“But we’re in desperate need of ready money, Father. We can’t afford to start repairs at Glasseye, and this is the third year we’ve put off. There’s Monkings, too,—the place is falling to pieces, and Luck says he’ll quit if he has to wait any longer.”
“Quit?—Let him. He needn’t threaten me. Tenants aren’t so scarce.”
“Good tenants are. We aren’t likely to get a man who farms the land as well as Luck. He got the Penny field to carry seven bushel to the acre last year. He’s clockwork with the rent, too—you know the trouble we have over rent.”
“But I won’t have Sowden cut down to keep him. Timber! I thought we were done with that shame when the war ended, and we’d lost Eleven Pounder and Little Horn.”
“But I can’t see anything more shameful in selling timber than in selling land, and you sold that Snailham piece last year to——”
Peter tried to retrieve his blunder, but his mind was not for quick manœuvres and all he could do was to flush and turn guiltily silent. His father’s anger blazed at once.
“Yes—we sold land last year, and a good business we made of it, didn’t we! The bounder thought he’d bought my daughter into the bargain. He thought he’d got the pull of us because we were glad to sell. I tell you, I’ll sell no more of my land, if it puts such ideas into the heads of the rascals that buy it, if it makes all the beastly tenants and small-holders within thirty miles think they can come and slap me on the back and make love to my daughters and treat me as one of themselves. I’ll not sell another foot as long as I live. When I die, Sir, you may not get a penny, but you’ll get the biggest estate in East Sussex.”
Peter groaned.
§ 12
Gervase did not think it advisable to go near his family when the time came for him to leave Vinehall for Thunders Abbey. He would have liked to see his mother, but knew too well that the interview would end only in eau de Cologne and burnt feathers. Since he was exiled, it was best to accept his exile as a working principle and not go near the house. He knew that later on he would be given opportunities to see his parents, and by then time might have made them respectively less hostile and less hysterical.