The old familiar landmarks rose up before him, bringing a strange feeling of age to him. So much had happened in the interval that it seemed that year upon year had piled up a wall before him, separating him for evermore from this old world that had been. The ivy still clung to the castellated walls of the Cathedral close; the clock chimed as he went by, just as he had heard it chime in the long days that were gone. The very rooks seemed unchanged as they clamoured huskily in the old beeches.
And yet, with it all, there was something different, and he knew that the difference lay not so much with the place as with himself. His entire perception had altered. He saw things through eyes that had grown older. The High Street, with its brooding air of stillness, that had once seemed so stale and intolerable to him, now appealed to him with its wondrous peace, a magical spot far away from the turmoil of things. There were the same names over the grocers' and the drapers' and the ironmongers' shops, but old Matthew Bethell's quaint bookshop had gone, and in its place there stood a large green, flat-fronted establishment, with an open window stacked high with magazines and newspapers, and a great poster above it, thus:
The Day.
ONE HALFPENNY
HOWARD
SLANDER
CASE.
FULL REPORT.
The sentimental in him winced, but the material business man glowed with pride as he saw the great poster, proclaiming The Day paramount over its rivals. There was always a conflict between the two men that made up that complex personality known as Ferrol. He went to the house where he had once lived; his father was dead now, and as he looked up at the open window and saw a strange woman doing some needle-work, it seemed to him as if the people that were living there had laid sacrilegious hands upon the holy fragrance of the past; as if their prying eyes had peered into all the hidden secrets that belonged to him. He turned away resentfully towards the old inn, the Red Lion, whose proprietor, old Hamblin, remembered him from other days when he revealed himself, and was inclined to be overcome with the importance of the visit, until Ferrol put him at his ease. They chatted together, the old man, with his back to the fireplace, coat-tails lifted from habit, for the grate was empty on this hot day, Ferrol sitting astride a chair, watching the blue stream of smoke that came from Hamblin's lips as he puffed at his long white churchwarden.... Hamblin must have stood like that during all the years that Ferrol had been in London. The only change that came to the people of Easterham was death.