This was meant as a friendly ending to the meeting. He showed his sympathy with the Tuncesters, to the extent of sending them a receipt for a punch; showed that he was going to be adamant about Spirr, and also showed them that he recognised that they would not be friends, and indeed belonged in opposite camps, but that what he had to share with them, a knowledge and love of birds, he would share, if they wished, to the full. He turned to say good-bye to his hostess, who was not content to end on a low note.
She had been brought up to having her own way without much opposition. She had learned, in the England of her girlhood, to ride over those who were not in her set, nor of her way of thinking; she was determined to ride over Frampton.
“It must be very interesting to you,” she said, “to come here, so near to your father’s old home.”
“It is interesting to see a new bit of England,” he said, “and study the savage inhabitants, and the dear old ruins of the eighteenth century, pretending to be what they were. England is always interesting.”
She affected not to see his hand, so he put it in his pocket.
“I don’t know what guns you make,” she said; “they may be very fine or they may not. Opinions differ. But if I know anything of the youth of these parts, your absurd scheme of a bird sanctuary will not prosper very far. And I must say, I hope it won’t. And if you try your plan of jerry-building, I’ll see what the Ministries can do.”
“It’s always a fresh surprise, isn’t it?” he said, “what the Ministries will do. One of them’s rather keen on having a machine-gun range and school just up above here. I tell them it’s just the place. I do hope they’ll establish it. I could try my new quick-firer at my own door, so to speak.” Seeing that he had touched her to the quick, he went on. “I’ve grown to loathe the quiet and the dry rot up on the Waste,” he said. “Haven’t you? Don’t you long to train quick-firers on Stubbington Wood, to blast some of those old sick trees away?”
Lady Bynd had never learned to spit and did not now attempt it; she drew herself up, looking liker an angry ham than before. Frampton heard the remark “insufferable” as he went through the door. Sir Peter followed him out to the car to see him away. Frampton wanted to be nice to Sir Peter, who had been very nice to him.
“If you’d like to bring your Boy Scouts out to Mullples at any time,” he said, “I’ll fix up a water picnic for them, with coracles, and a punt or two, and, of course, I’ll have a bathing-place for them.”
He drove away, then, thinking that he had done for himself in that house, and a jolly good job.
Lady Bynd presently put on a fur coat and was driven to her friend, Mrs. Method-Methodde at Stubbington Manor. There Mrs. Method-Methodde gave her tea and listened to her woes.
“What do you think of Mullples? My dear, isn’t it too ghastly? There is this dreadful gun-man, for I can call him nothing else, taking Spirr Wood from us out of sheer spite, and saying he’s going to make it a bird sanctuary. He only does it out of spite. We’ve met him; he lunched with us to-day. I shall never feel clean again. My dear, he is too awful. He speaks of building two hundred red brick villas and cinemas just above Spirr, so as to absolutely ruin our view. Pit was an angel to him; you know how charming he can be. I was for horse-whipping him there and then. Pit pleaded with the brute for Spirr Wood. Any decent man or half decent man would have yielded to the way Pit put it; but this creature kept saying that he had very deep feelings involved. He would not tell us what they were; naturally not; he hadn’t got any; it was only a pretence. A minute later, he said he was going to put his Gun Works on the Waste. My dear, do you realise that that man’s grandfather was a baker at Condicote, who was in Tatchester prison for assaulting a judge? He was. And his father kept a meat-pie store in Stanchester. It is altogether too ghastly. And now that poor Charlie is laid out, unable to ride, our only hope is for continued frost to make us not mind it, for the hunting season is ruined as far as this side of the country is concerned. He is an odious-looking man, with a black, cynical eye, which I always call an evil eye. There he is at Mullples. I said how difficult it is to get servants. He said that he left all that to a housekeeper. Such insolence. Not much housekeeper in the Condicote ménage, I imagine. He said that he always kept his maids; that they had nice rooms and books and a wireless set, as well as a great deal of leave. Millie says he takes them to Brighton for the week-ends. Now, there he’ll be. Absolutely killing hunting on all our side of the country.”
A young man who went by the name of Pob roused from his seat on the sofa as the lady finished her tirade. He was a leader of the B.Y.T. Club, the Bright Young Things Club, which functioned mainly in London, but had ramifications into that part of the country. He was the son of Mrs. Method-Methodde and the idol (and anxiety) of her heart.
“The chaps seems a bit of a bounder, I must say,” he said. “A bit of one.”
“I wish you’d seen him; I wish you’d heard him,” the lady answered.
“I suppose he’s made a good deal of tin,” Pob said. “These gun chaps and armament fellows, they do pretty well, what? I mean to say, they make a lot. Lots of tin in that job. He must be devilish well off.”
“Of course he has a lot of money. All these War profiteers have; nobody denies that. He makes you realise what is meant by the old phrase ‘Stinks of money.’ He has this offensive leer out of his eyes. And he looks at the pictures exactly as if he’d been a pawnbroker’s assistant, or valuer. He had the insolence to say that our Sir Joshua Reynolds was only by one of the school of. And the maid was in the room, and you know we want to sell it, if we can find some rich American. It will get about that it is not genuine, and everybody has always called it a Joshua Reynolds.”
Pob lit a cigarette.
“By Jove,” he said, “he seems a bit of a bounder. Is it true he’s not going to let us draw Spirr?”
“It’s absolutely true. For the first time for a hundred and fifty years. Even in the War years, some of us went through Spirr, just to keep the tradition alive.”
“By Jove,” Pob said.
“Just as he left,” the lady added, “he said he hoped Pit would bring the Boy Scouts out to his pond for a water picnic. Imagine those boys coming under such an influence. But with gun-works on the Waste and two hundred Tatchester unemployed in villas along the hill, Pit might just as well disband the troop.”
“As to the gun-works,” she went on, “I’ll speak to Ponk about it. He’ll get it taken up in the Press. Perhaps Pink might ask a question in the House. But certainly Ponk could do something about the red brick villas.”
Ponk was the owner of a group of newspapers in those parts; Pink was Mr. Methodde; all the friends of these people went by nicknames, most of them beginning with the letter P.
“I shouldn’t think many people near here will call on this gunman,” Lady Bynd said. “My dear, his manners are too odious. I feel in need of ammonia.”
She spread the news, and her views, of the gunman by letter, in person and on the telephone. On the Friday, Frampton drove to Tatchester Station to meet his father, who was coming from London for the week-end. The London Express, which reached Tatchester at 4 p.m., was always full of people from that countryside; the station approach was always thronged with cars sent to fetch them, and the platform populous with those who came to meet and to greet them. When Frampton came to the crowded platform, to meet the train, he saw at once that he was recognised, and with dislike. Press photographs and caricatures had made his face familiar to some millions of his countrymen. These people, who read little but illustrated newspapers, all recognised him. He realised that he was amidst the sporting set, and those hard mouths and angry eyes were set in rage at the bounder who had closed Spirr. There was no doubt, he was being stared at, with bitter comment. He knew the kind of comment, that this was the gunman who had done up Mullples and was going to shoot any fox or hound that ever entered Spirr; this was he who insulted Lady Bynd and meant to build red brick villas all over Mullples Hill; who had atheists to paint nudes all over his walls and took his housemaids to Brighton for the week-end.