The Square Peg or The Gun Fella

Mr. Fist said: “Well, good morning to ye, Mr. Mansold; come in and sit down and make your miserable self happy.”

He motioned him to a chair, and then with a wave of the hand introduced him to the Council. As Frampton sat, old Bert fumbled for a paper, which his neighbour found for him.

“I believe, Mr. Mansold, you want to do something with statues, or as some call them, bronzes, at about the bridge-end?”

“Yes,” Frampton said that he did.

“Well, Mr. Mansold,” Old Fist said, “will you be so kind as to tell the Council just what it is you want to do with statues there, and what these statues are, and how many clothes they got?”

Frampton told the Council; but he did not tell them his inmost thoughts, nor did he mention Snipton. The Council seemed puzzled and suspicious and a little indignant; puzzled because they could not see what little game this fellow might be up to; suspicious because they did not like this sort of thing, statues and that; one never knew where it would stop; and indignant because Stubbington could put up her own statues, without any outside interference from one who had only just come and had already put everybody’s backs up. Old Bert Fist pondered on what Frampton had said.

“You’ll excuse my asking, Mr. Mansold,” he said, “but I don’t know much about statues, never having had one done to me; I leave that to this grateful Council when I go to a Higher Chamber; but I understand that if you go making statues you spend a deal of money; it’s not so much the worth of the marble in the thing itself, it’s the worth of the marble that has to be cut away first. What I’m getting at is, that we’re responsible to the rate-payers for every penny; and we’ve got no money for statues.”

“But I wish to make it clear,” Frampton said, “that the figures I have in mind will be bronze, not marble, and that I wish to give them, if you will accept them, without asking for a penny from your rate-payers.”

One of the Council members said that the bridge-end had been mentioned as the place for the statues, and he would, therefore, suggest a more central site, such as the Diamond Park, as they called it. Mr. Fist pondered.

“But you will understand, Mr. Mansold,” he said at last, “that we’re responsible to the rate-payers for all that’s done, as well as all that’s spent. And when it comes to statues, why, they’re very ticklish cattle, some of ’em. Not but what we’re grateful for your kind thought, I’m sure.”

“I understand,” Frampton said, “that you will want to see designs showing what the figures will look like, when in place, before you grant the site for them. I’ve got the designs for you. And as for the central site” (here he turned to the member who had just spoken), “I want to make it clear that I only offer the figures for the end of the bridge; I mean the ends, north and south, of the parapets of the eastern end of the bridge. That is the site where they would look best and be best seen by everybody coming to the city from that side.”

“You mean where we splayed the bridge out a bit, in the widening?” Mr. Fist said. “We was thinking of putting a couple of lamp-posts there, if you remember, last time poor old Joe was here.” He said this to a member, who remembered well. “Poor old Joe, he couldn’t abide the thought of lampposts and taking the gas across the bridge,” Mr. Fist said. “But that’s the place, Mr. Mansold, across at Hen’s Marsh. I don’t know what poor old Joe would ’a said to statues.”

Another member said that he would like to know what the figures would look like to people coming across the bridge from the town; would people going out of town have anything to look at?

Frampton said: “Their backs would be towards the town. People coming from the town would not see them, save as the backs of big people. But backs can look very attractive; many men will follow a back a long way, in the hope of presently seeing the face.”

There was a laugh at this. A man said:

“Aren’t they jolly well had, nine times out of ten.”

The member who had asked the question said that he didn’t quite see why the figures should be there. Why shouldn’t they be at the town end of the bridge, facing the town?

Frampton said that at the town end, the swerve of the road made the bridge-end a bad place for statues.

“Yes,” the member persisted, “but so’s the other place a bad place, it seems to me.”

“Not at all,” Frampton said. “It is a fair field of view. You will see the figures all the straight two hundred yards leading to the bridge-end from the country. When you come to them there’s a fair space by the road, where you can leave your car while you examine them. They will add to the appearance of the bridge. At the town end, anyone looking at the statue’ll get run over.”

“Still, the people of the town would see them,” the man objected, “and in the middle of Hen’s Marsh they wouldn’t. People don’t go out the Hen’s Marsh side.”

“No, they come in from there,” Frampton said.

“Then you don’t want the town’s people to see them, only the country people?”

“I want everybody to see them who wants to see them,” he answered. “I believe that a good many people will go out to see them. And I know that they’ll improve the look of the bridge.”

“We in Stubbington are very proud of our bridge,” Mr. Fist said. “It was a bridge site in Roman times.”

A member who had not spoken now asked if he might be permitted to ask, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, exactly why Mr. Mansell was wishing to put up the statues. No one had done such a thing before, and the question was bound to be asked sooner or later, in the Press and that. Mr. Fist said that if it wasn’t a rude question, he, too, would like to know. Perhaps Mr. Mansold would not mind telling them.

“I’ll tell you, certainly,” Frampton said. “I own these two bronze figures, which I admire enormously. I think that they ought to be public property and would be very noble figures for such a site as your bridge-end. I would like to give them to Stubbington, for that site, if you will accept them for it. It is a site unequalled in England. I believe that with them the bridge-end will be a thing unmatched in England. Then for other motives, I have come to live not far from here. I do some of my shopping here. You might call this my market town. I have given here, as yet, no gift to any public body, save as subscription or donation. I would like to give something more important and more personal out of my love for art. I believe that if I give Stubbington two bronzes by Faringdon, the future inhabitants of the place will think of me without dislike.”

“Well, Mr. Mansold,” Mr. Fist said, “you have made us an offer, whether of statues or of bronzes, and which is which I’m not sure, and as the Chairman, it falls to me to say we’re very much obliged, I’m sure, and we shall be very pleased to discuss the matter and let you know. If you may think we’re not very welcoming, it’s because we haven’t had much experience of statues, or bronze statues, or bronzes. We’ve only got two things in Stubbington, which we pride ourselves on: good hearts and common sense.”

“A first-rate foundation,” Frampton said. “You can get most things with those.”

“I don’t know about most things,” Mr. Fist said, “but some we can.”

Frampton had taken this as his dismissal, and was going, when a member said:

“I wonder if, before he goes, Mr. Mansell will tell us one thing? In fixing statues you have to do quite a bit of masonry sometimes, fixing them in and tidying up round after. May I ask if Mr. Mansell means us to do that—provided, of course, that his scheme goes through?”

Frampton said that he meant the statues to be a gift, and that the gift would include the putting them in position and tidying up afterwards. The passage to the bridge would not be interfered with. Traffic would be able to pass, even when the bronzes were being put into position. But he wished it to be clear, that the citizens or townspeople of Stubbington would not have to pay a penny for the making or fixing of the bronzes. After the bronzes were there, they would be town property, and as much liabilities to the town as the rest of the bridge at the end of which they would stand. He made this, as he thought, clear to them, and then left. He felt that he had been accused of trying to poison Stubbington in its sleep, and was now suspected of having set the town on fire. He had tried to make them a handsome gift. They had made it clear that they were up to his devilry, thank you, and weren’t going to let him get away with it.

Just before he left, he placed on the table his photographs of the two figures, and the sketches of them in position, so that they might consider and discuss them after he had gone.

When he left the Council, he went over to see the warden in Spirr. He had been very bitter towards Tim since the Christmas frolic; but had been thinking that he was responsible for the frolic, and for Tim’s feeling lonely.

“What else can he do here?” he thought. “The place would drive me to drink the first night.”

He found Tim unshaven and dirty, at work on nesting-boxes for the spring season. His pets, the tame goose and partridge, came forward to meet the visitor, with the comment of their kind. Afterwards, the goose returned to watch Tim at his work.

“Look here,” Frampton said, “I’ve been wanting to speak to you. This goose and partridge may be better company than most of the people round here; I don’t say they’re not; but they aren’t enough for you. You feel it yourself, and that’s why you’re in the pubs half your time. What I want you to do this spring is to get the Boy Scouts keen about this. There’s a very good chap in charge of them at Tatchester. I want some of the best of the boys to come out here, and help put up the boxes, and help you in the nesting season, watching and filling in the notes. There’s nothing the keen boy would love more. It would do you good to have the boys around; and you’ve got a lot of talents that would do the boys good. Only this pub business has got to stop, understand? It’s doing your talent no good.”

Tim had heard more than once that the pub business was doing his talent no good. He brightened at the thought of the boys, and said that he would be glad to have them, if they were at all keen. From this, he went on to show that he was himself keen. He had had the luck to see and draw some fire-crests during the day before. He spoke of them as a divine might talk of little angels. Frampton left him, thinking that the chances were, that Tim had ceased to grow at the age of fourteen or so. Something had stopped him, then, and had kept his mind that of a boy.

“Possibly, the Scouts’ll buck him up,” Frampton thought, “and he may buck them up; he’s a boy himself in most ways.”

He had never liked Tim, yet as he came away from the dirty hut, where the goose was talking, he thought of a look of Tim’s, which recalled Margaret to him.

“O God,” he cried again, “I wish you’d killed me instead of Margaret. He’s like her, when he looks up suddenly. I’m really responsible to Margaret for him, and I hope the boys will do the trick. If I sack him, he’ll be on the Embankment in a month and in the Morgue within the year.”

However, the suggestion of the Scouts came from the source of all good suggestions. Some of them came over on that Saturday afternoon. Tim had prepared for their coming and gave them a wonderful time. He was not only a boy himself, he was an inspired boy. Thenceforward they were frequent visitors to Spirr.

Meanwhile, the Council in Stubbington debated the matter of the bronzes. They did not like the look of the photographs, but then they were somewhat staggered by Frampton’s declaration that Faringdon was a genius. Mr. Harold supported this, when asked, by saying that sooner or later the world would recognise Faringdon as a genius, and then the statues would be worth their weight in gold. It would be very nice to find people coming from all over the world to look at the end of their bridge.

They went out to look at the end of the bridge. Now that you came to think of it, it did look a little bare. It was a pity they hadn’t brought the gas across in Old Joe’s time. If there had been lamp-posts at the bridge-end, why, all this talk of statues would never have arisen.

But it wasn’t going to cost the town a penny; that they had had repeated, as well as in Mr. Mansell’s hand. If the things were not to cost a penny anyhow, ever, and might (as they were assured), become worth their weight in gold, almost overnight, why, then, would they not be failing in their duty to the rate-payers if they turned the scheme down?

This was the problem which perplexed them. But, then, the photographs did look very queer. Well, that was the art coming out, the queerness. You got used to that, the papers said. Then, if these statues were so very precious, why did this Mr. Mansell, who was a queer fish, anyway, always putting people’s backs up, why did he want to get rid of them, especially for a place like the bridge-end. This, too, was a problem which perplexed them. The other end of the bridge would have been all right; but not that end, where no one of the town would see them, unless they walked out on Sunday.

They debated and debated. They felt sure that there must be a snag, but could not see where, nor what. Time went by, yet they could not make up their minds. Frampton said nothing about the rejection of the figures from Snipton. They knew nothing about that. Presently, as he grew weary of waiting for a reply from them, he wrote to tell them that if they did not want the bronzes, he would be glad to know, so that he might offer them to the Tate. This made it necessary for them to make up their minds.

They wrote to say that they would like, if it were possible, to see the statues “before coming to a final decision.” This was a most reasonable request. Frampton would have been pleased, if they had shown a wish to see them early in the proceedings. Still, better late than never. He had the things in his big bare room downstairs. He wrote to say that he would be delighted. Old Bert Fist and four others, making a Committee of the fine arts, would come to lunch to see them and settle the matter.

They came to lunch, which was certainly well worth coming for. Old Bert and the others were jovial company at lunch; they cast wondering eyes at Frampton’s frescoes, but did not let them interfere with enjoyment. At the end of the lunch, Mr. Fist made a merry speech and drank Frampton’s health. Presently, they moved out to see the bronzes, saw them, and were soon tempted back to try some more of Frampton’s brandy.

They wondered a little, that the bronzes were not of St. George killing a dragon, nor of a Tatshire man in uniform, with a handkerchief tied round his brow, standing at bay. Still, these things were art, and you never could tell with art what was art. One member said that they would look very well at the bridge-ends when the leaves were out on the trees, so as to take the eyes away. That was the feeling of most of them, that the leaves would set them off and take people’s eyes away. Anyhow, it was most kind of Mr. Mansell, or Mr. Mansold, as old Fist always called him, it was most kind of Mr. Mansold to offer such valuable things to the town. They would remember the lunch and meeting with Mr. Mansold and Mr. Mansold’s brandy; it had been a red-letter day to all of them. As to the bronzes, they would send a formal letter of grateful acceptance as soon as they got back to the office.

Frampton suggested that they should all have a little more brandy to clinch the bargain, and at the end of the brandy hoped that old Mr. Bert would sing them one of his songs. Old Mr. Bert gladly sang; then they had a little more brandy. Then they were all the best of good friends; happy that Stubbington had so good a friend so near, proud that the old bridge was to have so find an addition to its beauties, and resolved that if there was one thing that Stubbington needed, it was a little more art, and now Mr. Frampton was going to give it. When should he give it? Well, when the leaves were out, when it was warm in the sun and people wouldn’t mind standing about. The middle of May would be a good time. They could get somebody down to speak. The Lord-Lieutenant might be unable, but the Bishop would come; and, of course, the Member; a detachment of the Tatshires would come and a good band. Would Mr. Frampton unveil the figures?

