keen enough. And
very keen on football." She laughed, and said a word about So-and-so
to Mr. Wilbraham. Mr. Wilbraham blazed up. "How could the farm go
on without discipline? How could there be discipline if Mr. Stephen
interfered? Mr. Stephen liked power. He spoke to the men like one of
themselves, and pretended it was all equality, but he took care to come
out top. Natural, of course, that, being a gentleman, he should. But
not natural for a gentleman to loiter all day with poor people and learn
their work, and put wrong notions into their heads, and carry their
newfangled grievances to Mrs. Failing. Which partly accounted for the
deficit on the past year." She rebuked Stephen. Then he lost his temper,
was rude to her, and insulted Mr. Wilbraham.

The worst days of Mr. Failing's rule seemed to be returning. And Stephen
had a practical experience, and also a taste for battle, that her
husband had never possessed. He drew up a list of grievances, some
absurd, others fundamental. No newspapers in the reading-room, you
could put a plate under the Thompsons' door, no level cricket-pitch,
no allotments and no time to work in them, Mrs. Wilbraham's knife-boy
underpaid. "Aren't you a little unwise?" she asked coldly. "I am more
bored than you think over the farm." She was wanting to correct the
proofs of the book and rewrite the prefatory memoir. In her irritation
she wrote to Agnes. Agnes replied sympathetically, and Mrs. Failing,
clever as she was, fell into the power of the younger woman. They
discussed him at first as a wretch of a boy; then he got drunk and
somehow it seemed more criminal. All that she needed now was a personal
grievance, which Agnes casually supplied. Though vindictive, she was
determined to treat him well, and thought with satisfaction of our
distant colonies. But he burst into an odd passion: he would sooner
starve than leave England. "Why?" she asked. "Are you in love?" He
picked up a lump of the chalk-they were by the arbour--and made no
answer. The vicar murmured, "It is not like going abroad--Greater
Britain--blood is thicker than water--" A lump of chalk broke her
drawing-room window on the Saturday.

Thus Stephen left Wiltshire, half-blackguard, half-martyr. Do not brand
him as a socialist. He had no quarrel with society, nor any particular
belief in people because they are poor. He only held the creed of "here
am I and there are you," and therefore class distinctions were trivial
things to hi