He was filled with such joy by the new idea, that he ceased to think of Margaret, nor of the fact, that his things were coming in to the new home the next day. Presently, he remembered both these matters and drove home to telephone to Margaret and to talk to his housekeeper, Mrs. Haulover.
Mrs. Haulover was a lady of some distinction. She was the widow of an old etcher and art-critic, with whom Frampton had had some acquaintance that had almost been friendship. She was younger than Haulover by ten years, and was now perhaps sixty-five. She had at one time been a good copyist at the National Gallery, and still modelled figurines with talent. She had been left penniless by Haulover. Frampton had put her in charge of his establishments after explaining his ideas, and for nearly six years she had managed for him. What she thought of him, she never said; but sometimes she compressed her lips. On the one hand, she loved loyalty; and Frampton was loyal to old Haulover and had organised and made successful the memorial exhibition of old Haulover’s prints. She made that excuse much. Frampton’s ideas of servants revolted her; but she had learned from old Haulover, that a genius has his own ways and may sometimes make those ways extremely effective in his own way by his own personality. Frampton chose his servants himself, and explained his methods to Mrs. Haulover, at one of their first interviews.
“I see their testimonials first, and they have to be good and written in a hand that shows character. I go to see the writers, if I feel that the person’s testimony is any good at all. Then I see the applicant, and make up my mind about her. She has to be a good animal, first of all; she has to be strong and look cheerful and intelligent, but she has to be a good animal first; somebody you wouldn’t mind breeding from. I won’t have one of these flimsy minowderers, with a powdered nose and a mouth like a film girl. Then I ask her to write her name, and then I ask her if she can draw or has ever read a book. None of them yet has been able to draw, and only two of them had read a book; a real book, that is. Then, of course, she has to be clean and look distinguished; I’ll not have one of these damned minowderers all cut after a pattern. Then I ask her what wages she wants, and tell her I’ll give her from half to twice as much, if she will put her guts into it. I make it clear she won’t get any damned nonsense from me and she’d better not try any of hers. I tell her, she’ll have a wireless set, and a library subscription; that I expect her to go at my expense to a picture show or a concert or a theatre once a week. I contrive to send two of ’em together. And I make ’em talk of it to me next morning. They’ve got to do their job on the ticker, without any shinnannikin. I pay them myself, every Friday morning, and give them a talk each time on world affairs and expect them to talk to me. I don’t get any rotters. I cut them out at the first interview; I get a good lot of workers, who stay a long time, and only leave to get married. It isn’t my idea at all. It’s my old father’s idea. He’s the wisest man I’ve ever met; and it was his system from the first. He wanted to get a servant who would really share a lot of the best that life has with him. It is expensive, perhaps, in that you pay more than the market rate; but you get something that isn’t to be had in the market, and never will be. Anyhow, that’s my way, and it’s going to be it.”
That was that. It wasn’t Mrs. Haulover’s way, but as Frampton had the knack of making it work, she said no more, but helped him to apply it. She had the job of moving into Mullples, and wondered, as she moved in, how long the maids and men would be able to stand the quiet of the valley. Frampton had been kind to the maids in his very rough way. He had seen, that they understood the kind of life he was taking them to. They had all seen the new house and had a look at the neighbouring towns of Stubbington and Tatchester. He would not tempt them into a place they might loathe. He told them, that if they liked they could go to take lessons in country things, such as pruning and dairy work, before going down.
Mrs. Haulover was moved in by the night of the nineteenth, and telephoned through to Frampton that the house was ready for him to see, if he would care to come in to see it, the next day, with Miss Holtspur.
On the twentieth, therefore, two days before his wedding, he drove over to Holtspur, her old home in Berkshire, a few miles from Newbury, picked her up there, and then drove her to see the Mullples. It was a day of great beauty, fine, sunny and not too hot; the garden was not at its very best, perhaps, but there was a fair show of roses for so new a planting. The house was looking its best, all new and trim. She went all over the new home; she had not seen it since her birthday, as Frampton had wished to surprise her with it. She was enchanted with what he had done and proud indeed, to know that he had done it for her. Some of the very young men who had been brought in almost as afterthoughts, to decorate the attics, had worked to the stretch of all their powers and done memorable work. She was much pleased by a rough, rude, powerful fresco by young Charles, done on the wall of an attic, representing a fence, of paling and thorn, with fern and flowers, and beasts looking over into the room.
“I love this,” she said.
He was much pleased, for he had spotted Charles as a future winner and had given him his chance; he was now thinking of using him in a new scheme which was not yet set upon paper. He himself, was in a glow of joy that day.
Mrs. Haulover reported, that the maids had liked their new rooms, and had settled in. Helga and Charlotte saw him later and thanked him, and said, that they were sure they would be happy there. They welcomed Margaret and hoped that she, too, would be happy there. He had to settle some points about the household’s attending his wedding. He was going to have caretakers in Mullples for a part of the day, so that all the staff might attend the wedding near Holtspur; after the wedding, he and Margaret were going to fly to Sweden for their honeymoon.
They lunched together in the new dining-room; she liked the new things; furniture, china, glass and cutlery were all new; and the vegetables and fruit were out of the garden.
“You’ve made a beautiful home for me, Frampton,” she said.
“They’ve done me well, my chaps,” he said. “Little Roly-Poly put his guts into it, and the men were what I knew they would be. If you put it to English chaps the right way, they’ll do anything. The trouble is, that they’re so used to doing tripe that they’ve come to look on tripe as the right thing. By the way, I’ve got a neat idea for a new gun; but I’ll tell you of that when we’re away.”
“Fram, I don’t think well talk of guns and killings while we’re away,” she said.
“No, perhaps not,” he said. “But it’s a neat idea. And now, come, we must have a look at Spirr Wood and your cousin’s bungalow.”
The cottage at Spirr had been finished more than a month before. Margaret’s cousin, Tim, was already there, settled in. The two walked to the cottage by the track left by the builders. They did not find the cousin at home. They called, “Tim,” as they approached, but had no answer except a kind of whistling mew from within the living-room from a young hawk, fallen from its nest, which Tim was trying to rear. On the back door was an old envelope, marked:
in black chalk.
“He’s off,” Frampton said. “He oughtn’t to have gone off like that. I specially told him we should be here. You can see, he’s got rather a jolly place of it.”
The place was, indeed, very pretty, and in a pretty part of the wood. On the one hand, it looked down to the water, where the valley had been dammed, so as to make an attractive pool, big and deep enough for the warden to bathe in, if he wished. On the other side, you looked up the slope of the wood into a variety of green. As they looked, a red squirrel came down and gibbered at them, from within a few feet of their heads.