The Poet and the Cheese

There is something creepy in the flat Eastern Counties; a brush of the
white feather. There is a stillness, which is rather of the mind than of
the bodily senses. Rapid changes and sudden revelations of scenery, even
when they are soundless, have something in them analogous to a movement of
music, to a crash or a cry. Mountain hamlets spring out on us with a
shout like mountain brigands. Comfortable valleys accept us with open
arms and warm words, like comfortable innkeepers. But travelling in the
great level lands has a curiously still and lonely quality; lonely even
when there are plenty of people on the road and in the market-place.
One's voice seems to break an almost elvish silence, and something
unreasonably weird in the phrase of the nursery tales, "And he went a
little farther and came to another place," comes back into the mind.

In some such mood I came along a lean, pale road south of the fens, and
found myself in a large, quiet, and seemingly forgotten village. It was
one of those places that instantly produce a frame of mind which, it may
be, one afterwards decks out with unreal details. I dare say that grass
did not really grow in the streets, but I came away with a curious
impression that it did. I dare say the marketplace was not literally
lonely and without sign of life, but it left the vague impression of being
so. The place was large and even loose in design, yet it had the air of
something hidden away and always overlooked. It seemed shy, like a big
yokel; the low roofs seemed to be ducking behind the hedges and railings;
and the chimneys holding their breath. I came into it in that dead hour
of the afternoon which is neither after lunch nor before tea, nor anything
else even on a half-holiday; and I had a fantastic feeling that I had
strayed into a lost and extra hour that is not numbered in the twenty-four.

I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as
private as a private house. Those who talk of "public-houses" as if they
were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a
place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate
cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable
Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original
Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong,
and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors
stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind
them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet,
with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would
not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat;