Nightmare Farm

by Jack Mann

  “Yes, darling, we’ll go back if you wish it. And I’ll be good and wait your year. D’you know, I’ve got a very charming secretary in my office, and I’ve been praying for something to come along and stop me from falling in love with her—and behold, it’s you!”

  “Is she very charming?” she asked.

  “Delightful,” he assured her, “but if I tried to kiss her she’d give notice or else walk out on me with no formality. So I don’t try.”

  “You’re a bad man, Mr. Gees,” she accused severely.

  “Haven’t I just told you I don’t try?” he demanded.

  “It’s just as well to give you the year’s probation,” she remarked as they walked along between two rows of trees. “Else, I should never be sure you really cared for me. But why didn’t you fall in love with that secretary, if she’s so charming?”

  “I thought it out,” he answered, “and you’ve convinced me I’m quite right. Almost as soon as we’ve found each other, know we belong to each other, you start dictating to me about this year of yours, and I want to dictate to her, don’t you see?”

  She thought it over. Half-way toward the inner end of the orchard, she stopped and faced him.

  “If you wish—I offered,” she said. “Now—tomorrow—if it

  means losing you, though only for a little while.”

  “Darling,”—for a moment he held her close—“you’re wise as you’re lovely. May, I’m quite sure of myself, or I’d never have spoken—because, as I told you, I never meant to love anyone like this. But the year will prove it to you, and we’re both young enough to afford it. You’re just as sensible as you’re dear, and—and if you stand as far away as that, I’m going to rip around and say things. May—darling—”

  Some five minutes or more later, they moved on toward the house. Mrs. Norris met them, looking rather anxious.

  “May, you must have known tea was ready! It’s positively stewed, now. Do come in, Mr. Green.”

  He put his arm round May and held her close to him.

  “D’you think you could spare her, Mrs. Norris, with a year to get used to the idea?” he asked.

  “Mr. Green!” The way of it reminded him of Celia Perivale’s exclamation. “Why, you—you’ve hardly met her!”

  “What have you got to say about it, May?” he asked, looking down at the girl.

  “I love him, mother,” she said.

  CHAPTER XVII

  WHERE?

  NORRIS, UTTERLY FLABBERGASTED.

  “But—Mr. Green, I’m taking one of your father’s farms!”

  “And I’m taking your daughter, on the first of June next year. The limit is hers, not mine—I’d take her away now, but she wants to be sure I’m a decent and honourable citizen of our great empire. God bless her for it, and I’ll wait cheerfully for the best and sweetest girl between here and—I was going to say—well, never mind. The dearest ever, as you know her, I’m sure.”

  “Aye, and she told me it’s her doing, the year’s waiting. To make sure of you, sir—she’s sure of herself, though the little you and she have seen of each other—well! And it’s my daughter and my landlord’s son, if you don’t change your mind in the year.”

  “Norris, drop that ‘sir.’ To me, anyhow. The sweetest daughter a straight man ever had to give—damn it all, I’m going to be your son-in-law, don’t you understand? May, God bless her, is going to be my wife, on the first of June of next year!”

  “God bless you both, sir. Never mind me—God bless both of you.”

  “And you. If I could swing a pickaxe the way you did, I’d—I’d hire myself out to haul Lenin’s corpse out of its glass tomb and bury it properly. Sometimes, too, May and I will come up and look at the aurochs my father thinks as much of as he does of me, and you’ll see her then, even if we do go wild in the intervals. So don’t worry. Don’t think you’ve lost her, but just ask yourself where the devil is that chap taking her—and grow wheat like that crop at Nightmare. Six quarters to the acre, not five, if I know anything. Now I want just another sight of May before I go.”

  Nicholas Churchill, apologetic, yet remonstrative.

  “Y’see, sir, ’twur a guse. T’ first guse us’ve had since laast November. T’ missus coot thee t’ best paarts, an’ thee uzzent theer!

  I towd her, thee might be coombered wi’ many cares, but she dang nigh scratted me! T’ first guse since laast November, an’ she maade me git oranges to go wi’t! An’ thee wurn’t theer!”

  “Bear up, Churchill. I feel like a spot of sleep, and I’m going to see if it’s waiting on that remarkably comfortable bed Mrs. Churchill makes for me. After that, if you’ll turn out the bits I ought to have had hot if I’d had any decency at all, tell her, I’ll mop ’em cold. Goose is goose, be it ever so—tasteish, and I’m on it like a bee on a dog’s west end when he’s going east. Goose for supper, by all means, and if I don’t eat enough to please you, bring in the ham and eggs.”

  Nicholas, his hump more evident than ever, rubbed his forefinger along his mighty nose, and rubbed back again.

  “Dost thee mean, sir, thee’ll have t’ guse first, or t’ ham and eggs?

  T’ missus’ll sarve ’em which way thee likes, an’ I’ll tell her.”

