II.
"Oh—have I come too soon?"
She had found Mr. Sutcliffe at his writing-table in the library, a pile of papers before him. He turned in his chair and looked at her above the fine, lean hand that passed over his face as if it brushed cobwebs.
"They didn't tell me you were busy."
"I'm not. I ought to be, but I'm not."
"You are. I'll go and talk to Mrs. Sutcliffe till you've finished."
"No. You'll stay here and talk to me. Mrs. Sutcliffe really is busy."
"Sewing-party?"
"Sewing-party."
She could see them sitting round the dining-room: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, Mrs. Belk with her busy eyes, and Miss Kendal and Miss Louisa, Mrs. Oldshaw and Dorsy; and Mrs. Horn, the grocer's wife, very stiff in a corner by herself, sewing unbleached calico and hot red flannel, hot sunlight soaking into them. The library was dim, and leathery and tobaccoey and cool.
The last time she came on a Wednesday Mrs. Sutcliffe had popped out of the dining-room and made them go round to the tennis court by the back, so that they might not be seen from the windows. She wondered why Mrs. Sutcliffe was so afraid of them being seen, and why she had not looked quite pleased.
And to-day—there was something about Mr. Sutcliffe.
"You don't want to play?"
"After tea. When it's cooler. We'll have it in here. By ourselves." He got up and rang the bell.
The tea-table between them, and she, pouring out the tea. She was grown up. Her hair was grown up. It lay like a wreath, plaited on the top of her head.
He was smoothing out the wrinkles of one hand with the other, and smiling. "Everybody busy except you and me, Mary…. How are you getting on with Kant?"
"I've done with him. It's taken me four years. You see, either the
German's hard or I'm awfully stupid."
"German hard, I should imagine. Do you like Kant?"
"I like him awfully when he says exciting things about Space and Time. I don't like him when he goes maundering on about his old Categorical Imperative. You can because you ought—putting you off, like a clergyman."
"Kant said that, did he? That shows what an old humbug he was…. And it isn't true, Mary, it isn't true."
"If it was it wouldn't prove anything. That's what bothers me."
"What bothers me is that it isn't true. If I did what I ought I'd be the busiest man in England. I wouldn't be sitting here. If I even did what I want—Do you know what I should like to do? To farm my own land instead of letting it out to these fellows here. I don't suppose you think me clever, but I've got ideas."
"What sort of ideas?"
"Practical ideas. Ideas that can be carried out. That ought to be carried out because they can. Ideas about cattle-breeding, cattle-feeding, chemical manuring, housing, labour, wages, everything that has to do with farming."
Two years ago you talked and he listened. Now that you were grown up he talked to you and you listened. He had said it would make a difference. That was the difference it made.
"Here I am, a landowner who can't do anything with his land. And I can't do anything for my labourers, Mary. If I keep a dry roof over their heads and a dry floor under their feet I'm supposed to have done my duty…. People will tell you that Mr. Sootcliffe's the great man of the place, but half of them look down on him because he doesn't farm his own land, and the other half kow-tow to him because he doesn't, because he's the landlord. And they all think I'm a dangerous man. They don't like ideas. They're afraid of 'em…. I'd like to sell every acre I've got here and buy land—miles and miles of it—that hasn't been farmed before. I'd show them what farming is if you bring brains to it."
"I see. You could do that."
"Could I? The land's entailed. I can't sell it away from my son. And he'll never do anything with it."
"Aren't there other things you could have done?"
"I suppose I could have got the farmers out. Turned them off the land they've sweated their lives into. Or I could have sold my town house instead of letting it and bought land."
"Of course you could. Oh—why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I? Ah—now you've got me. Because I'm a lazy old humbug,
Mary. All my farming's in my head when it isn't on my conscience."
"You don't really like farming: you only think you ought to. What do you really like?"
"Going away. Getting out of this confounded country into the South of
France. I'm not really happy, Mary, till I'm pottering about my garden at
Agaye."
She looked where he was looking. Two drawings above the chimney-piece. A chain of red hills swung out into a blue sea. The Estérel. A pink and white house on the terrace of a hill. House and hill blazing out sunshine.
Agaye. Agaye. Pottering about his garden at Agaye. He was happy there.
"Well, you can get away. To Agaye."
"Not as much as I should like. My wife can't stand more than six weeks of it."
"So that you aren't really happy at Agaye…. I thought I was the only person who felt like that. Miserable because I've been doing my own things instead of sewing, or reading to Mamma."
"That's the way conscience makes cowards of us all."
"If it was even my conscience. But it's Mamma's. And her conscience was
Grandmamma's. And Grandmamma's—"
"And mine?"
"Isn't yours a sort of landlord's conscience? Your father's?"
"No. No. It's mine all right. My youth had a conscience."
"Are you sure it wasn't put off with somebody else's?"
"Perhaps. At Oxford we were all social reformers. The collective conscience of the group, perhaps. I wasn't strong enough to rise to it. Wasn't strong enough to resist it…."
Don't you do that, my child. Find out what you want, and when you see your chance coming, take it. Don't funk it."
"I don't see any chance of getting away."
"Where do you want to get away to?"
"There. Agaye."
He leaned forward. His eyes glittered. "You'd like that?"
"I'd like it more than anything on earth."
"Then," he said, "some day you'll go there."
"No. Don't let's talk about it. I shall never go."
"I don't see why not. I don't really see why not."
She shook her head. "No. That sort of thing doesn't happen."