II

During the next few days several processes, which afterwards came to seem important, were steadily going on.

The fog, which covered Edgestow as well as Belbury, continued and grew denser. At Edgestow one regarded it as “coming up from the river,” but in reality it lay all over the heart of England. It blanketed the whole town so that walls dripped and you could write your name in the dampness on tables and men worked by artificial light at midday. The workings, where Bragdon Wood had been, ceased to offend conservative eyes and became mere clangings, thuddings, hootings, shouts, curses, and metallic screams in an invisible world.

Some felt glad that the obscenity should thus be covered, for all beyond the Wynd was now an abomination. The grip of the N.I.C.E. on Edgestow was tightening. The river itself, which had once been brownish-green and amber and smooth-skinned silver, tugging at the reeds and playing with the red roots, now flowed opaque, thick with mud, sailed on by endless fleets of empty tins, sheets of paper, cigarette ends, and fragments of wood, sometimes varied by rainbow patches of oil. Then the invasion actually crossed it. The Institute had bought the land up to the left or eastern bank. But now Busby was summoned to meet Feverstone and a Professor Frost as the representatives of the N.I.C.E . . . and learned for the first time that the Wynd itself was to be diverted: there was to be no river in Edgestow. This was still strictly confidential, but the Institute had already powers to force it. This being so, a new adjustment of boundaries between it and the College was clearly needed. Busby’s jaw fell when he realised that the Institute wanted to come right up to the College walls. He refused, of course. And it was then that he first heard a hint of requisitioning. The College could sell to-day and the Institute offered a good price: if they did not, compulsion and a merely nominal compensation awaited them. Relations between Feverstone and the Bursar deteriorated during this interview. An extraordinary College meeting had to be summoned, and Busby had to put the best face he could on things to his colleagues. He was almost physically shocked by the storm of hatred which met him. In vain did he point out that those who were now abusing him had themselves voted for the sale of the Wood: but equally in vain did they abuse him. The College was caught in the net of necessity. They sold the little strip on their side of the Wynd which meant so much. It was no more than a terrace between the Eastern walls and the water. Twenty-four hours later the N.I.C.E. boarded over the doomed Wynd and converted the terrace into a dump. All day long workmen were trampling across the planks with heavy loads which they flung down against the very walls of Bracton till the pile had covered the boarded blindness which had once been the Henrietta Maria window and reached almost to the east window of chapel.

In these days many members of the Progressive Element dropped off and joined the opposition. Those who were left were hammered closer together by the unpopularity they had to face. And though the College was thus sharply divided within, yet for the very same reason it also took on a new unity perforce in its relations to the outer world. Bracton as a whole bore the blame for bringing the N.I.C.E. to Edgestow at all. This was unfair, for many high authorities in the University had thoroughly approved Bracton’s action in doing so, but now that the result was becoming apparent people refused to remember this. Busby, though he had heard the hint of requisitioning in confidence, lost no time in spreading it through Edgestow common rooms. “It would have done no good if we had refused to sell,” he said. But nobody believed that this was why Bracton had sold, and the unpopularity of that College steadily increased. The undergraduates got wind of it, and stopped attending the lectures of Bracton dons. Busby, and even the wholly innocent warden, were mobbed in the streets.

The Town, which did not usually share the opinions of the University, was also in an unsettled condition. The disturbance in which the Bracton windows had been broken was taken little notice of in the London papers or even in the Edgestow Telegraph. But it was followed by other episodes. There was an indecent assault in one of the mean streets down by the station. There were two “beatings up” in a public-house. There were increasing complaints of threatening and disorderly behaviour on the part of the N.I.C.E. workmen. But these complaints never appeared in the papers. Those who had actually seen ugly incidents were surprised to read in the Telegraph that the new Institute was settling down very comfortably in Edgestow and the most cordial relations developing between it and the natives. Those who had not seen them but only heard of them, finding nothing in the Telegraph, dismissed the stories as rumours or exaggerations. Those who had seen them wrote letters to it, but it did not print their letters.

But if episodes could be doubted, no one could doubt that nearly all the hotels of the town had passed into the hands of the Institute, so that a man could no longer drink with a friend in his accustomed bar; that familiar shops were crowded with strangers who seemed to have plenty of money, and that prices were higher; that there was a queue for every omnibus and a difficulty in getting into every cinema. Quiet houses that had looked out on quiet streets were shaken all day long by heavy and unaccustomed traffic: wherever one went one was jostled by crowds of strangers. To a little midland market town like Edgestow even visitors from the other side of the county had hitherto ranked as aliens: the day-long clamour of Northern, Welsh, and even Irish voices, the shouts, the cat-calls, the songs, the wild faces passing in the fog, were utterly detestable. “There’s going to be trouble here “was the comment of many a citizen: and in a few days, “You’d think they wanted trouble.” It is not recorded who first said, “We need more police.” And then at last the Edgestow Telegraph took notice. A shy little article-a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand-appeared suggesting that the local police were quite incapable of dealing with the new population.

Of all these things Jane took little notice. She was, during these days, merely “hanging on.” Perhaps Mark would summon her to Belbury. Perhaps he would give up the whole Belbury scheme and come home-his letters were vague and unsatisfactory. Perhaps she would go out to St. Anne’s and see the Dennistons. The dreams continued. But Mr. Denniston had been right; it was better when one had given in to regarding them as “news.” If it had not been she could hardly have endured her nights. There was one recurrent dream in which nothing exactly happened. She seemed indeed to be lying in her own bed. But there was someone beside the bed-someone who had apparently drawn a chair up to the bedside and then sat down to watch. He had a note-book in which he occasionally made an entry. Otherwise he sat perfectly still and patiently attentive-like a doctor. She knew his face already, and came to know it infinitely well: the pince-nez, the well-chiselled, rather white features, and the little pointed beard. And presumably-if he could see her he must by now know hers equally well: it was certainly herself whom he appeared to be studying. Jane did not write about this to the Dennistons the first time it occurred. Even after the second she delayed until it was too late to post the letter that day. She had a sort of hope that the longer she kept silent the more likely they would be to come in and see her again. She wanted comfort, but she wanted it, if possible, without going out to St. Anne’s without meeting this Fisher-King man and getting drawn into his orbit.

Mark meanwhile was working at the rehabilitation of Alcasan. He had never seen a police dossier before and found it difficult to understand. In spite of his efforts to conceal his ignorance the Fairy soon discovered it. “I’ll put you onto the Captain,” she said. “He’ll show you the ropes.” That was how Mark came to spend most of his working hours with her second in command, Captain O’Hara, a big white-haired man with a handsome face, talking in what English people called a Southern brogue and Irish people “a Dublin accent you could cut with a knife.” He claimed to be of ancient family and had a seat at Castlemortle. Mark did not really understand his explanations of the dossier, the Q Register, the Sliding File system, and what the Captain called “weeding.” But he was ashamed to confess this and so it came about that the whole selection of facts really remained in O’Hara’s hands and Mark found himself working merely as a writer. He did his best to conceal this from O’Hara and to make it appear that they were really working together: this naturally made it impossible for him to repeat his original protests against being treated as a mere journalist. He had, indeed, a taking style (which had helped his academic career much more than he would have liked to acknowledge) and his journalism was a success. His articles and letters about Alcasan appeared in papers where he would never have had the entree over his own signature: papers read by millions. He could not help feeling a little thrill of pleasurable excitement.