In the morning, a slight drizzle was falling. It would behoove you, dear reader, to simply assume precipitation for the duration of my story, but if I slip into a description of the weather once more, I beg your forgiveness. Having fished around the kitchen in the early morning light and found nothing but cobwebs, a walk was no longer a ponderous activity with the benefit of exercise, but a necessity to garner some much-needed supplies.
I stood at the living room windows just before I set out, my hands absentmindedly grasping at the lapels of my coat, staring into white fog. I had hoped the morning would bring with it the views from the cottage that had been promised, but I'd have to wait. I tightened my hood around my head and set out, the rusty key to the cottage grasped firmly in my fist. It was a three-mile walk to Hertledge, where my train had arrived the day before, but having already made the trek up, going down didn't seem like such a chore. I watched my boots carefully as I stepped on the wet, rocky path. The fog was thick enough that even seeing to the toes of my boots was something of a chore. One advantage of a keen focus on the job of walking is that great distances can be covered in the blinking of an eye. It felt as if I had only just left my cottage when the hazy lights of Hertledge came into view. It wasn't much: a few cars on the street, a grocery, a coffee house, and one or two hotels. I ventured first to the coffee house, making good use of the boot scraper just outside the entrance.
“A face I don’t recognize. An unexpected pleasure, even when they aren’t nearly so handsome.”
“Grady. Thomas Grady.”
“And a gentleman to boot. Be careful now, Mr. Liddell is mighty protective of his Anabel.”
“And who could possibly blame him?”
“You must stick around, Mr. Grady. The art of banter being sorely lost on most folks around.”
“If your coffee is half as good as your company, I’ll never leave.”
The proprietor and namesake of the coffee house disappeared with a grin on her face and came back a few moments later with a cup, a saucer, and a carafe.
"It's better," she said with a wink before going off to serve someone else. Anabel did not oversell her coffee, and I made a resolution to make a stop off as a regular part of my morning routine. It was a capital idea. I could take my exercise by walking down to town while enjoying both Anabel's company and her coffee. I could retrieve any necessaries I needed from the grocery while I was in town. It suited me to the bones. A little conversation would be good for me, living up alone in the cottage. Isolation is necessary for good writing, but so is the continued observation of the human spirit. I would be inexorably stuck with my book if I was not able to talk to people. Perhaps that was my problem.
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As I drank my carafe, my thoughts wandered to the book, my eyes unfocused out the greasy front window. It was a gloomy view that I would get to know well. The window was not truly slicked by grease, but only appeared so as the muddy street and the cliffs of my home beyond it offered nothing but shades of misty gray to look at, none of the landscape ever lit by enough sunlight to appear with any clarity. The view always seemed to me like an oil painting, as if a painted representation on canvas could convey the image with more accuracy than even a photograph. My solitary carafe of coffee finished, I paid and thanked Anabel, assuring her I would see her again the next morning. I made my way to the grocery to buy my dinner. I was ready to go home. My typewriter called to me. I was going to get some good work done. I could feel it.
On my way home, even burdened as I was by my groceries, and going uphill as well, I was in a cheery mood. I was sure that my book would lurch with life for the first time in many months. As I neared a rounded top that meant I was a mile or so from home, I stopped to sit for a moment and catch my breath. I happened to see below me, another traveler. It appeared to be a man, wearing a long, blue coat and with a walking stick to help him navigate the treacherous rocks.
“Ahoy there!” I called.
The man was some distance below, but I was not yet good at estimations of the sort. Yet, I saw him look at me. There was no doubt in my mind that he turned, saw me, and made note of it. He did not respond or even deign to wave. He turned and went about his way, ignoring me entirely. What a luxury it must have been, so able to ignore company on such a desolate stretch of rock. I picked up my groceries and finished my walk home, but an unfortunate thing happened.
I could not get any work done. I sat in the high-backed chair, a fire roaring once more, an oil lamp standing near my typewriter on the wicker table. There I perched in front of the round top windows, the fog finally giving way by degrees, the black waters coming into view, the white tapering cutting through the dark water as they crested and crashed on the rocks below. My mind had latched onto a subject as it so often does, but this particular subject was anathema to all progress. It had nothing to do with my book and had only the effect of preventing my book from moving forward. I could not help but think of the lone man in the blue coat. It was not a great mystery, nor was it of any great concern to me personally, but it stuck like a craw in me and I couldn't let it go. His spectre inevitably appeared when my fingers even grazed the tips of the keys. Literary thoughts were immediately dashed away by the sight of his walking stick and solitary gaze. His gaze! He had certainly looked at me, heard my call, given me a once-over and deemed me not worthy of a return call. It didn't matter!
Why should I care what a stranger thought? For all I knew, the man was mute, incapable of answering my call, but that thought was no comfort as it brought out the possibility of a wandering mute and that hardly put my mechanistic mind to bed. It whirred and buzzed uselessly into the evening, the white sheet of paper neatly tucked into the typewriter flapping gently on occasion, never to be stamped with the indelible ink of my once-creative mind. No, the lone walker had stolen all my creative energy for the day and I could not get it back for all I tried.