“Do you see those, my Peggy?” Frampton said. “Those were the seats of the wicked lords. They lolled here, looking at the chaste Monimia at close quarters. When they sat in one of these, they could see her in the round, not as a picture in a frame. When she had a moving moment, or an aside to say, she played it or said it to the lord here. When the curtain came down, she was drawn into one or other of these boxes, and offered a knee, a rummer of port, and a dishonourable proposal. There has been some eye work and
“What rubbish,” Margaret said. “Even the worst of your lords had their better feelings, and the women touched those better feelings. If the lords came here to make dishonourable proposals, they repented when they saw Monimia play. They offered her their hearts, what remained of them, and their coronets, if they were not in pawn.”
“Might we see the kennel part?” Frampton asked.
It was cold in that gloomy place. The woman led them out into the sunlight, and along the building to its farther end. At this point, the field had been paved, but the grass had grown over the paving so as to hide every trace of it. The woman unlocked a door, and threw it open. They could look into the big, bare auditorium. The gallery of seats, which had been a part of the original design, had been removed; but the marks of it still showed. The sleeping-benches for the hounds still remained. Poultry had perched above them. They were filthy, littered with old feathers and bits of broken egg-shell.
“We used to keep poultry here,” the woman said. “Will you excuse me, if I go in, to see if my father wants anything? You might care to look at the grounds at the back and over there. If you wish to see my father afterwards, perhaps you’ll come to the house when you’re ready.”
“Well, Peggy,” Frampton said, when the woman had gone, “we mustn’t be too long. I’ll go up to explore on this side, and get all the snapshots I can while the sun lasts. Will you have a look round on your side?”
“All right,” she said.
“Are you pleased?” he asked.
“It’s rather a sad place, don’t you think?” she said.
“It’s been allowed to get its socks rather over its boots,” he said.
When he had gone, she walked back past the place where the brook was falling into the cellars. Turning up-stream, she found a fallen willow, by which she could cross the flood to a jungle and ruin beyond. A trampled space there had been the summer camping-place of a tramp and his lady, who had left some boots, rags, ashes and a bit of old sock. The walls were all ruined here, with ivy, old apple-trees and triumphing nettles five feet high, and hard as reed. Beyond the wall was what had once been a rose garden, now all wild and brambled. Some of the trees were ten feet high and bright with hips. A stone pedestal was in the midst of the space. She walked to it. It had once borne a sundial, which had been brutally wrenched away, apparently quite recently, for the marks of the jemmy were fresh. At the end of the rose-garden was another beautiful little summer-house, from which the roof had gone. The floor had been wrenched away for firing. From this summer-house, she had a good view of the back of the Manor.
A jungle lay beyond her, of sloes, hawthorn, nettles, brambles, thistles, hazels, goutweed, ciders and sycamores. All had been sheltered and well-watered there, and all had grown lushly. She found a sort of track, made by rabbiters perhaps. Going along this, she heard continually the strange and moving cry of moorhens. She stopped to listen to the cry, which had always delighted her. As she stood, she heard overhead the mournful sweet laughter of a curlew. She saw him, with his curved beak and crooked wing, going off into his lonesome.
“O blessed bird,” she thought, “would I could go where you go and know what you know.”
After floundering through some thickets, she came through the jungle to the lip of a long narrow pond, the edges of which had once been bricked. Thirty yards of clear water were there, the rest was choked with reed and flag. Two wild duck went up as she came in sight, and some moorhens jerked away into cover. Water was gushing from a broken, but partly jammed sluice into a lower pond, which was much more completely blocked with reed, flag and other tangle. She went past this into drier ways, where she saw rabbits and smelt the reek of fox close to. She came out at a place where once a mill had stood. The mill had gone, every trace of it, except the grass-grown dam. She went up the rise, expecting to come to the mill-leat or race, but found to her surprise that she was staring at a lake, a quarter of a mile long by one hundred yards across. Woods came down on both sides of it; herons and wild duck went up from before her, the herons with easy flaps, the ducks with a swift scutter.