"These poor people have no means of setting law in motion, no means of choosing where and how they will live, no means of doing anything except just what they are told; the Mallorings have the means to set the law in motion, to choose where and how to live, and to dictate to others. That is why the law is unjust. With every independent pound a year, this equal law of yours--varies!"
"Phew!" said Stanley. "That's a proposition!"
"I give you a ****** case. If I had chosen not to marry Tod but to live with him in free love, we could have done it without inconvenience. We have some independent income; we could have afforded to disregard what people thought or did. We could have bought (as we did buy) our piece of land and our cottage, out of which we could not have been turned. Since we don't care for society, it would have made absolutely no difference to our present position. But Tryst, who does not even want to defy the law--what happens to him? What happens to hundreds of laborers all over the country who venture to differ in politics, religion, or morals from those who own them?"
'By George!' thought Stanley, 'it's true, in a way; I never looked at it quite like that.' But the feeling that he had come to persuade her to be reasonable, and the deeply rooted Englishry of him, conspired to make him say:
"That's all very well; but, you see, it's only a necessary incident of property-holding. You can't interfere with plain rights."
"You mean--an evil inherent in property-holding?"
"If you like; I don't split words. The lesser of two evils.
What's your remedy? You don't want to abolish property; you've confessed that property gives YOU your independence!"
Again that curious quiver and flash!
"Yes; but if people haven't decency enough to see for themselves how the law favors their independence, they must be shown that it doesn't pay to do to others as they would hate to be done by."
"And you wouldn't try reasoning?"
"They are not amenable to reason."
Stanley took up his hat.
"Well, I think some of us are. I see your point; but, you know, violence never did any good; it isn't--isn't English."
She did not answer. And, nonplussed thereby, he added lamely: "I should have liked to have seen Tod and your youngsters. Remember me to them. Clara sent her regards"; and, looking round the room in a rather lost way, he held out his hand.
He had an impression of something warm and dry put into it, with even a little pressure.
Back in the car, he said to his chauffeur, "Go home the other way, Batter, past the church."
The vision of that kitchen, with its brick floor, its black oak beams, bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the great, open hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress standing before it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his mind's eye with curious fidelity. And those three kids, popping out like that--proof that the whole thing was not a rather bad dream! 'Queer business!' he thought; 'bad business! That woman's uncommonly all there, though. Lot in what she said, too. Where the deuce should we all be if there were many like her!' And suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men coming along the hedge toward the road--evidently laborers. What were they doing? He stopped the car. There were fifteen or twenty of them, and back in the field he could see a girl's red blouse, where a little group of four still lingered. 'By George!' he thought, 'those must be the young Tods going it!' And, curious to see what it might mean, Stanley fixed his attention on the gate through which the men were bound to come. First emerged a fellow in corduroys tied below the knee, with long brown moustaches decorating a face that, for all its haggardness, had a jovial look.
Next came a sturdy little red-faced, bow-legged man in shirt-sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a cap pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke. Then came two old men, one of whom was limping, and three striplings.
Another big man came along next, in a little clearance, as it were, between main groups. He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at the car. The fellow's eyes were queer, and threatening, and sad--giving Stanley a feeling of discomfort. Then came a short, square man with an impudent, loquacious face and a bit of swagger in his walk. He, too, looked up at Stanley and made some remark which caused two thin-faced fellows with him to grin sheepishly. A spare old man, limping heavily, with a yellow face and drooping gray moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent fellow, with yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck Stanley as half-idiotic. Then two more striplings of seventeen or so, whittling at bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with drawn-in cheeks; and, last of all, a small man by himself, without a cap on a round head covered with thin, light hair, moving at a 'dot-here, dot-there' walk, as though he had beasts to drive.
Stanley noted that all--save the big man with the threatening, sad eyes, the old, yellow-faced man with a limp, and the little man who came out last, lost in his imaginary beasts--looked at the car furtively as they went their ways. And Stanley thought: 'English peasant! Poor devil! Who is he? What is he? Who'd miss him if he did die out? What's the use of all this fuss about him? He's done for! Glad I've nothing to do with him at Becket, anyway!
"Back to the land!" "Independent peasantry!" Not much! Shan't say that to Clara, though; knock the bottom out of her week-ends!'
And to his chauffeur he muttered:
"Get on, Batter!"
So, through the peace of that country, all laid down in grass, through the dignity and loveliness of trees and meadows, this May evening, with the birds singing under a sky surcharged with warmth and color, he sped home to dinner.