Button Budd did not much relish calling.
“They say he’s got all sorts of queer painter fellows to do his walls,” he objected.
However, in the sacred name of neighbourliness, he dared this menace to his morals, and through his, the State’s, and called.
As it chanced, Mansell was at home when he came. It chanced, also, that he was at the point of coming out through the front door, at the instant of the squire’s ringing of the bell. There the two met; the squire could not at the moment find the wit to say:
“I only came to leave cards; I don’t want to know you, of course.”
Frampton shook him by the hand and asked him to come in; in fact, had him in, somehow, before the squire quite knew where he was. Frampton took him into his study, and offered him tea and a smoke. He replied that he never drank tea, except when called in the morning, and never smoked, except after dinner. He settled into a chair, and looked with much perplexity and misgiving at the loves of Tristan and Isolt, then looking at their best. The two men took stock of each other. Budd was a short, erect, stocky, lean man. He had an eyeglass, which was often the most important thing in his face. He had a tendency to fuss; he did not look too healthy; and wore good country clothes. He nursed his riding bowler, his riding gloves and the crop which he carried instead of a cane, as though they were reins. Frampton asked him if he would like a whisky and soda; he said he would, but his doctor had warned him off it for a bit, until after Christmas anyhow. He looked again at Tristan and Isolt.
“So you’ve come down to live in these parts?” he said at length.
Frampton said that he had.
The squire had never seen so many books in one room before; he looked in vain for the library edition of Surtees. Frampton said that it had been a lovely autumn. The squire said it had been the best he could remember, ever since shooting began.
“That’s why I always like a fine spring,” he said. “When it’s a fine, dry spring, I know the shooting’ll be good. The young birds grow up, and then you get what I really like, big coveys and all strong on the wing. Do you shoot?”
Frampton said that he did not shoot, but that he made guns and was accustomed to trying all his ideas with his own hands.
“Must be very interesting, making guns,” the squire thought; he had had no knowledge of any of Frampton’s inventions during the War, and did not know what they were like. To him, there were but two guns, for the killing of game, small and killing of game, big; to these might be added an occasional rook rifle.
“Are you a hunting man?” he asked.
Frampton said that he was not and would not be.
“We’re mostly huntin’ men in these parts,” the squire said. “By the way, have you met Bynd yet? Peter Bynd? He used to be Master here; now he’s secretary. He was going to write to you.”
“Yes, I’ve had his letter,” Frampton said.
“About Spirr Wood?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll excuse me asking about that,” the squire said. “I’ve been connected with the Hunt here all my life, except when I was in India. We always begin our season with a meet at Tibb’s Cross, just below here, and then draw Spirr Wood. It’s an old custom of the Hunt. Someone was saying, that you were going to preserve Spirr very strictly. I hope you aren’t going to turn us out, what?”
“I am, though,” Frampton said. “I’m making a kind of sanctuary for birds and beasts in Spirr; and though I’ve not really got going at it yet, and am only beginning with it, I don’t want it disturbed. I wrote and explained all this to Sir Peter Bynd. I’m going over to see him to-morrow.”
“I don’t know what we should do, turned out of Spirr,” the squire said. “I told Posh Tilter he ought to buy it, to make sure, when the Yocksirs were selling, but he took it for granted you’d be a hunting fellow. However, I hope Bynd’ll persuade you; an awfully good fellow, Bynd; been here a long time; clever fellow.”
“Are you fond of birds?” Frampton asked.
The squire said that he had always been fond of shooting.
“You must come out in the Spring with field-glasses,” Frampton said. “I may have some birds worth watching, then.”
“A sort of Nature study?” the squire said. “I’ve heard they do that kind of thing at some of the schools now. Fascinating thing, Nature, the more you study it. You never quite get to the bottom of it, do you?”
On this they parted. The squire’s last looks at Tristan and Isolt remained in Frampton’s memory for the rest of his life. However, he did not ask about them, shook hands and went, with some few words about the weather; and how steady the glass kept, in spite of all this cloud.
He went home, to report faithfully to his wife the conversation, and to accept from her reading of it the estimate of Frampton which was to be the Budds’ thenceforward. On the whole, Mrs. Budd judged it better, that that sort of man should not be asked into Fletchings House.
“If he’s going to turn us out of Spirr, we can keep him out of our houses; that’s the least we can do. Besides, a man living alone like that, with a lot of good-looking servants and indecent paintings on the walls, one does not know what to think. Anyhow, he is hardly the sort of man I’m accustomed to. I was talking to old Lady Maidy on Wednesday; she said she remembered the man’s grandfather, who was a wild Red and in prison for it. She saw this fellow’s father coming round with the bread-van. You’ve done all that is expected of you. You’ve left cards. He isn’t going to shut us out of Spirr and then expect to be received. He may make guns and employ modernist painters, but he can’t be a gentleman by instinct, or he wouldn’t put us out of Spirr; and that he isn’t one by birth we know too well.”
She had a great fluency when roused. She spoke in this vein among her friends, some of whom were dining with her that night.
On the morrow, Frampton went over to lunch with Sir Peter and Lady Bynd, who had no knowledge of Mansell as yet, save by hearsay. Lady Bynd had prejudice; Sir Peter, who was a much wiser person, hoped to win him. Lady Bynd held and voiced the opinion that the county ought to be made too hot to hold him. Sir Peter, who had had dealings with many odd men in many odd and tight places, had come to know that a gentle method is often much more effective. He had caused him to be asked to lunch, and hoped that he might win him to his side.
They lived at Coombe House, a fine old brick manor, which had been built in the form of an E in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The central jut of the E had long since been removed; the house was some seven miles from Mullples, towards Wicked Hill.
Frampton entered the hall, which was hung with fox-masks, guards’ coach-horns, “yards of tin,” hunting-horns, racks for whips and crops, the head of a rhinoceros, and the swords and guns of seven generations of soldier-sportsmen. He was led past these along a passage decorated with paintings by Alken and by prints from the same artist; among these were some recent paintings of fox-terriers and hunters, including several of a white horse, plainly a favourite. The yap of dogs grew louder as he advanced. When he entered the room where his host and hostess waited, two little dogs rushed yapping at him. His hostess sat on a sofa with a lap-dog in her lap.
“I can’t get up,” she said. “I’ve got Diddums here.”
Frampton shook hands with the pair and summed them up. The man was a big fellow, in very good, hard condition, with a look of great charm and sweetness of nature. The woman was a big woman, with “a face like an angry ham,” as he defined it to himself. She wore expensive, ugly clothes, as prescribed by her dressmaker; there was no trace of personal choice in anything about her; it was all arranged, hair, eyebrows, nails. She remained “the angry ham” to him through life.