitewashed trunks and a reasonable crop of fruit in embryo on their branches. There were, he estimated, a good four acres of fruit trees, set in grass land with a circle of dug soil about the roots of each: Cosham was a practised fruit farmer, evidently.

  He sauntered to the far end of the orchard and there stood, finishing his cigarette and ruminating, and saw May Norris approach him, apparently of set purpose. Then he threw away his cigarette end.

  “I saw you come out, and came to look for you, Mr. Green,” she said, rather uncertainly. “In case—in case we don’t see you again—what were—what did you and my father do at Nightmare to-day?”

  “Cleaned up,” he answered coolly. “A lot of dust and some soot, as you saw before—before I had a chance at that excellent bathroom.”

  “You mean—you’re not going to tell me?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I am not,” he said with decision.

  “My father won’t either—I’ve just asked him, though I hadn’t any hope he would,” she explained. “You see, Mr. Green, I feel it concerns me, somehow. I can’t explain that, but I feel it does.”

  Again he shook his head. “It doesn’t,” he contradicted.

  “Over your lunch—you and he were ta
lking about it,” she half-accused. “After I’d left you together, I mean.”

  “We were talking,” he said slowly, “about a very good young man named Hallam. At least, your father considers him a very good young man.”

  “Oh, does he?” she snapped. “Let me tell you, Mr. Green, the very goodness of that or any other young man isn’t of the slightest interest to me. Nor any other quality Harry Hallam happens to have.”

  “Gee-whiz! That’s a teaser in aspirates,” he remarked. “Harry Hallam happens to have! Got it right, first time! Now tell me, Miss Norris, why am I degraded from my high estate?”

  “Why are you—are you making fun of me?” she demanded angrily.

  “Asking you a straight question,” he retorted coolly. “You promised—promised, mind!—that I was to remain Mr. Gees to you. And now I’m degraded to plain Mr. Green. How have I offended you?”

  “You haven’t.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I felt—well, it was noticeable, with everyone else calling you—calling you that.”

  “Might be—yes,” he admitted thoughtfully. “I see. And—we’ve got it all to ourselves here, so I’m going to have things out. You didn’t mind my leaving that little blue bow where it was, did you?”

  “Why on earth should I?” she asked in surprise.

  “Well, because it had once belonged to you, say,” he answered deliberately. “Now go back to the day I went back to London, if you don’t mind. You told me then you cared for me, felt a sort of tie between me and yourself, but only in a way that admitted of your telling it—nothing else that might make you feel embarrassed. Remember it?”

  “Quite well,” she answered steadily, but not now meeting his gaze.

  “Yes. I remember it too. But if—I’ve got what you may consider a silly fancy, Miss Norris. I don’t know, unless I put it to you. And so—I want you to tell me—and if the answer isn’t what I want it to be, let’s still go on being friends—I want you to tell me, now I’ve got you to yourself, whether—whether...well—whether you could ever care for me in the way you couldn’t talk about unless I asked you—whether you could care about me in another way enough for us to think about getting married. I’m no hand at this sort of thing—never tried it before, but—but—do you think you could?”

  She stood before him, silent, her hands clasping and unclasping nervously, and he saw her shake her head slightly.

  “Right,” he said at last. “That’s that. Now forget I ever said anything of the sort, and let’s go on being good friends. Eh?”

  “But—but”—she gave him an instant’s glance—“I could, Mr. Gees.”

  “May!” His arms went round her. “May, darling—tell me quick!

  D’you mean that? I love you as I never meant to love anybody—d’you mean it? Darling, tell me!”

  “So much—I didn’t know till you’d gone—till there was only the empty road after you’d waved to me. So much—terribly. Till you said that, it frightened me. I—Oh, Mr. Gees, you don’t know! ...”

  Both hands against his chest, she pushed herself away from him, evaded his kisses, a flushed, breathless beauty.

  “You said—as you never meant to love anybody. My dear, how I love your big hands! But give me time—let me speak to you.”

