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Updated: May 28, 2025
That was what we and a thousand million others were discussing. . . . It chances that this last meeting with Nettie is inseparably associated I don't know why with the landlady of the Menton inn. The Menton inn was one of the rare pleasant corners of the old order; it was an inn of an unusual prosperity, much frequented by visitors from Shaphambury, and given to the serving of lunches and teas.
I drew a stump of pencil from my waistcoat pocket, turned a little away from him and wrote "Shaphambury" very quickly on my frayed and rather grimy shirt cuff. "Well," said I, with an air of having done nothing remarkable. I turned to him with some unimportant observation I have forgotten what. I never finished whatever vague remark I commenced.
It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, either in Norfolk or Suffolk. "Why!" cried I and stopped. What was the good of telling him? Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost fearfully, into my face. "You you haven't got it?" he said. Shaphambury I should remember that. "You don't think you got it?" he said. I handed the envelope back to him.
I invented the following story. I happened to be taking a holiday in Shaphambury, and I was making use of the opportunity to seek the owner of a valuable feather boa, which had been left behind in the hotel of my uncle at Wyvern by a young lady, traveling with a young gentleman no doubt a youthful married couple. They had reached Shaphambury somewhen on Thursday.
It occurred to me almost at once that, in the event of a prompt pursuit, there would be a great advantage in not taking a train from Clayton; that, indeed, to have done so would have been an error from which only luck had saved me. As it was, I had already been very indiscreet in my inquiries about Shaphambury; for once on the scent the clerk could not fail to remember me.
Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember whether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The hesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear in my mind. At last I grew weary.
I read myself into a fever of warlike emotions. Not only did I forget the meteor, but for a time I forgot even the purpose that took me on to the railway station, bought my ticket, and was now carrying me onward to Shaphambury. So the hot day came to its own again, and people forgot the night.
Here what they call a cliff was a crumbling bank of whitey-brown earth not fifty feet high. So soon as I arrived I made a systematic exploration of Shaphambury. To this day I retain the clearest memories of the plan I shaped out then, and how my inquiries were incommoded by the overpowering desire of every one to talk of the chances of a German raid, before the Channel Fleet got round to us.
My train from Wyvern to Shaphambury that morning was a whole hour late; they said it was on account of the movement of troops to meet a possible raid from the Elbe. Section 2 Shaphambury seemed an odd place to me even then. But something was quickening in me at that time to feel the oddness of many accepted things. Now in the retrospect I see it as intensely queer.
Then came an idea that I was giving too many facts about myself to one man, and I came back to Clayton after all. I forget how much money I got, but I remember that it was rather less than the sum I had made out to be the single fare to Shaphambury.
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