by Jack Mann
He conducted his visitor to the front door, and watched him drive away—back to the inn, for Gees decided to put the car away and then walk to the rectory to see Perivale, or, failing that, hand in the cheque with its covering letter. He stabled the car, and was about to set out again when Nicholas Churchill beckoned to him from the doorstep and, oddly enough, disappeared inside it. He reappeared again as Gees reached the doorstep, a slip of paper in his hand which he held out.
“T’ rector’s weddin’,” he said. “I kep’ t’ cootin’, an’ I thowt happen tha’d like to see it.”
Silently Gees took the slip, and read its contents.
PERIVALE-CARTER. At St. Alphege-by-the-Wall,
Southwark, on the 21st inst., by the Rev. D. T. Freeman, the Rev. Arthur Penley Perivale, M.A., rector of Denlandham, Shropshire, to Isabella, only daughter of the late Commander N. R. and Mrs. Carter. Shropshire and Cumberland papers please copy.
“Isabella Carter!”
But, Gees reflected, marriage in a false name, like setting fire to one’s own property after informing the insurance company about it, was not illegal.
CHAPTER XI
CELIA, ONE OTHER, AND MAY
THE RATHER UNTIDY, but evidently good-natured and probably over-worked maid, whom Gees had heard the rector mention as Bessie, admitted that Mr. Perivale was in, but she didn’t know whether he could see anybody. If he’d wait, she’d see, and with that she departed, leaving him on the doorstep but not, he reflected, closing the door on him.
At the foot of the stairs, though, she met Celia Perivale, emerging from somewhere at the back with a thermos flask in her hand. They stopped for inaudible exchanges, and then Bessie went to the back of the house instead of up the staircase, and Celia advanced to face Gees.
“Do come in, Mr. Green,” she invited. “Bessie tells me you asked to see my father, but if I can do anything or tell you anything you want to know—Saturday afternoon, and his sermons and all the rest, you know. In here, if you’ll forgive the untidiness.”
He entered the room. “I quite understand, Miss Perivale, and won’t disturb him. In fact, I wrote a little note in case—Hullo!”
It was the tortoise, against which he had stumbled. The girl looked down at it, picked it up, and put it under the big centre table.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Harold is always getting in the way.”
“Why Harold?” he enquired.
“Why, because he lost the battle of hasting—won’t hurry. It’s my small brother’s pun, but you asked. Won’t you sit down?”
She sat on an armchair arm, herself. Gees drew out one of the cane-seated chairs from the table and occupied it. “And the hedgehog—what’s become of him to-day?” he enquired.
“The children have him out in the garden—they’ll bring him in for his milk when they’ve finished their pirate picnic. I’m a base deserter from the party for a little while. I wanted a rest.”
“Ummm! I see. Has the hedgehog got a name?”
“Oh, yes! He’s Isle of Wight, because of the Needles. By the same author, after Lai—my youngest sister—had picked him up carelessly and found those needles uncomfortable. But I forgot—that’s not why you came to see my father, to hear how we name our pets.”
“Possibly not, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” he assured her. “Nor the pleasure of a talk with you, either.”
A sudden access of colour revealed her as a very attractive girl, if only she were just a trifle less shabby. The tweed skirt had been darned more than once—neatly, but darned all the same, and it was worn thin and napless at the knees. He thought of the cheque in his pocket, and hoped Norris would not forget to double it.
“You—you like Denlandham, Mr. Green?” she asked nervously.
“Haven’t had time enough to think whether I do or no,” he answered. “On the whole, though, yes. The worthies at the village pub—I’m staying there, as you probably know—ought to be heard on the radio—and the landlord feeds me as if I were an elephant. Except that the elephant would be lucky to get cooking like Churchill’s—or his wife’s.”
“I’m glad she has one gift,” the girl said, “but—”
“I’m keeping you from the rest you came to find?” he asked.
“No—certainly not. I’m afraid of keeping you, talking about nothing in particular when you came to see my father specially.”
“Don’t let that trouble you, Miss Perivale. I’ve absolutely nothing to do between now and to-morrow afternoon, and then only go to tea with some people before starting back on my journey to London.”
“And just now you said you had no time!” she reminded him, smiling.
“The past tense is correct,” he said. “Still—I suppose you know the rector did me a very great service yesterday?”
She shook her head. “All I know is that he was meeting you in the church in the afternoon. As for doing services, it’s his work.”
“Stern judge, aren’t you?” he remarked, and smiled. “You know, I expect, that he was meeting others beside me?”
“No,” she answered, and smiled back at him. “I tell him sometimes that the family is my parish, and he must look after his.”
