As she was a handsome young woman,
with a clear, pleasant voice, I was glad to have her sit there
and talk to me while I refreshed myself. Besides, I was in
search of information and got it from her during our talk. My
object in going to the village was to see a woman who, I had
been told, was living there. I now heard that her cottage was
close by, but unfortunately, while anxious to see her, I had
no excuse for calling.
"Do you think," said I to my young hostess, "that it would do
to tell her that I had heard something of her strange history
and misfortunes, and wished to offer her a little help? Is
she very poor?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "Please do not offer her money, if you
see her. She would be offended. There is no one in this
village who would take a shilling as a gift from a stranger.
We all have enough; there is not a poor person among us."
"What a happy village!" I exclaimed. "Perhaps you are all
total abstainers."
She laughed, and said that they all brewed their own beer
- there was not a total abstainer among them. Every cottager
made from fifty to eighty gallons, or more, and they drank
beer every day, but very moderately, while it lasted. They
were all very sober; their children would have to go to some
neighbouring village to see a tipsy man.
I remarked that at the next village, which had three
public-houses, there were a good marry persons so poor that
they would gladly at any time take a shilling from any one.
It was the same everywhere in the district, she said, except
in that village which had no public-house. Not only were they
better off, and independent of blanket societies and charity
in all forms, but they were infinitely happier. And after the
day's work the men came home to spend the evening with their
wives and children.
At this stage I was surprised by a sudden burst of passion on
her part. She stood up, her face flushing red, and solemnly
declared that if ever a public-house was opened in that
village, and if the men took to spending their evenings in it,
her husband with them, she would not endure such a condition
of things - she wondered that so many women endured it - but
would take her little ones and go away to earn her own living
under some other roof!
Chapter Five: Wind, Wave, and Spirit
The rambles I have described were mostly inland: when by
chance they took us down to the sea our impressions and
adventures appeared less interesting. Looking back on the
holiday, it would seem to us a somewhat vacant time compared
to one spent in wandering from village to village. I mean if
we do not take into account that first impression which the
sea invariably makes on us on returning to it after a long
absence - the shock of recognition and wonder and joy as if we
had been suffering from loss of memory and it had now suddenly
come back to us. That brief moving experience over, there is
little the sea can give us to compare with the land. How
could it be otherwise in our case, seeing that we were by it
in a crowd, our movements and way of life regulated for us in
places which appear like overgrown and ill-organized
convalescent homes? There was always a secret intense dislike
of all parasitic and holiday places, an uncomfortable feeling
which made the pleasure seem poor and the remembrance of days
so spent hardly worth dwelling on. And as we are able to keep
in or throw out of our minds whatever we please, being
autocrats in our own little kingdom, I elected to cast away
most of the memories of these comparatively insipid holidays.
But not all, and of those I retain I will describe at least
two, one in the present chapter on the East Anglian coast, the
other later on.
It was cold, though the month was August; it blew and the sky
was grey and rain beginning to fall when we came down about
noon to a small town on the Norfolk coast, where we hoped to
find lodging and such comforts as could be purchased out of a
slender purse. It was a small modern pleasure town of an
almost startling appearance owing to the material used in
building its straight rows of cottages and its ugly square
houses and villas. This was an orange-brown stone found in
the neighbourhood, the roofs being all of hard, black slate.
I had never seen houses of such a colour, it was stronger,
more glaring and aggressive than the reddest brick, and there
was not a green thing to partially screen or soften it, nor
did the darkness of the wet weather have any mitigating effect
on it. The town was built on high ground, with an open grassy
space before it sloping down to the cliff in which steps had
been cut to give access to the beach, and beyond the cliff we
caught sight of the grey, desolate, wind-vexed sea. But the
rain was coming down more and more heavily, turning the
streets into torrents, so that we began to envy those who had
found a shelter even in so ugly a place. No one would take us
in. House after house, street after street, we tried, and at
every door with "Apartments to Let" over it where we knocked
the same hateful landlady-face appeared with the same
triumphant gleam in the fish-eyes and the same smile on the
mouth that opened to tell us delightedly that she and the town
were "full up"; that never had there been known such a rush of
visitors; applicants were being turned away every hour from
every door!