Frampton said: “No, I want the figures to be unveiled, the one by a mother who lost a son, the other by a woman who lost her lover in the War. You have plenty of both in Stubbington. I feel those are the people to do the unveiling.”

There was a hush after this; the party went away. The letter of acceptance was sent that night and was received by Frampton the next morning.

It chanced that a few days later, Faringdon came down to see the site. He was much pleased with it; he had liked the old bridge, which had been built in days when the Hen Marsh stretched beyond the little river. He liked the amendment which Stubbington had made of it. As Frampton and he were walking back from the site, they turned from the bridge to a little space on the river-bank, where people could hire canoes and punts.

“This is a pretty little patch, with the pub there,” Faringdon said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Frampton said. “And it’s famous in Stubbington history. You ought to do a bronze of King Stubba, to go there.”

“Who was King Stubba?” Faringdon asked.

“Who was King Arthur?” Frampton answered. “I don’t swear that he existed, but Stubba is the local hero, who gave his name to the town, Stubba’s town. He is said to have driven out the enemy here. The enemy were in the town, sacking it, and had set fire to the bridge. Stubba galloped up to save the town, rode over the burning bridge, which collapsed just as he got across, and so had to fight the whole lot of them single-handed until his men could swim or ford across to help him. It would be a fine theme for you, Stubba on a war-horse, just at this point, and a plinth with a relief all round it, of the fight just here. It won’t all have happened, but something of it happened, and at this very place.”

Faringdon looked at the place with a kindling eye.

“I wish he’d a prettier name,” he said. “It would be a pretty good place to put something.”

“Well, what d’ye think about it?”

“I think yes about it, if you mean it and these chaps would give the site.”

“I’ll see them about it.”

Faringdon had an impassive face, but expressive eyes; his face moved no muscle but his eyes gleamed. He walked about the space, seeing it all round. It wasn’t a market-place nor a Cathedral close, but it was a good space and no doubt busy with people all day long. After doing those two contemplatives, Andromache and Polyxena; and the third, the Hecuba, which Frampton had commissioned, it would be fun to try a piece of vivid action, as well as the narrative on the plinth. Frampton saw that he had touched him to a big work. They drove home to lunch. After lunch, while Faringdon sketched designs for Stubba, Frampton went to see Old Fist and plied him with incitement to have King Stubba on the scene of Stubba’s fight. Old Fist liked the idea.

He had not been nicknamed “Old Fist” for nothing. Once in the far past, Old Fist when he was Young Fist had stood up to John L. on a music-hall stage and had lasted for three rounds with him. John L. had called him the best amateur he’d ever met, and had said he was proud to shake his hand. Old Fist took to the idea of King Stubba.

“Why, yes, Mr. Mansold,” he said, “that would be something we understand.”

However, the Council was less swayed by sudden feeling. They pointed out to Old Fist that the citizens hadn’t yet had a chance of judging the other two statues. They didn’t want a third, till they knew how the other two had gone down. Old Fist said that there was something in that, but in this case, though he didn’t know anything about art, he did know what he liked. Perhaps, somewhere in his innocent heart was a feeling that he was like Old Stubba. Anyhow, he made the Council offer the site, for a statue, or a bronze, or a bronze statue.

The lady whom Frampton called the angry ham was the secretary of a local branch of the County Charity. The Charity, being largely dependent upon subscriptions, was often short of money. When this happened, efforts were made to make money for it, by holding bazaars, jumble-sales, and sales of work, or by giving concerts or entertainments. These took place usually in or near Stubbington. Soon after Frampton had offered a King Stubba to the Council, it chanced that the angry ham was compelled to organise a concert in aid of the Charity; funds had never before been so low. Concerts were difficult to organise, and of late years there had been so much competition, in the way of cinemas, the wireless, and the gramophone, that they had been less popular and had brought in less money. However, the need of the Charity was pressing; ruin stared it in the face, so to speak; she, therefore, organised her Committee, and announced a concert in the Stokeley-Pitte Institute at Subbington.

Though she had cut Frampton in the street, she considered that in so holy a cause as charity that might be wiped out for the moment. He was the richest man in the district and might be persuaded to give generously, might even, with one cheque, flung, as these fellows do fling cheques, as entrance money to society, make the concert a success without further trouble to her. It is possible, that she believed, that Frampton was longing to buy his way to social recognition in this way. Judgment was not strong in her. She wrote to Frampton, enclosing a leaflet, and saying that they all so much hoped that he would buy some tickets and head the list of subscribers. She was sure that so good a cause would appeal to him. Of course, she added, she knew how busy he was, but she hoped that even if he could not come himself he would still buy tickets and subscribe.

Frampton wondered a little at her cheek, for he remembered her cut and had meant to avenge it presently. Here was a weapon for him, a sword that would cut the ham both as patron of the poor and of the arts. He would go to the concert and get young Harold to let him write about it in the Gazette. Young Harold was going in a few days to a real big chance in Liverpool; he would not mind what was said. He went to ask Dick about this, to make sure; Dick said that he was willing, as long as Frampton avoided libel.

“I won’t libel ’em,” Frampton said. “Fair critical comment is what they’ll get from me.”

“Very well, then,” Dick said, “you shall do it for us.”

“I won’t promise to write you a set criticism,” Frampton said, “only give you the thoughts that arise in me, if any do.”

He did not reply to the angry ham’s letter, but caused five tickets to be bought.

“I will sit among empty chairs,” he thought, “and have two empties on each side of me, one for my coat and hat, one to keep the bore off, and one on each side, to remove the cigarette-smoker and the chocolate-muncher a little farther. But why the devil does this ham woman not give the money herself? She draws most of her money from this County, in rents. Let her pay some of it back as conscience money, and for the rest, go round and beg from door to door, and plead her cause herself, instead of getting up a vile entertainment of this sort, with all sorts of extra expenses, of advertisements, printings, hire of hail, lighting, heating, to soak away any profits. She will provide something atrocious in the way of song and music, and the badness of it all will be excused by the plea, that it is all for charity; and in the end, when she has made night hideous and life loathsome for two and a half hours, shell have nine-teen-and-sixpence to give to the Fund.”

He had long known the sort of concert given in the country, Alas, he had long known the type of amusement offered to the people everywhere. Still, he went to this one, sat through all of it, slept upon his first impressions, waited for the announcement of the takings, and then wrote as follows:

He read this through.

“That’ll make ’em squirm,” he said.

He thought a little, and then added:

“That will make ’em squirm,” he said, with glee. It did.

There are many things better than making people squirm; nearly all these things can be practised easily, without any subsequent reapings of storms. But the angry ham had cut Frampton in the street, and here was his chance to make her a little thoughtful another time. The letter went to the Gazette. Young Harold was away when it came in, but his acting chief had it set up, and the proofs sent to Mullples by special messenger. The letter was in the paper that night, and in the hands of all the performers at the concert by noon the next day. It gave most of them acute pain and roused their deepest fury. It did not reach the angry ham till late that night, as she had gone to London for a day’s shopping, “and to have her face done.”

When it did reach her, she raged exceedingly, but not more bitterly than the other victims. In her rage, she was not less lovely than at other times, but less coherent. Frampton’s last page kept her awake for most of the night. In the morning, she was able to consult Sir Peter. He was at all times gentle towards the point of view opposed to his own. He read the letter, and said that he thought it an ill-advised, intemperate, and, therefore, unjust letter, but that it represented a point of view. As to the charges brought, it was wiser to look upon them as a reaction. The concert had made, as it were, a statement and had provoked a reply. It was the rebound of the ball, which had been flung down. He felt that his wife should not give the letter an undeserved importance by replying to it. Any intemperate letter destroyed itself; this one would be forgotten in a week, or less, if left to itself, without answer. As to the man, he was a clever fellow, unused to country ways; he was a terrible fellow, no doubt, and in some ways an antisocial fellow, but there he was, just at their doors, and the best thing to do about it was to ask him to lunch, and to see if they could not get him to organise something in the village, a gymnasium for the lads, or a choral society.

“We’ve got to live with him, whether we like it or not,” he said. “I’m sure that that’s the way to handle him. Get him busy.”

In this, as in so many things, Sir Peter was wise; but wisdom is lost upon the angry. Was she, Laetitia, to ask a Bolshevik to lunch? Was she, who had been told that she began with snobbery and ended with death, to be told to live with the teller? Was she to be told in her own county that her concert had revealed the art-starved soul in all its native hideousness? She was not going to turn the other cheek and sit down tamely under such insolence. She was outraged and horrified and wanted to hurt.

She thought of the possible assassins who might do the deed. Pob was useless; he was only a foolish boy who might get into serious trouble; Pink was in the House, and might find it difficult to act; Ponk in Tatchester might be induced to do something. Oh, if only Ponk had owned the paper; she would have had the Editor flung out on to the streets that evening.

Still, something she could do; she could write to that odious Mr. Harold; she could write to the paper itself; she could cause the withdrawal of some of its advertisements, and make it sorry it ever outraged a county magnate. She sat down at her desk and got busy.

That cleared the air a little. Then she wrote to the paper:

This helped a little further.

The withdrawal of advertisements was a more ticklish business, but she was not one to shrink. One of the big grocers in Stubbington High sued to advertise in the Gazette. His daughter had sung in a duet about a cat and a mouse, which Frampton had judged to be the worst song of the evening. Laetitia put on her fur coat and had herself driven to the grocer’s.

There had been a time, not long past, when a word from Lady Bynd would have made a Stubbington tradesman consider his policy; the time had passed, but she did not yet admit the fact. The grocer had not seen the letter; he read it, at her bidding, and expressed his indignation.

“You can show your indignation,” she said, “by withdrawing your advertisements from a paper which prints insults to your daughter.”

The grocer had lived a long life in a small country town; he was pliant as a reed while the gale blew. He temporised, by saying, that a town in the Far West an editor might be shot for printing a letter of that sort. He went on to say that he wondered at their daring to print it, and then suggested “might not the Law of Libel be invoked?” Many of those who took part in the concert were quite poor people, unable to fee lawyers, “but the Law, my lady, the Law will set them right.”

This struck Laetitia as a possible solution. She had not thought of the Law; what she longed for was a party of young men with cudgels catching Mansell in a dark lane. The time had been when a Bynd might have arranged that; but the times were now out of joint.

“I shall see my own lawyer, you may depend upon it, my lady,” the grocer said. “Fair criticism is one thing; but this is going too far.”

This was something to the good; she felt that she had done one good deed; although, later, she learned that the grocer did nothing. She moved on to the ironmonger.

The ironmonger’s daughter had danced at the concert. She felt that she had a good deal of power over an ironmonger. The Bynd Estate was big, and needed a good deal of iron-work, and many farm implements every year. The Bynd account was well worth having. If this man would not see reason, he might find his account closed. However, as it chanced, the ironmonger was away, and could not be back for two days; her schemes for the ironmonger to withdraw his advertisements would have to wait. There remained the corn and forage merchants; she would see them.

At the end of lunch, a telephone message came through from Ponk to say that he would be glad to see her if she would come in that afternoon. So away she went, with her heart full of rage, to the Ponk house near Tatchester. Ponk and his wife, Paddie, received her and poured the balm, not of wisdom but of approval, upon her anger. Ponk did not care one way or the other about a concert in Stubbington; he knew from old experience that such a thing would be pretty bad; but it had chanced that a bit of news had come into his ken; he wanted to speak to Laetitia about it.

“I wanted to see you, Letty, about this Mansell fellow,” he said. “He’s giving some bronzes by a chap called Faringdon to be put up on Stubbington Bridge; isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” she said, “he is. He attended our War Memorial meeting, as art adviser, so we were told, and was practically turned out of the meeting for the most offensive rudeness to dear Duckie Twee. Now that he finds that he can have no say in the War Memorial, he gives these two things to be put up where no one can see them.”

“Funny thing, that,” Ponk said. “Did you know that those two statues were done for the big War Memorial at Snipton, and turned down by the Snipton people?”

“No? Were they?”

“Fact. Here’s a note in the current number of the Mahlstick: ‘The two heroic bronzes, which Mr. Faringdon calls the Female Griefs, are perhaps the finest works done in the last thirty years. We are glad to think that these great works, which manufacturing Snipton has rejected, have been saved by the munificence of Mr. Frampton Mansell, who is placing them at his own cost on Stubbington Bridge in Tatshire.’”

“Why were they turned out of Snipton? Are they indecent? What is this Mahlstick?”

“Sort of art magazine,” Ponk said. “The bronzes were turned down by Snipton because they gave folk the fan-tods. I don’t know whether they are indecent. Probably only gloomy. But one of the Snipton Councillors is a friend of mine; he sent me this paper only this morning, and added that they are pretty grim; I’ll show you his letter; I felt that I might ask you about it. Did Mansell tell anybody that the bronzes had been turned down by Snipton?”