  He released her. “My dear,” he said gravely, “you’ve told me enough without words to make me love you more than I did ten minutes ago—and I had an idea then that I’d gone the limit. I hadn’t, I find.”

  “Your way of talking—all that makes you,” she said. “But—because of that. Where one loves most, one thinks most deeply, and—I can tell you now, dear. When you drove away, that day, and I knew there would be no happiness for me like—like the miracle of your loving me—even then I began to think. No—please let me talk, Mr. Gees. I believe you do love me, now—yes, I know it. But think how little we know of each other, how different your life is from mine.”

  “All the more to learn—all the more happiness in learning,” he said. “The root fact is there, May, and the rest will make our happiness.”

  “Will it?” She held both his hands and gazed up at him, and the violet eyes he had so soon learned to love were grave. “My dear, I’ve thought it all out—thought is very quick, when one loves as I love you. I’ve thought of what you are and what I am, the brilliant man and the ordinary farmer’s daughter—no, don’t interrupt, please!

  Different lives—so different! Different stations in life—so different!

  My father a tenant farmer, and yours—no, please don’t interrupt! If this is to be, Mr. Gees—if I’m to have the thing in life I want most after so very little a time, I want to build a sure foundation before you and I begin building together. Do you see? Oh, Mr. Gees, I love you so! It isn’t that I don’t know, but you—you with all the interests you have, all the things you know and the life you live—I want you to be sure! We’ve known each other so little a time, though I knew you before I ever saw you with my human eyes. I know—but you!”

  “May, darling, you make me want to pray that I may be worth a love like yours,” he said soberly. “I knew you had it in you, but I didn’t know all that was for me. You—you wonder-girl!”

  “I’m not—I’m just human, and believe I’ve found the best gift life has to give me. But still—Mr. Gees, will you listen?”

  “Solemnly and honourably, I’ll listen,” he promised. “You’ve owned you love me, and as long as you don’t take that back”

  “I couldn’t. If you hadn’t—hadn’t said what you have said, I think I should never have been anything but May Norris. And even now—Mr. Gees, I want us to wait a year—one year.”

  “Gosh! That’s a whale of a long while!” he said dubiously.

  “A year,” she insisted. “I want you to be quite sure—I’ve thought it out—you may count me un-maidenly for doing that, or what you like, but I have thought it out. I want you to do what you have always done, meet the people you have always met, be just Mr. Gees as you were before you knew there was a May Norris, and then, if you still love me as you believe you do now—Oh, darling!”—she drew herself close to him—“I want to give you all myself and all my life! I’m—you’ve only just told me, and I’m showing you what you mean to me. I don’t care—I don’t care! You do mean it, but we’ve got to wait the year, and then I’ll know my man loves me as I love him.”

  “And you?” he asked rather grimly. “If you forget it?”

  “If that were possible, I’d write and tell you honestly,” she answered. “Dear, I have no fear of myself—what I have given, I can never take back. It’s your life, your people, your interests, that make me say this. And I don’t forget—I owe you my very soul, my freedom from hell’s own ministers. Bad words for a girl to say, but you know they’re true. Mr. Gees, if you’ve got the courage, ask for what belongs to you because of what you did for me—tell me you want me now, and you shall have me. Quite freely, because I owe you that and I love you. Ask it of me!”

  She gazed up at him, confidently, and smiling at him.

  “No.” He shook his head. “That offer convinces me, May. I’ll be patient for a year. The first of next June—yes?”

  “If your love then is what it is now. Yes, the first of June next year. But be honest with me, Mr. Gees. If it isn’t, write and tell me, as I’d write and tell you if there were any possibility of mine growing less. And if you don’t tell me that, on the first of June next year I’ll come to you. Oh, how I love your big hands, and your eyes that say so much! ... Please, Mr. Gees, may we go back, now?”

  Quite suddenly, out of nowhere, it seemed, for the sun shone as brightly as ever, a shadow came to his mind, and he heard or seemed to hear a faint clucking, chuttering sound, somewhere not far off from them.