“So am I.”
“And I’m glad I’m not going to marry Jim.”
“Then you needn’t be angry with Cock Marling.”
“Yes, I am—because I know I could have been happy with Jim if there’d been no Cock Marling. It’s all very well for you to talk, Peter—but I think.... Oh, these big country houses make me sick. It’s all the same—everywhere I go I see the same thing—we’re all cut to a pattern. There’s always the beautifully kept grounds and the huge mortgaged estate that’s tumbling to pieces for want of money to spend on it. Then, when you go in, there are hothouse flowers everywhere, and beautiful glass and silver—and bad cooking. And we’re waited on badly because we’re too old-fashioned and dignified to employ women, so we have the cheapest butler we can get, helped by a footman taken from the plough. Upstairs the bedrooms want painting and papering, but we always have two cars—though we can’t afford motor traction for our land. We’re falling to pieces, but we hide the cracks with pots of flowers. Why can’t we sell our places and live in comfort? We Alards would be quite well-to-do if we lived in a moderate sized house with two or three women servants and either a small car or none at all. We could afford to be happy then.”
“Jenny, you’re talking nonsense. You’re like most women and can’t see the wood for the trees. If we gave up the cars tomorrow and sacked Appleby and Pollock and Wills, and sold the silver and the pictures, it wouldn’t do us the slightest good in the world. We’d still have the estate, we’d still have to pay in taxes more than the land brings in to us. You can’t sell land nowadays, even if it isn’t mortgaged. Besides—damn it all!—why should we sell it? It’s been ours for centuries, we’ve been here for centuries, and I for one am proud of it.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m ashamed. I tell you, Peter, our day is over, and we’d better retire, while we can retire gracefully—before we’re sold up.”
“Nonsense. If we hang on, the value of the land will rise, we’ll be able to pay off the mortgages—and perhaps some day this brutal government will see the wickedness of its taxation and——”
“Why should it? It wants the money—and we’ve no right to be here. We’ve outlived our day. Instead of developing the land—we’re ruining it, letting it go to pieces. We can’t afford to keep our tenants’ farms in order. It’s time we ceased to own half the country, and the land went back to the people it used to belong to.”
“I see you’ve been talking to Gervase.”
“Well, he and I think alike on this subject.”