I had slept but two nights at King's Cobb, when I saw distinctly that the
novel with which I was to revolutionize society and my own fortunes, and
with the purpose of writing which in an unvexed seclusion I had buried
myself in this expedient hamlet on the South Coast, was withered in the
bud beyond redemption. To this lamentable canker of a seedling hope the
eternal harmony of the sea was a principal contributor; but Miss Whiffle
confirmed the blight. I had fled from the jangle of a city, and the
worries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities; and the result
was--
I had rooms on the Parade--a suggestive mouthful. But then the Parade is
such a modest little affair. The town itself is flung down a steep hill,
at the mouth of a verdurous gorge; and lies pitched so far as the very
waterside, a picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edges
bristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crooked
breakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to its
harbourage--an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For the
attractions of King's Cobb are--comparatively--limited, and its nearest
station is a full six miles distant along a switchback road.
Possibly this last fact may have militated against the popularity of
King's Cobb as a holiday resort. If so, all the better; and may
enterprise for ever languish in the matter. For vulgarity can claim
no commoner purpose with fashion than is shown in that destruction of
ancient landmarks and double gilding of new which follows the "opening
out" of some unsophisticated colony of simple souls.
King's Cobb, if "remote and unfriended," is neither "melancholy" nor
"slow"; but it is small, and all its fine little history--for it has had
a stirring one--has ruffled itself out on a liliputian platform.
Than this, its insignificance, I desired nothing better. I wished to feel
the comparative importance of the individual, which one cannot do in
crowded colonies. I coveted surroundings that should be primitive--an
atmosphere in which my thoughts could speak to me coherent. I would be
as one in a cave, looking forth on sea, and sky, and the buoyant glory of
Nature; unvexed of conventions; untrammelled by social observances;
building up my enchanted palace of the imagination against such a
background as only the unsullied majesty of sky and ocean could present.
For the result was to crown with my name an epoch in literature; and
hither in future ages should the pilgrim stand at gaze, murmuring to
himself, 'And here he wrote it!'
I laid my head on my pillow, that first night of my stay, with a brimming
brain and a heart of high resolve. The two little windows, under a
thatched roof, of my sleeping place (_that_ lay over my sitting-room, and
both looked oceanwards) were open to the inpour of sweet hot air; and
only the regular wash of the sea below broke the close stillness of the
night. I say this was all; and, with the memory upon me, I could easily,
at any time, break the second commandment.
I had thought myself fortunate in my lodgings. They were in a most
charming old-world cottage--as I have said on the Parade--and at high
tide I could have thrown a biscuit into the sea with merely a lazy jerk.
My sitting-room put forth a semi-circular window--like a lighthouse
lantern--upon the very pathway, and it had been soothing during the
afternoon to look from out this upon the little world of sea and sky and
striding cliff that was temporarily mine. From the Parade four feet of
stone wall dipped to a second narrow terrace, and this, in its turn, was
but a step above a slope of shingle that ran down to the water.
Veritably had I pitched my tent on the wide littoral of rest. So I
thought with a smile, as I composed myself for slumber.
I slept, and I woke, and I lay awake for hours. Every vext problem of my
life and of the hereafter presented itself to me, and had to be argued
out and puzzled over with maddening reiteration. The reason for this was
evident and flagrant. It had woven itself into the tissue of my brief
unconsciousness, and was now recognised as, ineradicably, part of myself.
The tide was incoming, that was all, and the waves currycombed the beach
with a swishing monotony that would have dehumanized an ostler.
This rings like the undue inflation of a little theme. I ask no pity for
it, nor do I make apology for my weakness. Men there may be, no doubt,
to whom the unceasing recurrent thump and scream of a coasting tide on
shingle speaks, even in sleep, of the bountiful rhythm of Nature. I am
not one of them--at least, since I visited King's Cobb. The noise of the
waters got into my brain and stayed there. It turned everything else
out--sleep, thought, faith, hope, and charity. From that first awakening
my skull was a mere globe of stagnant fluid, for any disease germs that
listed to propagate in.
Perhaps I was too near the coast-line. The highest appreciations of
Nature's thunderous forces are conceived, I believe, in the muffled
seclusion of the study. I had heard of still-rooms. I did not quite know
what they were; but they seemed to me an indispensable part of seaside
lodgings, and for the rest of that night I ardently and almost tearfully
longed to be in one.
I came down in the morning jaded and utterly unrefreshed. It was patent
that I was in no state to so much as outline the preliminaries of my
great undertaking. "Use shall accustom me," I groaned. "I shall scarcely
notice it to-night."
And it was at this point that Miss Whiffle walked like a banshee into the
disturbed chambers of my life, and completed my demoralization.
I must premise that I am an exquisitively nervous man--one who would
accept almost ridiculous impositions if the alternative were a "scene."
Strangers, I fancy, are quick to detect the signs of this weakness in me;
but none before had ever ventured to take such outrageous advantage of
it as did Miss Whiffle, with the completest success.
This lady had secured me for a month. My rights extended over the
lantern-windowed sitting-room and the bedroom above it. They were to
include, moreover, board of a select quality.
"Select" represented Miss Whiffle's brazen mean of morality; and, indeed,
it is an elastic and accommodating word. One, for instance, may select an
aged gander for its wisdom, knowing that the youthful gosling is
proverbially "green." Miss Whiffle selected the aged gander for me, and I
gnawed its sinewy limbs without a protest. On a similar principle she
appeared to ransack the town shops for prehistoric joints (the locality
was rich in fossils), and vegetables that, like eggs, only grew harder
the more they were boiled.
I submitted, of course; and should have done no less by a landlady not so
obstreperously constituted. But this terrible person gauged and took me
in hand from the very morning following my arrival.
She came to receive my _orders_ after breakfast (tepid chicory and an
omelette like a fragment of scorched blanket) with her head wrapped up in
a towel. Thus habited she had the effrontery to trust the meal had been
to my liking. I gave myself away at once by weakly answering, "Oh,
certainly!"
"As to dinner, sir," she said faintly, "it is agreed, no kitching fire in
the hevening. That is understood."