Cicely wailed out:
“How and why have things come to this pass? It isn’t as if mother didn’t care. She does. So do I—tremendously. And with good-will on our part, with—with the sincere wish to do our duty—why have we failed?”
“If I could answer all questions as easily as that!”
“Please answer me.”
“I hate preaching. I hate indicting individuals. What is wrong here, and in thousands of other parishes, is the system. Peter is robbed to pay Paul. Compromise is the mot d’ordre. How can your mother or you know whether milk is pure or not? Of course, there is a man who is supposed to attend to these matters, a state-paid official. In my experience, most of these fellows—not too well paid, by the way—shirk their duties. Why? Because the foundations of the land system are rotten. Now and again a big fuss is made, and then things go on as before, simply because there is, as yet, no real awakening, no vital co-operation amongst land-owners. Many are good, some are outrageously bad—and they are ear-marked. The immense majority are indifferent, because they are ignorant. They simply don’t know what ought to be done. It’s futile to blame individuals. In a sense Gridley is responsible for the insanitary conditions in your pretty village. But I only blame him up to a point. With the best will in the world he would blunder horribly if he attempted drastic reform. Your mother would say that she can’t afford to employ an expert, but, between ourselves, she can’t afford not to do so. And really it comes to this: if land-owners can’t afford experts they must become experts themselves and teach their sons to become experts.”
“And their daughters?”
“And their daughters. This war, of course, has made things, the bad things, blatant. All the farmers are short-handed. I see an immense change in cow-sheds since I left last autumn. What drainage was done is now left undone. All I have said, Miss Chandos—and I have said it under pressure from you, and with the greatest reluctance—applies to everything here. Snitterfield, for instance, would not have neglected a patient so—so damnably, if he were not overworked. In his way, too, he is just as ignorant as Gridley. If ever he knew anything he has forgotten it. And there you are!”
She thanked him for his candour. He stared rather ruefully at his crumpled hat, smoothed it, and straightened it, put it on his head, and laughed.
“I feel these things too much,” he admitted.
“I can guess how you feel.”