This was Gerald Eversley’s home; he had never known any other. A quiet, sober red brick house with a facing of flint-stones built into the rubble; two rooms on the ground floor, looking into the garden, one of them the drawing-room with its ample bay-window, the other the dining-room, though in Gerald’s mind it was associated with lessons as much as with meals; above these rooms two corresponding bedrooms, in one of which Mr. Eversley had slept ever since he became vicar of Kestercham; on the other side of the house, which extended some way backwards, other bedrooms above the kitchen and the morning-room (which was seldom used until the afternoon) and Mr. Eversley’s study. Just outside the front door a noble birchtree raised its branches high above the roof of the house: how those boughs would creak and whistle in the north wind! Gerald had often lain awake in the still hours of the night listening to the rhythm of their moaning and wondering how long it would be before one of them fell with a thunder-clap to the ground. In front of the doorway was an oval grass-plot with a flowerbed, containing a large cactus in the middle, and a gravel carriage drive encircling it; beyond, a level bowling-green carefully kept and overshadowed by firs. There had been trees at the far end of the bowling-green as well as at its sides when Mr. Eversley came to Kestercham; but they had been cut away so as to allow a clear view from the vicarage of the church and the meadows leading to Kestercham Green. For it is a peculiarity of Kestercham, rendering the life at the vicarage still more solitary than it would otherwise have been, that the church and the vicarage are removed by a long distance--a mile and a half, even if one takes the short cut across the fields--from the ordinary scenes of the village life. It would seem that the church was originally designed to subserve the spiritual needs of several hamlets (for it is fully as near to the confines of Ripenham or Coddington as it is to Kestercham Green) and that the vicarage was built in due proximity to the church. The result is that at Kestercham the spiritual centre--the church--and the secular centre--the public house--are as far divided locally as possible. There is not a human habitation near the vicarage or in sight of it except the Grange, and even that is not visible from the vicarage itself. The vicarage stands in a solitude which may be felt.