In the background, flower borders, smooth grass, pastures, and shady woods rolled down the valley to a blue and indistinct sweep of plain. Kit felt the group and the landscape harmonized. The people were the sort of people one reckoned to meet at an old-fashioned country house. All but Jasper were marked by a cultivated serenity, and the serenity had charm. Yet Kit knew they were not his sort, and he doubted if they were Jasper’s. On a summer holiday he liked to be at Netherhall, but his business was where men sweated by the furnaces and engines throbbed. Then perhaps it was significant that Jasper’s chair was outside the circle.
“You were not back for lunch, Kit,” said Mrs. Carson. “Were you fishing?”
“The water was low and I went across the moor to Swinside Pike. At the cairn I loafed and smoked. The heather was soft, the moor was red and the sky was very blue. In the distance the sea shone and I thought about the shipyard. On the whole, I was glad it was a long way off.”
“But you are a shipbuilder and must soon go back.”
Kit smiled. “You don’t indulge me much! At the cairn I tried to see myself ruling an estate like Netherhall, and the picture was attractive. After the shipyard, to get up when I wanted and go shooting would be something fresh.”
“A landlord’s main occupation is to meet his bills,” Alan Carson remarked. “The politicians sacrifice us to the manufacturers. They want cheap food and low wages. Our part’s to pay the taxes.”
“Food is not cheap,” said Jasper. “You’re monopolists, and although you ought to pay, you don’t pay all you ought. When iron goes up, smelting companies build new furnaces and increased production cuts the price. When corn goes up you can’t enlarge your farms; at all events, you don’t. You’d like to stop competition and take your profit.” He turned and gave Kit a smile. “You’re not the landlord type and your chance of getting an estate is not good. It looks as if you must stick to your proper business.”
“I must try, sir, but that’s another thing. Draftsmen are rather numerous and shipbuilding is slack. Suppose the company lets me down? Do you think you could get me a Canadian post?”
“It’s possible. Do you expect the company to let you down?”
“One doesn’t know when one’s luck may turn. Then sometimes I’m ambitious, and ambitious Carsons go to Canada.”