“Looking at the ancestors?” he asked. “Well, those are the only ancestors we have; but no man could ask for better. They were good souls, my dear. Thank God, I was able to look after them when they were old; not that Father was ever old. But we aren’t exactly from the top drawer, my dear; just the ordinary.”
“You needn’t tell me that you and Frampton are ordinary,” she said.
“Not when we are getting at our particular things,” he said. “No, we’re both clever in our ways, Fram and I; but apart from those times we’re fairly usual, and had better not presume. We’re ordinary folk. I don’t mind. I don’t even mind the people who do mind; formerly I did.”
“And you think that the man who discovered Cornine is ordinary, do you?” she said. “You’ll make me talk like a bolshie, if you say things like that.”
“I think a good deal at odd times about this point, Margaret,” he said, “and as the English race is deeply concerned with it, it’s one we all have to think about. We have an instinct for aristocracy. I don’t say that we have the thing, but we have the instinct for the thing. Deep down, the Englishman knows that he has no real esteem for discoverers and inventors, like Fram and myself. He wants somebody much more varied, much better bred, used to leisure, generously brought up, able in all sorts of affairs, skilled and bright and beautiful. But the discoverer and inventor, no. As a matter of fact, the world doesn’t need discoveries; it doesn’t know how to use discovery; it abuses every discovery. What the world cries out for is not the ordinary, such as Fram and myself, but the extraordinary, who will lift the conception of life, government and nationality, which are all so low all over the world. In their blind, groping way, the English feel that, and therefore give enormous chances to the leisured people among whom such a spirit may emerge. He may never emerge. I sometimes think he won’t. But I do think that our best sort of gentleman (a very different being from the usual sort) is the best extant attempt at what the world really needs.”
Frampton came into the room, looking strangely handsome as he always did, when excited by work.
“Aha, my Peggy,” he called. He crossed the room, caught her by both hands and swung her round. “I’ve got little Rolly Marcham coming to-night,” he said. “I’ve got a large-scale map of the place; my photos will come out from Stubbington; and here are some of my little sketches. Well go over the plans together, my Peggy, with Marcham, and then to-morrow we’ll go to the house again, he and I, if you’d rather not come, so that he can be ready to get busy as soon as the lawyers are fixed.”
“You’ve not wasted much time,” she said. “Here’s your tea.”
“It’s a foul sort of poison, tea,” he said. “It came in with good taste; it spread with the public school.”
“It came in and spread to make men fit for the society of ladies after dinner,” she retorted. “Till tea came in, you lay below the tables till next morning.”
“One thing about this Mullples, Fram,” the old man said: “it’s farther from London and the Works than anything you’ve been accustomed to, and these country telephones aren’t always what perhaps the Postmaster-General hopes they may be before his successor dies.”
“I think we can fix that,” Frampton said.
“Well, there’s another thing, which probably won’t weigh with you. You may find your neighbours rather stuck in the last century, if not in the century before. There’s been a great drain away from the country: even since I was a boy, men of character and brain have been flying from it, and what remains may be very much sediment. It’s a pity, but it is so.”
“One can get friends from all over the place,” Frampton said. “The car has made a world of difference. Besides, Stubbington is a considerable place, and Tatchester isn’t far.”
“You’ll have friends enough, and you’ll have the Works,” the old man went on. “But I’m thinking of the loneliness for the maids, and for your wife. I noticed a good many pheasants as we came along; and most of the inns were called ‘The Horse and Groom’ or ‘The Fox and Hounds.’ It’s what is called a sporting district. Here’s the leaflet of Piggott, the agent. He says: ‘This well-known residential country offers sport with three packs of hounds.’ I imagine, that if you don’t hunt or shoot, and I haven’t noticed any signs of either in you, you won’t find many friends among your neighbours. You won’t mind, but there’ll be others.”
“Meaning me?” Margaret cried. “But I shall have music and the garden and all sorts of reading to do. The clergyman will call, and the local syndicate of married women will send somebody to see and report. Who knows? She may like me.”
“Now you come along, Peggy,” Frampton said, “and look at these plans. This is the kind of thing I want to do.”
They went through the plans together. Margaret made suggestions; the old man left them to it. After dinner, little Rolly Marcham was announced. He was somewhat like a robin in build and brightness. He had a strange way of hopping on to a chair when excited by something beautiful. He was a lover of the arts, but was one of those who felt that art began in England in 1660, with the restoration of Charles the Second. He was a fine architect. He had done all the alterations to the house in which the Mansells were. He had caught the express, on hearing from Frampton.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Marcham,” Frampton said. “I hope it wasn’t inconvenient?”
“Not in the least. Delighted,” Marcham said. It had been very inconvenient; he had had to break an evening’s engagement with his fiancée, and sacrifice his theatre tickets; his fiancée was not well pleased with him.
“D’you know Mullples Priory?” Frampton asked.
“It was in Tatshire, a Benedictine House,” Marcham said; he knew this kind of thing. “There’s nothing left of the priory, is there?”
“No.”
“I thought not,” Marcham said. “I’d have seen it, if there had been.”
Frampton rang the bell. When the maid came, he asked:
“Did a roll of papers come from the station for me?”
“They’ve just come, sir,” the maid said.
“Those are the large-scale plans,” he said. “I telephoned to London for them to be put on the express and sent on: that’s a good service. Come along then, Marcham, and we’ll have some coffee and I’ll show you the idea.” As he led the way out of the room, he said: “The people who got the priory at the suppression built a manor. That’s the main problem now.”
He led the way to the study next door which he shared with his father. It was a long, low room, with two big oak tables, one for himself, one for his father. Both the long walls were covered with book-shelves. Above these was a frieze in raised relief, coloured proper, representing fallow deer, in covert, and in the open, resting, moving, grazing or running. It was a work of great spirit, done by a young man in whose work and future he had believed. The only other work of art in the room was a bronze head of his father, a powerful thing, but impossible as a likeness.
He took a chair at his table, and opened a packet of photographs just in from the local photographers, opened the plans, rolled them flat, and plucked a chair to his side for Marcham.
“Sit ye down,” he said; “and now look here. This is the place; first appearance of the landed gentry. Monks out, gents in. Here are the photos; took them myself to-day. The chap who got it, pulled down the church and built himself a pretty nice house from it. It’s all gone galley-west with neglect. This is the Tudor bit: like it? What d’ye say to the porch? Make you hop?”