“Solder it with other men’s smelted gold? You had better break it up honestly as a thing which has had its day and is done with.”
“Poor old pot! Perhaps it would be better to bury it for good and all on Runnymede island. But I think you exaggerate a little—I must say you exaggerate. And you totally ignore a fact which has been put on record by every English sociologist and historian, that it has been its frank admission to its ranks of novi homines which has kept the English aristocracy vigorous and popular.”
She gave a scornful gesture of denial.
“It is the novi homines who have degraded the English aristocracy. Pardon me if I contradict you. Mr. Mallock has written very kind and possibly very just things of your nobility, but he has forgotten to satirize its most shameful infirmity, its moral scrofula—its incessant and unblushing prostration of itself before wealth quà wealth. It likes hothouse pines and can no longer afford to keep them for its own eating. It can only grow them for sale and eat them at the tables of those who buy them.”
“That is very severe!”
“Who would be less severe who had seen anything at all of Paris, of London, of Nice, of Biarritz, of any place where modern society disports itself?”
Framlingham laughed.
“My dear Miss Massarene, you delight me beyond expression, but I can imagine that you are, to a parent who adores princes and means to die a peer, rather—rather—forgive a vulgar word—rather a handful.”
“My father has purchased a place called Vale Royal,” continued Katherine. “You know it? Well, he wishes to be there plus royaliste que le roi. In the leases he gives to his farmers they are bound over to pay £40 for every pheasant killed or maimed on their ground. Is it not out-heroding Herod? He cares nothing for such trumpery sport himself; he has killed grizzlies and negroes and train-lifters; he would care nothing to fire at a flock of frightened hand-fed birds; but he wishes to tempt princes and lords to his coverts and to see the bags made on his estate cited in newspapers. Who set him that base example? Princes and lords themselves.”
“No estates would be kept up but for the game,” said her host, rather feebly as he felt.