“I never heard that he did. The Stubbington people wouldn’t have accepted the leavings of any other town.”

“So I suppose,” Ponk said. “He wasn’t bound to tell them. I know nothing about art myself, I suppose he shows public spirit and so forth in giving the things. What were his motives?”

“He is making an effort to show his superiority,” Lady Bynd said. “His father was a pie-man’s boy in Stanchester, and his grandfather a baker in Condicote. Now that he’s made a lot of money by making guns, he poses as a county magnate.”

“Well, do come out to see our winter aconites,” Ponk said; “we’ve got a real show of them this year.”

They saw the aconites; presently she went away. She had meditated evil for some hours, now, by special providence, a weapon had been given to her; she had poison for her blade. Ponk let her take the copy of the Mahlstick and his friend’s letter. She went straight to Old Fist in Stubbington, good easy man, and showed him not the copy or the Mahlstick, which might have made him glad to be housing the masterpieces of art, but the letter from the Snipton Councillor giving his personal opinion of the bronzes in bitter words.

“I thought that you ought to see the kind of thing you are going to put on our beautiful old historic bridge,” she said. “Did Mr. Mansell tell you that his bronzes had been forbidden in Snipton?”

“Never a word to us,” Mr. Fist truly said.

He looked once more through the Councillor’s letter. This was what a servant of the public got when he went wading out of his depth in the waters of art. Now there would be a fine old row. Oh, that Old Joe had let the gas lamps stand where the bronzes were to be.

“Something must be done about it,” Laetitia said. “You can’t let a beautiful old bridge like ours be made a dumping ground for rejected statues. Isn’t the bridge an Historical Monument?”

It was, but not in the sense she meant; she could not write to a Society, to bid it wield a bludgeon on Frampton’s head.

“Well,” Old Fist said, “well, my lady, it’s awkward, for we’ve accepted the bronzes, or statues, or bronze statues, from Mr. Mansold; we’ve said we’d be glad to have ’em, and thanked him kindly; we wrote him a pretty letter. And he’s done up the ground for them now; it’s all ready to put them in, or as good as. It’d look so awkward if we were to go back now.”

“I don’t see that. He must have known all along that the things had been rejected by Snipton. He kept it from you. It’s what the Law calls the concealment of a vital fact. He’s made you accept the bronzes on false pretences.”

Old Fist did not agree about the Law, but he felt aggrieved; he felt that he’d been had. And then, there was this statue, or bronze, or bronze statue of King Stubba; they had as good as said they’d like to have that; in fact they had said it; they’d written him another pretty letter. What if King Stubba, too, had been rejected from somewhere? It was a serious matter, being made to look absurd in the Press. The Press would be on to him about it. And the worst was, that the invitations had gone out for the unveiling ceremony; or had they gone? It was just possible that they hadn’t.

“I think it’s exactly like Mr. Mansell,” the lady went on; “the kind of malicious thing he exults in doing. He has a spite against the people here, because they know him for what he is. He has planned this to make the place look absurd. He buys these two bronzes as old metal, and knowingly persuades you to put them up. When they are up, everybody will round upon you to say that you have put up Snipton’s leavings. Depend upon it, he’s laughing in his sleeve at you now. If I were you, I’d write to Mr. Mansell at once, and tell him that Stubbington wants no more of the sweepings from Snipton nor from Mr. Mansell. Tell him to keep his bronzes for himself, and let him lecture his housemaids upon them, which I am told is a way he has.”

Old Fist said that “Circumstances alter cases.” He dwelt with much pleasure on the fact.

“Yes, that is so,” he repeated. “Circumstances do alter cases.”

He was, as she knew, a slow-moving man, but she suspected also, that in this case he did not mean to move; it might well be necessary to goad him.

“Well, it’s very true,” he said. “Circumstances will alter a case.”

“I should think that the suppression of a vital fact would alter people’s opinion of a man,” she said. “If the members of the Council are Englishmen, I should think it would. We are the ratepayers and taxpayers of all this area. We may not be called upon at once to keep up these bronzes. Ultimately we shall. And I think it monstrous that we should have a city’s leavings foisted on us in this way, to be maintained at our cost. But it’s not going to rest like this. Something’s got to be done about it.”

She went out on this, leaving Old Fist perplexed, but yet determined that the old hen what had begun to crow (thus he ungallantly described her), should not have it all her own way. He went across from his office and found that the invitations to the unveiling had not yet been sent out. He told the clerks to hold them. He took his car out over the bridge to see what had been done. He found that the sites had been prepared, one on each side, just where the lamp-posts should have been, but for poor old Joe, who was beginning to fail even then.

Meanwhile Laetitia, in her rage, went home, with the devil at her elbow suggesting poison and daggers in the back. On arrival at her home, she had another scheme. She believed in swiftness of action, “and trebly armed is he, who gets his blow in first.” With the help of the telephone, as well as invaluable introductions, also telephoned, and suggestions from Ponk, she contrived her attack.

The next morning, a London daily paper had a big photograph of the eastward end of King Stubba’s Bridge at Stubbington, under the heading: “Save Us From Our Friends. Another Beauty Spot Threatened.” There was an article beneath this which said that this beautiful bridge, the reputed scene of King Stubba’s victory, was to be used as a base for two bronze figures, lately rejected by the Snipton Town Hall as parts of the Snipton War Memorial. It asked all lovers of the unspoiled countryside to rally to prevent this new act of vandalism, which would bring the fever of modern art into the peace of rural surroundings and the beauty of one of our finest bridges. It said, that as far as could be learned, the Town Council which had accepted the bronzes, had no knowledge of the fact that Snipton had refused to house them. Had they known, nothing would have persuaded them to accept any such gifts. It would be remembered, the writer continued, that the giver of these bronzes was responsible but a few months ago for an agitation in our columns against the proposed desecration of Mullples Hill. That agitation came too late to be of help. Perhaps this article might come in time to prevent Stubba’s old and beautiful bridge from being desecrated with the leavings and rejections of Snipton.

On the other side of the page was a caricature of the two bronzes in place on Stubba’s Bridge, with old King Stubba looking at them. It was a clever caricature, and rather a triumph for the young man who had done it. He had only received the photographs of the bronzes from a Snipton photographer at midnight, and the drawing had gone to press before one.

Frampton was not a subscriber to this London paper; he did not see it that morning; as it happened, he was at his Works, trebly busy with routine and a matter that was not routine. His first knowledge of the article came when a Press man telephoned to him on behalf of some syndicate of papers, to ask if he had anything to say about it. He replied that he had not seen the article and had nothing to say about it. The pressman asked if it were true that Snipton had rejected the statues. He replied:

“What else would you expect Snipton to do with works of genius?”

“Oh, so you consider them works of genius, do you?” the pressman asked.

“Good morning,” Frampton said, and hung up the receiver.

He had much to do that morning, but at lunch-time saw the paper and at once recognised that the moving spirit had been the angry ham.

“Well, I did make her squirm,” he said. “I thought I would. The silly old hen has got busy.”

However, he had much to do, and gave no more thought to the matter, except that he registered the fact that she had some sort of access to the Press. An occasional feud or quarrel was nothing to him; he had lots of such things at all times; but a quarrel bulked big in Laetitia’s life; she made the most of each one while it lasted. He did not suspect the depth of the rage he had kindled in her. While he brooded on his daily task of making it easy for his countrymen to kill their foes, she in Weston Mullples prepared her second attack. Armed with copies of the newspaper containing “Save Us From Our Friends,” she set forth to Stubbington. She called on Old Fist and gave him his copy. He already had one. She then gave a copy to each member of the Council. After this, she contrived that Ponk should say something in the Tatchester Times; then she descended on the Stubbington Gazette. Harold had gone now; he was in his new office, enjoying himself. She found in his stead a young man who was very happy to be in charge just at the moment when fate had made Stubbington a part of the London news.

“Believe me,” he said, “we’re giving the question full publicity.”

“We” were. The next morning the Gazette had a full page about it, with scare-heads and photographs. Three letters, all written in the office, from Pro Bono Publico, War Widow and Indignant Art Lover, protested against this attempt to foist the rejections of Snipton on to a beautiful place like Stubbington. They took different lines, but Frampton, when he read them, noticed that they all made one point, that he had never told the Town Council that the bronzes had been rejected by Snipton. From this, he concluded at once, that the letters had been the work of one hand.

The Gazette, following upon the article and correspondence in the London paper, roused up a pretty stir in Stubbington. In the windows of the Gazette offices were photographs of the bridge, of the bronzes, a faked photograph, showing the bronzes in position, and a copy of the cartoon in the London paper. These things drew large numbers of people. The copy of the Gazette in the public reading-room had to be renewed four times during the first day from its frequent thumbing and turning.

Letters began to pour in upon the Editor and upon all the members of the Town Council. Old Fist had a meeting that afternoon and said that this matter of these statues, or bronzes, or bronze statues of Mr. Mansold’s had come to a point at which something ought to be done. He didn’t know anything about art nor genius, and didn’t know that he wanted to; but he had an uneasy feeling that Mr. Mansold, though a very kind and clever gentleman, hadn’t done quite clean potato by them, not telling them that these things had been turned out by Snipton. Now the fat was in the fire; here were all these letters, lots of them, and the photographs in the London paper, and the telephone ringing all day long, and at midnight, too; why, there were three calls from the London Press after he’d gone to bed last night. It didn’t do a man or a council much good to be called a fool in this way.

The members of the Council had all suffered from these attacks; they had felt them acutely; each man of them blamed Frampton for his suffering.

“He kept it dark,” they growled. “Any honest man would have told us. How could we know the things had been turned down?”

One or two of them, who wanted a motive, now suggested motive.

“For all we know, he may be in with this sculptor. He may be his relative. The chap would get a good deal of notice in the papers from having his statues on the bridge. It’d wipe out any unpleasantness from having them turned down at Snipton.”

This seemed good sense; but others groped farther for motive. They did not see where Frampton’s profit lay. What was he getting or hoping to get out of it? Why was he doing it? He must, they argued, be doing it for something. They themselves did things with purposes, therefore he must be doing it for the hope of benefit. What benefit? “No doubt,” they argued, “what he’s up to is a seat in Parliament here. He comes down here, and does up Mullples; that gives him a place in the constituency; then he gets busy against the Hunt and that, to make himself known; then he gives these statues to the bridge. There’ll be a general election in two years’ time. You mark my words, that’s what he’s up to.”

It wasn’t in the least what he was up to. He had acted from the first with great singleness of purpose, to help Faringdon, and to put two fine works in a fine setting; but when the member of the Council suggested the mean motive, it was received. It explained everything to them. If they had not been indignant, they would have judged more kindly, but one or two correspondents in the London papers had spoken of them as wiseacres, as yokels, and as the local Dogberrys. They were angry now. It is possible that they might be made to look ungracious, in refusing what they had accepted, but they had been made to look absurd, in accepting what had been refused, and their bloods were up. They wrote a letter to Frampton:

This was signed by the Chairman and sent off to Frampton, who received it the next day, when he arrived at Mullples for the week-end.

Soon after his reading of the letter a representative of the London Press arrived, asking for an interview. He saw the man and told him that Stubbington had refused the two bronzes; that he had been under no obligation to tell the Town Council anything of their past. Anyone in the least instructed or interested in the arts, or in civic government, ought to have known of their rejection by Snipton, which was a national disgrace. As to the rejection by Stubbington, that was not so much to be wondered at. Snipton did at least belong to the twentieth century. Snipton did at least have an unemployment problem and a model town refuse plant. Stubbington belonged to the century before the last in all things except the corrupt civic government which had given it its Guild Hall. You would not find many legacies to posterity in the Stubbington of today. This rejection of works of art by ignorant, purblind city authorities was going on all over the country. The children of future generations would pay the price in ugly, artless, joyless, hideous dens called towns, and in the stunted life which must follow any rejection of the finer kinds of intelligence. He wished it to be known that he had offered a bronze of King Stubba, by Mr. Faringdon, to the Stubbington people, as well as these Female Griefs, but that the offer would now be withdrawn.

Having expressed himself with a good deal of point and shrewdness to the delighted journalist, he sat down to write to the Town Council, to say that he had been surprised to receive their letter, but noted that the two bronzes were rejected, and asked that they would note that the offer of the bronze of King Stubba was finally and definitely withdrawn.

Though he felt that the angry ham had scored, he thought that the next round would be his. He would now quite certainly make his poisons on the Tittups estate; he would bend all his powers to putting that through. Little Rolly was told to get busy. In the meantime, he had to break the news to Faringdon that Stubbington had rejected the Griefs, and had had the Stubba taken from them. He felt that Faringdon ought to be told this by word of mouth, so went to see him. On his way he thought of things that might be done.

