Stood
staring at them and had said, We have waited these many years
for you to come and listen to our story and you are come at
last.
Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting
and message, but I failed to understand it, and after standing
there awhile, oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned
aside, and creeping and pushing through a mass and tangle of
vegetation went on my way towards the coast.
Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human
tragedy, came to me only because of another singular
experience I had that day when the afternoon sun had grown
oppressively hot - another mystery of a desolate but not in
this case uninhabited house. The two places somehow became
associated together in my mind.
The place was a little farm-house standing some distance
from the road, in a lonely spot out of sight of any other
habitation, and I thought I would call and ask for a glass
of milk, thinking that if things had a promising look on my
arrival my modest glass of milk would perhaps expand to a
sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and
pleasant one.
The house I found on coming nearer was small and mean-looking
and very old; the farm buildings in a dilapidated condition,
the thatch rotten and riddled with holes in which many
starlings and sparrows had their nests. Gates and fences were
broken down, and the ground was everywhere overgrown with
weeds and encumbered with old broken and rusty implements, and
littered with rubbish. No person could I see about the place,
but knew it was inhabited as there were some fowls walking
about, and some calves shut in a pen in one of the numerous
buildings were dolefully calling - calling to be fed. Seeing a
door half open at one end of the house I went to it and rapped
on the warped paintless wood with my stick, and after about a
minute a young woman came from an inner room and asked me what
I wanted. She was not disturbed or surprised at my sudden
appearance there: her face was impassive, and her eyes when
they met mine appeared to look not at me but at something
distant, and her words were spoken mechanically.
I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and would be glad
of a glass of milk.
Without a word she turned and left me standing there, and
presently returned with a tumbler of milk which she placed on
a deal table standing near me. To my remarks she replied in
monosyllables, and stood impassively, her hands at her side,
her eyes cast down, waiting for me to drink the milk and go.
And when I had finished it and set the glass down and thanked
her, she turned in silence and went back to that inner room
from which she first came.
