Lionel retorted warmly: “Father, he is incapable of that.”
Lady Pomfret winced. But she hastened to add:
“Your dear father doesn’t accuse Mr. Hamlin of making mischief deliberately.”
At that, the Squire “took the floor.” He spoke vehemently, with a feeling and emotion that surprised and confounded his son. Hamlin, first and last, was a Rad, with a Rad’s pestilent notions about property. He stuck his nose into every pie in the parish. He positively exuded Socialism. The fellow was of the people and with the people. All his ideas were impossible and Utopian. Did he do mischief deliberately? Perhaps not. But, unconsciously, he set class against class. He was importunate in his demands—demands, b’ Jove! which no landowner could grant without hostilising his farmers. Take wages. Concede, if you like, that wages were low in Wiltshire, about as low as the intelligence of the peasants. Concede, also, that in special cases a landowner might pay higher wages to his own outdoor servants, under-gardeners and the like. Concede all that, and then try it! And every farmer on your property would besiege you with protests, because they—poor devils!—couldn’t pay higher wages. Outsiders never understood these things. It was like arguing about sport with fellows who weren’t sportsmen. Hamlin had played cricket for his ’Varsity, but he wasn’t a sportsman. There you had it in a nutshell.
Under the table, Lady Pomfret gently pressed her son’s foot. Wisely, he attempted no defence of the parson. The Squire recovered his good humour with a second rasher of home-cured bacon. As he rose from the table, he smiled genially at wife and son.
“I spoke my mind just now, the more strongly because I have to suppress such feelings. It comes to this, Lionel, when a fellow is making sacrifices, when he is paring down expenses right and left, when he is doing his damndest to ‘carry on,’ it is exasperating to be pestered for the extra inch when you have cheerfully given the ell.”
He blew his nose with violence and left the dining-room.
“Dear fellow!” murmured Lady Pomfret. “He has been horribly worried during the last four years.”
Lionel looked and felt dazed. He supposed that Lady Pomfret invariably sided with her husband. Not out of any insincerity or moral weakness, but because she was of his generation and shared his views which were in all honesty focussed upon his duties and responsibilities. As much could be said of Hamlin. Lionel’s mind remained quite clear on this point. What confused and distressed him was the sudden realisation of cheese-paring, of sacrifice, of anxieties which he had ignored till this moment.
“Then it is true,” he murmured.