The third section of the guests, unquestionably more static than the others, confined themselves to pointing out that, though the land question was undoubtedly serious, nothing whatever would result from placing any further impositions upon landowners. For, after all, what was land? Simply capital invested in a certain way, and very poorly at that. And what was capital? Simply a means of causing wages to be paid. And whether they were paid to men who looked after birds and dogs, loaded your guns, beat your coverts, or drove you to the shoot, or paid to men who ploughed and fertilized the land, what did it matter? To dictate to a man to whom he was to pay wages was, in the last degree, un-English.
Everybody knew the fate which had come, or was coming, upon capital. It was being driven out of the country by leaps and bounds--though, to be sure, it still perversely persisted in yielding every year a larger revenue by way of income tax. And it would be dastardly to take advantage of land just because it was the only sort of capital which could not fly the country in times of need. Stanley himself, though--as became a host--he spoke little and argued not at all, was distinctly of this faction; and Clara sometimes felt uneasy lest her efforts to focus at Becket all interest in the land question should not quite succeed in outweighing the passivity of her husband's attitude. But, knowing that it is bad policy to raise the whip too soon, she trusted to her genius to bring him 'with one run at the finish,' as they say, and was content to wait.
There was universal sympathy with the Mallorings. If a model landlord like Malloring had trouble with his people, who--who should be immune? Arson! It was the last word! Felix, who secretly shared Nedda's horror of the insensate cruelty of flames, listened, nevertheless, to the jubilation that they had caught the fellow, with profound disturbance. For the memory of the big laborer seated against the wall, his eyes haunting round his cell, quarrelled fiercely with his natural abhorrence of any kind of violence, and his equally natural dislike of what brought anxiety into his own life--and the life, almost as precious, of his little daughter. Scarcely a word of the evening's conversation but gave him in high degree the feeling: How glib all this is, how far from reality! How fatted up with shell after shell of comfort and security! What do these people know, what do they realize, of the pressure and beat of raw life that lies behind--what do even I, who have seen this prisoner, know? For us it's as ****** as killing a rat that eats our corn, or a flea that sucks our blood. Arson!
Destructive brute--lock him up! And something in Felix said: For order, for security, this may be necessary. But something also said: Our smug attitude is odious!
He watched his little daughter closely, and several times marked the color rush up in her face, and once could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes. If the temper of this talk were trying to him, hardened at a hundred dinner-tables, what must it be to a young and ardent creature! And he was relieved to find, on getting to the drawing-room, that she had slipped behind the piano and was chatting quietly with her Uncle John. . . .
As to whether this or that man liked her, Nedda perhaps was not more ignorant than other women; and she had noted a certain warmth and twinkle in Uncle John's eyes the other evening, a certain rather jolly tendency to look at her when he should have been looking at the person to whom he was talking; so that she felt toward him a trustful kindliness not altogether unmingled with a sense that he was in that Office which controls the destinies of those who 'get into trouble.' The motives even of statesmen, they say, are mixed; how much more so, then, of girls in love! Tucked away behind a Steinway, which instinct told her was not for use, she looked up under her lashes at her uncle's still military figure and said softly:
"It was awfully good of you to come, too, Uncle John."
And John, gazing down at that round, dark head, and those slim, pretty, white shoulders, answered:
"Not at all--very glad to get a breath of fresh air."
And he stealthily tightened his white waistcoat--a rite neglected of late; the garment seemed to him at the moment unnecessarily loose.
"You have so much experience, Uncle. Do you think violent rebellion is ever justifiable?"
"I do not."
Nedda sighed. "I'm glad you think that," she murmured, "because I don't think it is, either. I do so want you to like Derek, Uncle John, because--it's a secret from nearly every one--he and I are engaged."
John jerked his head up a little, as though he had received a slight blow. The news was not palatable. He kept his form, however, and answered:
"Oh! Really! Ah!"
Nedda said still more softly: "Please don't judge him by the other night; he wasn't very nice then, I know."
John cleared his throat.
Instinct warned her that he agreed, and she said rather sadly:
"You see, we're both awfully young. It must be splendid to have experience."
Over John's face, with its double line between the brows, its double line in the thin cheeks, its single firm line of mouth beneath a gray moustache, there passed a little grimace.
"As to being young," he said, "that'll change for the--er--better only too fast."
What was it in this girl that reminded him of that one with whom he had lived but two years, and mourned fifteen? Was it her youth?
Was it that quick way of lifting her eyes, and looking at him with such clear directness? Or the way her hair grew? Or what?
"Do you like the people here, Uncle John?"
The question caught John, as it were, between wind and water.