He sang it charmingly, as was his way when a little drunk; the audience, being much moved by a touching poem, did not applaud, but murmured.
Frampton went into the bar, which smelt and looked like other country bars. A game of darts was on one wall. Behind the bar was a big, stuffed, moth-eaten badger in a glass case, and a framed almanac of twenty-three years before, showing a lifeboat approaching a wreck. A tall, tired-looking man, in his shirt-sleeves, was leaning behind the bar. Three men were sitting on the settles. Timothy and another man, a dapper little figure, very black and trim, were at the bar. The dapper man was saying:
“A sad but frequent case. Have another gin, Timothy.”
Frampton had come in meaning to have Timothy out of it and to give him a roasting, but he suddenly recognized the landlord.
“Why,” he said, “aren’t you Mr. Hordiestraw, who used to keep the inn at Tallant Bay, in Devon? What brings you so far from home?”
“Why, Mr. Mansell,” the man said, “we’m all simple fules, when it comes to city men. I reckon we’m all greedy, when the bacon is dangled. I was made a proper fule of; that’s why I’m here. They say rogues don’t prosper. Maybe they don’t for long, but they prosper proper for a time; iss vai.”
Frampton asked him a question or two, while the eyes of all the people present turned upon him. The little dapper man had moved discreetly to the door. Frampton heard one of the men present say “the chap at Mullples”; the stares became intense, while old Hordiestraw told the tale of his disaster; they knew the story, but they had not yet seen at such advantage this chap what they said was mad and had naked folks painted on his walls. There came the noise of a little car starting off. Timothy had judged that the glass was falling and had made for cover.
Hordiestraw said: “I well remember what you liked, Mr. Mansell.” He went to a door leading inwards from the bar and called: “Lily, Lily, bring up a bottle of Yellow Tommy. Here’s Mr. Mansell come in.”
Lily brought in Yellow Tommy, so called from being made from yellow tommy, or dandelion. She greeted Mr. Mansell, whom she had not seen for seven years, but well remembered from the days of their prosperity at Tallant’s Bay, when they had had a snug little inn of their own, and Mansell had stayed there with old Naunton who was on a sketching tour. Lily wept as she remembered. She asked after Mr. Naunton, and whether he still went on with his sketching, much as one might have asked if Mr. Wordsworth still liked Nature and that. An old man, who saw the Tommy being poured, called out:
“You be careful of that stuff, Mr. Mansell. There came a London man here, drank some of it last week. Her didn’t wake up for thirty hours.”
Another replied, that “the London man was a proper mazed article, there could be no going by him.”
Frampton remembered the cordial from of old. It was very fine stuff, but a very little of it was plenty.
Whether it was the Yellow Tommy or some other reason, Frampton suddenly felt, with a pang of emotion, that this old, unhappy, cheated inn-keeper and his wife had been nicer and more welcoming to him, and plainly much gladder to see him, than anyone in all that district in which he had made his home. He saw, too, why Timothy preferred this kind of company.
“It isn’t preference with him,” he thought; “it’s Hobson’s choice. If I’m cut, what must he be?”
However, he was at the staple of news; he tried to gather some.
“You had the hounds past you this morning,” he said. “Did they kill, did you hear?”
From the kind of cold plob with which the question fell, he knew at once that all there knew that a drag had been laid across Spirr, specially to spite himself. Some of them, he knew, must have seen the hounds; but all there knew the truth. They had been revelling in the truth all day.
Old Hordiestraw squirmed; but Yellow Tommy had loosened his cocks.
“There was a man here,” he said, “just afore you come in, Mr. Mansell; he said, he see them get to it, out beyond the bridge there. He said it was a drag they were running; just a bit of skin and aniseed.”
“I marvel their doing that,” Frampton said; “there are lots of foxes about.”
There was an uneasy squirming all round; they knew the truth, and suspected now that Mr. Mansell was out to get at the culprits, which would never do. No information was going to be had there. But two young men came in at that moment, and asked for a pint apiece.
“There’ll be upsets,” one of these men said. “There’ll be changes in these parts, from this fatal day.”
“What’s the matter?” Hordiestraw asked.
“Poor Colonel Purple Tittup’s been killed, hunting.”
“No? When?”
“About half after three. He was jumping under a tree, and hit his head on a bough. Alf and I brought him in on a hurdle.”
“Was he alive, then?”
“No, dead. He was killed, dead, and never knew what hit him.”
“Where was this?” one of the men asked.
“Just this side of Russell’s. They stopped the Hunt, of course.”
“Well, it was a quick end,” somebody said. “And you’re right, it may bring changes. He owned all of Stubbington Great Wood. All that will have to be sold.”
The young man who had brought the news finished his pint.
“It’ll be the end of Stubbington Wood, and Tittups, too,” he said. “No-one’ll take an old den like that to live in. It’s time these big estates got broken up, that’s what I say.”
“Tittups was a fine place in my grandfather’s time,” the other young man, Alf, said. “Lots of beer going.”
The two men were at the bar; they had caught up the communal dice-box and were throwing threes for who should pay for the pints. They had not noticed Frampton, who was at the far end of the bar, in bad light. Alf lost the throws and paid. His friend looked up and said:
“They laid a drag through Spirr, ’s morning. That was a quiff of that lad they call Pob Ted and his piece, the Brass-Eyed Sarah, to spite this toff who closed the wood. . . .” Hordiestraw made him a sign to shut up, but he was not quick in reading the sign, and in any case not prone to silence. “A damn good quiff, too,” he went on. “Why should a damn London toff come down here and spoil people’s sport? What did a London toff want in a rotten old drain like Mullples, anyway?”
Mrs. Hordiestraw, who was in misery at this, now whispered “Hush.”
He looked at her defiantly:
“Why should I hush? I don’t see.”
Frampton came along the bar to him.
“She was afraid you might hurt my feelings,” he said. “I’m the man at Mullples. It’s all right; no harm’s done, and no ill feelings caused. You couldn’t know I was here. But I bought Mullples because I thought it too fine a house to be let fall to pieces. Mrs. Hordiestraw, I wonder if we may have a bottle of Yellow Tommy, so that we can all have some?”
Mrs. Hordiestraw brought out a bottle; the cordial went round; it was said to be rare good tackle. The two young men looked at Frampton with friendlier eyes, but at the same time were wary. At the second passing of Tommy, the talk turned on the late Colonel Tittup. One there had seen him ride by that morning, on his way to his death. They had liked the old chap; he had done some manful things in his day; some of the friendly, stupid, testy and kindly things done and said by him were recounted. Frampton thought that the knowledge shown was extraordinary. The Colonel would have known nothing like this of any one of the men who thus discussed him.