of white
cottages in a vague cloud of trees. It had some chimneys smoking, there
was a man several fields away, and a dog sitting in a porch barked at
me. Here was a little of the warmth of human contiguity.

When night came, and the village was but a few chance and unrelated
lights, there was the choice between my bedroom and the taproom of the
inn where I lodged. In the bedroom, crowning a chest of drawers, was a
large Bible, and on the wall just above was a glass case of shabby
sea-birds, their eyes so placed that they appeared to be looking up
from Holy Writ with a look of such fatuous rapture that one's idea of
immortality became associated with bodies dusty, stuffed, and wired.
(Oh, the wind and the rain!) Yet there was left the bar-parlour; and
there, usually, was a dim lamp showing but a table with assorted empty
mugs, a bar with bottles and a mirror, but nobody to serve, and a
picture of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes.

There was but one other light in Clayton which showed sanctuary after
dark for the stranger. It was in Mr. Monk's shop. His shop at least had
its strange interests in its revelation of the diverse needs of
civilized homes, for Mr. Monk sold everything likely to be wanted
urgently enough by his neighbours to make a journey to greater Clayton
prohibitive. In one corner of his shop a young lady was caged, for it
was also the post office. The interior of the store was confused with
boxes, barrels, bags, and barricades of smaller tins and jars, with
alleys for sidelong progress between them. I do not think any order
ever embarrassed Mr. Monk. Without hesitation he would turn, sure of
his intricate world, from babies' dummies to kerosene. There were cards
hanging from the rafters bearing briar pipes, bottles of lotion for the
hair of schoolchildren, samples of sauce, and stationery.

His shop had its own native smell. It was of coffee, spices, rock-oil,
cheese, bundles of wood, biscuits, and jute bags, and yet was none of
these things, for their separate flavours were so blended by old
association that they made one indivisible smell, peculiar, but not
unpleasant, when you were used to it. I found Mr. Monk's barrel of soda
quite a cherishable seat on a dull night, for the grocer's lamp was
then the centre of a very dark world. Around it and beyond was only the
blackness and silence of vacuity. And the grocer himself, if not busy,
would give me his casual and valuable advice on the minor fra