The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

He read this through.

“That’ll make ’em squirm,” he said.

He thought a little, and then added:

“That will make ’em squirm,” he said, with glee. It did.

There are many things better than making people squirm; nearly all these things can be practised easily, without any subsequent reapings of storms. But the angry ham had cut Frampton in the street, and here was his chance to make her a little thoughtful another time. The letter went to the Gazette. Young Harold was away when it came in, but his acting chief had it set up, and the proofs sent to Mullples by special messenger. The letter was in the paper that night, and in the hands of all the performers at the concert by noon the next day. It gave most of them acute pain and roused their deepest fury. It did not reach the angry ham till late that night, as she had gone to London for a day’s shopping, “and to have her face done.”

When it did reach her, she raged exceedingly, but not more bitterly than the other victims. In her rage, she was not less lovely than at other times, but less coherent. Frampton’s last page kept her awake for most of the night. In the morning, she was able to consult Sir Peter. He was at all times gentle towards the point of view opposed to his own. He read the letter, and said that he thought it an ill-advised, intemperate, and, therefore, unjust letter, but that it represented a point of view. As to the charges brought, it was wiser to look upon them as a reaction. The concert had made, as it were, a statement and had provoked a reply. It was the rebound of the ball, which had been flung down. He felt that his wife should not give the letter an undeserved importance by replying to it. Any intemperate letter destroyed itself; this one would be forgotten in a week, or less, if left to itself, without answer. As to the man, he was a clever fellow, unused to country ways; he was a terrible fellow, no doubt, and in some ways an antisocial fellow, but there he was, just at their doors, and the best thing to do about it was to ask him to lunch, and to see if they could not get him to organise something in the village, a gymnasium for the lads, or a choral society.

“We’ve got to live with him, whether we like it or not,” he said. “I’m sure that that’s the way to handle him. Get him busy.”

In this, as in so many things, Sir Peter was wise; but wisdom is lost upon the angry. Was she, Laetitia, to ask a Bolshevik to lunch? Was she, who had been told that she began with snobbery and ended with death, to be told to live with the teller? Was she to be told in her own county that her concert had revealed the art-starved soul in all its native hideousness? She was not going to turn the other cheek and sit down tamely under such insolence. She was outraged and horrified and wanted to hurt.

She thought of the possible assassins who might do the deed. Pob was useless; he was only a foolish boy who might get into serious trouble; Pink was in the House, and might find it difficult to act; Ponk in Tatchester might be induced to do something. Oh, if only Ponk had owned the paper; she would have had the Editor flung out on to the streets that evening.

Still, something she could do; she could write to that odious Mr. Harold; she could write to the paper itself; she could cause the withdrawal of some of its advertisements, and make it sorry it ever outraged a county magnate. She sat down at her desk and got busy.