“No, there would be none,” opined the porter of whom she inquired. “Dr. Selwyn keeps naught but a little pony-trap, and he's most times using it himself. But there's a 'bus from the Cliff Hotel meets all trains, miss, and”—with pride—“there's a station keb.”
In a few minutes Sara was the proud—and thankful—occupant of the “station keb,” and, after bumping over the cobbles with which the station yard was paved, she found herself being driven in leisurely fashion through the high street of the little town, whilst her driver, sitting sideways on his box, indicated the points of interest with his whip as they went along.
Presently the cab turned out of the town and began the ascent of a steep hill, and as they climbed the winding road, Sara found that she could glimpse the sea, rippling greyly beyond the town, and tufted with little bunches of spume whipped into being by the keen March wind. The town itself spread out before her, an assemblage of red and grey tiled roofs sloping downwards to the curve of the bay, while, on the right, a bold promontory thrust itself into the sea, grimly resisting the perpetual onslaught of the wave. Through the waning light of the winter's afternoon, Sara could discern the outline of a house limned against the dark background of woods that crowned it. Linked to the jutting headland, a long range of sea-washed cliffs stretched as far as the eyes could reach.
“That be Monk's Cliff,” vouchsafed the driver conversationally. “Bit of a lonesome place for folks to choose to live at, ain't it?”
“Who lives there?” asked Sara with interest.
“Gentleman of the name of Trent—queer kind of bloke he must be, too, if all's true they say of 'im. He's lived there a matter of ten years or more—lives by 'imself with just a man and his wife to do for 'im. Far End, they calls the 'ouse.”
“Far End,” repeated Sara. The name conveyed an odd sense of remoteness and inaccessibility. It seemed peculiarly appropriate to a house built thus on the very edge of the mainland.
Her eyes rested musingly on the bleak promontory. It would be a fit abode, she thought, for some recluse, determined to eschew the society of his fellow-men; here he could dwell, solitary and apart, surrounded on three sides by the grey, dividing sea, and protected on the fourth by the steep untempting climb that lay betwixt the town and the lonely house on the cliff.
“'Ere you are, miss. This is Dr. Selwyn's.”
The voice of her Jehu roused her from her reflections to find that the cab had stopped in front of a white-painted wooden gate bearing the legend, “Sunnyside,” painted in black letters across its topmost bar.