At home, at Newbury, they found the old man in great excitement, having that noon laid bare some Roman remains in his kitchen-garden; from what had been laid bare, it was plain, that a villa had stood there. As the things were interesting, Frampton and Margaret stayed on with him after tea, helping to clear the pavement, in the midst of which a sort of beast, a cross as it seemed between a tiger and a Newfoundland dog, was done in mosaic, gardant, passant.
“Look at him,” Frampton said, “the results of empire and capitalism. Bad taste making itself felt a thousand miles from the centre. Think of the impulse which sent this beast out here and set him down as a flooring. Think of the mind that chose it and insisted on its being done.”
“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Margaret said. “But no museum is complete without one of these things. I’m going to have one more shovelful for luck. I’m going to try at the side here.”
She thrust her little spade into the earth and drew it away, loaded. Emptying the load carefully, she looked at her catch and parted it asunder with a piece of garden stick.
“I’ve got something here,” she said. “I do believe it’s gold.” She disentangled the thing from the roots of nettle that had grown through some of it and scraped it with the point of stick. Frampton went over to her side to see. “It is gold,” she said, “or has gold about it. It’s a fibula,” she said, as the cloggings fell from it.
“It’s a jolly fine fibula,” he said. “Debased period. And some of it certainly is gold. Let’s put it under a hot-water tap and see what we shall see.”
“I wonder how it got there,” she said. “It isn’t the kind of thing that people would have left about.”
“I fancy the Romano Britons left everything about towards the end,” he said, “and took to the woods for safety and never came back.”
The moon was near her full that night. After he had left Margaret at the Institute to receive the wedding present, he drove up to the Downs. He stayed there for hours, enjoying the solitude, the space and the continual booming drone of the cockchafers which came blundering about him. He loved the Downs, as almost the last thing left to us of peace and bigness. The night was fine and still, save for the light wind which always blows on the downland. The moon was ringed with tiny white cirrocumulus which held about her and never seemed to shift. A hem of brownness was round her; she was tranquil and spilled quiet upon the night. An owl or two passed from time to time; and others called from far away. The valley lay below, with a few moving gleams, flashing and disappearing as motors went or came round particular bends. A big express train swept its line of lights across the county. He was deeply moved by the beauty and peace. For a few minutes he doubted whether he could justify his life work of making guns, which would destroy so many of the sons of men; including his own, perhaps. He loathed professional soldiers more than any people in the world, in spite of the simple virtues which so many of them showed. From the beauty of the night, he began to think of soldiers, and decided that while professional soldiers had power in the world, and the chances were that they would have such power for many years to come, any guns that lightened the tasks of the unhappy slaves under them, and tended to make the ruthless folly of modern war effective, fatal and perhaps brief, would be to the good.
He stayed on so long upon the downland that he was startled presently by hearing the church clocks from many hamlets and villages out of sight on all sides of him, striking midnight and chiming for it. Soon, the cocks would be crowing. He thought with a pang, then, “to-morrow will be my wedding day, and I shall be married to Margaret.” A qualm passed through his mind, that he had perhaps left marriage till too late in life, and that he would loathe to find his freedom checked. Still, he would have Margaret instead of freedom; a pretty good exchange, for what of value was there in the life he had been leading? and who would care if it ended? He wanted something liker a home than that.
“Well,” he said to himself, “it’ll be cock-crow soon. I’ve got to be at the Works at ten to finish off before going away. I’d better be thinking of moving.”
He walked back to his car through the longish, dry downland grass from which the cockchafers came whirring and blundering. He turned the car across the track, still known as the Shipway, from its having once been the path along which so many thousands of sheep were driven to the downland sheep fairs of May. The chafers blundered against his glass, or hit the bonnet and slithered off it. Soon he was on the road, driving for home. It was not a long drive, for one like himself who liked pace, on a clear night, after midnight. On his way, he suddenly thought of Margaret a few miles from him. He thought that he would like to see her house and garden in the moonlight.