“Look here, King,” he said, “the Stubbington gang have turned down the bronzes, and I’ve withdrawn the Stubba from them. But I want you to go on with Stubba. I’m going to put in my new gas-plant in a model village in the wood above my house. I want you to let me have Stubba for the centre of things. I want to put your two Griefs, one on each side of this approach on the plan. In between, I want an inspired figure. I want you to get busy on it at once. It is a fine site, and as you can see from Rolly’s drawings, the building will be pretty good. In the meantime, I’ve been to the Sculptors’ Galleries in Bond Street, and taken them for June and the first half of July. I want to have a Faringdon show there, and you’ve got to help me. We’ll have all your bronzes and studies; the Griefs’ll go in the big room; and you must let me have the drawings for the Stubba and so forth. Then, I’ve got a good chap to write you up in the catalogue; and we’ll get some good reproductions in the catalogue, too. We have time to make the catalogue a collector’s piece. You’re ripe, as old Haulover used to say. The next step with you will be a wild success. And this show is going to be the next step. Don’t think of Snipton and Stubbington. You’ll have all the capitals of the world to choose from after June.”

He put life into Faringdon by this. He put life into the direction of the show. He put life into the beginnings of his model factory. In odd moments, when he was not driving himself, he used to say: “You can’t put life into yourself.” That was true. He seemed to be dead within. A few old loyalties to artists in poverty, the symbol to him of the art-starved England he longed to change, and a few old hatreds of all that had starved his England, alone seemed to keep him going; the rest was routine.

But lest his enemies should think that they had won the battle, he contrived to buy three big pastures stretching from Spirr towards Weston Mullples. On these fields, the farthest of which was in view of the windows of Coombe, he determined to build. He did not yet know what he would build.

“A Buddhist Temple would be a good thing,” he thought. “That’d make ’em squirm.”

But he meant to place there some memorial to Margaret when he could decide. He thought often of the Buddhist temple, for the story of Buddha meant much to him. He thought that a big notice board on the field, where the angry-ham would see it twenty times a day, would be something to the good, so he had one placed there, with the announcement:

That made ’em squirm indeed. There were letters to the Press and anonymous letters in the post. Pob and his friends got busy at once; but Frampton had foreseen their attack. The notice-board was on iron framings and was itself treated with barbed wires and a preparation known as Tikklo. He found a few days later some very fine fragments of tweed on the wires, and learned that Pob had gone to the doctor for an irritation of the skin. Tikklo had done its work. It had made him squirm.

In the middle of May the War Memorial was unveiled in Stubbington. Frampton had not asked about its progress, but had heard that it was being done. He was very busy with his building schemes, and did not see the Memorial till it had been ten days in place. Being then in Stubbington, he went to see it. The flags had been removed and the flowers had withered; the mean design looked at its meanest; and little boys had already put their marks upon the open marble page. There were forty-five wreaths at the foot of the prie dieu. He read the inscriptions on three: “To Bert from Mum,” “Alf from Daisy,” “Joe from a pal.” They struck him to the heart. Bert, Alf and Joe had been fine fellows, deserving a better thing than this noble book. Surely something could be done to show the Stubbington people that art could lay something lovelier than this at the shrine of the honoured dead? He had a fine collection of modern work; why should he not show it and talk about it, and get eminent critics down to talk of it? He could hang the best of his collection in the theatre and lecture to people about it every Sunday afternoon. He determined to do this.

Before he could prepare this work, the Faringdon exhibition began at the Sculptors’ Gallery. It happened that the Stubbington rejection, coming so soon after the Snipton refusal, had brought a great deal of attention upon Faringdon’s work. Faringdon was now news, he was arriviste, he was the idol of Little London; those who did not think him “simpy too marvous” were nowhere. The exhibition was a great success. It was well attended and well-noticed by the Press; people came to it in numbers; all the drawings and studies which were for sale were sold. The edition de luxe of the catalogue has sold since then for ten times its original price.

Among the exhibits were some drawings and wax sketches of the King Stubba. During the exhibition, an Australian from Stubbington, in Victoria, asked if he might have a replica of the bronze, when finished, to put up in the central square there. The new Stubbington had been founded by a settler from the Tatshire Stubbington, a century before; the bronze would be a link the more with the parent town.

This fact was made known to the Press by Frampton; press-cuttings were later sent to the Stubbington Town Council. Just before the exhibition closed, a big London Gallery begged to be allowed to show the Griefs until the autumn. Frampton gladly lent them.

He was happy at the results of his thought. He had made Faringdon’s name now, won him a good commission, and made the Stubbington Town Council to feel exceeding small. One paper had said that it was monstrous that creatures with less art-feeling than potatoes should have the power to refuse masterpieces when offered by one of great public spirit and generosity, such as Mr. Mansell of Mullples. This particular cutting Frampton posted to each member of the offending Council marked in red ink with his own hand.

Immediately the show was over, he arranged another exhibition in the theatre at Mullples; twenty of his best paintings and seventy of his drawings were hung there, with a couple of screens of Timothy Copshrew’s studies of birds. Naunton and Tenor Cobb came down to speak about their work, and invitations were sent to those whom Frampton felt likely to wish to come. Most of these were shopkeepers and shop-assistants in the Stubbington and Tatchester shops, and builders and carpenters working at St. Margaret’s. About forty people came for the opening day. After the talks, Frampton gave them all tea, and sent them away happy. He made a little speech, to say that the exhibition would be open on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from two till six, during the summertime. He said that he hoped that the members of a local Town Council, referred to lately in the London Press as having less art-feeling than potatoes, would leap at the chance of getting even with the spud at any rate. His words were reported, as such words will be, “with advantages.”

Soon after this, there came the anniversary of Margaret’s death, which was a sad time for him.

During the rest of the summer he made occasional changes in the exhibition, and added to it cases of examples of prints and book-illustration. On Sundays, he contrived to have talks by artists there. It was not well attended at first; in August, as the holidays drew to an end, people began to come to it; and in September fifty or sixty would come in one afternoon.

Early in September he went up to St. Margarets with his old father, whom he had net seen for some time. The old man shrewdly judged that his son’s settlement at Mullples had roused him some enemies; he knew how his son enjoyed putting people’s backs up, and how this unwisdom tempered his excellences of energy and insight. He regretted Margaret’s death more than he could say.

“You see,” Frampton said, “this place will be the centre of the community; a hall, where they can gather for lectures, or plays or gym. I’m putting Faringdon’s two Griefs there, and in the middle Faringdon will have a figure of Margaret; he has done some good sketches. But it is all tommyrot trying to make a decent village in this land. It’s like trying to make an ear of corn grow roots instead of the other way about. Only yesterday a man at my show said: ‘I’m told you have a theatre here on the premises, Mr. Mansell. May I see it, please?’ I told him he was in it; that that was the theatre. ‘Oh; what? This? I thought this was a billiard-room or so forth, made over for the occasion.’ They’re used to having a room in a house for a game; they’ve no thought of having a room for an art, or one of the crafts. I’m going to try a real exhibition in Stubbington in the autumn, something that’ll make the London critics take notice. And if that ham woman gives another concert, I’ll give a real one, to show them what’s the truth, her shabby old pretence, or something with some guts in it.”

“You oughtn’t to expect too much, Fram,” the old man said. “This countryside has been drained, triply drained, of all its best, three times in a hundred years. The chances of commerce drained it once, the prospects of the colonies a second time; then the War took the rest. You’ve got the average, dead-level here.”

“Well, I want to make it a living level, if it has to be a level.”

“It’s living, all right, with a good deal of courage and kindness. It’s a bit stupid sometimes, I daresay, but then you must make allowances. The world does not need guns and explosives, like you, all the time; it wants to jog along and dig its potato patch, and knock off while the hounds go by. This village that you’re building will be based on what? Fear of war, and the hope of killing the other fellow first. Those can’t be abiding things in life. These people here used to have fear of God and the hope of salvation. It became fear of squire and the hope of being able to muddle through somehow. It’ll change; it is changing.”

“Yes. I know it’s changing,” his son said, “and which way’s it changing? To a greater humanity or to a more degraded mechanism? I’ve grown up in ease to see certain things as important and to have them. I’d be a skunk if I didn’t strain a point to let the other chap have his share.”

“His share of what he wants, Fram, not of what you want.”

“The cheap Press and the Government have killed all personal wants in ’em,” Frampton answered. “They soon won’t even marry unless they draw a bonus.”

The pushing on of the work at St. Margarets was his chief interest that autumn; he had some hundred and fifty men working there. During the summer, when earth was green and the land dry, this work was not an eyesore; but when the autumn storms came in with wet and the thinning of the leaf, those who had known the empty Waste and woodland cursed Frampton for making such a mess. His lorries had churned the roads. Annual-Tilter’s car stuck there; the angry ham’s car stuck there; the Member wrote to complain.

“You wait, my swine,” Frampton thought. “When once we get going, your old happy seat in the places of obstruction will be damn near bust.”

It fell, that at the middle of that October, he had invited an artist and his wife to Mullples for the week-end. He had planned to have a fresco in the maids’ sitting-room, with portraits of all the maids in it, and wished to discuss it with the painter. The maids had looked forward to this, and he had had some expectations, for he believed that the young man might do a remarkable work. However, early in the Saturday morning the artist telegraphed that his wife was ill and that he could not come.

Frampton was vexed at this, for he was now at Mullples for the week-end without any companion. He had some thought of telephoning to ask his father if he might go there for the week-end, but remembered that his father had to be in London that week-end. It was a raw, cold morning, with the barometer falling and a dull south-east wind coming from a greasy sky. Dirty weather was coming; and as such weather always did, it brought to Frampton a sense of unsettledness and coming danger. He went up and down and in and out, all the morning, unable to settle to anything. He could neither write letters, nor draw designs; he could not think about guns, nor read a book. He loathed Mullples. It was the house that he “had built to be so gay with,” and this was the gaiety vouchsafed to him: Margaret dead, and himself loathed and loathing. He hated being alone there. He had some thoughts of bolting back to London, but the unsettledness in his mind due to the storm kept him there. He thought of various men whom he might ask to come along for the week-end, but the same unsettledness kept him from telephoning; as he planned, the opposite of the plan formed itself and checked the plan. Either there was something against the fellow, or it would never do to ask him at such short notice.

He debated and havered thus until lunch-time, unable to ask anybody. By lunch-time he was hating himself and Mullples, life and its messes, country and town. After lunch, when it was too late to ask anybody, he regretted that he had been so squeamish. They would have been glad to come, anyway, since sitting by the fire at Mullples, over some very good port, would have been better than sitting over a fire in a studio in London.

In the afternoon, the mizzling rain set in and the glass dropped steadily. The leaves were falling from the trees; the garden had lost most of its colour; there were a few roses still and a few wretched little pansies who looked, as Frampton told himself, like artists at a public school. It was a vile afternoon. In his uneasiness, Frampton could not endure the thought of sitting to a book or books; he did not feel like work; he could not draw; something in the storm made him want to dodge it somehow, by getting drunk or going out on a spree. He thought of going for a long walk, but the day was dirty and mizzle was falling; he thought that it would not be worth the mess. He would only be wet through and plastered with mud, and wouldn’t enjoy a trudge with his own thoughts, through a wet landscape, with all the views blotted by rain. He wondered if there were any local man who would come out for a talk or a walk. He could think of none who seemed in any way endurable. The rectors and others he put aside. Hard up as he was for companionship, he could not stand those fellows; besides, he would get into disputes with them about faith and so forth. He was half prompted to do half a dozen things, and yet could not feel urged to do any.

The pub of old Hordiestraw seemed the best that the country offered; a game of darts with a few of the lads there and a chat about old times with a few of the oldsters; he would get something good to remember all his days from those fellows. Yet, on second thoughts, he could not stomach the thought of the bar, with its stink of stale tobacco and old drinks and old swinky habituées.

Still, something had to be done; he did not quite see what; he would go melancholy mad there doing nothing till midnight.

He might go back to London and go on a bust. But going on a bust had no attractions for him; the thought of it made him sick. He loathed cinemas; he hated theatres; he disliked concerts, for so often a concert made him endure two hours of what he didn’t want for ten minutes of what he did.

One of the maids knocked at the door; he called to her to come in. She was a comely girl who had got herself engaged since coming to Mullples to a young man who ran a poultry farm. She brought in the afternoon’s post: a bill, two receipts, two begging letters, a request for an autograph, “thanking him in anticipation,” an answer to an enquiry about a supply of a new alloy called ferro-baryl, and a copy of the week’s Tatshire Times.

He looked through the letters; they did not keep him five minutes; then he opened the paper, and at once saw the heading: “Ancient Paintings Laid Bare in Stubbington Church.” He read, that two days before (which may have meant two days before the writing of the article, on the Wednesday of the week), some ancient wall-paintings had been laid bare by the removal of some panellings. The works were supposed to be of the fourteenth century, and to represent King Stubba’s fight with the pagans and subsequent conversion to Christianity. These works were in a little church called St. Lawrence in the Peppery. He had not heard of the church and had not seen it, but had heard of the Peppery as a place where people had once made long tobacco pipes; there was a couplet somewhere:

He judged that the light would be bad, but still, he could take a torch; he would go over to see these paintings. A glance at the map of Stubbington showed him the Peppery; it opened off the Market Square; within half an hour he was walking down the Peppery to the church.

He felt sure that on a day so contrary he would find, when he came there, that the church would be closed. In this he was wrong. It was not closed. The door stood open. A woman, who was making the church ready for the next day’s service, was emptying the altar flower vases into the gutter.

