He stared at Nancy aghast.
“But that’s horrible! You’re trying to make the Aurigans out to be pleasant!”
“Of course I ent, you silly ha’p’orth! But I expect they seem pleasant to each other.”
“Well, I prefer to think of them as menaces.”
“All the more reason for you to keep away from them!”
But to be out of sight was not to be out of mind’s reach.
Gregory received another letter from Dr. Hudson-Ward, a kind and encouraging one, but he made no attempt to answer it. He felt he could not bear to take up any work that would remove him from the neighborhood, although the need to work, in view of his matrimonial plans, was now pressing; the modest allowance his father made him would not support two in any comfort. Yet he could not bring his thoughts to grapple with such practical problems. It was another letter he looked for, and the horrors of the farm that obsessed him. And the next night, he dreamed of the saliva tree again.
In the evening, he plucked up enough courage to tell Fox and Nancy about it. They met in the little snug at the back of “The Wayfarer’s” public bar, a discreet and private place with red plush on the seats. Nancy was her usual self again, and had been out for a brief walk in the afternoon sunshine.
“People wanted to give themselves to the saliva tree. And although I didn’t see this for myself, I had the distinct feeling that perhaps they weren’t actually killed so much as changed into something elsesomething less human maybe. And this time, I saw the tree was made of metal of some kind and was growing bigger and bigger by pumpsyou could see through the saliva to big armatures and pistons, and out of the branches steam was pouring.”
Fox laughed, a little unsympathetically. “Sounds to me like the shape of things to come, when even plants are grown by machinery. Events are preying on your mind, Greg! Listen, my sister is going to Norwich tomorrow, driving in her uncle’s trap.
Why don’t the two of you go with her? She’s going to buy some adornments for her bridal gown, so that should interest you, Nancy-Then you could stay with Greg’s uncle for a couple of days. I assure you I will let you know immediately the Aurigans invade Cottersall, so you won’t miss anything.”
Nancy seized Gregory’s arm. “Can we please, Gregory, can we? I ent been to Norwich for long enough and it’s a fine city.”
“It would be a good idea,” he said doubtfully.
Both of them pressed him until he was forced to yield. He broke up the little party as soon as he decently could, kissed Nancy good-night, and walked hurriedly back down the street to the baker’s. Of one thing he was certain: if he must leave the district even for a short while, he had to have a look to see what was happening at the farm before he went.
The farm looked in the summer’s dusk as it had never done before. Massive wooden screens nine feet high had been erected and hastily creosoted. They stood about in forlorn fashion, intended to keep the public gaze from the farm, but lending it unmeaning. They stood not only in the yard but at irregular intervals along the boundaries of the land, inappro-priately among fruit trees, desolately amid bracken, irrelevantly in swamp. A sound of furious hammering, punctuated by the unwearying animal noises, indicated that more screens were still being built.
But what lent the place its unearthly look was the lighting.
The solitary pole supporting the electric light now had five companions: one by the gate, one by the pond, one behind the house, one outside the engine house, one down by the pig sties.
Their hideous yellow glare reduced the scene to the sort of unlikely picture that might be found and puzzled over in the eternal midnight of an Egyptian tomb.
Gregory was too wise to try and enter by the gate. He hitched Daisy to the low branches of a thorn tree and set off over waste land, entering Grendon’s property by the South Meadow. As he walked stealthily towards the distant outhouses, he could see how the farm land differed from the territory about it. The corn was already so high it seemed in the dark almost to threaten by its ceaseless whisper of movement.