Millicent made a half-disdainful gesture.
“He gets a great deal more—sport, a status, friends and standing, and a means of suitably entertaining them. That, I suppose, is one reason why the return in money from purely agricultural land is so small.”
“Then is it wrong for a business man to buy these things, if he can pay for them?”
“Oh, no! But he must take up the duties attached to his purchase. When you buy land, human lives go with it. They’re still largely in the landlord’s hands. Of course, we have legislation which has curtailed the land-owner’s former powers, but it’s a soulless, mechanical thing that can never really take the place of direct personal interest.”
She stopped and glanced back down the winding dale. Here and there smooth pastures climbed the slopes that shut it in, but over part of them ranged mighty oaks, still almost green. Beyond these, beeches tinted with brown and crimson glowed against the dusky foliage of spruces and silver-firs.
“One needs wisdom, love of the soil and all that lives on it, and perhaps patience most of all,” she resumed. “These woods are an example. They are not natural like your forests—every tree has been carefully planted and as it grew the young sheltering wood about it carefully thinned out. Then as the trunks gained in size it was necessary to choose with care and cut. With the oaks it’s a work of generations, planting for one’s great-grandchildren, and the point that is suggested most clearly is the continuity of interest that should exist between the men who use the spade and ax and the men who own and plan. It is not a little thing that the third and fourth generations should complete the task, when a mutual toleration and dependence is handed down.”
Lisle was conscious of a curious stirring of his feelings as he listened to her. She was tall and finely proportioned, endowed with a calm and gracious dignity which was nevertheless, he thought, in keeping with a sanguine and virile nature. This girl was one of the fairest and most precious products of the soil she loved.
“It’s a pity in many ways that the Gladwyne property didn’t come to you,” he observed.
Her expression changed and he spread out one hand deprecatingly.
“That’s another blunder of mine. I haven’t acquired your people’s unfailing caution yet, but I only meant—”