“Can I see the old paintings?” he asked.

“They’re in the side chapel,” she said; “the far side there; but you’ll not see much of them; it’s so dark.”

With the willingness to help the stranger and the helpless which is so marked a feature among the English, she followed him into the dark little church and pointed out an inner gloom at the north-east corner.

“It’s in there,” she said; “up in the corner there the paintings are, if it’s the paintings you want to see. But I don’t call them paintings myself; only a lot of queer mess, I call them. But you’ll see them for yourself, sir. Very old paintings, they’re said to be, and all about religion.”

He flung the beam of his torch on to the paintings, as far as they had been revealed. They were in a sad state still, with dust, dirt, cobwebs and the slime of slugs upon them. He could make out some big figures, with one bigger figure with a crown, probably King Stubba, wielding a sword. Up above the figures was a conventional design in dull red. He tried to get a good view from all the sides of the chapel, but could not make out much more. He determined to go again on Monday; nay, he would find out the vicar of the church and see to it that these old works were tenderly cared for. Nobody in England to-day could do things so vivid. Why, even the pattern above the figures was better than anyone could do to-day. And who had done these things? He sat down in a pew in the church to stare into the side chapel at the shadowy figures on the wall. Who had done the things in that little fourteenth or early fifteenth century England? He supposed that it was some local chap, for the church could never have been rich, and could not have afforded a man specially down from London to do the work. As he thought of it, he decided that probably King Stubba lay buried in that chapel, and that perhaps the shrine had been great and famous, visited by hundreds from all over England. It may not have been poor, but very rich.

He sat on there, wondering about who had done the design. “It was probably somebody here,” he thought. Somebody here had the knack and guts. Such chaps are in the town here still, perhaps. Those chaps at Hordiestraw’s, playing darts, could have done it if they had wanted to draw, instead of to ride on motor-bikes.

He was very lonely suddenly, longing unbearably for Margaret. She would have said:

“Of course, it’s the same race still; we must find those talents again and set them free and see that they can grow.”

His grief for her, which was sometimes numb, now gnawed unbearably.

“My God,” he muttered, “I wish to God I had died with you, instead of living on for this.”

He thought of what the old painter of the designs had probably believed about death and punishment after death.

“Life is punishment enough for most sinners,” he thought; “no more punishment than life is necessary.”

He thought that he would go on to speak to the vicar; he asked the woman, who was now shaking out the mats, where he could find him.

“You won’t find him on a Saturday,” she said. “He always goes out to Tatchester almshouses of a Saturday; but a letter would find him. She thought that she ought to say something about the paintings. “Very strange old things, the paintings, sir,” she said. “Still,” she added cheerfully, “it shows you what they thought was decoration, years ago.”

“Yes,” he said, “they show you that.”

Something made him think of Twelfth Night: “’Tis but Fortune; all is Fortune.” He often thought of Fortune in these days. What was she? He knew Dante’s description of her: “Necessity compels her to be swift”; but there was such a thing as a stable Fortune, in dynasties and great families, which endured for centuries. What was that? Well, what could you call it but Fortune? He did not rail at that kind of Fortune, but he was bitter at the superior Fortune being inferior in intelligence, in feeling, in the mixture of the two called tact, and in cultivation, and priding itself on possession, family, the front row seat, and the item in the society news column, and also, largely, on the power these things gave of making want of general intelligence function as its opposite. His own Fortune puzzled him. Here he was, called from a low-class family, as it was reckoned, the son of a man who had made much money by a clever device, and himself very clever at all dodges and devices of destruction and explosion. He was wealthy; he was shrewd, swift; and as it seemed, possessed of all things, but at the instant of his attainment, everything had been dashed from him; he had lost his throw; he was a failure in life; he had not won the world he had set out to win. He had won the crown, and put it on, only to find that the crown was tin and had no kingdom attached.

He passed out of the church into the evil weather, with its failing light and beginning storm. He had planned to go to the left, to see the forlorn water-meadows; he had thought that they would be a good image of desolation. Something, he knew not what, perhaps only a gust or draught of wind coming up the Peppery against him as he left the church door, made him say: “No, not the water-meadows.” He turned, instead, to the right, and was soon in the lights and glistening pavings of the Market Square. He had left his car there, and was just about to turn again to the right, towards it, when something caught his eye on the wall of the Corn Exchange, on the other side of the open space. It was a big notice-board, nearly covered with what seemed to be a design from Botticelli’s Primavera. He wondered what could have made her venture to a place like Stubbington, and crossed the Square to find out.

When he stood beneath the notice-board, he saw that the Spring was subtly changed, to show that she was dancing; it had been done with a good deal of ribald dash, but what brought ribald dash to Stubbington? Underneath was the announcement:

“Poor devils,” he muttered, “what on earth can bring Circassians to Stubbington of all places and on a day like this? Poor devils. What brought them here?” He knew nothing about Circassians, except what Tolstoi tells. “And ballet, too,” he muttered. “What can bring ballet here, a thing of rhythm, beauty and delight, to that awful hall where the concert was?”

Well, ballet belonged to the world of the imagination, which Stubbington had ceased to believe in. He would go to it, if only as a protest against everything that Stubbington stood for. He would be late, for it was already seven minutes to four, but still, even if they were only doing one of their three pieces it would be life and beauty in a day of death.

“Good old Stubbington,” he said, “once famed as the rottenest borough in England, now, without much question, the deadest. Forwards, to its champion morgue, the Stokeley-Pitte.”

He had called it Stubbington’s champion morgue, but when he drew near to it a few minutes later, he felt that few cities could have a morgue more gloomy; the supreme Morgue, “Death’s high capital and kingly seat,” would not seem a more awful negation of life. There it was in the cold and wet, vast, mean and hideous, with little suggestions of Gothic, and little hints of Byzantine, the foul day dying, the streets unlighted, though there were lights in some of the windows. The wind was rising and the rain becoming worse. Leaves were blowing about and some little boys had recently been at the posters near the door and had torn them into streamers which now lay and sometimes flopped on the pavement. Across the road from the hall a small, much battered car was parked. The house seemed to be deserted; the lights were on in the porch, but no signs showed of audience, and no noise came from within.

“I suppose the Circassians realised what they were coming to,” he said, “and cancelled the engagement.”

He walked to the entrance. The porch was covered in at the sides with panes of white and yellow glass, placed alternately; beyond the porch, in a gloomy passage, were a table and chair, the table bearing books of tickets and a paper of tax stamps. A woman was talking volubly and bitterly in French, not far away. Frampton beat with his foot upon the floor for the ticket-seller, but nobody answered. The draughts were running along the corridor and causing the frame of a picture to clack upon the wall. The picture was a much-foxed engraving of a whiskered man in uniform, General Stokeley-Pitte, no doubt. The window of the passage had had a stone through it; the rain had come in there in a long, dark smear down the wall. At the back of the house something whined and sobbed. It didn’t sound cheerful enough to be a dog in pain; Frampton thought it must be the hot-water system refusing duty.

The door at the end of the passage, which opened into the auditorium, suddenly pushed back; a young, fresh-coloured man, whom Frampton remembered to have seen more than once in Stubbington Market Place, came towards him.

“Is the show cancelled?” Frampton asked, “or can I have a ticket?”

“They’ve only just come,” the lad said. “They don’t know if they’ll dance or not. They don’t talk no known Christian language. Then there’s some mistake about the tickets. You see, they’ve got the wrong days on ’em. But Mr. What’s-his-name’ll be here in a minute; he’s the one that’ll know.”

After the lad had gone on, the tirade in French was taken up suddenly by a second voice, and rose to a crescendo, ending suddenly in what seemed like a slap. Almost at once, a foreign-looking man came out of a room, swaying upon his feet, being a little drunk. He called Frampton: “Tomás, Tomás,” then, finding that it was not Tomás, he made a gesture of apology and swayed back. The lad returned a minute later, bearing a spanner and a coil of insulated wires.

“I can’t make out if they mean to dance,” he said. “They don’t talk human speech at all. And these tickets; they’ve made a fair old muddle, if you ask me. These are next week’s tickets for Sulhampton. And they never got their posters out here till this morning. That don’t do, not in Stubbington, for people make their plans ahead.”

“Have you an audience waiting to see the show?” Frampton asked, for it was an hour and more after the advertised time of the performance.

“Oh yes, sir,” the lad said, “there’s some of ’em waiting. But excuse me, sir; perhaps this is Mr. What’s-his-name.”

“Who is Mr. What’s-his-name?”

“The sort of manager. Perhaps this is him on the pavement.”

It was not Mr. What’s-his-name, but two young women, who asked if they were too late. When told that they were not, they said that they had run almost all the way, having only just seen the poster. “But,” they added, “what a day for the dancers.”

The lad said that it was indeed a day, and that Mr. What’s-his-name would be in in a moment. Perhaps they would go into the hall and sit down. He could come to them about their tickets later. The elder woman asked if those were not the tickets on the table? He said no, those were the tickets for next week; but Mr. What’s-his-name would be in in a minute. Would they just take a seat? They went into the hall. Frampton saw that the elder woman took a shrewd look at him. She knew, plainly, that he was the wicked Mr. Mansell of Mullples.

Frampton walked in after them and took a seat in the front row, opposite the middle of the stage. The lad, who had followed him, bent at a projector. Frampton looked about him at the patient victims of muddle, sitting waiting for the show. There were about thirty, all told. Just behind him a young man and woman were smoking cigarettes and making audible comment on those present. In a minute the projector began to cast bright lights in different colours on to the curtain. A second lad, who had been grovelling on the floor with wires, now rose to his feet and wiped his hands, with the remark that she should go now, a fair treat; and he would run in and tell Mr. What’s-his-name. From behind the lowered curtain there came an intermittent noise of planing.

At this moment the door opened; a big, square, black-haired, military-looking man came in; he was a red-faced, healthy fellow, with long black moustaches, waxed at the ends. He reminded Frampton of a light-heavyweight boxer whom he had seen years before.

“This is Mr. What’s-his-name,” he told himself.

The man walked with a slight limp on to the stage, where coloured lights played all over him.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I regret that you’ve been inconvenienced owing to the delays. The performance will begin in wan minute from this.”

His speech, with its strong Irish accent, convinced Frampton that this was the boxer, Tiger Mick, or Mike the Tiger, or Tiger Mike.

Having spoken, Mr. What’s-his-name went out into the passage, Frampton followed to buy his ticket, and two tickets for the seats adjoining his. He found the ex-boxer seated at the table unpacking a new set of tickets from a paper.

“And what can I do for you, sorr?” he asked, looking up.

Frampton bought his tickets and then said:

“Excuse me, but I think you once won me a five-pound note. Didn’t you once box a Carib called The Mill Wheel?”

“Ah, were you there, sorr?” the man said, smiling. “And ye backed me? Indade, I’m glad. But that was before the War. I got a bullet in me leg and limped after. Now I run this Noah’s Ark, and there’s damn few doves in it, believe me.”

“Perhaps I can have a word with you later,” Frampton said. “I’ll get back to my seat.”

He got back, but found that he need not have hurried. The projector was squirting coloured light most oddly.

“What it wants really,” the electrician was saying, “is a new one. This one gets as hot as hot. One of these days it’ll go.”

The couple in the row behind Mansell lit up new cigarettes from a briquet. They had been smoking for the last twenty minutes, but at this moment, the lad, who seemed now to be door-keeper and in charge of the front of the house, interfered. He left the projector and came to the couple.

“Beg pardon, sir; beg pardon, miss,” he said, “but smoking’s not allowed in here.”

“Isn’t it?” the young woman said, puffing out smoke. “Isn’t it really?”

“No, miss,” the lad said. “The police don’t allow it in here.”

“Fancy that,” the young woman said.

A red glare from the machine fell upon the curtain; three men in Circassian war-dress gathered about the piano, that same piano which had so distressed Frampton at the concert. One of the three was a wild-looking man with less brow than Frampton had seen on any human head. He tossed back his hair, glanced at his fellows, and with a gesture of contempt struck a jangle on the keys. The tangle and tinkle seemed to be new to him. He glanced again at his fellows, one of whom played the Circassian trompe-marine, with a bow; the other, the Circassian pan-pipes. Together, they swept into the now familiar strains of the Nenuphars Rouges, then new to Frampton, and strangely moving.

The door-keeper came in hurriedly and handed programmes. Frampton bought one and read the foreign names of the musicians. The two young things behind him had not ceased to smoke. Frampton, who disliked their tobacco, wished that one of the Circassians might bowstring them or put them into sacks and then into the Bosphorus, which he had read was usual somewhere in those parts. But he was now caught by the music and gave no heed to the smokers.

The pan-pipes man was a master of his instrument; he was stirred by them to excitement, so that he rose from his seat, faced the audience, swayed about, and almost danced as he piped. Frampton was thrilled to see him. Here was a man who believed in art and showed that he enjoyed it. This was how one should respond to art. The two young things made comment.

“The dear man’s absooty gaga.”

“Priceless. Absooty.”

“Absooty marvous.”

