Saliva Tree. Part two
“You’ll be gone in a week and we shan’t never see you again.
Once you get to that there old school, you will never think of your Nancy no more.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “Are you my Nancy? Do you care for me?”
Her eyelashes came over her dark eyes. “Greg, things are so muddled here1 meanyes, I do care, I dread to think I’d not see you again.”
Recalling her saying that, he rode away a quarter of an hour later very content at heartand entirely neglectful of the dangers to which he left her exposed.
Rain fell lightly as Gregory Rolles made his way that evening to “The Wayfarer” inn. His friend Bruce Fox was already there, ensconced in one of the snug seats of the inglenook.
On this occasion. Fox was more interested in purveying details of his sister’s forthcoming wedding than in listening to what Gregory had to tell, and since some of his future brother-in-law’s friends soon arrived, and had to buy and be bought libations, the evening became a merry and thoughtless one.
And in a short while, the ale having its good effect, Gregory also forgot what he wanted to say and began whole-heartedly to enjoy the company.
Next morning, he awoke with a heavy head and in a dismal state of mind. The day was too wet for him to go out and take exercise. He sat moodily in a chair by the window, delaying an answer to Dr. Hudson-Ward, the headmaster. Lethargically, he returned to a small leather-bound volume on serpents that he had acquired in Norwich a few days earlier. After a while, a passage caught his particular attention: “Most serpents of the venomous variety, with the exception of the opisthoglyphs, release their victims from their fangs after striking. The victims die in some cases in but a few seconds, while in other cases the onset of moribundity may be delayed by hours or days. The saliva of some of the serpents contains not only venom but a special digestive virtue. The deadly Coral Snake of Brazil, though attaining no more than a foot in length, has this virtue in abundance. Accordingly, when it bites an animal or a human being, the victim not only dies in profound agony in a matter of seconds, but his interiors parts are then dissolved, so that even the bones become no more than jelly.
Then may the little serpent suck all of the victim out as a kind of soup or broth from the original wound in its skin, which latter alone remains intact.”
For a long while, Gregory sat where he was in the window, with the book open in his lap, thinking about the Grendon farm, and about Nancy. He reproached himself for having done so little for his friends there, and gradually resolved on a plan of action the next time he rode out; but his visit was to be delayed for some days: the wet weather had set in with more determination than the end of April and the beginning of May generally allowed.
Gregory tried to concentrate on a letter to the worthy Dr.
Hudson-Ward in the county of Gloucestershire. He knew he should take the job, indeed he felt inclined to do so; but first he knew he had to see Nancy safe. The indecisions he felt caused him to delay answering the doctor until the next day, when he feebly wrote that he would be glad to accept the post offered at the price offered, but begged to have a week to think about it. When he took the letter down to the post-woman in “The Three Poachers,” the rain still fell.
One morning, the rains were suddenly vanished, the blue and wide East Anglian skies were back, and Gregory saddled up Daisy and rode .out along the mirey track he had so often taken. As he arrived at the farm. Grubby and Neckland were at work in the ditch, unblocking it with shovels. He saluted them and rode in. As he was about to put the mare into the stables, he saw Grendon and Nancy standing on the patch of waste ground under the windowless east side of the house. He went slowly to join them, noting as he walked how dry the ground was here, as if no rain had fallen in a fortnight. But this observation was drowned in shock as he saw the nine little crosses Grendon was sticking into nine freshly turned mounds of earth.