LITMIR.BIZ

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at all. Neighbours, I think, sir? For long?"

      "No; it's a very temporary pleasure of mine," said Conrad.

      "Congratulate you," said the little man. "If your friend was a doctor, probably knew better than to stop. Much misled myself. Recommended here for my health. Most in-ju-rious! Damp, sir, Sweetbay is damp. They call it a 'humid atmosphere'; 'humid atmosphere' be damned, sir! Take your clothes off the peg in the morning and wring 'em out. That's not a humid atmosphere—it's a death-trap."

      "You astonish me," said Conrad. "I understood the climate was so salubrious that the inhabitants would all live to be a hundred if they didn't die of the dulness young." He lifted his hat. "I am obliged."

      "Pleasure," said the neighbour. "Er—hope we shall—er, er——"

      "I hope so too," smiled Conrad. "Er—no doubt."

      "'Morning," said the gentleman, saluting with his crop.

      It was discomfiting to find the occupant of Mary's former home so completely ignorant of Mary. Such ignorance, there, on the very threshold, in view of the sun shutters that had framed her face, seemed rather callous of him. As Conrad watched him swagger up the lane, he resented the usurper's privilege to stretch his gaitered legs on the hearth to whose history he was so utterly indifferent.

      Somehow the drawing-room looked emptier still to Conrad for the colloquy, when he went indoors. In the violent disassociation of the next house from Mary Page, this one seemed suddenly foreign to him; suddenly he felt that he had committed a fatuous and a mournful act in taking it. Sweetbay had meant to him four persons, and of these, three had fled, and the fourth was lost. Why should he stay here? He thought vaguely of a little dinner at "Odd-and-even's," and a stall at the Alhambra. He nearly stretched his arm for the time-table—and all the while the melancholy that oppressed him urged him to remain and find Mary. His mind demanded her more insistently than before. It was no longer a whim: it was a strenuous desire. "After all, it would be a crazy thing, to go to London for pleasure!" he mused. "I'll hear what the agents have to say."

      He strolled to their office after luncheon, and a small boy told him that Mr. Stokes was in. For once Conrad chafed at the local languor. The torpid tradesmen, unconcerned whether he bought or not, had amused him, but the heavy young man who gazed at him with vacant eyes was irritating.

      "Dr. Page?" echoed the young man dully; "Rose Villa? There was a Dr. Page in Esselfield, wasn't there?"

      "I don't know," said Conrad. "Perhaps you can tell me. Where is Esselfield?"

      "That's along the Esselfield Road," said Mr. Stokes with deliberation. "What do you want to know for?"

      "I'm trying to learn the address of a friend who has moved," Conrad explained, labouredly polite.

      "Oh y-e-s." He paused so long that it seemed doubtful if he would speak again. "There was a Dr. Page in Esselfield; I can't say if he's there still."

      "The gentleman I mean was—well, he must be an elderly man," said Conrad. He could not remember in the least how Dr. Page had looked; he wished he knew his Christian name. "An elderly man. He had a family. They used to be at Rose Villa, next door to Mowbray Lodge. I'm talking of years ago—a good many years ago. … Perhaps your partner might be able to assist me?"

      "Major Bompas lives at Rose Villa now," said Mr. Stokes. His tone was a little firmer, the tone of one who says a helpful thing.

      "And he took it of people called 'Greames'; I know all that. Dr. Page had the house before the Greames."

      "Oh," murmured Mr. Stokes, "did he? Y-e-s. … No, I couldn't say, I'm sure. Mr. Greames lived there before Major Bompas. Mr. Greames was there a long while back."

      "Dr. Page lived there in—let me think, where are we now? It must have been in eighteen seventy-seven."

      "Oh Gawd!" said the young man faintly. For the first time an expression humanised his countenance, an expression of dismay tempered with entertainment. It made Conrad feel prehistoric. "Eighteen sev-enty-sev-en? I'm sure I couldn't tell you who lived there then." A snigger escaped him. "There was a Dr. Page at Esselfield," he repeated; "he may have been at Rose Villa first."

      "Is there any place in the town," asked Conrad, with frank disgust, "where it's possible to see an old directory?"

      "I shouldn't think," averred the heavy young man, "that a directory was published in Sweetbay in 'sev-enty-sev-en." There was nearly a twinkle in his eyes.

      "Thank you," said Conrad. "Good afternoon."

      He went forth to seek the Esselfield Road incensed as well as disappointed now. 'Seventy-seven? Who was this blank-faced dolt to jeer at 'seventy-seven? Sweetbay had been an infinitely more attractive place in 'seventy-seven than it was to-day. The High Street bored him as he walked. Once it had been stimulating, replete with interest, and now it was unworthy his attention. He looked at it as a young girl looks at a married man. There was a fresh-coloured woman dandling her baby behind the glass door of a baker's shop as he passed, and he recognised with a frown that she had not been born in 'seventy-seven. It was a small matter, but it depressed him more.

      The sepulchral window of a monumental mason caught his glance. Overhead was the inscription, "Established 1852." He wavered in his course and entered. The interior was like a premature graveyard, ranged with marble tombstones waiting for allotment, and brittle wreaths lamenting the dissolution of "Beloved" relatives who were still alive. There seemed to him something appropriate in pursuing his investigations among the tombstones. But though the business had been established in 1852, the mason himself proved to be very recent. When he realised that his interlocutor was not there to give an order, the sympathetic droop of his bearing evaporated, and he straightened into a careless soul to whom the mention of 'seventy-seven was almost as disconcerting as it had been to Mr. Stokes.

      The Esselfield Road was thick with mud after the heavy rains. His long tramp—for he had learnt that it was necessary to walk—had no enlivening effect on Conrad's mood, nor was the village cheering when he reached it. A few houses were scattered beside a common; some geese waddled around a pond. Beyond an inn, a labourer in his cups shouted a refrain of the London music-halls.

      Conrad went into the "bar-parlour" and asked for beer. In the sensitiveness to his years which was being so rapidly developed in him he observed with satisfaction that the untidy proprietress was middle-aged. "Yes, there had been a Dr. Page,". she told him. "Not what you might call a regular doctor—he didn't do nothing. She believed he had moved into Sweetbay, so as to be near the sea."

      "I understood that he moved here from Sweetbay. An elderly man. He had a family," said Conrad with fatigue.

      "There was two young gals," she agreed. "They was always about."

      "'About'?" he murmured.

      "Picking, and skating, and that. I used to say they was never at 'ome."

      "Oho?" said Conrad. And added to himself, "The younger children grown up. Girls of spirit!"—"When did they leave?" he continued.

      "Oh, it must be a long time," she answered. She turned to a man who had the air of being her husband. "'Ow long is it since that Dr. Page was 'ere, pa?"

      "Dr. Page," drawled the man wonderingly. "Oh, it's a long time ago."

      "Yes," she repeated, "it's a long time ago."

      "But, roughly, how long?" persisted Conrad.

      "W-e-ll, it must be—eight years or more," she said, visibly resenting an occasion to be definite.

      In his soul he groaned; if eight years seemed so remote, what would they think of twenty-five? Again he was bowed beneath the sense of senility. "You don't happen to know where he settled in Sweetbay?" he proceeded.

      She shook her head, she had no idea at all; neither of the pair had any idea, so he finished his ale, and paid for some cigars, which there was of course no need to smoke.

      The lamps were winking through the dusk when he drew

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