But the prelude to the Nenuphars Rouges is moving work. Before he reached the finale, the pan-pipes man was dancing visibly; then the music leaped to its climax, the light brightened, the curtain lifted and there was the stage, newly planed over along its seams.

The stage had been set for the Red Waterlilies, Scene One. A backcloth representing a wild scene in Mount Ida was now so lit that the waterlilies in the river were red as blood. The music slowly worked its preparation. Presently, the Nymphs of the Gorge glided in sur les pointes, with their faces set in the rigid smiles of the ballet. They danced the dance of the hallowing of the gorge. Frampton watched them. They were not dancing specially well, he thought, yet he watched them with interest, very glad that he had come. He was rapt out of Tatshire and the thoughts of Spirr Wood and the angry ham; he was in Ida, in some century not well defined, but existing in the soul for ever. The music was so uncanny, that even those three men, one of them playing on that impossible old hack piano, and those three muscular young women, made him feel that unearthly beings were moving there.

Presently the immortals had ended; they danced away. The folk of Troy were dancing on, followed by the elders; the three young heroes were going to dance for the hand of the princess. As the Trojans gathered at the back of the stage, the music seemed to Frampton to take another turn round his heart and tighten there.

A young woman came forward to begin the celebrations. Frampton had not seen her, had not at any rate noticed her, till the music brought her forward. Now, as she glided out, he looked at her, and felt the blood rush to his head, so that a red mist covered his eyes for a moment. It was Margaret come back out of the grave. The red mist cleared from his eyes; he could see more clearly. He leaned forward and dug all the nails on his fingers into his knees. The girl was Margaret. He almost cried aloud to her. It was almost more than he could bear.

“It is her wraith, perhaps, come to summon me,” he thought. “Oh please, God, I can be gone from all this folly with her, for she was my Fortune, and I cannot live after my Fortune has gone.”

He looked about the dingy hall. It seemed to have disappeared. He looked back at the stage. There was Margaret dancing; her face, indeed, painted into the mask of the stage, but with that beautiful hair, and exquisite grace of body and movement. It was Margaret come back to him. He watched her, quite breathless, till she almost drew him to the stage. Others were dancing now, but he had no eyes for the others. Who could she be? Who was she? He had a programme in his hand; he tried to read the name, but the light was too dim for him to read it. Besides, he wanted to watch her every movement.

She ended her dance at last, and flung herself down upon skins at the left back of the stage and lay there looking, indeed, at the actors dancing on the stage, but through them directly at himself. It seemed to him that her eyes were never off his face. He told himself that, of course, she was staring directly into the glare of the light and that she could not possibly see him. But he met her eyes and stared back into them, more deeply moved than he had ever been in his life. He did not want to see what was happening on the stage. The young men were competing in deeds of skill and strength for the hand of the princess. It flashed into his mind that probably one of the young men was this Margaret’s husband or lover. Well, if that were so, he would win her from him. Then the play caught him. The young men had tried their best, one of them was out of it and retired broken-hearted. Then the winner won his last trial and danced off with all the crowd.

Frampton cursed the dim light. There was a synopsis of the play in the programme, and also a list of the parts and dancers, but he could not read them. He could not read one word.

“Of course,” he told himself, “of course, this is only an illusion. She is all so made up that she may be quite unlike Margaret. It was an accident of make-up. It is just chance and took my breath away. Probably I was quite wrong about it.”

However, at that moment, the Margaret danced back to the loser left lonely on the stage, and again his heart stood still. This was not an illusion. Make-up or no make-up, this was Margaret’s self. He was not wrong about it. Again he clutched himself. What if this were Margaret’s wraith come here to call him? What if this divine dance and strange music were the realities of heaven? What if he were to have done with all the folly and unreality of guns and explosives, the furnaces, the castings, the excitements of the ranges, the angers, hatreds, and stupidities of this district in Tatshire, and in a few moments to dance into the coloured light to be with Margaret forever?

He perceived the drift of the play now; it was all made clear to him by her. In all this succession of dancing the uncanny music of the Caucasus kept Frampton stirred as never in his life before. He watched intently.

“Perhaps,” he kept telling himself, “perhaps it is all an illusion or hallucination. I’ve been thinking too intently of Margaret. I shall wake up soon in my bed at Mullples and find that it is all a dream. But no, this is not a dream. But it cannot be Margaret. It must be some half-sister of hers, by some other mother. It cannot but be that. Still it is so like. If it be not a dream it will surely be a nightmare. It cannot but be that she is married to one of these men. She will not look at me. How can I speak with her? I must get at the manager, there. Suppose she is Mrs. Tiger Mike, or his mistress?

From time to time in the dance she floated well to the front of the stage. She was not of the world’s greatest dancers, he could see that, but she was very good, good enough to be in the company of even the greatest. Five or six of the company were good enough for that. It was a marvel that such a company should be in such a place. He watched and watched. It was Margaret, from hair to dancing shoes.

The curtain fell at last; the red light ceased to glare; the electric lights in the roof of the hall went on. The audience applauded. As most of the audience was sitting right at the back, it seemed strangely remote, but they stamped with their feet and clapped. The curtain rose and Frampton saw the entire cast ranged in a semi-circle, taking their call. He applauded vigorously; the young woman behind him asked for another cigarette, lit it and again puffed, so that the scented smoke drifted on to Frampton’s cheek. He didn’t mind that now; he went on clapping. The curtain fell, but rose again so that they might have the satisfaction of a second call. Then, presently, it fell, and the dancers were free to go to change for the next ballet.

He looked at his programme. There in the list of the dancers was the name. The part of the girl was to be danced by Margarita Sorya. So that was her name: Margarita Sorya. She was a Margaret, as he had thought, but she was his, meant to be his, given back to him from the grave by some miracle of life. She was the other half of his uncompleted being. She was there on the other side of the old, torn, mothy, red-and-yellow curtain, probably talking with her husband, he thought bitterly, or in some foul and littered, cold dressing-room, trying to get changed for the next ballet. She would probably be in that. It would be Les Circasses, he supposed. Well, he had half an hour to wait, probably, for it generally took a ballet company twenty minutes between dances, and this company seemed likely to take longer than most. He rose up. As he did so, he saw the girl behind him nudge her companion, puff a blast of smoke from her rouged lips and heard her drawl: “The skunk who shut Spirr Wood.” He turned and looked at them as he went out; the young man seemed somewhat scared at her remark, but she was defiant; she stared back, though with half-shut eyes, and blew another blast of smoke right at him. At that instant, Tiger Mike appeared and addressed her.

“Madam,” he said, “will you please put your cigarette on this ash-tray?”

“I’ve not finished it yet,” she said.

“I know, madam,” he answered, “but the orders of the police are that no one is to smoke here. But there is a fine yard at the back, if you should want the use of it. You could smoke there and welcome.”

She relinquished her cigarette with the remark, that she had never before been in a place where she couldn’t smoke.

Frampton went out into the rain. Somewhere within a few yards of him, in one of the ignobler dens of that mean building, was his Margaret given back to him. He was in such a turmoil that he knew not quite what to do. Going back presently to the entrance corridor, he saw Tiger Mike talking to the young man who took the tickets. He was talking about the lady who had smoked.

“She said: ‘I’ve never before been in a place I couldn’t smoke.’ Indade there’s few times that painted Jezebel has been in the inside of a church. Did ye mark her nails now? All done up red as though she’d been scratching her lips. Can I do anything for ye, sorr?”

“Yes,” Frampton said, “indeed you can. Might I have a few words with you?”

“Deed you can. Will you just run round to the light boy, young fellow, and say it’ll be all of twenty minutes before there’s one of ’em ready?”

The young man went off into the heart of the gloomy building. Frampton was alone with the Tiger.

“You haven’t changed much since I saw you win your title,” Frampton said. “I’d like to shake hands with you, if I might be allowed.”

“Indeed, I’ll be proud,” the Tiger said.

“This company,” Frampton asked: “I gather you had trouble in getting here.”

“Trouble, is it? Begob, you’re right, sorr. We’ve been in one long mess and that’s the truth. The manager, that was, cleared out on us with the gate. He’s the boy let us in about these tickets. Then our lorry broke down on the road, and our ’bus, that we tour in, went the wrong road. Still, here we are.”

“How about lodgings for the night?” Frampton asked. “Have they all got lodgings in this place? It’s a noisome hole.”

“Ah, they’ll find some place,” the Tiger said, “between the act and to-night’s show; they’ll all find some place.”

“You mean they haven’t yet?”

“Not a one of them. But there’s pubs and places. It’s nothing. They’ll find spots. There’s always places in England’ll take ’em. The police’ll fix them, if they can’t find any for themselves.”

“It’s no great fun running round a place like this in a storm,” Frampton said. “It will be dark by the time this show’s over. Do you mean to say these poor souls have to change from their dancing things, fly off to find lodgings, get food of some sort and then fly back to the evening show?”

“They’re used to it. It’s nothing. Use is second nature.”

“Have you any place to go?”

“Sure, sorr. I go to my garage: he’s promised me a bed.”

“I could give five of them shelter,” Frampton said. “I’m not married, but I’ve got a big house doing nothing, and I could take them to and fro. You may think perhaps I’m running a bawdy house. I’m not. I’m interested in the show and would like to help. It’s going to be a bad night. Do you go on to Sulhampton to-morrow?”

“No, Sorr, we’d go on to Sulhampton Monday morning.”

“I’ve got a housekeeper,” Frampton said. “She’d look after the women.”

“I doubt there’s many housekeepers is used to this sort,” Mike said.

Frampton had thought that, too, but he was ready to try.

“Here is my card,” Frampton said. “If you will take my offer to five of the women, and tell them that I have a housekeeper who will make them at home, and who will come for them in a car at the end of this performance, if they choose to take the offer. But perhaps you have married couples. Two married couples and a girl, I could take those, if they would like.”

“We got no married couples, worse luck,” Mike said. “This bunch isn’t like the circus, nor yet like a touring company, with East Lynne and the Harbour Lights. I never was with a menagerie before, and begob it’s my last time. I’ll take your offer to them, Sorr, and in the meantime, I thank you kindly.”

Frampton saw that Mike acquitted him of running a brothel, and put him down as an odd sort of madman, such as was said to inhabit these islands. He closed the unwanted tickets; it was unlikely that anyone would ask for a seat now. He said:

“Will you just wait here, Sorr? I’ll bruit it to them.”

He took the card, glanced at it carefully, and vanished down the passage which led to the dressing-rooms. Faint wafts of cheap scent and cigarette smoke came from those parts. As Frampton waited, the young man and woman from the house came slowly out of the hall. The young woman was smoking. She stared at Frampton, who stared back. At the passage end, she paused and said:

“Shall we go to their dressing-rooms and tell them how lousy they are?”

“I wouldn’t,” the young man said, “Circassian blood, you know. These chaps are very handy with the knife.”

“Lousy day,” the young woman said, looking out of the outer door.

“Absooty pute.”

“I suppose they take us for the bloods, waiting for the soubrettes.”

“Like to cut?”

“What else can we do, till it’s time for Crissies?”

“You could see over the church,” the young man said. They giggled.

“What’s the time now?”

“Twelve past five. We’ll wait till half-past and then cut and have a cocktail at Paggies’. We’ll have earned it.”

They sauntered back past Frampton; she stared at him as she passed; he returned her stare. Tiger Mike returned just as she passed him. Tiger Mike was like a living conscience.

“Lady,” he said, “will you put that cigarette out now? Smoking’s not allowed in here, neither in the hall nor in any passage. The orders of the police are clear. Put it out now. I told you of that before.”

“Were you speaking to me?” she asked.

“Yes, lady.”

“I’m glad to know. Don’t let it become a habit, will you?”

“Young gentleman,” Tiger Mike said to the lad, “you must ask your lady to go outside to smoke, or take her from here.”

At this point, Miss Adobe came out with Eldrida, whose excitements always went straight to her liver and was now beginning to feel their onslaught. They went out hurriedly.

“Do you hear?” the young woman said. “We’re absooty chucked out, on our ears; absooty marvous. Get my wrap. We’ll leave this and see the church. We can smoke there.”

She moved to the outer door, and continued to smoke there, while her young man fetched the wraps from the hall. Mike turned to Frampton.

“I put it to them, Sorr,” he said. “The five here on this sheet will thank you kindly, Sorr.”

He took the sheet, without looking at it.

“Is there a telephone here?” he asked.

“No, Sorr, this place is not on.”

“I must get through to my housekeeper. I’ll go telephone. The show won’t be beginning?”

“You’ll have lashings of time, Sorr,” Mike said.

He had seen enough on his trip to make him sure of that.

Frampton went out into the rain. When he had gone a few yards up the road, he looked at the precious list, carefully screening it from the rain. It was written or scrawled with eyebrow-stick or some dark kind of grease-paint on the packing-paper which had covered the supply of tickets. It bore the names of five persons: Sorya, Marianela, Aranowski, Godelof, Zapritska. Sorya was the first of them; she was to be there, and she wasn’t married. His luck was in.

