“It was built in the eighteenth century,” she said. “Sir Jocelyn Petersbury built it. Afterwards it was sold to my great-grandfather, who used it as a kennels, I believe, for his foxhounds.”
“Might we see it? Is there anything to see?”
“Certainly.”
She took them out of the house, and along the path through the field.
“The audience part of it is untidy,” she said, “but you can see the stage.” She had a key in her pocket; she opened the door for them. “It’s very bleak in here,” she said. “I wouldn’t stay long, if I were you.”
They entered to a pleasant room, so well-proportioned that it was delightful to be in it.
“This is always called the green room,” she said. “I don’t know why. The actors and actresses used to meet here, I believe. Some of the old gilding is still there.” It was true; the fine old cornice still had traces of gilding visible through the dirt and cobwebs. “This is the way to the rest of it,” the woman said.
She led them into a dark, cold passage, moving quickly in front of them. She opened doors, so that they could see that they were in a passage which had the wings of the stage on the one hand and a row of small dressing-rooms on the other. “These are the dressing-rooms of the actors and actresses,” the woman said. “They had not much room; even the best; some are tiny.”
She went into one of the dressing-rooms, and opened a shutter. A ray of sunlight came into the passage. “Come in,” the woman said. “This is a chief dressing-room.”
They went into a cubby-hole, lit by a window from which the shutter had been turned. Some of the old wall-paper was on the wall. A neat old fireplace was there. Over it was an ancient mirror, its glass foxed with the fouling which besets old mirrors. Somebody had written on it with a diamond. Frampton pointed to the writing.
“What is the poem?” he asked.
The woman had not known that there was a poem. Frampton, with his driving glove, rubbed some of the filth from the glass, so that he could read one line; then, judging that what remained could not be indecent, the other. He read it aloud.
I’ll bet she wasn’t as chaste as all that,” he said.
“You don’t know,” Margaret said. “The writer had probably tried the matter and wrote from knowledge.” She leaned forward to examine the writing. “I expect he kneeled on a chair while he wrote,” she said. “The glass is let into the wall; he could not have had it down. What a pity the glass cannot show us his face, or Monimia’s.”
“I don’t want to see Monimia’s face, if she were as chaste as all that,” he said. “What staggers me about this building, is the elegance of its proportion. It looked small, when we were outside, but see how spacious it really is.”
The woman had moved along the passage and had opened more doors and shutters.
“You can see the stage, now,” she said.
It was true: they could. A step brought them to the verge of it. The supports for the scenes still stood, and there were slots in the floor, along which these supports, when set with scenery, had once been run. On some of the supports there were still the tin sconces for the candles which had once lit the scenes. Frampton strode on to the stage proper. It was, as he judged, very long and narrow, with a considerable rake. The row of footlights had been removed. Right across their line a partition of lath and plaster had been put.
“That is the division for the fowl-house and kennels,” the woman said.
The stage was heaped with garden things: packing straw, mouldy hay, pea- and bean-sticks, rhubarb-pots, flower-pots, some bricks, seed-boxes and flower-frames. There were also the remains of tools, spades with broken handles, rakes with missing teeth, saws rusted past sharpening, forks with the prongs gone, etc.
“When was the stage last used for a play?” Margaret asked.
“Oh, long, long ago,” the woman said, “in Sir Jocelyn’s time, 1777, the paper in my father’s desk says. The play was called Zimoire the Terrible; it was a French play.”
“And when was the partition put up?” Frampton asked.
“After my great-grandfather bought it,” she said. “He wanted a place for his hounds; so he shut off the stage, and put the hounds where the audience used to be.”
“Yes, of course, he would have wanted a place for his hounds,” Frampton said.
It was dark near the partition; the woman moved away, and let in light. Close to them, one on each side of the stage, were stage boxes.
“Do you see those, my Peggy?” Frampton said. “Those were the seats of the wicked lords. They lolled here, looking at the chaste Monimia at close quarters. When they sat in one of these, they could see her in the round, not as a picture in a frame. When she had a moving moment, or an aside to say, she played it or said it to the lord here. When the curtain came down, she was drawn into one or other of these boxes, and offered a knee, a rummer of port, and a dishonourable proposal. There has been some eye work and double entendre work between the stage and those boxes, I’ll bet.”
“What rubbish,” Margaret said. “Even the worst of your lords had their better feelings, and the women touched those better feelings. If the lords came here to make dishonourable proposals, they repented when they saw Monimia play. They offered her their hearts, what remained of them, and their coronets, if they were not in pawn.”
“Might we see the kennel part?” Frampton asked.
It was cold in that gloomy place. The woman led them out into the sunlight, and along the building to its farther end. At this point, the field had been paved, but the grass had grown over the paving so as to hide every trace of it. The woman unlocked a door, and threw it open. They could look into the big, bare auditorium. The gallery of seats, which had been a part of the original design, had been removed; but the marks of it still showed. The sleeping-benches for the hounds still remained. Poultry had perched above them. They were filthy, littered with old feathers and bits of broken egg-shell.
“We used to keep poultry here,” the woman said. “Will you excuse me, if I go in, to see if my father wants anything? You might care to look at the grounds at the back and over there. If you wish to see my father afterwards, perhaps you’ll come to the house when you’re ready.”
“Well, Peggy,” Frampton said, when the woman had gone, “we mustn’t be too long. I’ll go up to explore on this side, and get all the snapshots I can while the sun lasts. Will you have a look round on your side?”
“All right,” she said.
“Are you pleased?” he asked.
“It’s rather a sad place, don’t you think?” she said.
“It’s been allowed to get its socks rather over its boots,” he said.
When he had gone, she walked back past the place where the brook was falling into the cellars. Turning up-stream, she found a fallen willow, by which she could cross the flood to a jungle and ruin beyond. A trampled space there had been the summer camping-place of a tramp and his lady, who had left some boots, rags, ashes and a bit of old sock. The walls were all ruined here, with ivy, old apple-trees and triumphing nettles five feet high, and hard as reed. Beyond the wall was what had once been a rose garden, now all wild and brambled. Some of the trees were ten feet high and bright with hips. A stone pedestal was in the midst of the space. She walked to it. It had once borne a sundial, which had been brutally wrenched away, apparently quite recently, for the marks of the jemmy were fresh. At the end of the rose-garden was another beautiful little summer-house, from which the roof had gone. The floor had been wrenched away for firing. From this summer-house, she had a good view of the back of the Manor.