If Dr. Nestley had been imaginative he might have thought that he was being driven by one of the statues out of the old church, so grim and stiff was the figure beside him. Munks had a hard-featured face, and an equally hard manner, and in his suit of rough grey cloth he looked like Don Juan's Commandantore out for an airing. He devoted himself exclusively to the raw-boned animal he was driving, and replied to Dr. Nestley's questions in what might be called a chippy manner, his answers being remarkably monosyllabic.
Was the squire ill?--very! What made him ill?--Did not know! How many people lived at the Grange?--Six! What were their names?--The squire, Miss Una, Miss Cassandra, Patience Allerby, Jellicks and himself.
As Nestley did not find this style of conversation particularly exhilarating, he relapsed into silence, and the stony Munks devoted his attention once more to the raw-boned horse.
The dog-cart spun rapidly through the sleeping village with the dark-windowed houses on either side--over the narrow, vibrating bridge under which swept the sullen, grey river--across the wide common, where the gorse bushes looked fantastic and unreal in the moonlight, with only the silent sky overhead and the silent earth below--tall trees on either side, some gaudy with the yellow and red of their autumnal foliage, and others gaunt and bare, their leafless branches ready for the winter snows. So still, so silent, with every now and then the sad cry of some night bird from the lonely marshes, and the steady beat of the horse's hoofs on the hard, white road. The scenery, grey and colourless under the pale light of the moon, changed with the rapidity of a kaleidoscope. First the tangled, odorous hedges that separated the road from the closely-reaped fields, afterwards a grove of beeches, casting fantastic shadows on the ground, and then, suddenly starting out of the earth as if by magic, the thick, dark wood which surrounded Garsworth Grange, as though it were the enchanted palace of the sleeping beauty. The rusty iron gates were wide open, and they drove into the park between the tall white posts with the leopards sejant thereon--up the broad, winding avenue with the trees tossing their leafless branches in the chill wind--while here and there at intervals the cloudy white forms of statues appeared indistinctly. The wheels crunched the dead leaves that thickly carpeted the path--a wide sweep of the avenue, and then a low, broad terrace of white stone, to which a flight of shallow steps led up through urns and statues to Garsworth Grange.