Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/17

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PASTON OATVILE DORMY-HOUSE
3

the sanctities of its manorial soil will be as interminable as golf. An enterprising club, seconded by an accommodating railway, has invested its rural solitude with an air of suburbanity; it is only an hour's journey from London, and the distance could be covered in three-quarters of the time if the club were less exclusive. Bungalows, each fitted with its own garage, and cottages that contain billiard-rooms have sprung up in the neighbourhood; thirty or forty of these, all rough-cast and red tiles, conceal by a series of ingenious dissimilarities their indebtedness to the brain of a single architect. In the middle of these—the cathedral, the town hall, the market-place around which all their activities centre—stands the dower-house of the Oatviles, the dormy-house of to-day. The committee have built on to it largely in what is understood to be the same style, and indeed, the new part is undeniably brick and timber, though in wet weather the timber is apt to warp and fall off. It is not only a club-house, of course, it is also an expensive hotel—if we may call it an hotel, and not rather a monastic settlement; for the inhabitants of these pleasant rooms all live for one end—golf : twice daily they go round the course, with all the leisurely solemnity of Benedictines reciting their office, and every night they meet in corona to discuss the mysteries of their religion.

Which reminds me that I have forgotten to mention the village Church. There is still a village, that straggles mysteriously, like so many English