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For several days after his coming to Holcot Grange, Sir William lay on his bed, which Mrs Barlow had made very comfortable with clean sheets and soft coverlets, and slept or day-dreamt.

He found that the place exactly suited his mood, or rather, had changed his mood in harmony with itself. The oblivion that he desired he now possessed. He found himself completely shut away from those events from which he most wished to escape. It was as if life began anew for him in this quiet house that had not been lived in for so long, but which nevertheless was orderly, clean, and full of beautiful and strange objects, and the isolation soothed his exasperated nerves, and the peculiarity of his lonely situation pleased his fantastical temperament.

It was perfect summer, the weather itself was sufficient to make a festival. Beyond the garden was the park and beyond the park all his fields and meadows, and beyond again, the sea, a mere glimmer of light in the sunshine.

Mrs Barlow was always attentive, and the servants knew their work, and he had his own man, Martin, to make him comfortable.

This was a dry, satirical fellow, well trained and shrewd, who remained in Sir William’s employ with much fidelity, constant either to his affections or to his interests. He had been not without blame in the affair which had sent his master flying from town, and was glad to be out of the way. When he had followed Sir William from the city he had brought with him, besides money and clothes, a reassuring letter for his master from a friend.

The affray at the masquerade had been a bad business, no doubt, but it seemed likely to die away without ill consequences, yet it were best that Sir William should keep from town for the summer at least.

The friend had concocted a good story to account for his sudden departure and had so confused the truth that there were many who doubted whether he had been at the masquerade at all. Sir William, on receipt of this letter, had spoken to the servant, whom he held in careless confidence and a kind of negligent, half-contemptuous friendship.

‘You are willing to stay with me in this place, Martin? It is to your interests, as I believe, to do so.’

The servant repeated in a parrot-like fashion that was not, however, in the least stupid:

‘I am quite willing to do so, Sir William. And I believe that it is to your own interest as well as mine to remain away from town for a while. And if I might give my opinion I should say that Holcot Grange is an ideal place for this retreat.’

‘It pleases me, for a while,’ assented the young baronet, ‘but who knows, Martin, in a moment, one might suddenly tire!’

‘It is the novelty that pleases, Sir William,’ said the servant. ‘The question is, how long will the novelty endure? It is like a spell which must, sooner or later, wear off.’

‘Aye, the novelty,’ laughed Sir William Notley. ‘No news-sheets, no coffee houses, no riots or carnivals or theatres, no races or sports, no friends or acquaintances, not as much as a barber or a tailor. Novelty indeed, Martin! Come, can you tell me nothing of the place? We have been here several days.’

‘I know all there is to know, Sir William, and it is very little. Holcot Grange stands far away from the high road, as you found to your cost, I expect, sir, when you were endeavouring to find it, the night you rode from London. The village is very small and the Vicar an old, mild man, sunk in the sloth of age. For the rest it is sheep farming, and the farms very far apart—the village but a handful of cottages. Then there is Mr Morley at Griffinshaws, who has married a farmer’s daughter and lives as if he were a farmer himself.’

‘But I found him honest,’ said Sir William; ‘he gave a good account of his charges. And I thought as I saw him anxiously going over items of even a few pence, “Consider what a life that man leads for the small amount I pay him.”’

‘Philosophy apart, Sir William, he does very well.’

‘And there is no one else?’

‘There is a Miss Julia Roseingrave who lives in the Dower House with her sister, who is idiotic, and her mother, who is like a block of wood from paralysis.’

‘That is the cool creature who came to see me on the night of my arrival. Do you know, Martin, I have no desire to behold her again, yet I think she is handsome enough.’

‘And the only woman within miles, Sir William, if your thoughts should turn in that direction.’

‘They are not like to, Martin. I am now for a chaste and studious life. If I should have an intrigue here it would not be with a creature like Miss Roseingrave—and that’s a strange name, too, Martin—but with some milkmaid, some white-handed Hebe, all milk and roses.’

‘There is none such, I do assure you, sir. The two maids here are coarse, stupid creatures, and only worthy of the swains who have bespoke them.’

‘Well, let that go, it does not trouble me. And is there no one else with any pretence to breeding besides this Miss Roseingrave?’

‘She is very much respected, sir,’ said Martin, ‘and lives a very virtuous life. Her devotion to her mother and her sister is very commendable, and I think, Sir William, it would only be a usual courtesy if you were to wait on her. She is, in some manner, your relation.’

Sir William was not offended at this advice. He permitted his servant a great freedom.

