“You mean, I might build them a lodge, and take them on as keeper and house-keeper? I wouldn’t have them within extreme long range, I look on them both as duds. They were begotten by duds, the pair of them, and now our civilisation is slowly putting them out of action, as the duds they are.”
“Fram, I’m very sorry for them and should not care to live in Mullples thinking that those two are turned out to misery. Will you, to please me, let them have the cottage at Cullingdon, if they would like it, rent free, until the father dies, at any rate? Then perhaps, she might do something for herself.”
He did not relish doing anything for people of whom he disapproved, even for Margaret. The cottage at Cullingdon was a week-end cottage used by him in the summer when busily employed at the Works. It was a pleasant place, made of two improved cottages, knocked into one; it stood in a little apple orchard about half a mile from the village. He had hardly used it for the past two years; all his spare time had been given to travelling.
“Do, do this, to please me, Fram,” she pleaded. “You said you weren’t doing anything with Cullingdon.”
“Very well,” he said, not very graciously. “They can go to Cullingdon when they quit Mullples. I’ll get my books and things out. They can move in at Christmas, or before.”
“Oh, thank you, Fram,” she said. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
“I don’t think for a moment,” he said, “that they’ll like taking a favour from me, so will you go and offer them Cullingdon?”
“Let us do it together, Fram,” she said. “Let’s go over tomorrow and offer it to them; and then, mayn’t we help them over the move? for they are as nearly ruined as two souls can be, and what they spend in moving will have to be paid for out of their food, and I can’t bear the thought of it.”
He could have borne the thought of it very well, but Margaret was very gentle and winning; in his rough way he was very fond of her; he was going to be married, and he was in a good mood at getting Mullples at a bargain. Her gentle counsel prevailed. When the purchase of Mullples was sure, he went with her to see the Knares-Yocksirs, and offered more than she had hoped, or would have asked. When he had resolved upon a thing, he always did it well. Margaret was much pleased at the way he offered Cullingdon. They were in the sick man’s room at Mullples. Frampton, speaking to father and daughter together, said:
“I don’t know whether what I have to say will interest you. I have a place in Essex, called Cullingdon. It is this place in these photographs. We were wondering whether you would like to come over with us to look at it? If you like it, when you have seen it, we wonder whether you would care to stay there for a time, till you find something better; it needs some keeping up, but not much, and if you would do that for us, you would have to let us pay you some small sum. It is easy to get stores there, and the garden is very fruitful. Of course, if you liked the idea, we should undertake the getting you there and settling you in.”
He felt, in his own phrase, that he had done them proud, and expected a recognition of the fact, which did not come. He found the father obtuse and inclined to boggle.
“I see,” he said, “you keep to your one idea, of getting us out of this.”
The daughter said nothing, but looked at him in a peculiar way, as though she would like to cut his throat.
“Well, turn it over in your minds,” he said. “I must just get the measure of the room at the end.”
He went out into the garden, fuming. He walked up and down, saying he had cast pearls, and the swine had trodden them. But as they drove away, when he burst out against the couple, Margaret told him, that the woman had broken down, and been quite unable to thank him.
“She said that she had not known where to turn nor what to do. She had no relations and, of course, no friends, and now this plan was just salvation.”
She herself was weeping as she spoke. “Fram,” she said, “I do thank you for saving these people. I couldn’t have borne to live at Mullples, knowing that we had turned them out.”
“It’s up to them now,” he said. “I’ve done what I can for them. But my belief is, that when a chap or a family starts to go down, it’s a lot better to let ’em go. If I ever get into the feckless state that chap’s got into, I hope you’ll store me in the petrol cellar and give me plenty of matches.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” she said. “But you don’t know how you’ve pleased me.”
Before Christmas Day, the couple were out of Mullples, and in charge at Cullingdon.
On the day on which they gave up Mullples, Frampton took Margaret to the old house and walked over it with her. A cricket chirped by the not quite dead fire, in which, as they could see, a lot of old papers had been burned. One half-burned sheet of notepaper had fallen from the grate. It was dated the 7th July, 1852, from Something—wick Castle. The family had been prosperous then.
“This is to be our home,” Frampton said. “I hope I may make it a happy one for you, my Peggy.”
“I’ve no doubt you will,” she said.
“It’ll be the first real home I shall have had,” he said. “A bachelor’s dens don’t count. Now, I want to tell you my ideas, and what I’m doing by you. You know my views, that I don’t believe this bunk about artistic times. All times might be times of art. The talents in races don’t vary; only some decades use the talents, others neglect or thwart them, or just crush them and misuse them, as the fashion is to-day. Most modern houses just make me sick; they’re either plundered junk stores or the work of fakirs.
“Formerly houses had the marks of slow accretion about them; you could see the growth of the family in them, each generation adding something. There aren’t many like that now. Anyhow, I don’t belong to such a family. You know about us. I make no bones about it. We were on the ground, broke to the wide, in my own father’s young days, as you know.
“I’ve hopes, that this home will be a stable one for us. I’m founding my hopes on that. All this time is restless and shifting; it’s the only time that has been able to be restless; people can shift about and live away from their work. I know hardly anybody who is in the home he was born in. I want this place to be me, not anybody else, and my offering to you. I’ve designed every stick that’s coming into it for you. I’ve designed carpets, curtains, chintzes, the furniture, the metal-work, the china, the glass, everything; or gone over every design and approved it; and every stick and thread and cup and pot and pan will be made by men known to me; and if you don’t like any of ’em, why, you need only say the word and they’ll make ’em new, till they make something you do like. We’re alive, and we’ll have the work of life about us; not the death from the London junk stores, thanky. When we get home, you shall see some of the things, and I think you’ll agree with me, that you’re getting a better lot of gear than any young woman of your time.”
Margaret understood him well. He was filling the house with images of his energy; his thought was to be all round her there; well, it was living and clear thought. She hoped that she might presently touch it with gentleness.
Going out into the winter day, a horn blew not far from them; a clear voice cheered and cheered. They saw the hounds passing up the valley, and a blowzy and muddy company following after them.
“I do believe they’ve been running through the shrubberies there,” Frampton said, “trying for a fox just up by the summer-house. I’ll soon stop that little game.”
For the moment, however, he did nothing to stop their little game. He would do that presently, when some of the more pressing things were done. He saw the hounds go up the valley; and later followed on their tracks. They were all on his land, though they left it just beyond the water.