“Unfair division of labour—you can’t dodge your parishioners,”
he commented. “Still, after what he did for me, it’s criminal to talk like that about him, even in jest. And I want to do something for him in return. Now, Miss Perivale”—he looked full at her and spoke with purposeful gravity—“a good many country parsons have a hard time of it in these days, keeping up church and buildings and all the rest.”
“I know it,” she said, not less gravely.
“Forgive me for saying that I can see you do, or call me tactless over it, if you like. Now I’ve written a little note to Mr. Perivale to cover a small acknowledgment of his kindness to me that’s enclosed with the note, and put it as tactfully as I know how, and I want you to hand it to him, and do me a favour at the same time, if you will.”
“And that—the favour?” she asked.
“Is he likely to show you what I’ve written?” he asked in reply.
“If it’s—yes, I expect he will,” she answered.
“Then put your weight on the side of what I’ve said in that note, please. Don’t let him go distributing my few pennies all over the parish and forgetting himself and his family.”
She considered it. “How many pennies?” she asked at last.
“Fifty—I mean fifty pounds.”
“Mr... . Green!” She stared at him, aghast.
“Miss Perivale,” he said earnestly, “it’s not one tenth—not a hundredth, for no money could repay—of the value of what he did. Leave it at that—don’t ask either him or me what it was. Just persuade him—a good time for his children, books or things he wants for himself, because I mean it for that and don’t want to offend him by saying so outright. But you can say a lot, I think.”
He stood up hastily as he saw her lips quivering and tears gathering in her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Miss Perivale—I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Oh, stop!” She shook the tears away and laughed unsteadily.
“As if—he’s so worried, I know, and you—you can’t know what it means!”
Momentarily his lips tightened grimly. For he had remembered Isabella in her dainty, costly clothing—and the children were this girl’s parish, not Isabella’s! Then he smiled and held out his hand.
“Then I know you’ll back me up, and—that’s all, Miss Perivale.”
She took the offered hand and held it. “If I could tell you—” she said, and broke off, looking into his eyes.
“Quite—but you have told me,” he answered. “Please don’t make me feel all embarrassed—I’d far rather hear about Harold and the Isle of Wight and things like that. The lighter side. Let’s get back to it when we next meet. And now I’ll win the battle of hasting—back to the inn
. Pikelets for tea—tried ’em the first time yesterday, and you’d need a mighty long tape measure to take the size of my yearn. Don’t forget. Oh, here’s my note for him, and I nearly nearly went off with it in my pocket! Good-bye, Miss Perivale—I will not miss my pikelets for anything on earth. My regards to your father.”
Past question, he realised as he left the house, Isabella had telephoned Hunter yesterday afternoon, for this girl obviously knew nothing of what had transpired—did not even know that Norris and his daughter as well as Gees had been due to meet her father. The rector would tell his wife—everything, in his present state over her, Gees reflected.
And here, brilliant as the late spring sunlight, she faced him at the rectory gate, about to enter as he was about to leave. Svelte and tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired—beautifully waved, that dark hair—and perfectly dressed in different colours from those she had been wearing when he had seen her in the study doorway (Celia wore the same old tweed skirt and home-knitted jumper); she paused, quite composed, now.
“How d’you do, Mr. Green?” A languid, insolent drawl.
“As well in my present occupation as my last, thank you,” he answered promptly. “And you, if I may ask?”
He had angered her, he saw. She spoke sharply.
“Your previous occupation—yes. But you still do your spying in the clothes worn as a rule by gentlemen, I notice.”
“I thought that word was reserved for snobs and charwomen in these days,” he remarked coolly. “Or for—clairvoyantes, say.”
She drew a sudden, audible breath. “Once—once before you tried to ruin me,” she said unsteadily. “And now—again?”
“Again?” he asked. “But how could I?”
“Tell him—my husband—that,” she said.
“Oh, no!” He spoke almost carelessly. “You paid your fine, which was the end of it. But”—his tone changed to grim earnest—“are you quite sure that is all, Mrs. Perivale?”
“All?” she echoed. “What else? Of course it is!”
“Better make sure it remains so. I’m off to London to-morrow, though, so must take your word for it. Unless, of course, you happen to be coming up for a few days again. If so, I might see you. Sorry I must go now. Be very careful, Mrs. Perivale, that the episode of the Peppered Pig remains all you need to conceal from your husband.”
