Melrose would dine alone, but would be glad to see Mr. Faversham in the
library after dinner.
Faversham made a quick and sparing meal in his own room, and then
adjourning to his newly furnished office ran eagerly through the various
papers and proposals which he had to lay before his employer.
As he did so, he was more conscious than ever before of the enormity
of Melrose's whole career as a landowner. The fact was that the estate
had been for years a mere field for the display of its owner's worst
qualities--caprice, miserliness, jealous or vindictive love of power.
The finance of it mattered nothing to him. Had he been a poorer man his
landed property might have had a chance; he would have been forced to
run it more or less on business lines. But his immense income came to
him apparently from quite other sources--mines, railways, foreign
investments; and with all the human relations involved in landowning he
was totally unfit to deal.
Hence these endless quarrels with his tenants to whom he never allowed a
lease; these constant evictions; these litigations as to improvements,
compensation, and heaven knows what. The land was naturally of excellent
quality, and many a tenant came in with high hopes, only to find that the
promises on the strength of which he had taken his farm were never
fulfilled, and that if it came to lawyers, Melrose generally managed "to
best it." Hence, too, the rotten, insanitary cottages--maintained,
Faversham could almost swear, for the mere sake of defying the local
authorities and teaching "those Socialist fools" a lesson.
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