‘Have you seen her, then, Martin?’

‘Yes, I took the chance to walk past the Dower House. I went several times before I caught a glimpse of her. I thought her, too, Sir William, a very handsome creature.’

‘I will not go, I do not know why. As I am here incognito it cannot be pronounced a discourtesy. But tell me,’ added the young baronet, impatiently, ‘are there no others?’

‘There is old Dr Rowland, sir, who is gently born, and I believe was a scholar at Trinity College once. He lives like a hermit, given up to experiments and speculations.’

‘As I mean to be,’ cried the young baronet, ‘I must make the acquaintance of this fantastic. And who else?’

‘No one else at all, sir.’

The young man sighed and smiled together, stretched his arms above his head, and went to the window. The peace of the place was incredible. He could scarcely believe in those sunny gardens, in those trees, tossing their high tops in a cloudless blue, in the continuous cooing of the doves and in the profusion of scent of flowers opening their hearts to the last strength of summer.

The room, too—surely there was a certain spell about this clean apartment where nothing had been moved nor even touched for so many years; where everything had been left exactly in its place, mirrors, in which every face that had ever looked must now be dust, chairs, couches and beds on which none but ghosts could have rested for so long, embroideries, worked by fingers now long withered away, portraits of dead beauties by dead artists, treasures, hoarded long ago, but now neglected, their very meaning incomprehensible. And over all the sunlight, mellow as run honey.

In a closet in one of the upper rooms the young man had found some women’s clothes, shoes of wrinkled leather, corsets with rusted steels, and brocades with tarnished tinsel braidings.

‘Is there not supposed to be a curse on this house, Martin? I heard Mrs Barlow, the good housekeeper, speak of it.’

‘Yes, I have heard that tale, sir,’ replied Martin, who made it his business to hear all tales wherever he went. ‘But this is nothing much, only that the property was forfeit during the rebellion and given to a follower of Oliver Cromwell, and when the Restoration came his descendant, a young man, married the heiress of the Royalist family. It was a match of convenience.’

‘And of mighty convenience, too,’ laughed Sir William, ‘since it saved the estates to each.’

‘But the story goes, as I have heard it from Mrs Barlow, that they were very unhappy and that he ill-treated her and she died, calling a curse on her descendants, sprung from this union.’

‘Was she an ancestress of mine?’ asked Sir William carelessly. ‘Perhaps I have inherited this curse. I would it were so, Martin. There would be a relish and piquancy about such a fate. I feel, now I have come to this place, that all my days have been very dull.’

At this point Mrs Barlow ventured into the room. She said that a clean old woman who was named Mother Cloke, and against whom indeed no one had ever had any complaints, desired to see Sir William. It would only be to beg some charity of course, but she had been very insistent.

Sir William checked these apologies.

‘Do you know anything of this Mother Cloke?’ he asked his body-servant.

The man replied:

‘She is reputed, Sir William, to be a witch.’

Mrs Barlow was not altogether in favour of Mother Cloke and regarded her coming to the Grange as an impertinence, but at the same time she was somewhat in awe of the herb-woman, whom she believed to be something more than her appearance gave warrant for. So she had desired her to wait in the room to the left of the entrance hall, which had once been used for card playing and musical diversions. It was furnished, therefore, with alcoves for tables and in a large press were several musical instruments which had been for long in a sad state of disrepair.

There was only one portrait in the room and that was of a lady in a failing collar, holding in one hand an apple. Both the lady and the fruit seemed to have long ago withered, for it was but a ghostly face and a ghostly apple which gleamed faintly from the faded wood panel.

Mrs Cloke waited patiently among these splendours so long since unvisited. She had a large basket covered with a white napkin on her arm. When Sir William Notley entered she curtsied very low in a manner that seemed as if she were used to dealing with the gentry, and yet the young baronet had been assured that there were no people of breeding in his neighbourhood.

He liked the look, at once intelligent and meek, of the old woman, and her ready address which was respectful and not servile, pleased him also. She told him that she was a tenant of his, and had lived all her life on the small piece of land for which she paid rent to Mr Morley of Griffinshaws. Her ancestors, she said, had been tenants of the lords of Holcot Grange for as many years as a man could remember.

‘The owners of the Grange were but distantly connected ancestors of mine,’ said Sir William courteously. ‘I came into the Grange through my mother’s people. She was by birth a Wilbraham.’

‘You can see all their graves in the chapel if your honour but takes the trouble to look.’