  “We will begin on the goose, Churchill, and finish on it. From what I know of your providing, the only thing to be done with the ham and eggs after the goose is to throw ’em at the walls as decorations.”

  “Eh, then, I’ll tell her t’ guse—it ain’t two month since t’ walls was paapered. An’ now I think o’t, sir. Happen thee don’t know Bill Marsh, Master Cosham’s cowman?”

  “I’ve heard of the gentleman—what about him?” Gees asked.

  “He got himself circumcised—I mean circumstanced—so’s the prevention o’ cruelty come down on him—’tis all over the village. Ill-treatin’ a yearlin’, it wur. T’ first time the prevention come down on anyone in Denlum. Us don’t maul animals about, mostly.”

  “If I could get next-door to that cockerel of yours, I’d be a case,”

  Gees ruminated darkly. “Never mind, Churchill—goose for supper, and me for a sleep in the meantime. Did you ever see a grig?”

  “A what, sir?” Nicholas’ eyes goggled as he asked it.

  “A grig. Proverbially merry. That’s me, to-day. So merry that if anyone comes to disturb me before, six-thirty, I’ll strangle ’em. Reason for the mirth—I’ve just found out I’m going to get married.”

  “Well, sir, I wish thee loock,” Nicholas said dubiously. “They say ’tis a lottery, an’ I hoap thee’s not drawin’ a blank.”

  “The voice of experience. Call me in time for goose, but don’t make it a minute too soon. I’ve got an urge—bedward. S’long, Churchill.”

  “We’ll see thee’s roused in time f’r t’ guse, sir.”

  Evidently, Gees reflected as he climbed the stairs to his room, Bill Marsh was not the right type of man to handle cows that had lost their calves. He had frightened the animal, instead of gentling her and thus inducing her to yield her milk. The milk fever that Cosham had seen as imminent would, almost certainly, have supervened if Gees himself had not appeared and reversed the results of “throwing” and similar expedients. But Bill Marsh could go hang: for this present, sleep was all that counted, sleep with the memory of May’s kisses and the lovelight in her violet eyes.

  Gees, caught at last! And happy over it!

  “Darling, I accept your decision—Oh, hell!”

  “T’ guse, sir.” Nicholas Churchill loomed beside the bed. “ ’Tis cowd, but t’ missus done the best she could wi’ it. Happen thee’ll be down soon? T’ taters’ll be cowd, else, an’ thee missed thy dinner.”

  “I’ll be down in two shakes of a maiden’s prayer,” Gees promised. “If you know anything more sudden than that, tell me about it from the foot of the stairs—and put a pint tankard alongside the goose.”

  “Aye. ’Tis good bitter, sir, if I d
o say it mysel’.”

  Somewhere about two hours later, Gees sat in Perivale’s study, and the rector ruminated long and deeply over the story of Nightmare Farm, which Gees had told in detail, shapes and mouldering body of Robert Hunter, and everything that he and Norris had done and seen.

  “This needs thinking over,” Perivale said at last.

  “The only thing I can see as needing any thought,” Gees said, “is whether I ought to tell this present Squire Hunter what I did with the bones of his ancestor, or whether I keep it to myself, as I’m perfectly sure Norris will. Hunter doesn’t like me, hates me like poison, in fact, but still I’ve got a—monition in my bones, call it—I ought to tell him what I found and dumped in Knightsmere.”

  “You’re a singularly honest person, Mr. Green,” the rector observed after a pause. “If you chose, you could have kept all this to yourself instead of coming and talking to me about it—not under any seal of confession, because the Church of England abhors any such foolish interventions between God and man—coming to me and asking my advice as between one man and another in ordinary confidence.”

  “Norris might let it out some time,” Gees pointed out. “If he does not, I’ve got it on my mind. I, against Norris’s expressed wish, remember, deprived Robert Hunter of any chance of Christian burial—that is, deprived the bones that remained of any such chance, after his final dissolution. Ought I to tell the present Squire Hunter about it?”

  “That is for you yourself to say, Mr. Green. In your place, honestly, I don’t know what I should do. Squire Hunter is an excellent landlord to his tenants, and has been a good friend to me, especially lately. But you say he dislikes you. Well, do as you please. I know him as a short-tempered man, capable of extreme generosity, but at the same time capable of violent outbursts against people he dislikes, and in particular I would cite the man Bird—Phil Bird, one of the kindest and most broad-minded men in our village. Yet Squire Hunter literally hates him, for some reason that I cannot fathom. You say he dislikes you—any reason, within your knowledge?”

  “There is no reason whatever,” Gees lied gravely and successfully.

  “Well, frankly, Mr. Green, I can’t advise you over this—”

  He broke off, and Gees stood up, as Celia Perivale appeared from the head of the stairs, bearing a tray on which were a cup and saucer, the cup emitting steam, and a couple of biscuits. Gees responded to her smiling greeting as she put the tray down.

