He realized this effect was partly because Lardie, the young bitch collie who had taken the place of Cuff, was not running up barking as she generally did with visitors. The yard was deserted. Even the customary fowls had gone. As he led Daisy into the stables, he saw a heavy piebald in the first stall and recognized it as Dr. Crouchorn’s. His anxieties took more definite shape.
Since the stable was now full, he led his mare across to the stone trough by the pond and hitched her there before walking over to the house. The front door was open. Great ragged dandelions grew against the porch. The creeper, hitherto somewhat sparse, pressed into the lower windows. A movement in the rank grass caught his eye and he looked down, drawing back his riding boot. An enormous toad crouched under weed, the head of a still writhing grass snake in its mouth. The toad seemed to eye Gregory fixidly, as if trying to determine whether the man envied it its gluttony. Shuddering in disgust, he hurried into the house.
Muffled sounds came from upstairs. “The stairs curled round the massive chimneypiece, and were shut from the lower rooms by a latched door. Gregory had never been invited upstairs, but he did .not hesitate. Throwing the door open, he started up the stairwell, and almost at once ran into a body.
Its softness told him that this was Nancy; she stood in the dark weeping. Even as he caught her and breathed her name, she broke from his grasp and ran from him up the stairs. He could bear noises more clearly now, and the sound of cryingthough at the moment he was not listening. Nancy ran to a door on the landing nearest to the top of the stairs, burst into the room beyond, and closed it. When Gregory tried the latch, he heard the bolt slide to on the other side.
“Nancy!” he called. “Don’t hide from me! What is it?
What’s happening?”
She made no answer. As he stood there baffled against the door, the next door along the passage opened and Doctor Crouchorn emerged, clutching his little black bag. He was a tall, somber man, with deep lines on his face that inspired such fear into his patients that a remarkable percentage of them did as he bid and recovered. Even here, he wore the top hat that, simply by remaining constantly in position, contributed to the doctor’s fame in the neighborhood.
“What’s the trouble. Doctor Crouchorn?” Gregory asked, as the medical man shut the door behind him and started down the stairs. “Has the plague struck this house, or something equally terrible?”
“Plague, young man, plague? No, it is something much more unnatural than that.”
He stared at Gregory unsmilingly, as if promising himself inwardly not to move a muscle again until Gregory asked the obvious.
“What did you call for. Doctor?”
“The hour of Mrs. Grendon’s confinement struck during the night,” he said.
A wave of relief swept over Gregory. He had forgotten Nancy’s mother! “She had her baby? Was it a boy?”
The doctor nodded in slow motion. “She bore two boys, young man.” He hesitated, and then a muscle in his face twitched and he said in a rush, “She also bore seven daughters. Nine children! And they allthey all live.”
Gregory found Grendon round the corner of the house. The farmer had a pitchfork full of hay, which he was carrying over his shoulder into the cowsheds. Gregory stood in his way but he pushed past.
“I want to speak to you, Joseph.”
“There’s work to be done. Pity you can’t see that.”
“I want to speak about your wife.”
Grendon made no reply. He worked like a demon, tossing the hay down, turning for more. In any case, it was difficult to talk.
The cows and calves, closely confined, seemed to set up a per-petual uneasy noise of lowing and uncow-like grunts. Gregory followed the farmer round to the hayrick, but the man walked like one possessed. His eyes seemed sunk into his head, his mouth was puckered until his lips were invisible. When Gregory laid a hand on his arm, he shook it off. Stabbing up another great load of hay, he swung back towards the sheds so violently that Gregory had to jump out of his way.