His old father was peering into a map. “I’ll get out here, if you don’t mind, Fram,” he said, “while you and Maggie go down to see the house. I want to have a look at that ruin we’ve just passed, where the water was gushing. It’s marked as
He climbed out, with the help of Margaret and his son. He was only a few years short of eighty, and had not been very well of late.
“I’ll poke about in the ruins,” he said, “and then, when you’ve looked at the house, you can pick me up there.”
“Won’t you come down to the house?” they asked.
“No, thankee, I’ve seen enough of these houses to let. But it oughtn’t to be called the
He had with him, as always, a strong gardening-stick, fitted with a spud at the end; with this, he walked up towards the ruin. Margaret and Frampton drove slowly on towards the house, which stretched away from them on the other side of a brook.
“Tudor brick,” Frampton said. “See the twisted chimneys?”
“It has been a lovely place,” she said.
It had been noble, but it was plain to anyone that fire, water, poverty, brutality, avarice and helplessness, had all wreaked harms upon it.
“There’s a dovecote,” Frampton said, “in the orchard beyond. And one blue pigeon.”
“What is the other building, beyond?” Margaret asked.
“Stables, I should think,” he said. He stopped the car, looked and said: “Well, Peggy, what d’ye think about it? It’s there or thereabout, wouldn’t you say?”
She quoted from
“I don’t believe much in curst,” he said. “It’s been let get into a mess. It looks to me more like poverty. Father is right about the priory. Look down the brook to the left, there; those mounds and tumps are the priory. This would have been the guest-house, perhaps.”
“Don’t you think there would have been a gate-house, before a guest-house?”
“I should imagine,” he said, “that the chap who got the grant of the priory buildings, pulled down the gate-house, which would have stood about here, and used the stuff to enlarge the house itself. I think I’m wrong about that far building. It can’t be stables. What do you make of it?”
“I don’t know what to make of that,” she said, “I don’t know what it can be.”
“It’s a noble place,” he said, “and the valley it stands in is a dream. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”
“In a way, very,” she said.
She was thinking that Frampton had already decided to buy the place and make it their first home; her life, or a part of it, would be passed here; and from the first, something in the scene had struck her as sinister; perhaps that was too strong a word, but something of the desolation of heart of those who had lived here had impressed the things near it. There was something wrong with the place. Men and women had lived a great, free and splendid life there once, but as for those
It had been a place of fallen pride and misery since then.
“This man, Knares-Yocksir,” he said, “the present owner, will be a lunatic. He may not sell, when it comes to the point. Why hasn’t he sold long ago? Scores of people would have given him a mint for a place like this. I’ll stop the car here. We might have a
They stood together and looked down at the noble old house before them. The Tudor design had been severe and straight. In the reign of James the First, the owner had built on a porch or doorway, in a half round, crowned with pinnacles which must once have been bright, with weathercocks or devices, now gone. Along the front of the house was a terrace, still marked at intervals with mounds, where urns of flowers had collapsed. The grass below this terrace was gone back into the rough. Beyond the grass, farther from the house, was a long, black pond, edged with old brick and almost choked with water-weed. In one little space of water, in the middle of it, a moorhen oared to and fro. Farther away, on a lower level and parallel with the pond, was a second, choked like the other. At its ends were two charming little summer-houses, copied from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren. All the building showed signs of neglect and disorder. Some broken window-panes had been stuffed with rags. Some of the roof had given, and another part of it sagged. The jasmine which had grown up the walls had grown to great thickness. In one place, near the porch, some recent gale had torn a mass of it away. It lay now in a mat across the terrace. As they were standing close to the end of the house, they were conscious of a noise of falling water.
“Hear that?” Frampton said. “The brook’s got into the cellars.”