  “My nightcap, Mr. Green,” Perivale observed. “I don’t know if you’d care for one like it—just ordinary cocoa and milk?”

  “Not guilty, sir—that is, I don’t think I will, thank you. Now you’re here, Miss Perivale, may I make you and your father the first to know a spot of village news? It’s solely my property, so far.”

  “Well?” she asked. “What is the news—exclusive, you say?”

  “One of your father’s parishioners has just gone and got herself engaged,” he told her. “To wit, Miss May Norris, to me.”

  He had never seen more sincere pleasure than he saw in the girl’s face as she took in the meaning of his statement.

  “Oh, Mr. Green! The beauty of Denlum! I’ve often wondered whom she’d choose in the end, and—someone really worthy of her!”

  He laughed. “I’ll eat my hat and boots if anyone pays both of us a better compliment than that, Miss Perivale,” he said. “I’m the fortunate one, but when it comes to worthiness—well, if you knew me a bit better, you’d be more careful over what you say. But how’s Harold?”

  “Still losing,” she answered. “He started to move from under the table to under the sideboard half an hour ago, and I don’t know whether he’s got there yet. The Isle of Wight is peacefully asleep in his basket, in case you feel interested about him—but please tell May how glad I am about this, and give her my very best love.”

  “Consider it done,” he assured her. “Won’t you stay with us a bit, though? That is—I’m issuing your invitation, sir,” he ended, turning with the final sentence to Perivale.

  “I can’t,” the girl said. “It’s Bessie’s evening out—our maid, I mean—and I haven’t nearly finished all there is to do, yet. Some other time, Mr. Green—this is not the only time we shall see you, I hope. And don’t forget when you see May next—if you can remember anything but her when you do see her. She’s such a dear.”

  She went out. The rector, nibbling a biscuit, gazed hard at Gees.

  “So you’re stealing Denlum’s loveliest flower,” he observed.

  “That is, my wife is not a native to the village, so Miss Norris retains the title. I’m sorry you have to miss seeing my wife. She gets fits of sleeplessness and has to take long walks to avert them, and tonight she went to her room very early. But you’ll be seeing us again before you leave the village, and”—he paused and stirred his cocoa—“I was about to ask you, when my daughter came in, your honest opinion of what you—well, disturbed, call it—when you discovered the body of Robert Hunter. The whole of it is an utterly incredible tale, but having seen what I did see in—by God’s mercy—restoring Miss Norris to sanity, I feel myself compelled to admit its truth. These—things, call them. You have proved you know more than most people—what are they?”

  “Elementals, if that means anything to you,” Gees answered unhesitatingly. “Old, incredibly old, by human standards, and capable under favourable circumstances—which they enjoy just now—of very great influence. Unusually strong for elementals, in fact. I’m talking the jargon of the spiritualistic cult, sir, but for heaven’s sake don’t accuse me of belonging in that galley, for I loathe and abhor the crowd and all their works. They’ve never added one iota to the sum of human knowledge, and never will, though they may make money out of deluded folks who believe it’s possible to get in touch with departed loved ones, and get false messages from such beings as these I found at Nightmare. Because those beings, and all their gang, are anxious to raise themselves by getting in touch with humanity on any terms—they’ll lie and cozen and play up through what you may call genuine mediums, personate the beloved dead till their nearest can’t tell that the representation isn’t the reality. They’re all round us now—not those things I drove out from Nightmare, because we should see and feel them, but the lesser elementals, plentiful as humans. Those three, astral with the slightest trace of material to make them visible anywhere, damned dangerous—I’m horribly sorry, sir! It slipped out, thinking of them.”

  “Both damned and dangerous, I should say,” the rector observed meditatively. “Carry on with your most interesting explanation, please.”

  “If you find it so,” Gees observed. “I don’t know if you’ve read or heard anything about experiments being made by a Doctor Alexis Carrel just now—experiments with what he appears to call an artificial heart?”

  Perivale shook his head. “I can’t say I have. How does that?”

  “Carrel, it seems, finds that he can reanimate certain organs, even including a brain, after they’ve been dried and are apparently quite dead. There’s no complete account, so far, of what he’s doing or how he does it, but I suppose he uses this artificial heart to pump a blood stream through these organs and make them—well, wake up, call it. As I see it—the connection between his experiments and what Norris and I found to-day, I mean—he seems to prove that as long as organs are intact they’re not completely dead. There’s a possibility of restoring them to life, as he seems to be doing. And when we discovered the body of Robert Hunter, all of it was intact. The eyes a bit gone—filmed over—but still there. Kept like that, I make it, in some way beyond our comprehension, by those things, those three elementals we found with him. Forming a rallying place for them, a home, in fact, which we destroyed by exposing him to light, taking that body beyond their control, and letting natural processes have their way with it.”