‘He means Riverside! But they are not bad houses; the people are not unhappy there. Oh, I could show you some! But at Riverside they are only ugly. The people are not badly off; they get on well enough. One helps them a little sometimes, but they rarely come on the rates, or even apply to the Rector. Why, Mr. Swinford, you mustn’t only look at the outside of things.’
‘I know,’ said Leo, repeating himself (but this was part of his excited state), ‘that I am housed like a prince, and they—not so well as the horses in the stables.’
Little Miss Grey kept her eyes on him as he spoke, as if he were a madman, with a mixture of extreme curiosity and anxiety, to know if there was method in his madness. ‘Well!’ she cried, ‘that is not your fault. You are not—what do you call it, Emily? for I am not clever—anything feudal to them. You are not their chief, like a Scotch clan. What makes them poor (and they’re not so very poor) is their own fault. They’re as independent as you are. If they drink and waste their wages they’re badly off; if they don’t they’re comfortable enough; if they’re dirty, it’s because they don’t mind. Bless me, Mr. Swinford, it isn’t your fault. If you pulled down the houses, they would make an outcry that would be heard from here to London. Besides, I don’t think they belong to you!’ said Miss Grey triumphantly. ‘They were all built by White, the baker. I know they don’t belong to you!’
Leo Swinford sat and gazed at her with a rising perception that there was something ludicrous in the attitude he had assumed, which, at the same time, was so entirely sincere and true.
‘And as for the stables being better—some stables are ridiculous—sinful luxury, as if the poor dumb brutes were not just as happy in the old way. Why, my little house,’ said Miss Grey, looking round, ‘is not all marble and varnish, like your stables. And you think, perhaps, it is a poor little place for me to live in, while you live in your palace like a prince, as you say?’
He did not make any reply. This little woman took away his breath. But he did cast a look round him at the minuteness of the place; a kind of wistful look, as if he could not deny the feeling she imputed to him, and would have liked nothing so much as to build her a palace, too.
‘Well!’ said Miss Grey, ‘and I would not give it for Windsor Castle. I like it ten thousand times better than your palace; and the poor folk in Riverside are just like me.’
‘Dear lady,’ said Leo, in his perplexity, ‘it is not the same thing; but you take away my breath.’
Here Lady William came to his aid, yet did not fail to point a moral. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you must not follow a hasty impulse even to do good. There are two reasons against making a desert of Riverside; first, because the people there don’t find it dreadful, as you do; and next, my dear Leo, because you’re not their feudal lord, as Miss Grey says, and the houses don’t belong to you.’
He shrugged his shoulders, as a man discomfited has a right to do. But Miss Grey burst in before he had time to say a word: ‘If that is what you want, Mr. Swinford, I can show you a place!’