“Who does the place belong to?”
“To a Jew, I think, who lives in Ireland. Years ago, I’ve heard, the place was mortgaged, and the mortgagee foreclosed. But lots of people have rented it since then, and nobody within my recollection has lived there longer than about three years.”
What the young woman told me caused me to jump to the conclusion that the house in question was once the residence of Bartholomew da Schorno, and after finishing my ale I lit a cigarette and sauntered forth to have a look at the place.
I need not tell you how eagerly I walked to the top of the village, but on arrival there I saw no sign of the house in question. I inquired of a lad, who directed me into a farmyard gate, whence I found a short, ill-kept road which ended in a cul-de-sac, leading into a field. On my right was a clump of elms, and hidden among them was the quaint and charmingly old-world Manor House.
First sight of the place was sufficient to tell me that it had been allowed to fall into decay, and certainly it was, even in that summer sunshine, a rather dismal and depressing place of abode.
The old cobbled courtyard was overgrown with moss and weeds, and some of the outbuildings had ugly holes in the roofs. The house itself was long, low, and rambling, of Elizabethan architecture, with old mullioned windows, built entirely of stone, now, however, grey with lichens and green with moss on the parts which the clinging ivy had failed to cover. The outside woodwork, weather-beaten and rotting, had not been painted for a century, while upon one of the high square chimneys stood forth the rusty iron angle of a sundial, from which, however, most of the graven numerals had long ago disappeared.
The high beech hedge which formed one of the boundaries was sufficient proof of the antiquity of the place, but the trees of the broad pleasure grounds, which had no doubt once extended far away down to the river, had been cut down and the land turned into pastures, so that only a small, neglected kitchen garden now remained. The place, even in its present decay, spoke mutely of a departed magnificence. As I stood gazing upon it, I could imagine it as the residence of the lord of the manor in the days when peacocks strutted in the grounds, when that moss-grown courtyard had echoed to the hoofs of armed horsemen, and the talk was of the prowess of Drake, of Walsingham’s astuteness, of the martyrdom of Mary at Fotheringhay, and the fickleness of the Queen’s favour.
Determined to make the acquaintance of the present occupiers, even though it might or might not be the former residence of old Bartholomew, I went up to the blistered door and pulled a bell, which clanged dismally within, and made such an echo that I wondered if the place were devoid of furniture.
My summons was answered by a rather stout, middle-aged woman, who, in response to my inquiry, informed me that she was Mrs. Kenway. I was somewhat taken aback at this, for I had believed her to be a servant, but the moment she opened her mouth I knew her to be a countrywoman.
I was compelled to make an excuse for my call, so I invented what I conceived to be an ingenious untruth.