Frampton entered the hall, which was hung with fox-masks, guards’ coach-horns, “yards of tin,” hunting-horns, racks for whips and crops, the head of a rhinoceros, and the swords and guns of seven generations of soldier-sportsmen. He was led past these along a passage decorated with paintings by Alken and by prints from the same artist; among these were some recent paintings of fox-terriers and hunters, including several of a white horse, plainly a favourite. The yap of dogs grew louder as he advanced. When he entered the room where his host and hostess waited, two little dogs rushed yapping at him. His hostess sat on a sofa with a lap-dog in her lap.
“I can’t get up,” she said. “I’ve got Diddums here.”
Frampton shook hands with the pair and summed them up. The man was a big fellow, in very good, hard condition, with a look of great charm and sweetness of nature. The woman was a big woman, with “a face like an angry ham,” as he defined it to himself. She wore expensive, ugly clothes, as prescribed by her dressmaker; there was no trace of personal choice in anything about her; it was all arranged, hair, eyebrows, nails. She remained “the angry ham” to him through life.
There were no books in the room, nor anything that could be read. Yet he felt sure that somewhere in the house there would be a study, where Sir Peter would have a great many pamphlets about new dressings for soils, Williams on the care of cider trees, Hawkins on the management of clay; books of farriery and kennel management; hound books and game books; the works of Surtees and Whyte-Melville; books of local history and archaeology; perhaps even Drayton’s
They went in to lunch in a big, lofty room hung three deep with family portraits of the Bynds. Frampton cast a shrewd glance at them, and judged them as a very poor lot; no good painting among them. The lunch began; it was a very good lunch, with excellent wine. The conversation was not easy, because the angry ham was not a charming hostess to guests of whom she disapproved. When the port was passed, Sir Peter said:
“I ought not to ask you this, Mr. Mansell, for you have already refused us; but it is a question about which we feel deeply. Is there any hope of your relenting about Spirr Covert?”
“No, really none; I’m going to be adamant,” Frampton said.
“You’re a great birdist, somebody was saying, and keen about bringing back bitterns and so forth,” he went on. “I expect you will know my cousin, Jim Bynd, who has the hoopoes nesting in his garden each year.”
“No, I do not know him,” Frampton said.
Sir Peter had made his opening and was about to develop it, when the lady intervened with a little grit for the bearings.
“What I cannot understand, Mr. Mansell,” she said, “is how a visit of the hounds in November could disturb your birds; they won’t be game-birds and they can’t be nesting then.”
“Ah,” he answered, “I want the wood to be for wild animals as well as for birds. That is why I want the hounds away. I want the place to be a shelter.”
“What do you reckon as wild animals?” she asked.
“There aren’t too many, are there?” he answered. “Foxes, otters, squirrels, weasels, possibly pine martens, dormice; it isn’t a long list.”
“But a lot of those are vermin,” she said. “They oughtn’t to be sheltered; they ought to be shot.”
“By gamekeepers, perhaps; but I’m not a gamekeeper. I don’t call them vermin. I call them very beautiful, clever things, of enormous interest.”
“I say, I shan’t love you, Mr. Mansell, if you go bringing otters here. I’ve got a trout hatch, you know,” Sir Peter said.
“Otters are great rovers,” Frampton said. “They would be hard to keep in one place. The beast I would really love to introduce would be the beaver.”
This was the beginning of the final damnation of Frampton Mansell in all that countryside. He spoke out of a genuine wish to fulfil the thought of Margaret, now in her grave; but it fell like a spark into the fuming gas of his hostess.
“I would love to have beavers in the valley in Spirr,” he said.
“But really, Mr. Mansell,” the lady said, “the Government has just had to go to quite enormous expense in putting down beavers. They have got into the river-banks and are destroying them everywhere to an extent the papers say must be seen to be believed. Surely you aren’t going to bring in more?”
“Beavers?” he asked. “Where are there beavers in England?”
“But all down the Severn, destroying all the banks.”
“Surely you mean musk-rats?”
“Aren’t they the same as beavers, destructive to the banks?”
“No, no. Beavers are quiet beasts, who build dams. I can send you a book about them, which will quite change your views about them.”
“No, no, please; I don’t want to know more about them than I do at present.”
“I fear you don’t know anything about them at present.”
“I know more than enough. I do not believe in introducing wild animals to a country like this.”