Frampton was not interested in the story of Spirr Wood, but was touched at this song being still in the old fellow’s memory; it was the only trace of art in him, this relic of a bad ballad about a fox-hunt, with only three left in it at the end, lovely horses galloped to death, and Mr. Flaggon twisted for life. He stayed on talking to the old man, but not encouraging him to delve further into the epic of Spirr Wood, but asking to be shown something of the mystery of ditching. He was ever fond of trying to do country things. He held, that all art comes from the power that does rough work, and the pride and joy of doing that rough work well. All the diseases of art, and he knew them all pretty well and had seen their practitioners, seemed to him to proceed from that very point of weakness. The artists could not do the rough work, they therefore were not men of power, and their work was consequently weak and despondent, without pride and unable to give joy, seeing that itself did not proceed from joy.
He remained with the old man, doing a bit of ditching and a bit of hedging under his guidance, for a while, and then returned home, thinking of the might of men, who in the course of centuries had made the art of the countryside, so trim and beautiful, ditching the fields, planting, trimming and plashing the fences, carrying away the standing meres, getting the boggy patches dry, a work of centuries, always noble because it taxed a strong man to the utmost at all times, and never could be relaxed nor ended. In that particular bit of England, as he very clearly saw, the effort to get the water off the land must have been heroic. Traces of old drains were everywhere. At one time, they had cared for that land as a mother cares for a child. Then, indeed, men had cared for England.
Thinking over what the old man had said, he decided that it would be best to write to the Hunt Secretary, to make it clear that Spirr Wood was to be a bird sanctuary, and that he wished the hounds to avoid it. He wrote this letter, and sent it off, thinking:
“Well, sooner or later, these chaps will be turned out of every covert; they’ve had five generations of Spirr.”
He had a busy week in the Works just after that and did not pay any attention to the plea of the Secretary, whose name seemed to be Bynd, that he would reconsider his decision. Taking the letter from his table by chance a few days later, he thought that he had better send a brief reply. He, therefore, wrote a formal line or two, to say that he was sorry that he could not reconsider his decision: Spirr was to be a sanctuary. Somebody told him a day or two later that a man of the name of Bynd had come up twice to
Afterwards it did occur to him: “Oh, it was the Hunt Secretary. Well, he has had his answer; and he must see, by this time, that I’m putting a warden’s hut inside Spirr. He must take No for an answer. Why should he think that I’ll give up a considered plan for a whim of a few fox-hunters? Margaret shall have her birds, and the Hunt may go chase itself.”
By the end of April, the work of the house was well forward. The painters who were doing his frescoes were getting along well, and enjoying the chance to show their power. Each toiled there with his plasterer from dawn till dark, as happy as the day. There were four main designs; one, in the hall, of the year’s work in the fields; one, in his library, of the story of Tristan and Isolt; another, in Margaret’s room, of the birds that haunt the water and watery places, herons, dippers, wild duck, moorhens, curlews, and the green plovers who cry from the marsh at night; and a fourth, in a big sitting-room, of the forest of England, with Robin Hood, his meyny, the deer and the wild things. The garden had been remade and planted. Enthusiasts were already coming out in cars from Stubbington, in the early mornings, to steal the plants.
In Spirr Wood, the “bungalow, made to look sylvan,” looked as sylvan as so new a thing could. The builders had made something of a mess in getting it up, but the Spring was pushing fast over the traces. Timothy had moved in there as soon as one room of it was covered; he had passed some weeks already, with much enjoyment, getting up nesting-boxes of different kinds in the trees. He worked at the making and disguising of these all day long, with the skill and pleasure of genius. He had a carpenter’s bench there; he was glad to be out of London and to have some excuse, not to work at his profession. He was a charming-looking lad of much sweetness and weakness. He made Frampton feel that he was, as he put it, “going to pull up his socks for good.”
He had a delicate way of disguising his nest-boxes, which pleased Frampton very much.