“Now I’ve talked a great deal about Spirr, and I’m afraid bored you dreadfully, but what I want to lead up to is whether, now that you know the feelings, or even the passions, involved, you will not think about putting your bird sanctuary somewhere else, and letting the Hunt buy Spirr from you?”
“I’m sorry,” Frampton said. “The place has associations for me, which go deep.”
He stopped a moment, thinking how deep they went, and wondering whether Margaret would have advised him to accept this offer, not to be churlish and stand out against what people so much wanted. He liked this hunting man; he was a very fine, simple fellow; but then, he did not like the fellow’s wife, with the face like the angry ham and the folly about the musk-rats and the beavers. She had not made him welcome there. She had shown him plainly that he was there on sufferance, against her will. He thought at once that his dead love would have told him to agree with the adversary and let the covert go. Then he thought, no, she wouldn’t; she loathed fox-hunting, and despised its followers: “grown-up people,” she said said, “running a poor fox to death.” She had planned to make the wood a sanctuary, and it now was one. She had much enjoyed the thought of it, and loved the sight of it. Perhaps some of her last thoughts on earth had been of it and about it. Then he thought of Posh Tilter and hardened his heart. Never should they draw Spirr.
The lady said, with bitter and evil intention: “I had not understood that you had associations nearer than Condicote.”
“Those were my father’s,” he answered. “My father came from there. I do not know the place much. But for Spirr Wood, I have very deep feeling.”
He knew that the lady had wished him to know, that she and everybody there knew, that his grandfather had been a baker in Condicote. He decided that the lady had ruined the Hunt’s chance of ever having a fox from the covert in time to come. He resolved to hit back in a way that would make them squirm; he did so.
“Another thing I’ve thought of doing presently,” he said, though the matter had only at that moment floated into his mind, “is to develop all this countryside as building sites. Tatchester is an appalling city from every point of view. The Cathedral has its points, of course, but apart from the Close, there isn’t a decent house in the place. Now out by Spirr, and along by
He knew that he had dealt them a deadly thrust apiece; with his best poker face he watched their misery and rage. The lady’s face gave him acute pleasure. She had been hardly able to contain her indignation with him hitherto; now she boiled over.
“Surely, Mr. Mansell,” she began, “surely, Mr. Mansell, you are not seriously thinking of desecrating this wonderful part of England?”
“Desecrating?” he said. “Really, no; I would never desecrate. I like buildings, and I like this country. I only want to give a lot of poor chaps a chance of enjoying it.”
“Enjoying it? Mr. Mansell, but they wouldn’t enjoy it as we should.”
“Very likely not; I hope not; for they are very different sort of people, but they would enjoy it, I don’t doubt.”
“Yes, at the expense of everybody else.”
“No, at my expense; but the scheme would be self-supporting.”
“You know what I mean, Mr. Mansell; it would be at the expense of everybody who cares for this countryside. It has been kept hitherto by people who love it.”
“Wouldn’t you rather that it were lived in henceforth by people who love it.”