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The young man went in, and perched himself on the window-sill beside a pot of Bridal Wreath. The cottage was one of the Mallorings', and recently repaired. A little fire was burning, and a teapot of stewed tea sat there beside it.
Stanley, who was settling himself for the twenty minutes of whiskey, potash, and a Review, with which he commonly composed his mind before retiring, answered negligently: "The Mallorings? Oh! about the best type of landowner we've got." "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"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!"
To Felix, who took her in to dinner, she spoke feelingly and in a low voice. She liked Felix, in spite of his wife, and respected him he had a name. Lady Malloring she told him the Mallorings owned, of course, everything round Joyfields had been telling her that of late Tod's wife had really become quite rabid over the land question. 'The Tods' were hand in glove with all the cottagers.
Her father, old Colonel Moray, was just that sort; by George, he was a regular black Highlander. What's the trouble exactly?" It was Stanley who answered: "That sort of agitation business is all very well until it begins to affect your neighbors; then it's time it stopped. You know the Mallorings who own all the land round Tod's.
Put your Mallorings to earn their living on fifteen to eighteen shillings a week, and where would they be?
Then, clustering in the doorway, grasping the edibles and the sixpence, and consulting with each other, they looked long after his big figure passing down the road. Still later, that same morning, Derek and Sheila moved slowly up the Mallorings' well-swept drive.
What was he doing had been the burden of her cry falling in love just at this moment when they wanted all their wits and all their time and strength for this struggle with the Mallorings? It was foolish, it was weak; and with a sweet, soft sort of girl who could be no use. Hotly he had answered: What business was it of hers? As if one fell in love when one wished!
Only when actually under the shelter of the porch, which some folk thought enhanced the old Greek-temple effect of the Mallorings' house, Derek broke through that taciturnity: "What if they won't?" "Wait and see; and don't lose your head, Derek." The man who stood there when the door opened was tall, grave, wore his hair in powder, and waited without speech.
What I want is that Tod should be made to see that his family mustn't quarrel with his nearest neighbors in this way. We know the Mallorings well, they're only seven miles from us at Becket. It doesn't do; sooner or later it plays the devil all round. And the air's full of agitation about the laborers and 'the Land, and all the rest of it only wants a spark to make real trouble."
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