SEACOMBE,
_July-August_.
1
After a hundred miles of dusty road, it is good to snuff the delicately
salted air. The bight of the Exe, where we crossed it by steam launch,
was only a make-believe for the sea. How wonderfully the slight
rippling murmur of a calm sea flows into, and takes possession of one's
mind.
I stood by the shore and watched the boats, and was very peaceful. Then
I went down the Gut to the house that I guessed was Anthony Widger's.
Many children watched me with their eyes opened wide at my knapsack. A
pleasant looking old woman--short, stout, charwoman-shaped--came out of
the passage just as I raised my hand to knock the open door. "Are you
Mrs Widger?" said I.
"Lor' bless 'ee! I ben't Mrs Widger. Here, Annie! Here's a gen'leman to
see 'ee."
Mrs Widger, the afternoon Mrs Widger, is a quite slim woman
who--strangely enough for a working man's wife--looks a good deal
younger than she is. She has rather beautiful light brown hair and
dresses tastefully. I am afraid she will not feel complimented if the
old woman tells her of my mistake.
Her manner of receiving me indicated plainly a suspended judgment,
inclined perhaps towards the favourable. I was shown my room, a little
long back room, with ragged wall-paper, and almost filled up by a huge,
very flat, squashy bed. After a wash-over (I did not ask for a bath for
fear of exposing the lack of one) I went down to tea.
Bread, jam and cream were put before me, together with fairly good hot
tea from a blue, smoky, enamelled tin teapot which holds any quantity
up to a couple of quarts. Mrs Widger turned two guernseys, a hat,
several odd socks, and a boot out of a great chintz-covered chair which
lacked one of its arms. To my _made_ conversation she replied shortly:
"Dear me!" "My!" "Did you ever...." She was taking stock of me.
Presently she went to a cupboard, which is also the coal-hole, and
brought out an immense frying-pan, black both inside and out. She
heated it till the fat ran; wiped out it with a newspaper; then placed
in it three split mackerel. "For Tony's tea," she explained. "He's to
sea now with two gen'lemen, but I 'spect he'll be in house sune."