Squire sat up and began to tick things off on the fingers of his left hand.
'Let me understand. You want me to give three of my farmers notice to quit—Gregson first of all—for bad farming; you ask me to plough up fifty acres of my park; and you have the goodness to suggest that I should cut some of my woods.'
Sir Henry realized that possibly a strain on his temper was coming, but he felt sure he could stand it.
'That is what we suggest—for your own advantage and the country's.'
'And pray who are "we"? I don't yet understand that clearly.'
'"We,"' said Sir Henry patiently, 'are the County War Agricultural Committee, formed for the express purpose of getting more food out of the land, and so making these islands self-supporting.'
'And if I refuse, what can you do?'
'Well, I'm afraid,' said Sir Henry, smiling uncomfortably, 'we can act without you.'
'You can turn out my farmers, and plough my land, as you please?'
'Our powers are very wide.'
'Under—what do you call the beastly thing?—"Dora"—the Defence of the Realm Act?'
Sir Henry nodded.
The Squire rose and began to pace up and down, his hands under his coat-tails, his long spider legs and small feet picking their way in and out of the piles and boxes on the floor. At last he turned impetuously.
'Look here, Chicksands, I shall not give that man warning!'
Sir Henry surveyed the lanky figure standing opposite to him.
'I should be very sorry, Mannering, to see you take that course,' he said, smiling and amiable as before. 'In some ways, of course, I am no more in love with some of the Government's proceedings than you are. We landlords may have to defend ourselves. I want, if I may say so, to keep your influence intact for the things that really matter. You and I, and all the other Brookshire landlords, may have, at some point, to act together. But we shall resist unreasonable demands much more easily if we accept the reasonable ones.'
The Squire shook his head. The suave tone of the speaker had clearly begun to rasp his nerves.
'No! You and I have really nothing in common. You may take it from me that I shall not give these men notice. What happens then?'
'The Government steps in,' said Sir Henry quietly.
'And turns them out? Very well, let them. And the park?'
'We are, of course, most anxious to consult you.'
'Excuse me, that's nonsense! I refuse—that's flat.'
Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders. His tone became a trifle colder.
'I can't believe that you will refuse. You can't deny—no sensible man could—that we've simply got to grow more food at home. The submarines have settled that for us.'
'Who brought the submarines upon us? The politicians! No politicians, no war! If it hadn't been for a pack of idiots called diplomats making mischief abroad, and a pack of incompetents called politicians unable to keep their heads at home, there'd have been no war. It's Russia's war—France's war! Who asked the country whether it wanted a war? Who asked me?' The Squire, standing opposite to Sir Henry, tapped his chest vehemently.
'The country is behind the war,' said Chicksands firmly.
'How do we know? How do you know? I've as much right to an opinion as you, and I tell you the country is sick and tired of the war. We are all dying of the war! We shall all be paupers because of the war! What is France to me, or Belgium? We shall have lost men, money, security—half the things that make life worth living—for what?'
'Honour!' said Sir Henry sharply, as he got on his feet.
'Honour!' sneered Mannering—'what's honour? It means one thing to me and another to you. Aubrey bangs me over the head with it. But I'm like the Doctor in the Punch and Judy show—he thinks he's knocked me flat. He hasn't. I've a new argument every time he comes. And as for my daughters, they think me a lunatic—a stingy lunatic besides—because I won't give to their Red Cross shows and bazaars. I've nothing to give. The income tax gentlemen have taken care of that.'
'Yet you spend on this kind of thing!' Sir Henry pointed to the vases. He had grown a little white.
'Of course I can. That's permanent. That's something to mend the holes that the soldiers and the politicians are making. When the war's become a nightmare that nobody wants to remember, those little things'—he pointed to a group of Greek bronzes and terra-cottas on a table near—'will still be the treasures of the world!'
In the yeasty deep of Sir Henry's honest mind emotions were rising which he knew now he should not long be able to control. He took up his hat and stick.
'I'm sorry, Mannering, that I have not been able to convince you. I'm sorry for your point of view—and I'm sorry for your sons.'
The words slipped out of his mouth before he knew.
The Squire bounded.
'My sons! The one's a fire-eater, with whom you can't argue. The other's a child—a babe—whom the Government proposes to murder before he has begun to live.'
Sir Henry looked at the speaker, who had been violently flushed a minute earlier, and was now as pale as himself, and then at the sketch of Desmond, just behind the Squire. His eyes dropped; the hurry in his blood subsided.
'Well, good-bye, Mannering. I'll—I'll do what I can to make things easy for you.'
The Squire laughed angrily.
'You'll put on the screws politely? Thank you? But still it will be you who'll be putting the screw on, who'll be turning out my farmers, and ploughing up my land, and cutting down my trees. Doesn't it strike you that—well, that—under the circumstances—it will be rather difficult for Aubrey and Beryl to keep up their engagement?'
The Squire was sitting on the edge of the table, his thin legs crossed, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. Sir Henry coloured hotly.
'You gave your consent to their engagement, Mannering.'
'Yes, but I propose to withdraw it,' said the Squire coolly.
Sir Henry's indignation kept him cool also.
'You can't play ducks and drakes with young people's lives like that. Even you can't do that.'
'I can. I can withdraw my consent.'
'Because you mean to fight the County War Committee, of which I am Chairman?'
'Precisely. The situation is too difficult,' said the Squire with sparkling eyes. 'The young people will no doubt see it for themselves.'
'Pshaw! Nonsense!' cried Sir Henry, finally losing his temper. 'Aubrey is long since of age and his own master.'
'Perhaps,
