“Here’s t’key,” remarked the man. “And if yü feel like a pipe one o’ these evenin’s, yü might coom down tü t’village. My place is over opposite t’post office. I be t’saddler. Yü’ll see t’name Allbut George over t’shop.”
Antony thanked Mr. Albert George, and then watched the patriotically named gentleman turn his horse, and drive off in the direction of the coast. When the trap had vanished from sight, he heaved a sigh of relief.
“Josephus,” he remarked, “it will need careful practice and wary walking, but I fancy I did pretty well.” And then he opened the garden gate.
He walked up the little path, and fitted the key with which Allbut George had provided him, into the lock. He turned it, and pushed open the door. It gave at once into a small but cheerful room, brick-floored, with a big fireplace at one side. An oak settle stood by the fireplace; a low seat, covered with a somewhat faded dimity, was before the window; there was a basket-chair, two wooden chairs, a round table, a dresser with some highly coloured earthenware crockery on it, a corner cupboard, and a grandfather’s clock. There was a door behind the settle to the right of the fireplace, and, in the opposite corner, stairs leading to a room or rooms above.
Antony put his bag down on the table and went to investigate the door. It led into a tiny scullery or kitchen, provided solely with a small range, a deal table, a chair, a sink, and a pump. In one corner was a box containing some pieces of wood. In another corner was a galvanized bucket, a broom, and a scrubbing-brush. He glanced around, then came back into the sitting-room, and made his way to the stairs.
They led direct into a bedroom, a place furnished with a camp bed covered with a red and brown striped blanket; a small, somewhat rickety oak chest of drawers, a rush-bottomed chair, a small table, a corner washstand, and a curtain, which hid pegs driven into the wall. A door led into a small inner room over the kitchen scullery. Antony opened the door. The room was empty. Widow Jenkins had had no use for it, it would appear. Or, so Antony suddenly thought, perhaps all Widow Jenkins’s furniture had been removed, and what at present occupied the place had been put there solely on his account.
He crossed to the window, and pushed it back. It looked on to a tiny vegetable garden, in much the same state of neglect as the front garden, and was separated from a field yellow with buttercups by a low hawthorn hedge. Beyond the field was a tiny brook; and, beyond that again, a copse. There was not a sound to break the silence, save the dripping of the rain from the roof of the cottage, and, in the distance, the low sighing note of the sea. The silence was emphasized by the fact that for the last week Antony had had the hum of traffic in his ears, and had but this moment come from the noise of trains and the rattle of a shaky dog-cart.
He still leaned there looking out. It was even more silent than the veldt. There were no little strange animal noises to break the silence. Nothing but that drip, drip of the rain, and that soft distant sighing of the sea.
A curious sense of loneliness fell upon him, a loneliness altogether at variance with the loneliness of the veldt. He could not have defined wherein the difference lay, yet he was well aware that there was a difference. It was one of those subtle differences, exceedingly apparent to the inner consciousness, yet entirely impossible to translate into terms of speech. The nearest approach he could get to anything like a definition of it, was that it was less big, but more definitely poignant. Beyond that he did not, or could not, go. For some five minutes or so he leant at the little casement window, gazing at the gold of the buttercups seen through a blurred mist of rain. Then he pulled the window to, and came down into the parlour.
The hands of the grandfather’s clock pointed to ten minutes to five. Antony, remembering the box of wood in the scullery, bethought himself of a cup of tea. His bag contained all the requirements. Long practice had taught him to provide himself with necessities, and also, on occasions, to substitute lemon for milk, as a complement to tea.