"I still maintain," he said, "that a little practical ingenuity might have found a way."
"And I will support you," said Wharton, laying down the paper-knife and bending over to Hallin, "with good reason. For three years and a few months just such an idea as you describe has been carried out on my own estate, and it has not worked badly at all."
"There!" cried Marcella. "There! I knew something could be done, if there was a will. I have always felt it."
She half turned to Aldous, then bent forward instead as though listening eagerly for what more Wharton might say, her face all alive, and eloquent.
"Of course, there was nothing to shoot!" exclaimed Frank Leven.
"On the contrary," said Wharton, smiling, "we are in the middle of a famous partridge country."
"How your neighbours must dote on you!" cried the boy. But Wharton took no notice.
"And my father preserved strictly," he went on. "It is quite a simple story. When I inherited, three years ago, I thought the whole thing detestable, and determined I wouldn't be responsible for keeping it up. So I called the estate together--farmers and labourers--and we worked out a plan. There are keepers, but they are the estate servants, not mine. Everybody has his turn according to the rules--I and my friends along with the rest. Not everybody can shoot every year, but everybody gets his chance, and, moreover, a certain percentage of all the game killed is public property, and is distributed every year according to a regular order."
"Who pays the keepers?" interrupted Leven.
"I do," said Wharton, smiling again. "Mayn't I--for the present--do what I will with mine own? I return in their wages some of my ill-gotten gains as a landowner. It is all makeshift, of course."
"I understand!" exclaimed Marcella, nodding to him--"you could not be a Venturist and keep up game-preserving?"
Wharton met her bright eye with a half deprecating, reserved air.
"You are right, of course," he said drily. "For a Socialist to be letting his keepers run in a man earning twelve shillings a week for knocking over a rabbit would have been a little strong. No one can be consistent in my position--in any landowner's position--it is impossible; still, thank Heaven, one can deal with the most glaring matters. As Mr. Raeburn said, however, all this game business is, of course, a mere incident of the general land and property system, as you will hear me expound when you come to that meeting you promised me to honour."