He opened the warped gate which lay across the bridge over the stream.
“Tudor bridge, too,” he said. “Victorian gate. I’m not sure they haven’t let it go too far.” That end of the house had a very green-mouldy look.
“It looks very rotten and damp here,” she said, “and the wall’s cracked.”
“The Tomfool owner’s been cracked,” he said, “to let that sycamore grow there, and drip all down the wing; let alone the brook in the cellar.”
They walked along the soft grass of the terrace in front of the house, stepping over fallen jasmine, and passing windows broken or boarded up. At the Jacobean porch, Frampton stopped and stared with kindling eyes. Margaret watched him, knowing that he was excited by the house, and determined to have it. She was impressed by it; she had not seen anything like it; and the well-watered valley delighted her; but yet, within her an instinct rose, that there was something wrong with the place, and that she would not like to live there.
At the porch, they paused for a moment, to look at some children’s scratchings done on the brick with sharp nails. They had been done there in the seventeenth century, and represented a man on horseback, and a windmill.
“Well done, too,” Frampton said. “No boy in this county could do them half as well now.”
He took the old iron bell-pull which hung beside the inner door, and rang. It was stiff in its bearings, but his tug upon it did waken a kind of tinkle inside the house. No one had come in or out of that door for a long time; the spiders had spun across and across. Margaret pointed this out to him.
“This door is not in use, now,” she said. “Look at the spiders’ webs. Don’t you think we’d better go to the back, somewhere?”
“I’ll ring again,” he said, and did so. “We’ve come the wrong way, of course; we ought to have come from Stubbington. That’s good old iron on the door; done at the local forge, no doubt. I’ll try again.”
He took the bell-pull once more and gave it a tug.
“Someone’s coming,” Margaret said.
They heard footsteps inside the house, and then a fumbling at bolts and lock within. Then a female voice said;
“Who is there, please?”
“We’ve come to see the house,” Frampton said.
“Are you from Mr. Piggott, please?”
“Yes, with an order to view.”
“Will you come round to the back, please?” the voice asked. “The key is too stiff for me to turn.”
“Which is the way to the back?” Frampton asked.
“Not the way you came in,” the voice answered. “Keep on to your left, across the grass, then through the gap; you’ll see the path then.”
“So we’ve been watched,” Frampton said, as they moved off. “Not the way we came in, quotha.”
They followed the path to a court or orchard in which a few old apple-trees supported clothes-lines on which some sheets were drying. A woman stood at the back door, looking shrewdly at them. She was of a medium height, and strongly built, with fine brown hair, touched with grey, with keen brown eyes, and an expression of disdain or pride. Margaret thought that the face might once have been merry, but that life had been too hard, to let much merriment stay there. The woman was neatly dressed, and wore an old-fashioned big star-brooch set with small diamonds. She had an apron over her dress, and looked as though she had been cooking. Frampton thought that she had a very beautiful pair of arms with wonderful skin.
“Is this Miss Knares-Yocksir?” he asked.
She moved her head to say yes.
“I’ve got an order to view here.” He handed it to her.
“Come in,” she said.
She was a lady, though she had come down in the world. She welcomed Margaret in, with charming manners. She understood very well, that the pair were engaged, and that Frampton was one who might be a rough customer.
“You had better keep your things,” she said to Margaret. “The house is chill. But perhaps you would like to sit in the kitchen? There’s a fire there.”
“Oh, no, I want to see the house,” Margaret said.
“Perhaps you will see the house first,” she said to Frampton. “My father isn’t very well, but I will show you the house, and you shall see him afterwards, if you wish.”
She showed them the house. It had been a noble thing, even as late as 1890, but it was now all come to grief. One room she did not show.
“My father is in bed there,” she explained.
Most of the rooms were empty; the furniture, pictures, and other fittings had been disappearing bit by bit in the last hundred years.
“This room was panelled,” Frampton said. “Have you any of the panelling put away?”
“Oh, it was sold,” she said. “And the other room was panelled too; some Americans bought it.”
One small Sheraton cabinet containing four pieces of Leeds porcelain was the only beautiful thing remaining to them.
“This is my room,” she said, throwing open a door.
Frampton glanced at its bareness. A photograph, evidently of her brother, a young man in uniform, was on the mantel. He judged that the brother had been the hope of the house, and had been killed in the War.
“Tell me,” he said, “what is the eighteenth-century building outside the house on this side?”