“A fine setting for a mystery, Mr. Parslewe,” I answered.
“I dare say you’re right,” he said with a laugh. “But I think we shall have done with mysteries to-morrow, my lad. And what mystery there is has been none of my making! Well, I’m off to my bed. Good night.”
With that, and a pleasant nod, he went unconcernedly off, and presently I followed his example, more mystified than ever by his last remark. For if he had not made all this mystery, who had?
Whether the mystery was going to be done with next day or not, its atmosphere was still thick upon us next morning. At ten o’clock, Parslewe, who invariably made all his arrangements without consulting anybody who was affected by them, marshalled us into a carriage and pair at the door of the Crown and gave some instructions, aside, to the coachman. We drove off into a singularly picturesque and well-wooded country. Madrasia, fresh from the almost treeless slopes of the Cheviots, was immediately in raptures with it. Already the trees were in leaf, the wide-spreading meadows were covered with fresh green, and in the vistas of woodland through which we passed daffodils and wood anemones made splashes of colour against the bursting verdure. New to her, too, were the quaint thatched cottages, many of them half-timbered, and all ancient, by the roadside.
“It’s like the old England that one sees in pictures!” she exclaimed. “It’s as if we’d gone back!”
“We have gone back,” said Parslewe, with one of his queer, grim looks. “Back to Elizabeth! There’s not much that’s altered hereabouts since Shakespeare’s time—neither houses nor men. And if you’re going to develop a taste for mediævalism, my dear, you’ll soon be satisfied—we’re presently going to set foot in a house that’s as old as they make ’em.”
But before this came about the carriage stopped at a wayside cottage, and Parslewe, without a word to us, got out, knocked at the door, and went in. He remained inside for several minutes; when he emerged again it was in the company of a tall, weather-beaten old man whom, because of his velveteen coat and general appearance, I took to be a gamekeeper. Motioning to the coachman to follow him up the road, Parslewe walked on ahead with his companion, and presently turned into a wayside wood. Coming abreast of the bridle-gate by which they had entered, we saw them in conversation with a third man, also elderly, who was felling trees; for some minutes the three stood talking together.
“What is he after now?” asked Madrasia.
I shook my head—nothing was going to draw me into speculations about Parslewe’s proceedings.
“The best thing at the present juncture,” said I, as oracularly as possible, “is just to let things occur. I don’t know what he’s after! Let him pursue it! We shall find things out as we go on.”