He left her—guessing, as he intended she should. That the warning he had given reached her far too late—years too late, probably—he knew, but it might render her more careful to conceal. Perivale would waken in time to the reality of the woman he had married, but he might be spared the blasting of his life in entirety, if accident or her lack of caution did not bring full enlightenment to him. His state, now, was that of a man walking in black darkness and ignorant of a precipice edge beside him! Perivale might get to the end of his journey without finding himself at the foot of the precipice—and might not!
What a village! Motor buses and cinemas available, yes, but parson and squire, the farmers, the rustics and their nightly gatherings in the bar, all as in old time. And the thing that had fled down the church aisle and out, active, perhaps still potent.
Where? Nightmare Farm still offered harbourage. Was it there?
A small drop-head coupé of a previous year’s vintage stood outside Cosham’s gateway on Sunday afternoon, and, since it was a perfect spring day with a threat of summer in the strength of the sun’s rays, the coupe was unroofed and revealed a significant black leather case on its seat. Gees drew his long Rolls-Bentley in behind the coupe, got out, and went along the garden path in time to see a monocled, pale-faced man of about his own age emerge from the house, and to hear Mrs. Norris’ voice.
“Why, here he is! This is Doctor Haverstock, Mr. Gees. We have just been telling him about you. Mr. Gees, Doctor.”
“Ah! How d’you do, Mr. Gees? Mrs. Norris has just been attributing a miracle to you, and I’ve been trying to tell her it was simply a matter of suggestion, influence of the mentality of the patient by the right person. The worthy rector of the parish, a man she knew and respected. Don’t tell me we ought to have thought of that, Mr. Gees—don’t tell it me! We doctors have to confess to more of empiricism than precedent, you know—no two cases respond identically to the same treatment, as perhaps you are well aware?”
“I am,” Gees answered. He felt that he knew this type.
“Ah! I felt sure you would be. Simply a matter of hitting on the personality capable of effecting the—well, the hypnosis, really. Clever of you to think of the one person the girl would, as one might say, be certain to obey. And he snapped her out of it, after our good Norris had tried everything—and even Sir Wagram Snoot had to own he had at last come on a case that baffled him. Sir Wagram Snoot, my dear sir!”
“Sir Wagram Snoot,” Gees echoed solemnly.
“Well,” said the very dapper and suave physician, “I must be getting along—I must be getting along. Yes! I may say that never have I found myself happier to be robbed of work than in this case. I think it extremely probable, Mr.—er—Gees, that it has been a case in which the—er—the fortunate guesswork of the layman has been of more avail than the accurate yet ineffective diagnosis of the trained mind.”
“Undoubtedly, doctor—undoubtedly,” Gees assured him.
“Mrs. Norris has been trying to convince me, Mr.—er—Mr.
Gees, that there was—er—she believes there was an element of the supernatural or shall we say of a psychic nature among the causes of this—er—seizure. Of course you, with your wider knowledge of the world, know what to think of credulity of that sort?”
“I do, doctor. Oh, most certainly I do!”
“Yes, I was convinced of it. In this age of scientific achievement and research, with the bubbles of alchemy and astrology dispersed by the mere breath of reason and practicality, one can only regard such leaning toward almost mediaeval superstition as—but I must be getting along, Mr.—er—Mr. Gees—I must be be getting along. Good day to you, sir—good day. I am sure Sir Wagram Snoot will be delighted over the joke against himself when he hears how easily you disposed of the problem that defeated him for the first time in his distinguished career. Good day to you, sir, and my congratulations—good day.”
He went briskly and happily along the path to his coupe. Gees turned for a last, lingering look at this disciple of materialism.
“That man deserves to get on,” he said gravely.
“He is getting on, Mr. Gees,” Mrs. Norris assured him. “People go to him much more than they will to the older doctors. He’s so—so up-to-date, and he’s got such a wonderfully impressive manner, which is half the battle, for a doctor.”
“I’d say seven-eighths, in his case,” Gees remarked pensively.
“But do come in, Mr. Gees. This is Mr. Cosham, my husband’s cousin, and Mrs. Cosham you’ve already met, I know. Mr. Gees, James.”
“I’m sure glad to see you, sir,” said Cosham, a red-faced, typically honest-looking and apparently simple farmer, but, as Gees had overheard in the Hunters’ Arms, the slyest and craftiest man on a deal for miles round. He shook hands with the pair, and was relieved to see them retire into the room from which they had emerged and leave Mrs. Norris to conduct him to the apartment in which he had first seen her daughter, where the claw-leg table was laid for what looked more like a sumptuous cold supper than mere tea, and Norris and his daughter stood to welcome their guest.
The girl came first, with both hands outstretched, and her beautiful violet-blue eyes alight with pleasure, her lips parted in a smile.