It was an old square house,deep red brick,with crooked chimneys,and s stone court in front of it.To either side of the court there were barns.Behind the house thick trees,clouded with green,showed.In the middle of the court was a pump,and all about the flagged stones pigeons were delicately walking.As they drove up,the pigeons rose in a wheeling flight against the sky now staining faintly with amber;dogs rushed barking from the barns;a haycart turned the comer,its wheels creaking,and four little children perched high on the top of the hay.Then the hall-door opened,and behold Mrs.Monk,Mr.Monk,and,clustering shyly behind,the little Monks.
In the scene that followed Jeremy was forgotten.He did not know what it was that made him hang behind the others,but he stood beside the wagonette,bent down and released Hamlet,and then waited,hiding under the shadow of the cart.His happiness was almost intolerable;he could not speak,he could not move,and in the heart of his happiness there was a strange unhappiness that he had never known before.The loneliness that he had felt at Liskane Station was intensified,so that he felt like a stranger who was seeing his father,or his mother,or aunt,or sisters for the first time.Everything about him emphasised the loneliness:the slow evening light that was stealing into the sky,the sound of some machine in the farm-house turning with a melancholy rhythmic whine,a voice calling in the fields,the rumble of the sea,the twittering of birds in the garden trees,the bark of a dog far,far away,and,through them all,the sense that the world was sinking down into silence,and that all the sounds were slipping away,like visitors hurrying from the park before the gates are shut;he stood there,listening,caught into a life that was utterly his own and had no share with any other.He looked around and saw that they were all going into the house,that Jim and Mr.Monk were busy with the boxes,and that no one was aware of him.He knew what he wanted.
He slipped across the court,and dropped into the black cavernous hole of the farther barn.At first the darkness stopped him;but he knew his way,found the steps that led up to the loft,and was soon perched high behind a little square window that was now blue and gold against the velvety blackness behind him.This was his favourite spot in all the farm.Here,all the year,they stored the apples,and the smell of the fruit was thick in the air,sweet and strong,clinging about every fibre of the place,so that you could not disturb a strand nor a stone without sending some new drift of the scent up against your nostrils.All the year after his first visit,Jeremy had been longing to smell that smell again,and now he knelt up against the window,drinking it in.With his eyes he searched the horizon.From here you could see the garden with the sun-dial,the fields beyond,the sudden dip with the trees at the edge of it bent crossways by the wind,and there,in such a cup as one's hands might form,just beyond,was the sea.
He stared as though his eyes would start from his head.Behind him was the cloudy smoke of the apple-scent;in front of him the sun was sinking towards the dark elms.Soon the trees would catch the sun and hide it;the galleon cloud that had been over them as they drove was new banked in red and gold across the horizon;birds slowly,lazily fled to their homes.
He heard someone call,"Jeremy!Jeremy!"With a last gaze he saw the blue cup turn to gold,the sun reached the tops of the elms;the fields were lit with the glitter of shining glass,then,even as he watched,they were purple,then grey,then dim like smoke.
Again the voice called "Jeremy!"He slipped from the window,found the little stair,ran across the dusky court and entered the house.