The old man was speaking again, in bewilderment: “I distinctly remember Mr Jenkins, the proprietor, informing me that you had found it necessary to leave at once. He said something about a prophecy coming out exactly to the day, 17 August. People are always talking to me about prophecies. But that was the date he said it was, 17 August.”
He looked up, unscrewing the frown from his thin, worn face. “I beg your pardon, young sir. It is very remiss of me to stand here mumbling to myself. May I say that I am glad that the report was untrue, as I have very much enjoyed our several conversations.”
He raised his hat. “I would invite you in for tea, but Mrs Carmody is not in the best of moods this morning. Poor woman! Looking after an old man must be a great trial; and I dare not add to her afflictions. Good morning to you, Mr Kent. Good morning, Tom.”
Kent nodded, unable to speak. He heard the driver say:
“S’long, Mr Wainwright.”
Kent watched, as the tall, frail figure walked slowly across the road behind the car, and moved unhurriedly across the open pasture land to the south. His mind and gaze came back to the car, as the driver, Tom, said:
“Well, Mr Kent, you’re lucky. You know how long you’re staying at the Agan Hotel.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr Jenkins will have your bill ready for you 17 August.”
Kent stared at him, uncertain whether he ought to laugh, or – what! “You’re not trying to tell me that the ghost also tells the future. Why, today’s only 8 July, and I intend to stay till the end of Septem—”
He stopped. The eyes that were staring into his were utterly earnest, humorless: “Mr Kent, there never was anyone like Mr Wainwright in the world before. When he tells the future, it happens; it was that way when he was alive, and it’s the same now that he’s dead.
“The only thing is that he’s old. He’s over ninety, and weak in the head. He gets confused; he always mixes the future with the past. To him it is the past, and it’s all equally blurred. But when he says anything as clear as a date, it’s so. You wait and see.”
There were too many words; and the concreteness of them, the colloquial twang of them on the still air, built an oddly insubstantial picture. Kent began to feel less startled. He knew these country folk; and the conviction was suddenly strong in him that, in some obscure way, he was being made the victim of a practical joke.
It wouldn’t do, of course, to say so. Besides, there was the unaccountable episode of the gate.
“This Mrs Carmody,” he said finally. “I don’t recall her. Who is she?”
“She came to look after the farm when her sister-in-law, the old man’s grand-daughter, died. No blood relation, but—” The driver drew a deep breath, tried hard to look casual, and said: “She’s the one, you know, who murdered old Wainwright five years ago. They put her in the crazy house at Peerton for doing it.”
“Murdered!” Kent said. “What is this – the local ghost story?” He paused; then: “Just a minute. He talked as if he was still living with her.”
“Look, Mr Kent” – the man was pitying – “let’s not go into why the ghost says what he says. People have tried figuring out what’s going on, and have ended with their brains twisted into seventeen knots.”
“There must be a natural explanation.”
The driver shrugged. “Well, then, you find it.” He added: “I was the one who drove Mrs Carmody and her two kids from Kempster to the farm here. Maybe you’d like to hear as much of the story as I can tell you the rest of the way to the hotel.”
Kent sat quietly as gears shifted; and the machine moved heavily off. He turned finally to look at the farm. It was just passing out of sight behind a long spread of trees.
That last look showed – desolation, deadness. He shuddered involuntarily, and did not look again. He said: “This story . . . what about it?”
The woman saw the farm as the car slowed at the lip of the hill. She was dimly aware that the car was in low gear, with brakes on, slithering down the loose gravel of the steep incline.
The farm, she thought with a greedy intensity that shook her heavy body; safety at long, long last. And only a senile old man and a girl standing between her and possession.
Between her – and the hard, sordid years that stretched behind her. Years of being a widow with two children in a tenement house, with only an occasional job to eke out the income from the relief department.
Years of hell!
And here was heaven for the taking. Her hard blue eyes narrowed; her plump, hard body grew taut – if she couldn’t take the treasure of security that was here, she’d better—
The thought faded. Fascinated, she stared at the valley farm below, a green farmhouse, a great red barn and half a dozen outhouses. In the near distance a vast field of wheat spread; tiny wheat, bright green with a mid-spring greenness.
The car came down to the level of the valley; and trees hid the distant, rolling glory of the land. The automobile came to a stop, its shiny front pointed at the gate; and, beside her, the heavily built boy said:
“This it, ma?”
“Yes, Bill!” The woman looked at him anxiously. All her ultimate plans about this farm centered around him. For a moment she was preternaturally aware of his defects, his sullen, heavy, yet not strong face. There was a clumsiness of build in his chunky, sixteen-year-old body that made him something less than attractive.
She threw off that brief pattern of doubt; she ventured: “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Naw!” The thick lips twisted. “I’d rather be in the city.” He shrugged. “But I guess I know what’s good for us.”
“That’s right.” She felt relieved. “In this world it’s what you get, not what you want. Remember that, Bill . . . what is it, Pearl?”
She spoke impatiently. It was the way her daughter always affected her. What good was a pasty-faced, twelve-year-old, too plump, too plain, and without the faintest promise of ever being pretty. With an even sharper annoyance, the woman repeated:
“What is it?”
“There’s a skinny old man coming across the field. Is that Mr Wainwright, ma?”
Mrs Carmody turned slowly and stared in the direction Pearl was pointing. And, after a moment, a current of relief surged through her. Until this instant she had felt a sharp edge of worry about the old man. Old, her sister-in-law had written in her occasional letter. But she hadn’t imagined he’d be this old. Why, he must be ninety, a hundred; utterly no danger to her at all.
She saw that the driver had opened the gate, and was coming back to drive the car through. With a new confidence she raised her voice at him:
“Wait!” she said, “wait for the old man. He’s been out for a walk, and he’ll be tired. Give him a lift to the house.”
Might as well make a good first impression, she thought. Politeness was the watchword. Iron hands within velvet gloves.
It struck her that the driver was staring at her peculiarly; the man said: “I wouldn’t count on him driving with us. He’s a queer old duck, Mr Wainwright is. Sometimes he’s deaf and blind, and he don’t pay attention to no one. And he does a lot of queer things.”
The woman frowned. “For instance?”
The man sighed. “Well, ma’am, it’s no use trying to explain. You might as well start learning by experience, now as later. Watch him.”
The long, thin figure came at an even, slow pace across the pasture to the south. He crossed the road, passing the car less than three feet from the fenders, seemingly completely blind to its presence. He headed straight for the gate.
Not the open gate, wide enough for the car to go through, but the narrow, solidly constructed wooden gate for human beings. He seemed to fumble at some hidden catch. And then—