Chapter Four.
Ashcroft.
Some twenty miles away from Rapley, in a less flat and dull and more richly wooded landscape, was the little village of Ashcroft, where Mr Whittaker’s cousin, Charles Warren, was head keeper to Mr Cunningham, of Ashcroft Hall.
The keeper’s lodge was a large, substantial cottage, with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls, standing all alone in a wide clearing in the midst of the woods that surrounded the Hall. It was nearly a mile from the great house, and had no other cottages very near it, being situated in what was sometimes grandly called “the Forest”—a piece of unenclosed woodland, where the great ash-trees that gave their name to the place grew up, tall and magnificent, with hardly any copse or brushwood at their feet—only ferns, brambles, and short green turf! Right out on this turf the keeper’s cottage lay, with never a bit of garden ground about it, the idea being that, as the rabbits and hares could not be kept out of the way of temptation, temptation had better be kept out of the way of the rabbits and hares.
There were no flowers, except in the sitting-room window, but there were tribes of young live things instead—broods of little pheasants, rare varieties of game and poultry, and puppies of different kinds under training. The barking, twittering, and active movements of all these little creatures made the place cheerful, and took off from the lonely solemnity of the great woodland glades, stretching out from the clearing as far as eye could reach.
It was a very beautiful place, but “it weren’t over populated,” as Mrs Stroud remarked one fine July evening, as she sat at the door looking out at the wood, having come to spend a couple of nights with her cousins.
“We don’t find it lonesome,” said Mrs Warren. “It’s not above half a mile down that path to the village, and there’s a good many of us scattered about in the lodges and gardens to make company for each other.”
Mrs Warren was a pleasant-looking woman, well spoken, with a refined accent and manner, being indeed the daughter of a former gardener at Ashcroft Hall.
“Well,” said Mrs Stroud, “there’s something about them glades as I should find depressing. With a street, if you don’t see the end of it, at least you know there’s fellow-creatures there, if you did see it; but there’s no saying what may be down among those green alleys. To say nothing that one does associate overhanging trees with damp.”
“Well, we have to keep good fires, but, you see, there’s plenty of fuel close by. And how did you leave your brother and his young family? I’ve often thought I’d like to renew the acquaintance.”