uring for me the
isolation of the place. Clayton appeared to be two railway platforms
and a row of elms across an empty road. After the last rumble of the
train, which had the note of a distant cry of derision, there closed in
the quiet of a place where affairs had not even begun. It was raining,
there was a little luggage, I did not know the distance to the village,
and the porter had disappeared. A defective gutter-spout overhead was
the leaking conduit for all the sounds and movement of the countryside.

Then I saw a boy humped into the shelter of a shrub which leaned over
the station fence. He was reading. Before him was a hand-cart lettered
"Humphrey Monk, Grocer and General Dealer, Clayton." The boy wore
spectacles which, when he looked at me, magnified his eyes so that the
lad seemed a luminous and disembodied stare. I saw only the projection
of his enlarged gaze. He promised to take my luggage to Clayton. I
walked through three miles of steady rain to the village, by a stretch
of marshland so hushed by the nearness of the draining sky that the
land might have been what it seemed at a little distance: merely a
faint presentment of fields solvent in the wet. Its green melted into
the outer grey at a short distance where rows of elms were smeared.
There was nothing beyond.

This old village of Clayton is five miles inland from Clayton-on-Sea,
that new and popular resort hardened with asphalt and concrete, to
which city folk retire for a change in the summer. During the winter
months many of the shops of the big town are closed till summer brings
the holiday-makers again. The porticoes of the abandoned premises fill
with street litter, old paper, and straws. The easterly winds cut the
life out of the streets, the long ranks of automatic machines look out
across the empty parade, and rust, and the lines of the pier-deck
advance desolately far into the wind and grey sea, straight and
uninterrupted. It is more than barren then, Clayton-on-Sea, for man has
been there, builded busily and even ornately, loaded the town with
structures for even his minor whims in idleness; and forsaken it all.
So it will look on the Last Day. The advertisements clamour pills and
hair-dye to a town which seems as if the Judgment Day has passed and
left the husk of life. So I was driven to the original Clayton, the
place which gave the name, the little inland village that did, when I
found it, show some signs of welcome life. It was a clump