He was there in good time, and hung about in a passage under the curious eye of a charwoman who was mopping down the stairs, after the passing of the boots of the Council. Presently the Clerk came out and asked him to come into the meeting-room. It was a big, well-lit room, with a bright fire burning. There was a long table covered with green baize; at this the Council sat; some whom he knew, and three strangers. On the walls were paintings of deceased royalties. George the Fourth was the most recent. The Charles the Second might be by Lely, Frampton thought. The town of Stubbington had sheltered Charles on his flight to the sea; this may well have been a royal gift.
The Chairman of the Council was one nicknamed “Old Bert Fist”; he was not known to Mansell, save by repute; tales of him had been told to him during the week. He was a slow, beery, popular and very kindly man, who ran the big general store called the “Stubbington Stump.”
Mr. Fist said: “Well, good morning to ye, Mr. Mansold; come in and sit down and make your miserable self happy.”
He motioned him to a chair, and then with a wave of the hand introduced him to the Council. As Frampton sat, old Bert fumbled for a paper, which his neighbour found for him.
“I believe, Mr. Mansold, you want to do something with statues, or as some call them, bronzes, at about the bridge-end?”
“Yes,” Frampton said that he did.
“Well, Mr. Mansold,” Old Fist said, “will you be so kind as to tell the Council just what it is you want to do with statues there, and what these statues are, and how many clothes they got?”
Frampton told the Council; but he did not tell them his inmost thoughts, nor did he mention Snipton. The Council seemed puzzled and suspicious and a little indignant; puzzled because they could not see what little game this fellow might be up to; suspicious because they did not like this sort of thing, statues and that; one never knew where it would stop; and indignant because Stubbington could put up her own statues, without any outside interference from one who had only just come and had already put everybody’s backs up. Old Bert Fist pondered on what Frampton had said.
“You’ll excuse my asking, Mr. Mansold,” he said, “but I don’t know much about statues, never having had one done to me; I leave that to this grateful Council when I go to a Higher Chamber; but I understand that if you go making statues you spend a deal of money; it’s not so much the worth of the marble in the thing itself, it’s the worth of the marble that has to be cut away first. What I’m getting at is, that we’re responsible to the rate-payers for every penny; and we’ve got no money for statues.”
“But I wish to make it clear,” Frampton said, “that the figures I have in mind will be bronze, not marble, and that I wish to give them, if you will accept them, without asking for a penny from your rate-payers.”
One of the Council members said that the bridge-end had been mentioned as the place for the statues, and he would, therefore, suggest a more central site, such as the Diamond Park, as they called it. Mr. Fist pondered.
“But you will understand, Mr. Mansold,” he said at last, “that we’re responsible to the rate-payers for all that’s done, as well as all that’s spent. And when it comes to statues, why, they’re very ticklish cattle, some of ’em. Not but what we’re grateful for your kind thought, I’m sure.”
“I understand,” Frampton said, “that you will want to see designs showing what the figures will look like, when in place, before you grant the site for them. I’ve got the designs for you. And as for the central site” (here he turned to the member who had just spoken), “I want to make it clear that I only offer the figures for the end of the bridge; I mean the ends, north and south, of the parapets of the eastern end of the bridge. That is the site where they would look best and be best seen by everybody coming to the city from that side.”
“You mean where we splayed the bridge out a bit, in the widening?” Mr. Fist said. “We was thinking of putting a couple of lamp-posts there, if you remember, last time poor old Joe was here.” He said this to a member, who remembered well. “Poor old Joe, he couldn’t abide the thought of lampposts and taking the gas across the bridge,” Mr. Fist said. “But that’s the place, Mr. Mansold, across at Hen’s Marsh. I don’t know what poor old Joe would ’a said to statues.”
Another member said that he would like to know what the figures would look like to people coming across the bridge from the town; would people going out of town have anything to look at?
Frampton said: “Their backs would be towards the town. People coming from the town would not see them, save as the backs of big people. But backs can look very attractive; many men will follow a back a long way, in the hope of presently seeing the face.”
There was a laugh at this. A man said:
“Aren’t they jolly well had, nine times out of ten.”