He telephoned at a little tavern; he got through to Mrs. Haulover and gave his orders, that there would be five strange young women at Mullples for the week-end; that their rooms were to be made ready at once, with fires lighted, and that she was to come down at once in the big car to welcome them. It was somewhat of a blow to Mrs. Haulover, who guessed that something unusual had occurred. He told her to get through to a Stanchester firm, which knew him and happened to be open on Saturdays, to insist that any extra stores needed should be sent by road at once.

“That’s that, then,” he concluded. “The sooner the quicker.”

He judged that Mrs. Haulover had guessed that a staggering chance had fallen. He went back to his place as the curtain rose upon the Toltecs.

It falls to few to see their late espoused Saints brought to them like Alkestis from the grave. For all the longing that goes up to Heaven, that mercy is seldom granted. When the life of the heart dies, the soul is all unlit and unhelped, so that it broods and sickens. He had been unlit and unhelped since Margaret’s death; nothing had been happy for him. Now, suddenly, Margaret was dancing before him; the lost chance of life was restored. This was Margaret given back by life; there could be no disloyalty to the dead in turning to her.

Yet, suppose she were already engaged? Suppose it? Why, it was pretty certain that a woman of such beauty and cleverness would have lovers by the dozen. And what would she think of a bachelor, who asked five strange women to stay for the week-end? She would have met plenty of pretty queer bachelors of all ages, touring in the provinces, and this sort among them.

He longed to speak to her and hear her voice. She held her head exactly as Margaret had done; surely her voice would be the same. Would she speak English? Would she prove to be Circassian? Was she in some strange way related to Margaret? Suppose she told him that she was so sick of the attentions of men that she wanted to be left alone?

After the curtain fell, he went out into the rain, to try to quiet his thoughts. In the Market Place he bought a box of cigarettes for Tiger. He found the Tiger sitting at the table in the passage.

“I’ve brought you a few cigarettes,” he said.

“Indeed, Sorr, that’s kind of you. I smoke a lot of them things, now that I do not have to mind meself.”

“It’s a bad day for business.”

“Ye’d not get many worse. This has been a bad tour. Run by bad men and rotten.”

“Are your people, the dancers, Circassians?”

“There’s all sorts, the same as in Noah’s Ark. There’s many of ’em might be anything, they’ve just traipsed about touring with dancers all over the place. They’d be hard put to it to say what they are, if pressed. But they’ve been every place, and know nothing of any, except they danced there one time.”

“That was a great night at the club,” Frampton said, “when you put it all over the Mill Wheel.”

“It was a great night for me,” Mike said. “But ye said you backed me?”

“I did,” Frampton said.

“Indeed, there’s not many did. Me manager said: ‘Now, Mike, they’ve offered me five hundred quid for you to lose. I’ve told ’em that if they talked like that to me, I’d turn you loose on ’em.’ They said: ‘Well, tell your lad he’ll get no more jobs here nor any place, if he puts the Mill Wheel out. Let him just chew on that and give me a hint in the morning.’”

“Was that the Mill Wheel’s set?”

“No, Sorr, it was just a set that fixed things. Me manager said to me: ‘Mike, we got a tough bunch against us. They got a lot of dough and want to get the Mill Wheel right up in Gee. But you’re a straight lad, Mike, and I believe you can put the Mill Wheel out. If you can’t, you do your damnedest, and you’ll make your name, at least.”

“I remember the betting was ten to one on the Mill Wheel,” Frampton said.

“What made ye back me, Sorr?” the Tiger asked.

“I liked the look of you. I saw you weigh in in the morning. I thought you looked just a shade the better man.”

“And indeed I was,” Mike said, “but only just a shade. He nearly got me in the first round. He caught me a welt on the jaw that made me think I was gone. He learned me sense with that welt, not to come so near asking for trouble. I was a glad lad, I tell you, Sorr, when I got my chance in the seventh round.”

“I used to see the Mill Wheel later, in the halls,” Frampton said. “What became of him?”

“He’s in Hollywood, Sorr, where all the lads go now. He trains tigers for the films. He calls himself Zendavesta, the Brahman Tiger King.”

“About these ladies on your list?” Frampton asked, “can you tell me if any of them talk English?”

“Miss Sorya’s English; her mother was English, at least, I believe. Miss Marianela’s French; she talks a fair whack of English. The Aranowski, I don’t know what she is; nor the other two. Zapritska sounds like something to eat in one of these foreign joints. They don’t talk much English, those last three, but you may make your meaning clear to them. They’re not what they call temperamental, them three birds. We’ve some in this outfit are. They’re the lads to lie down and scream on you, if you ask them to be ready for the train by noon. But you’ll have no trouble, Sorr, with your lot. They’ll be on their company manners.”

“When my housekeeper comes, I’ll get you to introduce me,” Frampton said.

They talked for a while of the whirling Mill Wheel, now Zendavesta, whom Mike had laid on the mat. Mike loved to talk of the days of his fame; few folk remembered Tiger Mike. Suddenly from one of the dressing-rooms came a wild and angry outburst, followed by screaming.

“For the love of me,” Mike said, “there’s that Tzigajzwsky again. She’s jealous of the Trojan king, the long bird who necks the rum. She’ll have his eyes out, if I don’t watch it.”

He was off to the battlefield, but the Trojan king came out bleeding before he reached the door. He was the tall drunken man who had called for Tomás. Blood was running down his cheek from scratches, and Tzigajzwsky followed up her foe with a volley of old dancing shoes.

“Say now, Birdie,” Mike began, “you mustn’t mind that big mutt.”

He drew her away into the room. Sounds of storm followed, while the audience waited. Presently Mike appeared, to say that it was unfortunately not possible to perform Les Circasses; they would substitute for it, with their permission, the famous Divertissements, which the audience would find described on the back pages of their programmes. He did not say so, but there was a pretty scene raging at the back at that moment. However, he was used to raging scenes, and having been in the ring could deal with most that came his way.

The curtain rose upon Marianela in her famous Chilian success of La Cachuca, with big black, languishing eyes and a pair of castanets; her genius was much more for this kind of dance, than for any other. She had a real success, and was recalled. Frampton noted the admiration of the lad at the door. He heard him say:

“Those are the sort of girls that stick a knife into a chap.”

Sorya came fourth upon the list, with what was called a Russian Moon Dance. As she was less made up for this than in the dance before, her likeness to Margaret was more startling.

Soon, the performance ended with the playing of God Save the King. He went out to the hall. The rain was falling heavily now, as though it would do nothing else till dawn. He stood staring out into it, while folk put on their coats and pushed past him.

Frampton’s big car drove up with Mrs. Haulover. After a very few minutes, one by one, the five dancers appeared. Mike introduced them: Miss Aranowski, a tall, very strange-looking lady, with pale eyes and a vehement soul; Miss Zapritska, still stormy from some trouble of the dressing-rooms, with a twitching nostril above some suggestions of moustache. Third was Miss Sorya. As she came forward into the light, Frampton saw Mrs. Haulover start; he knew at once that the reason for his inviting them was plain to her. She spoke English; she greeted Mrs. Haulover, and Frampton with a few words of thanks and then moved aside, to make room for Godelof, tall, handsome, with red-gold hair of great beauty, and Marianela, a little, wiry, lean, quick, brown-faced woman with decisive movements. Frampton packed them into the car and spread the rugs about them. Then the car drew away, with Zapritska lighting a cigarette.

He watched the car out of sight; then bought tickets for Mrs. Haulover and some of the household for the night’s performance.

“You’ve done a good deed, Sorr,” Mike said, “taking them girls in. It’s no life for a girl at all. Men’s different, but a girl likes a home to go to. Even I gets sick of these one-night stands, year in, year out.”

Frampton took his own car, and offered Mike a lift to his garage; but Mike had something to say to the boys who were setting the stage for the evening show.

When he reached home, he found the Godelof sitting by the blaze of the fire, which made her red-gold hair shine at its best. Aranowski joined them; she slid her neat, long foot along the floor and said that that was the place for a dance, not that sale hall in the town.

“Dance, if you like,” he said. “But I have a little old theatre here. To-morrow you could dance in it with much greater effect, if you’d like to.”

“A theatre? Here?” she cried.

Zapritska joined them at this instant.

“You ’ave a theatre here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but it hasn’t been used for some century or so, except as a dog-kennel.”

“Perhaps,” Godelof said, with meaning, “perhaps we could dance the Circasses there, to-morrow; not be put out by some fracas of the Halles, no.”

The Zapritska would have replied to this in the Goneril manner, but Sorya and Marianela came in together at this instant, and Marianela caught sight of Tenor Cobb’s big painting.

“Ha,” she cried, “you ’ave a Cobb?”

“So you like Cobb?” he said.

“I adore Cobb,” Marianela said. “That is well touched, that one. I ’ave sit to Cobb for the ’and. I ’ave the good ’and.”

She held it out; she spoke the humble truth; she had a very good hand.

“And do you paint?” he asked.

“I cannot paint, alas. I am vagabonde.”

“A very good thing to be,” he said.

“It’s like Texas,” Sorya said, “fine for men and dogs, but hell on women and oxen.”

He had not heard this before and laughed at it.

“Come along now and eat and drink,” he said. “You’ve not too much time, since you have to get back and make up for to-night.”

Mrs. Haulover was a good hostess.

After the meal, while they were waiting to start for the Hall, Frampton heard Aranowski ask Zapritska in a low voice, whether Mrs. Haulover were Mr. Massilio’s amie. Zapritska replied that in England all the men were vierges and all the women like to remain so. Then they went off to the Hall, singing as they went.

He watched the evening’s performance with a beating heart. In two of the three ballets Sorya danced; in the divertissements she danced a bayadère. He did not care what the others on the stage did; he sat staring at her through his glasses whenever she appeared, not doubting that she was Margaret come back to him.

“She will have a lover; she cannot fail to have a lover,” he kept thinking. “But I’ll beat him from her.”

When she was on the stage, the certainty that she must have a lover somewhere made him sick with jealousy. The grace of the creature so often made him sure that she was Margaret’s spirit, moving as Margaret had never moved. Presently, they danced Les Sylphides; Margaret danced the Prélude. She made that dingy stage an unearthly garden hovered in by the butterflies of the soul.

The storm had gathered by this time into something of its full intensity. The Hall contained an audience of twenty-nine persons, who had come, they did not quite know why, or because tickets had been given to them. Some of these would no doubt have left early but for the pouring of the rain. Frampton looked at them from time to time. They looked unreal in that place and light; they were unreal; they were not feeling. He was more deeply moved than ever before in his life; he was shaken to his foundations. At the same time, he was confirmed in his certainties. He was on the side of Margaret and this her spirit; he would make Spirr a sanctuary; he would fight the insensitiveness of stupid Stubbington, which sat so dead and lout-like while this Margaret danced. He thought of Faringdon, toiling at the figure which was to stand for Margaret up at Holtspur. Why, here was the model for him. The living Margaret was here. These lovely movements and groupings should be the birthright of the children born at Holtspur. He would begin a new England up there in the Waste.

Presently the wonderful evening ended, and the people went out into the roaring and the darkness. Once again he helped his five into the car, and set off after them alone.

He did not have much talk with any of the five that night. He lay long awake listening to the storm and thinking of this Margaret Sorya. When he woke, at about five in the morning, the wind was still roaring, but he could see a star or two through his open window. He thought that if this troupe were going on to Sulhampton for a week’s stay, they might, if they wished, stay with him and go and come by car. He would see more of her thus. He prayed that they might choose to do this.

He rose early, as soon as it was light, and made himself a French breakfast, of strong black coffee and bread. Following his custom after any night of storm, he took a two-prong, and went along the brook, breaking up all the dams of branches and dead leaves. Going indoors presently, he found Sorya there reading Who’s Who.

“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?”

Timothy blushed and was pleased, but looked a bit startled.

“I used to do them for Margaret sometimes, and she liked them. Lately, I’ve been doing them again for the Boy Scouts who come here; they all like them.”

“Well, you come up to lunch, and we’ll discuss the future. These things are the real thing, and put your nature studies behind the wainscot.”

“About this Russian cousin,” Timothy asked; “you said it was a she. Does she speak English?”

“Yes. She’s like Margaret.”

“All right. I suppose I’d better shave.”

Frampton stayed talking with Timothy for a while, then turned back to the house.

“This cousin of yours is a ballet dancer,” he said, as he left. “She has four friends with her, so you’d certainly better shave; and put on a tie, if that isn’t asking too much.”

“I’ve got a fine tie somewhere,” Timothy said.

Frampton went back to the house wondering what had happened, while he had been at Spirr. He supposed that the Sorya would have looked at the photographs and then, perhaps, been moved to look at the portraits, and then, having realised how like she was to Margaret, and her effect upon himself, might have come to some decision about it. Anyhow, she would know now that he could not look upon her without being deeply moved, and moved in a way which most women would resent, not for any quality in herself, but for her resemblance to someone dead. He had pointed this out to her as delicately as he could; if she had fled, while he was away, he would understand.

But she had not fled. She was on the terrace, beside the long pond, when he came in. He had the feeling that she was waiting for him. She was looking at him with interest and some pity.

“Zeila Aranowski was saying that you have a theatre here,” she said. “Is that true, or was it something that she didn’t quite understand?”

