“That is the theatre,” she said.
“What is a theatre doing here?” he asked. Mr. Piggott had not mentioned a theatre, but had said: “Interesting period outhouses.”
“It was built in the eighteenth century,” she said. “Sir Jocelyn Petersbury built it. Afterwards it was sold to my great-grandfather, who used it as a kennels, I believe, for his foxhounds.”
“Might we see it? Is there anything to see?”
“Certainly.”
She took them out of the house, and along the path through the field.
“The audience part of it is untidy,” she said, “but you can see the stage.” She had a key in her pocket; she opened the door for them. “It’s very bleak in here,” she said. “I wouldn’t stay long, if I were you.”
They entered to a pleasant room, so well-proportioned that it was delightful to be in it.
“This is always called the green room,” she said. “I don’t know why. The actors and actresses used to meet here, I believe. Some of the old gilding is still there.” It was true; the fine old cornice still had traces of gilding visible through the dirt and cobwebs. “This is the way to the rest of it,” the woman said.
She led them into a dark, cold passage, moving quickly in front of them. She opened doors, so that they could see that they were in a passage which had the wings of the stage on the one hand and a row of small dressing-rooms on the other. “These are the dressing-rooms of the actors and actresses,” the woman said. “They had not much room; even the best; some are tiny.”
She went into one of the dressing-rooms, and opened a shutter. A ray of sunlight came into the passage. “Come in,” the woman said. “This is a chief dressing-room.”
They went into a cubby-hole, lit by a window from which the shutter had been turned. Some of the old wall-paper was on the wall. A neat old fireplace was there. Over it was an ancient mirror, its glass foxed with the fouling which besets old mirrors. Somebody had written on it with a diamond. Frampton pointed to the writing.
“What is the poem?” he asked.
The woman had not known that there was a poem. Frampton, with his driving glove, rubbed some of the filth from the glass, so that he could read one line; then, judging that what remained could not be indecent, the other. He read it aloud.
I’ll bet she wasn’t as chaste as all that,” he said.
“You don’t know,” Margaret said. “The writer had probably tried the matter and wrote from knowledge.” She leaned forward to examine the writing. “I expect he kneeled on a chair while he wrote,” she said. “The glass is let into the wall; he could not have had it down. What a pity the glass cannot show us his face, or Monimia’s.”
“I don’t want to see Monimia’s face, if she were as chaste as all that,” he said. “What staggers me about this building, is the elegance of its proportion. It looked small, when we were outside, but see how spacious it really is.”
The woman had moved along the passage and had opened more doors and shutters.
“You can see the stage, now,” she said.
It was true: they could. A step brought them to the verge of it. The supports for the scenes still stood, and there were slots in the floor, along which these supports, when set with scenery, had once been run. On some of the supports there were still the tin sconces for the candles which had once lit the scenes. Frampton strode on to the stage proper. It was, as he judged, very long and narrow, with a considerable rake. The row of footlights had been removed. Right across their line a partition of lath and plaster had been put.
“That is the division for the fowl-house and kennels,” the woman said.
The stage was heaped with garden things: packing straw, mouldy hay, pea- and bean-sticks, rhubarb-pots, flower-pots, some bricks, seed-boxes and flower-frames. There were also the remains of tools, spades with broken handles, rakes with missing teeth, saws rusted past sharpening, forks with the prongs gone, etc.
“When was the stage last used for a play?” Margaret asked.
“Oh, long, long ago,” the woman said, “in Sir Jocelyn’s time, 1777, the paper in my father’s desk says. The play was called
“And when was the partition put up?” Frampton asked.
“After my great-grandfather bought it,” she said. “He wanted a place for his hounds; so he shut off the stage, and put the hounds where the audience used to be.”
“Yes, of course, he would have wanted a place for his hounds,” Frampton said.
It was dark near the partition; the woman moved away, and let in light. Close to them, one on each side of the stage, were stage boxes.