The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

“You’re unjust to them, Fram,” the old man said. “The vote of the world is for them. I regret it, perhaps, but I don’t cavil at it. In this case, the thing that weighs is beauty. The beauty of the hunt is so great that people forget the cruelty.”

“Don’t tell me that the fox-hunters care for the beauty,” his son said. “They like the swank and the display. If they cared for beauty, there’d be more of it in the towns and houses they live in. They don’t; they don’t give a tuppeney curse for anything about it, but going fast in an expensive suit.”

“My own youth would have been the poorer without that beauty,” the old man said. “However, you will presently be settled where you can judge of it better than I. I had nothing to put in its place; you have.”

Frampton had to spend the next week at the Works picking up the strings and resuming control. At the end of the week, he took train to Tatchester, meaning to spend the week-end at Mullples. It was to be his first home-coming.

He had so loathed the thought of going home without Margaret that he had put it off as long as he could; it was now a time of beginning frost, short days and fluttering leaves. The line kept beating in his brain, about the little house “we built to be so gay with.” He had never gone to Mullples from Tatchester with Margaret; he chose that route so that he might not be reminded of her; but he was reminded of her cruelly continually. He had seen most of the landmarks on the line with her, at one time or another. There were women in the compartment with him of the kinds he most loathed; creatures with plucked eyebrows, machined hair, rouged lips, scarlet nails; all smoking. The sight of them filled him with rage; they were left and she had been taken; he could see no sense nor justice in it.

“It’s part of the infernal game called Life,” he thought.

He bought an evening paper and read it as the train sped through the fields. At the end of the paper, his eye caught a familiar name in the column headed “Hunting Gossip.” He read the paragraph through.

“The hell he hopes it,” Frampton muttered to himself. “Annual-Tilter again, that dud in the Anti-Progress Office, who turned down my gun in the War, and blocked even the trial of it for a year. Hopes to show as good sport as his predecessor, does he? Let him not come near Mullples, he and his damnation pack.”

His old rage with the dud rose up in him. He had longed to fire a few rounds of his gun through Annual-Tilter’s foolish head. Now Tilter might be bringing his hounds to draw Spirr. Would he, by George? Just let him try. The thought of having a little of his own back was almost more than he could bear.

The train drew up at the dismal station of Tatchester. He descended; his driver, who had been waiting for him, ran up and took his gear. Looking back at the train, Frampton saw the hated Colonel himself getting down from one of the smoking compartments in the same carriage. It was dark by this time, and Tatchester station was ill-lit, as ever, but the Colonel was unmistakable.

“The same simple English character,” Frampton muttered. “But if I’d a mouth like that, I’d either grow a moustache or have it sewn up.”

The Colonel’s mouth was not his strong point, but he was not a bad-looking man; he bore himself well. As he looked about him under one of the light-standards, a lady advanced to meet him; she was the lady who had spoken to Frampton in Spirr Wood a few weeks before. She was dressed at much greater cost and less success than on the last occasion, having been to a sherry-party; Frampton caught a reek of sherry and scent from her as she passed. She hailed the Colonel in her rather high, cracked voice.

“Evenin’, Posh.”

“Evenin’. Marvous train,” the Colonel said.

“Absooty marvous,” the lady agreed.

The Colonel was fumbling for his ticket.

“So you are the Posh who was to regret my having Spirr,” Frampton muttered. “Well, my son, if I can make you regret it, I will.”