At the inquest, these things were repeated and sworn to. The London man had died by that time. He was a well-known sporting man, who had had his licence endorsed for careless driving. He had had four whiskies, topped off with a gin “to settle them,” at a road-side inn, a few miles away, and was supposedly hurrying to keep a luncheon engagement with his fiancée. His car was smashed almost beyond repair. It was supposed that at the moment of impact, he was moving at sixty miles an hour. All the upper part of the car was torn clean off the body and flung along the road. The coroner’s court found that deceased met their ends as the result of accident, due primarily to drunkenness and want of common caution in the male driver. They expressed their sympathy with the two bereaved fiancées, and recommended that a danger sign be placed near the turning where the disaster had occurred. One of the jury wished it to be set on record that the accident was directly due to the abuse of alcohol, and that it ought to be made a penal offence, to serve alcohol of any sort to one in charge of a car.
That was the end of Margaret Holtspur, a charming and beautiful woman, “killed on the eve of her wedding,” as the gutter press printed in big type.
Margaret was buried. The whole village turned out to the funeral. The grave was heaped with flowers. Photographers on the churchyard wall got various views of Frampton and his father as they stood near the grave during the service. These were in the evening papers that night, and in the cheaper morning papers next day. “Well-Known Gun Manufacturer Mourns Fiancée Dead in Car Smash,” was one heading; “Frampton Mansell at Grave,” was another; “The Long Farewelclass="underline" Frampton Mansell Bids Adieu to Love,” was a third.
However, the burial came to an end; the body was laid in the grave and left there. The mourners moved from the grave to their cars, followed by a great rush of photographers, who wanted to get close-ups of the gun-maker and his father. Frampton looked at some of these men, and said: “You damned carrion-hunters,” and was thanked by them for giving them so fair a chance to take him. After this, he drove away with his father to the house at Newbury. His father was quiet and sympathetic, being a very feeling man, who had been through many sorrows of his own. He said little on the way home except:
“The great thing is, never to let it make you cynical. It is all in that.”
Presently, they were at the house at Newbury. The father went up to his room to rest. Frampton went out to walk up and down in the walk between the hedges of hornbeams. His father’s spaniel, Joe, saw him there, and came floundering and wagging out to suggest a walk together. He scowled at the dog, who saw that something was amiss, and wagged and cringed, still hoping against hope, but at last saw that the walk was hopeless and lay down there, at the walk’s end, to watch if perchance the black mood would pass.
After a long, long time, he went in, flung off his mourning clothes, and bathed and dressed for dinner. It was delayed for a minute by a telephone enquiry from the Press, to ask if the recent sad bereavement would interfere with his plans for the new gun.
“Then I can say, Mr. Mansell, that you are carrying on as usual? Business as usual, eh?”
He hung up on this optimist, and let the telephone ring unacknowledged for the rest of the evening.
During dinner, his father said:
“You will come away with me to-morrow, Fram. I’ve taken berths to New York. We’ll fly to Vancouver together and see some of those plants there. I’ve long wanted to do that. We’ll be away three weeks or a month.”
The next morning, they motored to Southampton and so away into the West.
He had planned to be in the West for three weeks only, but stayed on for six, in frequent change of scene and in the great heat which his father always enjoyed. He found no consolation for his loss, but something which kept his mind from it; strangers to talk with, and new landscape to look at. Before leaving England, and while on the sea, he had determined to sell Mullples for what it would fetch as soon as he returned, but in the far West, the thought of that old house, which he had rescued from ruin, plucked at his heart; he had put a lot of thought and imagination into it, as well as all his hope. “Peggy liked it,” he thought. “She wanted that sanctuary at Spirr. I’ll keep it going for her sake. I’m not likely to meet another woman I shall want to marry.”
On their return to England, late in September, they drove to the Newbury house. It was all full of memories of Margaret; it was a grim home-coming to Frampton. He spent a couple of days there before going back to the Works.
“Look here, Fram,” his father said, “what d’you say to giving up Mullples and keeping on with me here for your week-ends? We’ve always got along together, and you know I’d be glad of you.”
“No,” Frampton said, “I’ve made Mullples. It’s my flesh and blood. I put my guts into that old house. It’s me. Besides, I’ve begun something there. I’ll not draw back, now I’ve put my hand to the plough. I’ll winter it and summer it before I chuck it.”
“I expected you’d say something like that,” the old man said, “but I’m thinking that the winter’s on us. You won’t find much congenial company there in winter-time, with nobody but shooters and fox-hunters. What will you do with all those sportsmen? Why not spend the autumn and winter here, at any rate? In the spring, go down to Mullples.”
“No,” he said, “I ought to go to Mullples. I’ve got all the household there. I’ve got them all pledged to stick it with me, and I won’t go back on them. I’ve got the thing to go. I mean to make it go. You see, it can’t go without me.” He mused for a moment and then went on. “You must not bother about the sportsmen. I’ve never failed to find congenial company, wherever I’ve been,” he said. “I shall only be there for the long week-ends; and there’ll always be work to do in the gardens or along by the waters. I can bring people down from the Works, and from Town, to eke out the local supply. I’ve got my gun to work at, if I’m bored; but I’ve never been bored yet.”
“I don’t believe you ever have been, Fram,” his father said. “It’s a good record. But you’ve never had a winter yet, in an English countryside. By the way, which pack of hounds is it at Mullples?”
“We are in the Tuncester country, what they call the Tunster; and close to the edge of the PDQ.”
“Are you going to hunt?”
“I? Hunt? No. Why do you ask a thing like that? Is thy servant a dog?”
“Not at all; but there’s a note in the paper here that the master of the Tunster has broken his thigh in a fall and will be unable to ride for a long time; the mastership will be taken by somebody else. You might do worse than offer your services. It would tide you through a bad time.”
“I’d rather have the bad time. Why hunt, when there are a thousand things that need doing right under one’s nose?”
“I think you under-estimate fox-hunting,” the old man said. “The English have only had two pleasures, as far as I can follow the matter, in the last three hundred years; puritanic religion and fox-hunting. Both seem to me now to be in their decadence. I do not feel that either yields or ever has yielded a very desirable joy, but remove them and what remains to the poor land?”
“Drink,” Frampton said.
“No, no. The days of drink are past. The present seeming boom in drink is only due to the fact that drink now is weaker than it was, so that women have discovered it. No. I’m afraid the only thing remaining will be patent medicines. I’m not sure that they haven’t ousted the old firms already. And they have every advantage. The Puritans have only one God, and the fox-hunters only one kind of fox, the one to be worshipped and the other to be killed in only one sort of way. But man has two hundred and forty major ailments, and two hundred and forty nostrums for each, so I think the drug people will win.”