The next letter was from the Stubbington Gazette, a little four-page weekly, which he had seen once or twice. He had passed its office in Stubbington several times; usually the window was full of the week’s local photographs, and thereby conspicuous. The letter ran:
Dear Mr. Mansell,
Though I have not the pleasure of knowing you, I have often heard of you from my brother, Charles Harold, who was, till recently, one of your chemists. It is possible that he may have mentioned me to you. I am present editing the Stubbington Gazette, or trying to. I am also writing a little monograph on the paintings of Tenor Cobb, who has, I know, done so much work for you at Mullples. I write to ask, if you will be so very kind as to let me see your Cobbs during daylight, sometime in the next week or two, if that be not asking too much.
Yours sincerely,
He knew Charles Harold, of course, as a young and brilliant chemist, who had left the Works in order to make a special study of certain matters in China. So here was another Harold, probably a most unusual chap, running a little paper and writing about modern painting.
“There’s real genius in that family,” he thought.
He went to the telephone at once, got through to Mr. Harold, and asked him to come to lunch that day. He would be in Stubbington, and would bring him out to Mullples. Things weren’t so bad, perhaps, if over at Stubbington there were people who knew about Cobb.
When this had been arranged, he drove over to Stubbington to the police station, where he explained that he owned Spirr Wood, that he had warned the Hunt that he wished it to be observed as a bird sanctuary, and not to be drawn, and that conspicuous notices of PRIVATE were at several points. In spite of this (here he produced his casts), a drag had been run through it, his gate broken open and unhinged, and his fields and property trespassed upon and damaged. He wanted summonses against those who had broken open the gate, laid the drag and ridden the covert. He said that he had reason to suppose that the drag was laid by a Miss Drachm, and two friends. The casts on the table were of the footprints of the three whom he believed to be guilty of the drag, but the Hunt must have known of the drag and were guilty of the trespass. The Master and the huntsman, and probably the Whip as well, must have been in the secret. He had taken pains to show the Hunt that Spirr Wood was to be a bird sanctuary, and as such not to be disturbed. He had spent, as he put it, a pot of money on the place, and would not permit his wishes to be flouted thus.
The Police Inspector was a large and genial man; he had had a man out to Spirr to see the damage done.
“You could see they’d been in the field,” he said. “They’d had the wires round the gate cut with clippers and had taken the gate off the hinges. Since you insist upon it, Mr. Mansell, the summonses shall be issued. Are you sure that the PRIVATE notices could be seen?”
“Certain,” Frampton said.
“My man says that he didn’t see any notices.”
“They were there.”
“He says he couldn’t see any. He says he couldn’t see much damage to the wood, except just at the fence.”
“The fence and the gate,” Mansell said.
“You see,” the Inspector went on, “the bench has no jurisdiction for trespass, unless damage is done. And the damage must be done wilfully and/or maliciously.”
“I do not say that much damage was done,” Frampton said. “I say that some was done, wilfully and maliciously. The Master of the Hunt could have stopped his servant trespassing on the field. The huntsman could have stopped the hounds entering the covert. They didn’t; and I’ll have them up for it.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” the Inspector said. “You leave it to the Law.”
“Do you know anyone named Pob Ted?” Frampton asked.
The Inspector’s brow clouded.
“Him and Miss Drachm’ll be my death one day,” he said, but said no more.
After this, Frampton went on to meet Richard Harold at the Gazette office. He was a young man, with a whimsical, clever face, very like his chemist brother, but with a feeling for art, which the chemist was without.
He was like the young naval officer in charge of a picket-boat, very happy in his first command. As the young naval man may thrill at the question, “Who commands this saucy packet?” so did Richard Harold thrill when someone clumped up the dark and winding stair, and asked: “Where can I find the Editor?”
“It’s no great shakes of a place,” Harold explained. “It’s in the old premises of the founder, with the press at the back, there. But it’s awfully interesting experience. I’ve been here a year, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it.”
The Editor’s room was certainly no great shakes of a place, being littered with old galleys, old books of reference, files of script, and heaps of advertisements. It looked out upon a yard, beyond which were the printing works. Down below, in a dingy den, two young men worked at their calling with scissors and paste. Frampton got the young man into his car, with the feeling that this lad would not long be at Stubbington. He mentioned his feeling; Harold blushed, and said that he had put in, as it happened, for a real paper elsewhere, but would not know just yet.
At lunch, they talked of art, of which Richard knew much, not wholly as a scholar. He had been for a time under Berquin in Paris, trying to etch.
“What on earth made you chuck Paris and etching with a chap like Berquin, to come to edit a Gazette in Stubbington?” Frampton asked.
“Well,” Richard said, “if you saw my etchings, perhaps you might not ask that. I’m no good as an etcher, and never shall be. Berquin told me that I etched just like an Anglais, ‘for the advertisement, yes, perhaps, in the provinces, but for the Art, no.’ He told me the truth, and as I’d come to suspect it, it didn’t hurt too much. I know that I’ve a flair for running a paper. I did it at school rather well. I heard that the Gazette here was dicky. My mother used to know the owner years and years ago. I went to the old chap and asked if I might not have a try at pulling it round. Nihil praestat buccae. Nothing like cheek. So I got the job; and I’ve got it round. I hope to get a quite big provincial paper presently, and then start on my own, and enter politics. It isn’t what I’d hoped for myself, but it’s what I know I can do. Old Berquin told me what I’d begun to suspect: ‘’Arold, you are not artist, you are gentlemans.’ Well, he is right, but I do love art, and I must say it is a pleasure to come to a house like this, only a few miles from Stubbington, and see all these things and find you, who know it all.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much art in Stubbington. People don’t seem much to care for it,” Frampton said.
“How can they care for it?” Harold said. “If it ever touches their lives at all, it is as something rammed into them from above, by someone plainly not enlightened.”
“I’m delighted to hear you say that,” Frampton said.
“The best thing that one can say about them is, that they know well enough that art of that sort isn’t any good to them. It isn’t any good to anybody. Art is a thing that must have roots in life. Any sort of weed-art is better than, the sort of cut-flowers-art, which these chaps sometimes try to foist on them. The arts of Stubbington are considerable, however. The dairy-farms are good; there are three flower-farms which are remarkable; not on this side, of course; you’ll be on the Waste here. There are some market-gardens out towards Tatchester, and especially towards Stanchester, which are worth a visit. But, of course, all these things do not count. The real interest, excitement and energy, all the really creative elements of the soul, are devoted to sport, shooting to some extent, and just round Stubbington there is fishing, but mainly fox-hunting. That is the real or only delight and joy to the well-to-do in this county and the four all round it. As far as these people have an art, that is their art, and there can be no doubt that they practise it whole-heartedly. You know, there’s a lot to be said for it.”