The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

“Say you get the house clear at Christmas,” Marcham said, “that will mean work in the winter; short days and very likely frost. When do you want to be moving in?”

“I want to be married in July,” he said, “and I want the house to be finished and in apple-pie order before then, with all the men out to hell from it, and none of your little messes in the flowerbeds. You’ll have to get treble shifts on to it, but you’ll get it done.”

Marcham did not relish being bullied. He was thinking, that Mullples was a long way from any centre; men and gear would have to travel far to get to it. The nearest station was twelve, or more miles away. It would be a costly matter putting Mullples in order. Still, that was Mansell’s look-out: he was rich enough. He knew his patron well enough to know, that any suggestion of difficulty would lose him the job, which was attractive to him. He knew, too, exactly how to put Mansell into good humour. “Who have you got in mind for the walls?” he asked.

“Who says I’m going to decorate the walls?” Frampton asked.

“I know you won’t have them bare,” Marcham said, “so the sooner we can get the big rooms ready for the painters the better. How many frescoes have you in mind?”

“The big room, the dining-room, my study and my bedroom: four. I’ve been on the telephone about them. I’ll get the measures with you to-morrow and get them to get on with the cartoons.”

“Fine,” Marcham said. “I see this map marks a chapel here. Is that anything?”

“No; but it’s on the property and it’ll need tidying up. A few bits of wall are above ground.”

“Will you have all the water rights? Can you do what you like with the brooks?”

“Yes; and with the lake and with the springs. Oh . . . and then, here in this covert I want a watcher’s cottage. I mean to make this a bird sanctuary.”

“Spirr Wood; good name; fine,” Marcham said. “I’ll just make a note of that. A red brick bungalow idea, made to look sylvan.”

“That’s the idea,” Frampton said.

“Any sheds or outhouses or so?” Marcham asked. “But we can go into that on the spot. Fine. I say, I do hope that the roof’s pretty good.”

“I think the whole house is pretty bad,” Frampton said.

“Well then, I tell you what,” Marcham said, “I do hope it won’t rain to-morrow. If there is one sound I hate, it’s rain falling into a fine old house.”

“It won’t rain to-morrow,” Frampton said. “The glass is rising. It is going to be a lovely day to-morrow. And now, what d’ye say to a pot of hot grog and to bed. I’m going to rout you out of here at eight to-morrow. You’ll be called at six-thirty.”

At eight the next morning, just as the beauty of the day was beginning to show, they were off and away to Mullples, to infuriate the sick man, by their insistence on getting at parts of the roof that he didn’t know the way to, and angering the daughter by their laying of sacrilegious measures on the walls. She had not been used to energetic men, during her life on earth, and the sight of two was, therefore, the more revolting.

Marcham, when fired, was a man of the utmost keenness. The sight of Mullples was more than enough to fire him.

“By Jove. My Golly,” he kept crying, “what a place. And I’d never heard of it. Except just the mention of the theatre. By Jove. My good Golly. I do hope you’ll get this place. Golly, look at that front; and then the details. O, my Jove and Golly.”

Of course, Frampton got the place. Margaret felt for the fall of the Knares-Yocksirs. She pleaded for gentle treatment for them.

“Fram,” she said, “I’ve been worrying about the Knares-Yocksirs. They’ll have very little to live upon when their house has gone and their debts on it are paid. All that they have will hardly bring them fifty pounds a year, between them.”

“I know it,” he said, “and they’re not worth fifty pounds a year, between them.”

“Yes, they are, Fram,” she said. “Everybody is.”

“I deny that,” he said. “But go on, my Peggy. D’you want me to find him a job in the gun works? I won’t, nor the woman; they’re unemployable.”

“No, no; they’re not. She was born to some position in the county, but she has accustomed herself to a good deal, to cook, and run the house, and be a nurse, and so forth; she’s proved herself.”

“I hate that kind of woman,” he said. “She’s no use to anyone, and is sour with it.”

“Now, Fram,” she said, “we are going to be wonderfully happy; might not some little share of our happiness come to them?”

“You mean, I might build them a lodge, and take them on as keeper and house-keeper? I wouldn’t have them within extreme long range, I look on them both as duds. They were begotten by duds, the pair of them, and now our civilisation is slowly putting them out of action, as the duds they are.”

“Fram, I’m very sorry for them and should not care to live in Mullples thinking that those two are turned out to misery. Will you, to please me, let them have the cottage at Cullingdon, if they would like it, rent free, until the father dies, at any rate? Then perhaps, she might do something for herself.”