“No, it’s true. There it is, yonder. Would you care to see it? You’d better get a wrap, while I get the keys; you know how chill an unused theatre can be.”

“I do know that,” she said.

He led the way to the theatre.

“Are any of your sisters down?” he asked.

She thought not. They were having a long lie; later in the day they would have a practice, but for the moment they were enjoying life. He opened the door and let her into the green room and thence to the stage.

“This is the stage,” he said. “It is rather long and narrow, and steeply raked. Will you wait a moment, while I go to my seat? I want to see you make your debut.”

He vaulted down into the house and took his seat. With inimitable grace, she danced down to the footlights, and made the dancer’s adorable reverence to the imaginary audience.

“I’m afraid the stage is too much raked for a ballet,” he said.

“Not at all; it’s only the back that’s raked,” she said. “This space here, the acting area, is barely raked at all. The backs of these old stages were used for display and what the old writers call perspectives, which gave illusions of distance. You could give adorable small ballets, with a few dancers and music by Gluck and Mozart. It is a wonderful place, and so beautiful.”

“It’s luck to have escaped the Gothic revivalist,” he said. “He would have pulled it down and put up black and white rafters and pierced a few loop-holes for bows. But just when the Gothic chap was in charge, in matters of taste, it was in use as a kennel for hounds, and later as a fowl-house. It is pretty much as it was at first now, I think.”

“But who built it?”

“One of these mad English,” he said.

“And have you given many performances here?” she asked.

“I? No,” he said. “There are no performers, and worse still, no audience here.”

“I should have thought you would spend all your time here, giving performances.”

“Not I. I spend my time inventing things that’ll blast people dead without danger to the blaster. I make death swift for the receiver and comfortable to the giver. Anything that shortens war and limits the rule of generals in human affairs, that’s the kind of thing I study. You said, a moment ago, that you will all have to do a practice or exercises some time to-day.”

“We shall have to go in to Stubbington for that,” she said, “to be with the others.”

“Why not have them all out here and exercise in the theatre or in the court outside?” he suggested. “I can telephone and arrange it. You have a transport ’bus, and I could manage to bring some here; and I can give the party some tea later. Why not?”

Sorya could see no reason why not. It would be a pleasure to them all. As they walked back to the house, she said:

“I went to look at my cousin’s portraits. I left your photographs of her on your table there.”

“Thank you,” he said. “For the moment we won’t speak of that. You will understand that I had to show you.”

He arranged for the company to come that afternoon to practise in the theatre. It chanced that the weather improved steadily as the day progressed. At two o’clock, the wind had died, and a hot autumn sun was shining, so that many people from Stubbington drove out to Stubbington Hill, behind Mullples, parked their cars, and came to the edge to see the view. It was at its best on a sunny autumn afternoon, when some trees were bare, and the others in different colours, when the autumn ploughing had turned up red, brown and yellow fields, and the green crops of roots had not been taken. In parts of this expanse flood water was gleaming. The view from Mullples edge stretched away and away. Many who loved the view loved to come a little forward, so as to see Mullples Lake and the line of the severe roof ridge.

Among those who came forward, as it chanced, on this Sunday afternoon, were Mrs. Method-Methodde and her friends, the Morral-Galles. They had focussed their glasses on the blue smears in the distance, to see whether they could distinguish Burnt Top from Bildon, when they became aware of a bus near the court of Mullples, a yellow, rather battered bus, which had an air of knowing a thing or two. In the court-yard, a company of men and women appeared.

“Who can these be?” Mrs. Method-Methodde asked.

To the company came others, to wit the gun-man and his man, bearing what they could not identify upon a wheelbarrow. The thing was taken from the barrow. It was a gramophone. Distant as it was, a faint strain or two came to them from it, and the company began to dance.

“I’ve seen that thing,” Mr. Morral-Galle said. “It’s the Circasses; quite a well-known ballet.”

“Circasses?” Mrs. Method-Methodde cried. “But those must be the Circassians who were at the Pitte Rooms. I wouldn’t let my maids go. They looked a dreadful set. I saw two of them in the street. And Mr. Mansell has them out to dance on a Sunday.”

Shocking as the sight was, she watched it. There they were, in the open air, dancing themselves to damnation, while preaching red revolution and doubtless practising free love. And on a Sunday, too. And the worst of it was that the earth didn’t open to swallow them. They danced for a long time, and then all trooped away to the house.

“So,” she concluded, “he is giving them tea; those people. Really, to bring those people to Mullples, which was once a monastery, is a little too much. They had a dreadful poster in Stubbington which gave a lot of offence.”

However, it was a new sin of the gunman’s, and as such a good topic for talk.

As he watched the dancers, on his stage, Frampton thought:

“Why should they not dance a ballet here next Spring? Cobb longs to design for the ballet; the young poet whom I met longs to invent for it, and the musician Harold spoke of, whose work I so much liked, has all sorts of schemes. Why should they not get busy and make something for the Sorya and the others to dance here? It is true, there is no audience; but I shall have some people on the Waste then, and I’ll get my main audience down from London. I’ll make it a big thing. It is true, I know nothing of dance-writing, and know no one who does. But I’ll get the best chap there is, when I’ve the fable and the music. And by Christmas, I myself will have learned all that a layman can learn of the art. These swine tried to stamp on Margaret, when they drew Spirr. They tried to stamp on Sorya, not coming to her dance yesterday. My Golly, they shall long to come to her dance here and not be asked. That’ll make ’em squirm. These people will be touring England till after Christmas, and then go to the South of France for a short season. After that, I’ll get them for my thing, or the best of them. I’ll make this Sorya famous here, and this place famous, too, as the home of a new ballet.”

Instantly, his mind seized on this new way of angering his neighbours. He was not one to do a thing by halves. As the dancers practised before him, a part of his shrewd brain went into the probable costs of a season of ballet there, while in another part came visions of a matchless décor by Cobb, and Sorya floating in upon it, sur les pointes; he would make it the loveliest thing.

He spoke of his thought to the company as he wished them farewell, and later went to his study to work out some of the details, and to telephone (as was his way), while the idea was hot in him, to poet, painter and musician. There camp a tap at his study door. Sorya and Marianela were there. He rose with a leaping heart and led them in.

“We came to see you,” Sorya said, “because we speak English better than the others, and some of them are a little shy. They ask us to thank you for your kindness to us all and to say how much they enjoyed being in your theatre.”

“They thanked me thoroughly before they went,” he said. “It was a great pleasure to me to have them here. I want to say to you, that I am serious about using the theatre. Now, I have some ideas of doing ballets here in May or June, and I want you both to come to dance for me.”

“We gladly will,” they promised.

“I will ask Mlle. Marianela to repeat some of her triumphs. And I want you to do the Red Waterlilies and to dance the lead in a ballet I have in my mind. I have the idea. I know the men who can work it out. I mean to make the festival here a very splendid thing, and I do want you to be in it.”

“I’d love to be in it,” she said. “If you want some of our company, I’m sure they will be delighted to come here. Pitowski was enchanted with your theatre. Our people are very much better dancers than you might think from seeing them in that taudis yesterday. Pitowski has been very famous and most of them could go to-morrow into the Imperial Ballet if it still existed.”

She thought a moment, while Marianela asked practical questions about who would direct. Presently, Sorya spoke again; she had been watching Frampton with a minute attention. He was unlike anybody she had ever met or heard of; he had come already queerly within the armour.

“There is something that might interest you,” she said. “You may not know that the original Red Waterlilies had what was called the flute scene, which they flung out. The music and the costume designs for it are too beautiful for words. Ortiz has the designs in Paris still, and I expect Kaianovitch still has the flute music. But the two would be frightfully costly, of course. I heard some of the flute music; it is unlike anything ever done. It is for the end of the play where the girl joins the water spirits. All the managements boggled at the cost, so that it has never been done.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m here to do what I can for the arts. I may as well do the thing in style. But this is a little theatre and the designs may be overwhelming to the small stage.”

“They were not meant for a big stage,” she said. The Papillon only seated four hundred and fifty. That made the margin of profit so small.”

“I’ll get you, then, to put me in touch with Ortiz and Kaianovitch.”

“You’ll meet Kaianovitch to-morrow at Sulhampton, if you come there,” she said. “He’s coming there to conduct his Mass at the Abbey.”

“I shall come to Sulhampton,” he said.

Some minutes before the curtain rose on the Red Waterlilies at the Mullples May Festival, Frampton knocked on the door of Sorya’s dressing-room. He carried a great bunch of red carnations. He found her standing in front of her pier-glass, ready to go on. She had some red geranium petals in her fingers; with these she was adding a faint touch of colour to her cheeks. As he entered, the crumpled red frailties fell to the floor. He had never seen her so beautiful.

“I came to wish you good luck,” he said, “A few people are still coming in. You’ll have two minutes still.”

“I’m just gibbering with nerves,” she said.

“You don’t look it. Look here; when I saw you in that barrack at Stubbington that time, I thought you were my Margaret come back. It meant the world to me. Since then, I’ve been coming to care for you, as I hope you know, not any shadow, please believe, but you. The dead are at rest and gone on; but I think she led you to me. I’ve brought you these red flowers. If you can care for me at all, I want you to dance the last scene with one of these flowers between your lips; then I shall know.”

She looked at him curiously, with shining eyes. The call-girl, Marianela’s sister, came tapping at the doors. “Beginners on,” she was saying. The first of the three silver trumpets, which were to give the curtain signal, sounded in the adjacent wing. The passage outside was noisy suddenly with moving feet and rustling costumes.

“Good luck,” Frampton said, taking her hand suddenly. “Good luck; I must cut.”

He slipped out of the door into the passage. Members of the cast, whom he could not recognise in their paints and costumes, were hanging in the wings. He saw Pitowski and Godelof. Godelof’s mouth was working; she was hanging on to two others of the cast, whom he could not name; all three were very nervous.

“Courage,” he said. “It will be all right directly you’re on.”

They looked at him with wan smiles. The two trumpets blew their blast. He slipped through the stage door to the side of the auditorium, and took his seat. He knew that a great many eyes were turned upon him. He heard a girl say:

“That’s Mr. Mansell, just sitting down now.”

The people in the house settled and became tenser; he had given the strictest orders that no member of the audience was to enter the theatre after the second trumpet. There was now no hurried shuffling to seats; all were seated. The house lights went out; the front stage lights flashed on. The three silver trumpeters appeared, one centre, the others in the wings. Lifting their trumpets, they blew the third blowing, with the air of three Rolands scattering paganism for ever. When they disappeared, the orchestra broke out into the prelude.

The history of the Mullples May Festival has been written by another hand. It has been famous, and has made many people famous, dancers, designers, musicians and poets. It was, while it lasted, the most interesting ballet festival in the world; it ran for one fortnight in each year, for seven years.

What it cost Frampton Mansell can never be known; perhaps in all about fifty thousand pounds, for he imported his musicians, dancers and stage hands and had to house and feed them. But that is all history. At the first performance there were present all Little London’s most elegant four hundred, including all London’s critics. Twenty-three Bright Young Things, including Pob and Pinkie, were turned away by the police for attempted gate-crashing. More than seven hundred persons came out from Stubbington and Tatchester to see the cars enter the car-park. The weather was a deep anti-cyclone centred over Oxford.

It was noticed that when Sorya took her call at the end of the Red Waterlilies, she bore between her lips the red carnation with which she had danced the last scene. She has been known since as the Lady with the Red Carnation. Tenor Cobb’s painting of her with the red carnation between her lips (his masterpiece) is now in the Tate Gallery, and a replica of it hangs in the beautiful town of Melbourne.

She married Frampton Mansell in the June of the first year of the festival.

Frampton Mansell still makes guns and weapons of destruction; but his main interest now is the Red Carnation Theatre of Ballet, in Russell Square. He built and equipped this theatre; he has already made it the most delightful place in London.

Mullples is now a part of St. Margarets, which has become not only the most beautiful garden city in the world, but a part of the Margaret Holtspur National Park. The wood of Spirr (now usually called Holtspur) runs back into Stubbington Great Wood now, and forward almost as far as Coombe. It is well known now to naturalists and nature-lovers; there are beavers in the valley; hoopoes and bitterns nest there; the golden oriole has been introduced and a pair of —— have nested twice and this year raised a brood. Timothy asks me not to say what these birds are.

Frampton and his wife and children frequently go there. The house is a guest-house for nature students and for the young people qualifying for work in the Red Carnation Theatre. Faringdon’s bronzes in the midst of St. Margarets draw many visitors from all over the world. The Stubbington guide-book urges all visitors to the district to be sure to see them. I write, of course, in this present year of 1955.

The Tunster no longer meet at Tibb’s Cross; the national preserve has squeezed them out. Colonel Cuttand-Thrustum has lately taken them over, and told a Press representative yesterday that he hopes to give as good sport as his predecessor.

St. Margarets is a most beautiful place, now that time has made it look like the beloved homes of men. Its first suggestion was a desire to hurt; its first impulse was one of indignation. Indignation has been said to be the voice of God, at whose bidding so many angels rush with fire and the beauty of lilies and songs of exultation.