The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

The Editor’s room was certainly no great shakes of a place, being littered with old galleys, old books of reference, files of script, and heaps of advertisements. It looked out upon a yard, beyond which were the printing works. Down below, in a dingy den, two young men worked at their calling with scissors and paste. Frampton got the young man into his car, with the feeling that this lad would not long be at Stubbington. He mentioned his feeling; Harold blushed, and said that he had put in, as it happened, for a real paper elsewhere, but would not know just yet.

At lunch, they talked of art, of which Richard knew much, not wholly as a scholar. He had been for a time under Berquin in Paris, trying to etch.

“What on earth made you chuck Paris and etching with a chap like Berquin, to come to edit a Gazette in Stubbington?” Frampton asked.

“Well,” Richard said, “if you saw my etchings, perhaps you might not ask that. I’m no good as an etcher, and never shall be. Berquin told me that I etched just like an Anglais, ‘for the advertisement, yes, perhaps, in the provinces, but for the Art, no.’ He told me the truth, and as I’d come to suspect it, it didn’t hurt too much. I know that I’ve a flair for running a paper. I did it at school rather well. I heard that the Gazette here was dicky. My mother used to know the owner years and years ago. I went to the old chap and asked if I might not have a try at pulling it round. Nihil praestat buccae. Nothing like cheek. So I got the job; and I’ve got it round. I hope to get a quite big provincial paper presently, and then start on my own, and enter politics. It isn’t what I’d hoped for myself, but it’s what I know I can do. Old Berquin told me what I’d begun to suspect: ‘’Arold, you are not artist, you are gentlemans.’ Well, he is right, but I do love art, and I must say it is a pleasure to come to a house like this, only a few miles from Stubbington, and see all these things and find you, who know it all.”

“There doesn’t seem to be much art in Stubbington. People don’t seem much to care for it,” Frampton said.

“How can they care for it?” Harold said. “If it ever touches their lives at all, it is as something rammed into them from above, by someone plainly not enlightened.”

“I’m delighted to hear you say that,” Frampton said.

“The best thing that one can say about them is, that they know well enough that art of that sort isn’t any good to them. It isn’t any good to anybody. Art is a thing that must have roots in life. Any sort of weed-art is better than, the sort of cut-flowers-art, which these chaps sometimes try to foist on them. The arts of Stubbington are considerable, however. The dairy-farms are good; there are three flower-farms which are remarkable; not on this side, of course; you’ll be on the Waste here. There are some market-gardens out towards Tatchester, and especially towards Stanchester, which are worth a visit. But, of course, all these things do not count. The real interest, excitement and energy, all the really creative elements of the soul, are devoted to sport, shooting to some extent, and just round Stubbington there is fishing, but mainly fox-hunting. That is the real or only delight and joy to the well-to-do in this county and the four all round it. As far as these people have an art, that is their art, and there can be no doubt that they practise it whole-heartedly. You know, there’s a lot to be said for it.”

“I know all that is said for it,” Frampton said. “I wonder if by any chance you know of any young man about here known as Pob Ted?”

“Young Prentice Methodde, the Member’s son, is known as Pob Ted. He’s a waster, who roams from field to field here. His father got me to give him a job in the office, saying that it would be such a good introduction to politics for him. He’s no good. He couldn’t do any one thing that we put him to here, and didn’t try to. So we sacked him at the end of a week. You keep clear of him. Willie M-M, the mother, will be on to you, probably, to give him a job in your factory. Well, don’t.”

“Pob Ted,” Frampton said. “What does Pob mean?”

“It sort of describes the chap,” Harold said. “He is what you would call a Pob. I mean, it leaps to the eye, that. He is a pobby sort of a chap. If he were dobby, you could trust him; if he were knobby, you could have him operated on; if he were sobby, you could have him psycho-analysed; but as he’s only pobby, he’s a very bad jobby.”

They had a pleasant afternoon together, looking at works of art, and discussing favourite painters. Frampton’s Tenor Cobbs were looking their best. It was the happiest time Frampton had yet had at Mullples. When Harold had gone, he felt again his anger against the Hunt. There was no letter of apology from the Secretary, nor had there been a call of apology from the Master. This he thought the limit of rudeness. There would have been time for his letter to reach Bynd, who ought by this to have telegraphed an apology.