“Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew.  I have a lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate, and I find that an individualist is never contented.  My tenants have everything they want, but it’s impossible to satisfy them.  There’s a fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap.  I don’t give in to him, of course.  If he had his way, he’d go back to the old days, farm the land in his own fashion.  He wants to buy it from me.  Old vicious system of yeoman farming.  Says his grandfather had it.  He’s that sort of man.  I hate individualism; it’s ruining England.  You won’t fend better cottages, or better farm-buildings anywhere than on my estate.  I go in for centralisation.  I dare say you know what I call myself—­a ‘Tory Communist.’  To my mind, that’s the party of the future.  Now, your father’s motto was:  ’Every man for himself!’ On the land that would never do.  Landlord and tenant must work together.  You’ll come over to Newmarket with us on Wednesday?  George has a very fine horse running in the Rutlandshire a very fine horse.  He doesn’t bet, I’m glad to say.  If there’s one thing I hate more than another, it’s gambling!”

Mrs. Bellew gave him a sidelong glance, and a little ironical smile peeped out on her full red lips.  But Mr. Pendyce had been called away to his soup.  When he was ready to resume the conversation she was talking to his son, and the Squire, frowning, turned to the Hon. Mrs. Winlow.  Her attention was automatic, complete, monosyllabic; she did not appear to fatigue herself by an over-sympathetic comprehension, nor was she subservient.  Mr. Pendyce found her a competent listener.

“The country is changing,” he said, “changing every day.  Country houses are not what they were.  A great responsibility rests on us landlords.  If we go, the whole thing goes.”

What, indeed, could be more delightful than this country-house life of Mr. Pendyce; its perfect cleanliness, its busy leisure, its combination of fresh air and scented warmth, its complete intellectual repose, its essential and professional aloofness from suffering of any kind, and its soup—­emblematically and above all, its soup—­made from the rich remains of pampered beasts?

Mr. Pendyce thought this life the one right life; those who lived it the only right people.  He considered it a duty to live this life, with its simple, healthy, yet luxurious curriculum, surrounded by creatures bred for his own devouring, surrounded, as it were, by a sea of soup!  And that people should go on existing by the million in the towns, preying on each other, and getting continually out of work, with all those other depressing concomitants of an awkward state, distressed him.  While suburban life, that living in little rows of slate-roofed houses so lamentably similar that no man of individual taste could bear to see them, he much disliked.  Yet, in spite of his strong prejudice in favour of country-house life, he was not a rich man, his income barely exceeding ten thousand a year.