BOOK II
X
While Faversham was driving back to Threlfall, his mind possessed by a
tumult of projects and images--which was a painful tumult, because
his physical strength was not yet equal to coping with it--a scene was
passing in a bare cottage beside the Ulls-water road, whence in due time
one of those events was to arise which we call sudden or startling only
because we are ignorant of the slow [Greek: ananke ] which has produced
them.
An elderly man had just entered the cottage after his day's work. He was
evidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a table
which held tea things and some bread and butter. His wife could be heard
moving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room.
The man sat motionless, his hands hanging over his knees, his head bent.
He seemed to be watching the motes dancing in a shaft of dusty sunlight
that had found its way into the darkened room. For the western sun was
blazing on the front, the blinds were down, and the little room was like
an oven. The cottage was a new one and stood in a bare plot of garden,
unshaded and unsheltered, on a stretch of road which crossed the open
fell. It was a labourer's cottage, but the furniture of the living-room
was superior in quality to that commonly found in the cottages of the
neighbourhood. A piano was crowded into one corner, and a sideboard, too
large for the room, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace.
The man sitting in the chair also was clearly not an ordinary labourer.
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