"They've been talking about 'the Land'"--he raised his hands and ran them through his palish hair--"'the Land!' Heavenly Father!
'The Land!' Why! Look at that fellow!"
Nedda looked and saw a man, like Richard Coeur de Lion in the history books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.
"Sir Gerald Malloring--hope he's not a friend of yours! Divine right of landowners to lead 'the Land' by the nose! And our friend Britto!"
Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a suave insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.
"Because at heart he's just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-blooded to feel, he'll demonstrate that it's no use to feel--waste of valuable time--ha! valuable!--to act in any direction. And that's a man they believe things of. And poor Henry Wiltram, with his pathetic: 'Grow our own food--maximum use of the land as food-producer, and let the rest take care of itself!' As if we weren't all long past that feeble individualism; as if in these days of world markets the land didn't stand or fall in this country as a breeding-ground of health and stamina and nothing else. Well, well!"
"Aren't they really in earnest, then?" asked Nedda timidly.
"Miss Freeland, this land question is a perfect tragedy. Bar one or two, they all want to make the omelette without breaking eggs; well, by the time they begin to think of breaking them, mark me--there'll be no eggs to break. We shall be all park and suburb.
The real men on the land, what few are left, are dumb and helpless; and these fellows here for one reason or another don't mean business--they'll talk and tinker and top-dress--that's all. Does your father take any interest in this? He could write something very nice."
"He takes interest in everything," said Nedda. "Please go on, Mr.--Mr.--" She was terribly afraid he would suddenly remember that she was too young and stop his nice, angry talk.
"Cuthcott. I'm an editor, but I was brought up on a farm, and know something about it. You see, we English are grumblers, snobs to the backbone, want to be something better than we are; and education nowadays is all in the direction of despising what is quiet and humdrum. We never were a stay-at-home lot, like the French. That's at the back of this business--they may treat it as they like, Radicals or Tories, but if they can't get a fundamental change of opinion into the national mind as to what is a sane and profitable life; if they can't work a revolution in the spirit of our education, they'll do no good. There'll be lots of talk and tinkering, tariffs and tommy-rot, and, underneath, the land-bred men dying, dying all the time. No, madam, industrialism and vested interests have got us! Bar the most strenuous national heroism, there's nothing for it now but the garden city!"
"Then if we WERE all heroic, 'the Land' could still be saved?"
Mr. Cuthcott smiled.
"Of course we might have a European war or something that would shake everything up. But, short of that, when was a country ever consciously and homogeneously heroic--except China with its opium?
When did it ever deliberately change the spirit of its education, the trend of its ideas; when did it ever, of its own free will, lay its vested interests on the altar; when did it ever say with a convinced and resolute heart: 'I will be healthy and ****** before anything. I will not let the love of sanity and natural conditions die out of me!' When, Miss Freeland, when?"
And, looking so hard at Nedda that he almost winked, he added:
"You have the advantage of me by thirty years. You'll see what I shall not--the last of the English peasant. Did you ever read 'Erewhon,' where the people broke up their machines? It will take almost that sort of national heroism to save what's left of him, even."
For answer, Nedda wrinkled her brows horribly. Before her there had come a vision of the old, lame man, whose name she had found out was Gaunt, standing on the path under the apple-trees, looking at that little something he had taken from his pocket. Why she thought of him thus suddenly she had no idea, and she said quickly:
"It's awfully interesting. I do so want to hear about 'the Land.'
I only know a little about sweated workers, because I see something of them."
