At the end of lunch, a telephone message came through from Ponk to say that he would be glad to see her if she would come in that afternoon. So away she went, with her heart full of rage, to the Ponk house near Tatchester. Ponk and his wife, Paddie, received her and poured the balm, not of wisdom but of approval, upon her anger. Ponk did not care one way or the other about a concert in Stubbington; he knew from old experience that such a thing would be pretty bad; but it had chanced that a bit of news had come into his ken; he wanted to speak to Laetitia about it.
“I wanted to see you, Letty, about this Mansell fellow,” he said. “He’s giving some bronzes by a chap called Faringdon to be put up on Stubbington Bridge; isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” she said, “he is. He attended our War Memorial meeting, as art adviser, so we were told, and was practically turned out of the meeting for the most offensive rudeness to dear Duckie Twee. Now that he finds that he can have no say in the War Memorial, he gives these two things to be put up where no one can see them.”
“Funny thing, that,” Ponk said. “Did you know that those two statues were done for the big War Memorial at Snipton, and turned down by the Snipton people?”
“No? Were they?”
“Fact. Here’s a note in the current number of the
“Why were they turned out of Snipton? Are they indecent? What is this
“Sort of art magazine,” Ponk said. “The bronzes were turned down by Snipton because they gave folk the fan-tods. I don’t know whether they are indecent. Probably only gloomy. But one of the Snipton Councillors is a friend of mine; he sent me this paper only this morning, and added that they are pretty grim; I’ll show you his letter; I felt that I might ask you about it. Did Mansell tell anybody that the bronzes had been turned down by Snipton?”
“I never heard that he did. The Stubbington people wouldn’t have accepted the leavings of any other town.”
“So I suppose,” Ponk said. “He wasn’t bound to tell them. I know nothing about art myself, I suppose he shows public spirit and so forth in giving the things. What were his motives?”
“He is making an effort to show his superiority,” Lady Bynd said. “His father was a pie-man’s boy in Stanchester, and his grandfather a baker in Condicote. Now that he’s made a lot of money by making guns, he poses as a county magnate.”
“Well, do come out to see our winter aconites,” Ponk said; “we’ve got a real show of them this year.”
They saw the aconites; presently she went away. She had meditated evil for some hours, now, by special providence, a weapon had been given to her; she had poison for her blade. Ponk let her take the copy of the
“I thought that you ought to see the kind of thing you are going to put on our beautiful old historic bridge,” she said. “Did Mr. Mansell tell you that his bronzes had been forbidden in Snipton?”
“Never a word to us,” Mr. Fist truly said.
He looked once more through the Councillor’s letter. This was what a servant of the public got when he went wading out of his depth in the waters of art. Now there would be a fine old row. Oh, that Old Joe had let the gas lamps stand where the bronzes were to be.
“Something must be done about it,” Laetitia said. “You can’t let a beautiful old bridge like ours be made a dumping ground for rejected statues. Isn’t the bridge an Historical Monument?”
It was, but not in the sense she meant; she could not write to a Society, to bid it wield a bludgeon on Frampton’s head.
“Well,” Old Fist said, “well, my lady, it’s awkward, for we’ve accepted the bronzes, or statues, or bronze statues, from Mr. Mansold; we’ve said we’d be glad to have ’em, and thanked him kindly; we wrote him a pretty letter. And he’s done up the ground for them now; it’s all ready to put them in, or as good as. It’d look so awkward if we were to go back now.”
“I don’t see that. He must have known all along that the things had been rejected by Snipton. He kept it from you. It’s what the Law calls the concealment of a vital fact. He’s made you accept the bronzes on false pretences.”