“Yes, but not for some time. I want to get a lot of young people into the way of coming here first, for discussion and to see works of art. Then, when I’ve got the people, we can turn them onto that, if they seem inclined that way.”
“It seems a pity not to use this charming little theatre for plays,” she said; “but I do a little wonder where the audience would come from. We are far from any community.”
“The motor has made all communities near,” he said. “If you dangle a good bait, or dangle a bad bait cleverly, you’ll get all the community you can manage. You’ll find that we shall be a good bait, and the fish will rise.”
They had walked out from the theatre into the open. It was a lovely May day; the plum and pear blossom was white in the orchards; some of the apple-trees were touched with bud. They looked at the men busy about the house, and listened to the noise of the work going forward, saws, hammers and the rush of planes. To the west was Spirr Wood, with its fir-trees like dark masts under sail. To the north, the low wooded hills stretched; a noise of rooks came from the rookery in one of the woods.
“What is that wood called?” she asked.
“It’s a part of what is called Stubbington Great Wood,” he said. “It belongs to a crusted old Tory called Colonel Purple Tittup. That’s his name and that’s his nature. He lives in a big house there; lots of land and no money, they say.”
“It’s a very beautiful wood,” she said.
“I don’t believe it really is,” he said. “I was up there not long ago on a wall; it didn’t look so well, near at hand. It’s all on this Waste, as they call it, where nothing really does. ‘Nothing’ll grow on the Waste,’ they say.”
“Fram,” she said, “do you really believe in a Waste? You were saying that art only fails from want of encouragement. Does not an estate only fail from the same cause? This Waste, as they call it, is only a stretch of land with some chemical deficiencies. If you fed those chemicals to the land, things would do there. Don’t you think it would be fun to try?”
“So you want me to buy that wood, too?” he said. “Well, wait a bit. That wood looked to me exactly like a modern city, all full of people and something wrong with the lot of them; not a tree wholesome, except perhaps some elders. Now I put it to you, does a doctor want to tackle an entire city when he first sets up in practice? In all those acres, I should have to feed chemicals of some sort to every tree.”
“But, trees have grown on it,” she said. “Trees have contrived to get a kind of life out of it; probably for centuries.”
“Have they?” he answered. “Have they? Are you so sure? The place reeked to me of the act of a Government. First there came peace, when a government sold all the possible oak woods and starved the Navy; then there came war, when a government wanted oak wood for the Navy and said that England must be prepared against all emergencies. Then all the patriots offered all the plots that were worthless, and the Government bought them all at ten times their value, and promptly planted them with woods that would do worst on them. Presently, when the scare died down, and peace was piping, the Government sold all the plots back to the patriots, dirt cheap. That’s what was done at Stubbington in the Napoleonic wars; don’t tell me it wasn’t.”
None the less, he always thought of Margaret’s suggestions, and soon came back to them. It would be fun to take on the Waste, bit by bit, and make it productive. It would be fun to remake Stubbington Great Wood, and pull down the old rotting barrack where Purple Tittup tittupped and was purple.
The summer, which had begun in April that year, continued with fair, dry weather for weeks together; the work at