“A good ecclesiastical and memorial firm,” Frampton said. “Who will do a marble book for you. And that is the utmost you can do, in the way of grateful feeling, for the chaps who went west in the War. Supposing an angel were to come here from Paradise; you needn’t look shocked, he won’t come; only suppose that he did come and that you had to show him round. Well, you show him your school, and let him have a look at the drains and the city dump, and then you show him your marble book. He will say: ‘What in wonder is this?’ You will say: It’s a Memorial to our friends who were killed in the War. Of course, we didn’t take any trouble about it. We were just a Committee who handed it over to a good ecclesiastical and memorial firm who does that kind of thing. It’s real marble; cost a pot of money; see the gleam there; only marble gleams that way; the sort the toffs have on their tombs, that is.’ Can’t you see the kind of thing you’ll get? And the kind of fathead who’ll unveil it, and the kind of tosh he’ll say?”
He was enjoying his innings, but wanted to be gone from among them. Mr. Quart gave him a chance to go with a fine curtain. Mr. Quart was a big man with a bullying manner.
“I must say,” he said, “Stubbington has shown her sense in turning her back on what’s artistic for a good concrete proposal.”
“You’ll get a concrete Memorial, if you don’t watch your contractors,” Frampton said.
He went out on this, noting as he went a professional smile on the faces of the building party. He came away, raging at being asked to advise a Committee of this sort, at having gone to it, and at being so treated by it. He felt, that he had been an ass to go to it, and that now the reading-desk would go up in the triangle, and everybody would think that he had advised it.
“Golly, it’ll be a terror, that desk,” he thought, “and the swine’ll print, that the Committee had the benefit of Mr. Mansell’s advice. I’ve made a few more enemies,” he said, “but I enjoy making enemies here; I’ll make a few more in a day or two.”
In this, he spoke truth; he did. That winter was a sad season for him, because it made him feel the emptiness of his life without Margaret. He walked out, to look down over Spirr from the top of the Waste above it. He thought of her with great sadness.
“Still,” he thought, “something of your wish lives on still; that is your wood, and the birds there live by your mercy for them. I’ve stopped the beastly hunter on all this side of the country; and I’ll put some of your ideas into practice when I get the new gun being made here.”
He walked home feeling frustrated. He had Tim up to the house to dinner that night and plied him with the drinks he loved, so that Tim, going back to his lodge in Spirr, mistook his way, and was found in the outskirts of Stubbington shortly after midnight, singing that:
As he was very rude to the policeman who tried to direct him, he passed the rest of the night in a Stubbington police cell. Frampton had him out of it, soon after breakfast. He was not well pleased with Tim, but knew that it was his own fault.
“You’ve got no head,” he said. “You ought not to drink these things when your head is like that. You’ve got about as much head for alcohol as my maiden aunt has for lust.”
His morning had been spoiled by the expedition to Stubbington; he had found the town already gathering in the market-place for the meet of the fox-hounds, which always took place there on Boxing Day. About two hundred people had gathered there to see the meet when he arrived. Before he left, another hundred had come in; some forty riders had mustered. He was, by this time, well known to the fox-hunting set; they recognised him, as he drove slowly through the press with Tim. They began by pointing him out as the chap who had closed Spirr and Tittups. One or two of the young men began to boo him. Then one, who was more outspoken than his fellows, rode up to the car and called:
“Yah, ye damn spoil-sport. You ought to be ducked in the damn mill-pond.”
“You go threaten the fox,” Frampton said, stopping his car and switching off the engine. “That’s about all you’re fit for. But don’t you threaten me, or you’ll find yourself in queer street.”
“Yah,” the man said.
Half a dozen others, thinking that there might be fun, rode up and also called: “Yah”: “Who closed Spirr”: “Dirty gun-maker”: “Son of a Stanchester pie-man”: “Hot pies”: “Nice puppy pies; nice as Mother makes ’em.”
It was quite good-humoured, and a great delight to the crowd. A policeman shoved through the throng and reproved Frampton for stopping in the crowded street.
“What are you blocking the road for?” he said. “Can’t you see you’ve all these cars behind you, wanting to get by? Move on. You ought to know better than to stop like that.”
Frampton said nothing, but set the car going. The riders laughed and booed; the crowd gave derisive cheers.