‘I have not been to the chapel yet, good Mrs Cloke. It has been long closed up, and I hold it but a dusty business to pry into these dismal places. Yet, for the sake of the dead, through whom I come into this estate, it seems, I will go there, and even, perhaps, set a priest up. And yet if I did who would attend for his ministry, for I shall go away quite soon, and I think there would be no one else to go to this chapel.’

‘All the farmers, the villagers, the shepherds, would be very glad to go there. The village church is a poor place and this is nearer for most of them.’

With that she took the cover off her basket which she had set on one of the walnut tables where cards had been flung down and picked up so often so long ago.

She had brought him, she said, as a gift and a little act of homage from his oldest tenant, some samples of her herbs.

Here in their separate bags were hyssop or mother of time, a decoction of which, made with figs, honey and rue, was good against the cough, and the stiff branches of woody lavender, with the long hoary leaves, which, taken in the morning, fasting, were good for the panting of the heart.

Another bag contained the small shining seeds of fleawort which, pressed into a plaster, were excellent for swelling of the joints. Common pimpernel she had, too, which, though it was but a vulgar weed and growing on wastes, and even barren places, had much virtue in it she declared, for a pottage of this herb would draw out thorns which had been buried in the flesh, or help the dim-sighted when made into a wash for the eyes. From ditches and streams down by the marsh where she lived, and in moist woods, she had plucked the herb twopence, or moneywort, or twopenny grass, which cured ulcers when mixed with resin, wax and turpentine; comfrey she had also, prunel, mouse-ear, cudweed, featherfew, good, she said, for such as are sad and pensive, and eyebright, much commended for the eyes.

While she named and praised these and laid them out severally on the card table, the young baronet listened amused and pleased, for in reaction from what had happened to him in the city, he was gratified by all simple things that served to lull his senses and were different from his usual habits.

She observed him very shrewdly; although she had little experience and had seen few people, she had much natural wisdom.

‘Your honour,’ said she, suddenly coming to an end of her long catalogue, ‘does not, very like, believe in magic.’

He, sighing with a sincere regret, answered as so many others had answered before him:

‘I would that I could.’

‘Some,’ said she, ‘give me the name of witch, though I am by no means deserving of that. I have seen strange things, particularly down in Ballote Wood.’

‘And where’s that?’ asked he, willing to humour her fantasy.

‘That, sir, slopes from the high ground to the marsh, and is near my home; it takes its name from the black horehound, which grows there in quantities and which the rustics call ballote. It has the smell of a citron and the flowers are of a carnation colour, and is a very powerful balm,’ she added cunningly, ‘helping much the sudden anguish of love, sir, that affects the heart.’

‘From which I have never suffered,’ said Sir William pleasantly. ‘Yet I must purchase from you some of this balm, good mother. Now tell me some of the mysteries you have seen in Ballote Wood.’

‘It would not be safe to do so,’ she replied quickly. ‘The young and the gallant ever like curious adventures, and you are both young and gallant, and so I thought to tell you that if you cared, when the moon is full, to walk in Ballote Wood, you might see what would please you.’

‘So these, then, are not ugly sights?’ he asked, teasing, ‘no apparition of the devil or his attendant friends?’

‘Nay, nothing of that,’ she said. Then lowering her voice as if they might be overheard, even in the empty room in the empty house, she added: ‘A nymph or fairy or goddess walks there and bathes in the deep pool underneath the willow trees. I have seen her sometimes when the lunar rays are directly overhead. She shines like a silver spool.’

‘When can I see this?’ asked Sir William laughing still more, ‘and what charm must I bring with me to open my eyes? For I believe no ordinary traveller could behold such marvels.’

At that Mother Cloke seemed reluctant and would shut up the subject, but he pressed her, swallowing his amusement, though he believed she only feigned the hesitation for art’s sake, and to lead him on. No doubt she had a trick up her sleeve, yet her talk had suited his mood. And at last she said in a sudden hurry as if she would be rid of the matter:

‘The moon will be full in three days’ time, and if you should come to my cottage, sir, I will go with you and show you the place and the person.’

‘You do not undertake a little matter,’ said he in hearty mirth. ‘I am to behold a goddess and at so little cost?’

‘Aye, but you must have some charm with you. I will give it you—a bunch of red archangels, tied with a specially woven thread. But leave all that matter to me.’

‘I will do so very willingly, but see to it, good Mother, that you do not dress up some village wench as your goddess. My senses are not so gross but that I should not at once discover the fraud.’

‘If I do anything so crazy, beat me for an old cheat, your Honour.’