"Thank you," said Conrad. "Good afternoon."
He went forth to seek the Esselfield Road incensed as well as disappointed now. 'Seventy-seven? Who was this blank-faced dolt to jeer at 'seventy-seven? Sweetbay had been an infinitely more attractive place in 'seventy-seven than it was to-day. The High Street bored him as he walked. Once it had been stimulating, replete with interest, and now it was unworthy his attention. He looked at it as a young girl looks at a married man. There was a fresh-coloured woman dandling her baby behind the glass door of a baker's shop as he passed, and he recognised with a frown that she had not been born in 'seventy-seven. It was a small matter, but it depressed him more.
The sepulchral window of a monumental mason caught his glance. Overhead was the inscription, "Established 1852." He wavered in his course and entered. The interior was like a premature graveyard, ranged with marble tombstones waiting for allotment, and brittle wreaths lamenting the dissolution of "Beloved" relatives who were still alive. There seemed to him something appropriate in pursuing his investigations among the tombstones. But though the business had been established in 1852, the mason himself proved to be very recent. When he realised that his interlocutor was not there to give an order, the sympathetic droop of his bearing evaporated, and he straightened into a careless soul to whom the mention of 'seventy-seven was almost as disconcerting as it had been to Mr. Stokes.
The Esselfield Road was thick with mud after the heavy rains. His long tramp—for he had learnt that it was necessary to walk—had no enlivening effect on Conrad's mood, nor was the village cheering when he reached it. A few houses were scattered beside a common; some geese waddled around a pond. Beyond an inn, a labourer in his cups shouted a refrain of the London music-halls.
Conrad went into the "bar-parlour" and asked for beer. In the sensitiveness to his years which was being so rapidly developed in him he observed with satisfaction that the untidy proprietress was middle-aged. "Yes, there had been a Dr. Page,". she told him. "Not what you might call a regular doctor—he didn't do nothing. She believed he had moved into Sweetbay, so as to be near the sea."
"I understood that he moved here from Sweetbay. An elderly man. He had a family," said Conrad with fatigue.
"There was two young gals," she agreed. "They was always about."
"'About'?" he murmured.
"Picking, and skating, and that. I used to say they was never at 'ome."
"Oho?" said Conrad. And added to himself, "The younger children grown up. Girls of spirit!"—"When did they leave?" he continued.