It chanced that that day Frampton had planned to drive to Sulhampton, to see the glass in the Abbey windows. It was a drive of some thirty-five miles from Mullples.
On leaving the Abbey, he turned towards the famous old Royalist tavern, King Charles’s Crown, for lunch. He had been there before, more than once. While he was lunching, he suddenly stiffened at the sound of a familiar, cracked voice, saying:
“They give a feller a very sound pie here.”
It was the Annual-Tilter in person, accompanied by his wife and another man, a rather big chap, with pop eyes and a heavy jowl. They took a table at some distance from him, near a window which looked on the street. They had not noticed him. They talked about what they were going to have for lunch, and how Millie had looked. The waitress took their orders, put one or two items on their table and then withdrew. Mrs. Annual-Tilter looked round, saw Frampton, looked hard, to make sure, and then with her hand made her husband look; all three looked. Frampton was aware of their stares; he stared back, and then, thinking that the chance was too good to miss, rose from his place, came over to their table, and said:
“You are Annual-Tilter, acting master of the Tunster. You were in charge, when your filthy dogs went through my bird sanctuary. Since you haven’t had the grace to apologise, let me tell you that I’ll stop your hunting in that part of Tatshire, if it costs me the last penny I’ve got. That’s all I’ve got to say to you at present.”
He turned his back upon them and walked back to his place. Sitting down, he stared, stare for stare, with his enemy, in whom he saw desire for battle checked by the knowledge that a scene would never do. He ate his cheese slowly, still staring at them. Mrs. Annual-Tilter said: “Outrageous.” The pop-eyed man meditated war, but did not wage it. Frampton drank his coffee slowly, still staring. He had made them squirm a little, he thought. He had made them Frampton-Mansell-conscious; they would remember the gun-fella in their prayers that night. When he had finished his lunch, and paid his bill, he stood up, nodded to them and strolled out.
“Now I see what to do,” he said to himself. “This has been just like an answer to prayer. Now I’ll make an offer for the Tittup ruin and all that filthy wood and put the Hunt out of all our side of Tatshire.”
He had no intention of paying one penny more for that derelict property than the lowest price he could screw them down to. As he explained to the agents in Stubbington ninety minutes later, the house was rotten, there was dry rot in the roof and wet rot in the wainscots. The handles and hinges were worth half a quid, the marble mantelpiece in the drawing-room might fetch a quid; and he would give them a bob a ton for the bricks. As for the Wood, well, he only asked them to look at it. No one could use the house in its present state. It wasn’t a dwelling-place. It couldn’t be made into a school, nor a nursing-home, nor a mad house. The Wood was one long disease. He would offer them, and here he named his price, and they could take it or leave it.
They left it, with indignation, that night, but within the week they thought better of it. They had missed their chance, however, and had to take much less. Ten days later, the property was his. He owned the Tittups property. This was a matter of great cheer to him.
“See, my little Fram,” he said, “you own Tittups, the seat of the fox-hunter, where Bahram, the great hunter, that great ass, used to live. You own the heart of the Tunster country, the sure find, the covert where the famous Tittup foxes le. iAnd now we’ll have the hunters out of it forever.”
He caused his lawyers to write a warning to the neighbouring Hunts, that they were to keep out of Stubbington as out of Spirr. He hired a firm of house-breakers to put the derelict house out of the way. He caused an enterprising firm to wire the fences of the estate.
“I’ll keep them out, the swine,” he muttered.
There were four melancholy cottages on the Tittups Estate; he put these under a deferred sentence of death. The people who lived in them had nowhere else to go.
“And now,” he said, “I’ll really do what I only suggested to the angry ham. I’ll make this a model community.”
He had thought of it a good deal since he had seen how bitterly it had been resented. It was a maxim of his: “When you see these duds writhing, be sure that what you’re doing is right; go on at it.” He had thought of a lot of schemes, had drawn up several plans with estimates vouched for by Rolly, and was tempted to begin upon it at once.
Rolly came down, to go over the ground with him. He began to be excited about this child of his invention. A community of fifty homes, two recreation centres and a school seemed to him to be a great return to be had for money. He was not sure how far he could insist on the school being run on his own lines, but he thought of the children who might graduate from that school, all lovely athletes, all able to sing and to play instruments, all able to draw, to speak and to act. He read eagerly the many books describing the many ideal settlements founded since the industrial age began to rouse protesters. He thought that he saw the causes of the failures of most of these. They had attracted usually the wrong kind of artist and the deadly kind of prig. Well, he would make this place the home of his very best workers, and make his new gun here.
Rolly was eager about the scheme; he gave of his very best thought to the planning and prepared those drawings which made such a sensation when exhibited. For a few days, just after the purchase of Tittups, Frampton felt that he had found again an interest in life.
He thought that it would annoy the local sportsmen if he advertised the forthcoming building in the Tittups estate. He, therefore, put up large posters in prominent places, to say that this was the site of the St. Margaret’s Model Village or Garden Suburb. A part of the Waste at the top of the hill seemed to him to be necessary to the completion of his plan. By great good fortune, it was possible for him to buy this, too. He had a diviner down, to run out the springs. There was abundant water on the estate. He began to figure out the question: Could his new gun be made there? He had received a specimen or trial piece showing something of the new gun. He was eager to have it made close to where it had been devised.
“It’ll make ’em squirm,” he thought.
Even so, he hesitated; it was too big a plunge to take for fun.
One afternoon it chanced that he was talking at Mullples to young Dick Harold, about acting as art adviser to the Stubbington War Memorial Committee. It seemed that Colonel Tittup’s death had re-opened this question of the War Memorial. The money was there; it had lain in the bank ever since 1919; and now that the old Treasurer, Tittup, was gone people, being reminded of it, felt that a new Committee should be formed and a Memorial raised. Dick Harold, as Editor, had printed some correspondence about it. Mr. Copshrews, the Rector of Stubbington, was strongly in favour; and Dick had suggested to Copshrews that Frampton would be a most useful adviser; “he knows everything about modern art and all the best artists; he’s the chap to have.” Copshrews had had misgivings about asking such a firebrand, but had suggested that the Committee, then being formed, should invite Frampton to come as adviser. Harold asked if he would consider the invitation.
“If the people really want me,” Frampton said, “of course I’ll come and do what I can. But I doubt that the people in these parts will want me.”
“Oh, they want you in Stubbington,” Harold said. “Stubbington isn’t like the country. With you advising, we may get something really good.”