“I’m just looking you up,” she said, “I hope you don’t mind.”
“That will give you the outline,” he said. “Will you tell me something of yourself? Are you a Circassian?”
“I’m a South Russian. My grandmother was English. She was a Miss Holtspur from a place called Windlesham, in Berkshire.”
“What?” he said. “But that is extraordinary. She was the daughter of the old man who made the money?”
Margaret seemed surprised at his knowledge. She nodded.
“Yes. But it was a run-away match, not much approved on either side. My mother always spoke English. My father was a landowner. He was taken away in the Revolution. We never heard, but we cannot doubt, that he was murdered. An old woman got us away, that is my mother and myself. My two brothers died before the War. It was a frightful time for Mother, of course, getting away, with me hanging on to her. I took it as a child will, not knowing about the danger. I used to be frightened at the shooting sometimes. We were very lucky in getting taken on board an English transport at Odessa; Mother’s English was a real help then. We were taken to Prinkipo, where nobody wanted any of us. After a long time, we got to Paris, where Mother worked as a seamstress; some friends helped her and had me trained as a dancer.”
“Is your mother alive still?”
“Yes, in Paris. She has done well as a dressmaker. She employs nine women now, and has saved enough to live on. She doesn’t come to England. Her rather distant English cousins weren’t at all helpful when we were in distress. There was a Mr. Holtspur of Windlesham, to whom she wrote.”
This had been Margaret’s father, Frampton supposed. He had not known him, but had heard that he was a hard man in his later years.”
“Look here,” Frampton said, “what you tell me about your being a Holtspur is very interesting to me. Here’s breakfast, if you take that sort of thing. After breakfast, I want you to come out with me. I want to talk to you.”
He left her then; he could not stand it any longer. He went out again along the brook and speared some dams. Zapritska, who could see him from her bed, wondered what the sacred Anglais was up to there, while she sipped her coffee and blew smoke-rings.
The Haulover was out of the way discreetly. The other four dancers were not yet down, and were not like to be down, the maids thought. Frampton presently found Sorya in the garden, looking at the long and lovely line of Mullples in the bright morning.
“Do you know England well?” he asked.
“No. I’ve danced here; a summer season in London, and two tours. I’ve danced in most countries, but I like England best, on the whole.”
“On the whole I do,” he said.
It struck her as an odd remark. She looked at him with interest and saw that he spoke sincerely. That was the first breaking of the ice between them.
“I was out, in that direction,” she said, pointing up the valley. “There is some building there. Is that another suburb?”
“It is a place I am building for some of my workers,” he said. “I want to make some of my poisons here.”
“It doesn’t look quite the place for making poisons,” she said.
“It’s the very place,” he said. “But my poisons are compounds which in other syntheses can be fertilisers and so forth. I can beat my swords into ploughshares in some cases.”
“But the building is beautiful; even already one can see that; it is not a factory.”
“You have been out there, already?” he said. “You saw the sort of chapter-house. I want my chaps to have all the chances I had myself.”
“That isn’t very usual among your countrymen,” she said.
“It’s a want that’s growing,” he said. “The wealth of a land isn’t money, which is largely a fiction, when it isn’t actually a fraud. Real wealth is intelligence, want of waste, want of folly, want of redundancy. The sort of thing you get in art and training. A land that has a people who are healthy and intelligent is a wealthy land. Looking at the world, I’d say that wealth’s as rare as genius.”
“And how do your people respond to your advance?” she asked.
“They are like all people. They respond to any call properly made. The worker’s a bit mistrustful of an employer, and I don’t wonder. The brain’s been bred right out of half of both sides, in this thing called commerce. I put a lot of backs up, but some of my chaps have begun to see my point.”
“I should think they have,” she said, looking at him curiously; for she liked a generosity in men and employers, and had seen something of the harshness of commerce. She had been told that the Anglais were mad, in their queer individualism, and odd personal worships. Here was one who wanted his chaps to have a chance, yet seemed to spend his spare time poking sticks in a brook.
He had meant to show her the portraits of Margaret where they hung on the wall in his room, but they had now turned up the stream together, past the house towards the lake. He had his two-prong with him, from old habit. The sun and the wind of the clearing weather made the valley marvellous to them; some little company of goldfinches picked at the thistledown and flitted from their coming.
“I want to tell you something,” Frampton said. “I was engaged to be married to Margaret Holtspur, a cousin of yours. She was killed in a motor-car, just before our wedding. I built this house for her. You are so like her. You can see how like you are. There’s a set of photographs here; and there are portraits in the room at the end of the top floor there. I want you to look at them presently. You must forgive me. You’ll think me pretty cool, to ask you here because of that. I had to tell you. There’s a sort of cousin of yours, a bird-painter, in the wood yonder. You must meet him later. I’ll leave these photographs with you and clear out.”
He did this rather roughly, and was away at once, up to the lake, and along its north shore in great strides, jabbing at the scattered leaves as he passed. He went along to the lake end, then struck away into the covert, and so west to Spirr, where he found Timothy just up, frying bacon, while tits and chaffinches hopped about his untidy room.
“I want a word with you,” Frampton said. “Do you know anything of some cousins of yours in Russia?”
“I know there used to be some,” Timothy said, “but I think they rather got killed off in the troubles.”
“They rather did,” Frampton said grimly, “but some of them didn’t, and one of them’s up at the house. You’d better come up to lunch to meet her.”
“O God, I’m not very tidy.”
“Come as you are.”
“I say, won’t you sit down? I’ll shove these books aside, then you can sit on the window-seat.”
“You mind your bacon,” Frampton said. “I’ll do it.”
He picked up the portfolios and drawing-books which littered the seat, shoved them aside and sat. Timothy finished the bacon, set it down and made coffee from the long-boiling kettle. Frampton, meanwhile, picked up a drawing-book and turned the pages. It was filled with charming little, fantastic drawings of a children’s world of tiny people. The things were gay and delightful.
“What the devil have you been playing at?” Frampton asked.
“I say,” Timothy said, “you aren’t supposed to know about those. Those are private.”
“They are not private,” Frampton said. “Why haven’t you shown me these? Don’t you see, that these are the things you ought to be doing? You can do birds pretty well, but so can half a dozen men, and a lot better than you. But no one can do this. This is the real you. Why the devil didn’t you show me these?”