“It’s Ascher,” said Gorman, “who makes that necessary. If it were not for Ascher’s rake-off, the tax he levies on every industry, the machine could be bought right out for the original £25 and there would be no instalments to be paid.”
Possibly. But the tires of the machine were made of rubber. I remembered my visit to Para, the broad, steaming Amazon, the great ships crawling slowly past walls of forest trees, the pallid white men, the melancholy Indians. It may be possible to devise some other means of getting the precious gum from the Brazilian forest; but at present the whole business is dependent on Ascher.
We left that motor cycle behind us at last and sped faster along a stretch of road where the traffic was less dense.
“You notice,” said Gorman, “the way London is swallowing up the country. That was once a rural inn.”
I had observed what Gorman pointed out to me. Here and there along the road, a mile or so apart from each other, we came on old buildings, a group of cottages, a farm house, an inn. These were solidly built after the good old fashion. It had seemed wasteful to pull them down. The waves of the advancing tide of London reached them, passed them, swept beyond them, left them standing.
“Quite a few years ago,” said Gorman, “those houses stood in the middle of fields, and the people who lived in them ate the food that grew at their doors.”
“No tinned peaches,” I said, “no bicycles.”
“And no Ascher,” said Gorman.
“Well,” I said, “we can’t go back.”
“In Ireland,” he said, “we needn’t go on. If we can only get clear of this cursed capitalistic civilisation of England—that’s what I mean by being a Home Ruler.”