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Dr. Richmond came into lunch with the air of a man who had something on his mind. He had been to see Mr. Truslove, and in plain English he did not like the look of Mr. Truslove, not as a man, but as a patient. Mr. Truslove had a hard, high tension pulse, and was suffering from attacks of breathlessness and faintness, and inexplainable headaches. Dr. Richmond did not discuss his patients with his wife, but he had another matter on his mind, and it was a problem which Mrs. Richmond could share with him.

“Old Woosnam sent for me to-day.”

“I hope he is not ill again?”

“No. A matter of business.”

Dr. Richmond had pulled Mr. Woosnam through an attack of acute pneumonia, and Mr. Woosnam went about saying that the doctor had rescued him from a cold bed in St. John’s Churchyard. Mr. Woosnam was the senior partner in the firm of Messrs. Woosnam & Wilkins, Auctioneers and Estate Agents.

Dr. Richmond helped himself to mustard.

“The fact is, Woosnam wanted to do me a good turn. An adventure in real estate.”

“Land, John?”

“Well, yes. Southfleet seems to be growing like a gourd. Land values are trebling, even in the outskirts. The old timber-yard is coming on the market.”

“In High Street?”

“Yes.”

“But what a pity! I should be so sorry to lose that old place.”

“So should I. It’s real. It smells of real things.”

“And the trees, those fine old chestnuts.”

“Yes, they’ll be doomed. Woosnam told me I could buy the site for two thousand pounds, and that in a year or two it might be worth twenty.”

“What, for shops?”

“Exactly. But somehow it doesn’t pique me. I can’t be money-minded.”

“I’m glad, John,” said she; “there is so much more in your life than that. The people here think of you in a different way.”

“I wonder.”

“Oh, yes, they do. What you give them isn’t merely for money. It may sound silly, but the town would be—hurt—if you turned—trader.”

Dr. Richmond smiled at his wife.

“You are very sensitive—about my——”

“No, just proud of it, John. I like to think of you as one of the few men who labour for the love of the thing.”

“Well, I thanked old Woosnam and said no to him.”

“I’m glad.”

Mrs. Richmond was right, and her rightness in such matters made her the beloved person that she was. Doubtless much of the new Southfleet that travelled daily to the city and engaged in obscure and sometimes sinister commercial scrambles would have thought Dr. Richmond’s wife a sentimental fool, yet there were simpler folk who would have understood her delicate and fastidious feeling about such a transaction. The old timber-yard and its trees were part of a memory, a pattern that was pleasant and gracious, one of those wholesome realities which can be smudged over or erased by some improving and mercenary hand. But there was more to it than that. She who had suffered love and been tortured by it and seen it return to her with tenderness and contrition, was jealous of the pride that had shared its consummation. Would she see her husband among the money-changers? No. His world had come to think of him as a man who laboured more for the love of the things he did than for the material reward that might follow after. If such fastidious and ungreedy souls were becoming rare in the new world, so much the worse would the world be for it.

None the less, Southfleet was indeed the happy hunting-ground of the speculator, and legitimately so for those who had the foresight and the money to spread and who valued property—and what reasonable man does not? Those who lack it may decry it, but not one man in a million would refuse to accept a nice fat legacy plumped upon his plate by some generous testator. Dr. Richmond could dare to be fastidious because his professional income was a substantial one. Moreover, when the beauty of England is considered, those who have preserved it are the Dukes and the great gentlemen. The middle-class mind may see beauty only in a factory or a row of jerry-built cottages, and an uneducated democracy may spill a standardized ugliness over the land. The old craftsmen were dead or dying. A hundred years might pass before a hygienic and municipal world would be re-educated back into the artist’s world. Perhaps—never.

Dr. Richmond expressed his thanks to Mr. Woosnam for the private information received and refused it, and Mr. Woosnam looked with coy affection at his physician.

“I rather thought you would refuse, doctor.”

“Just putting temptation in my way, sir!”

Mr. Woosnam allowed himself a chuckle.

“No, doctor. Kissing goes by favour, but not with us—of course. I know someone else who will—be a probable purchaser.”

“I won’t ask who it is.”

“And if you did I couldn’t tell you.”

“Why don’t you buy the yard yourself, Woosnam?”

“I prefer not to be responsible——”

“For what may happen there?”

“Yes, partly so. Besides, it wouldn’t be professional.”

“You have to consider clients?”

“That is my business, doctor.”

Dr. Richmond, sitting beside Mr. Truslove’s bed later in the morning, and knowing that a friendly gossip might be more cheering to Mr. Truslove than mere medicine, put the case before him in confidence, for Mr. Truslove had some of the wisdom of Solomon. Mr. Truslove listened, and having reflected upon the case, confessed that some ten years ago he might have done business with Mr. Woosnam.

“But not now, Richmond. I might as well buy myself a gold coffin. I suppose one must be growing senile when a bargain does not pique one.”

“Or—wise.”

“With the wisdom of your wife. May I get up for an hour or two to-day?”

“No walking up and down stairs.”

“No. I’ll just sit on the balcony and gape at humanity.”

“Anyone to help you dress?”

“Yes, Jimmy Slade. There’s a philosopher for you.”

“Rather a quaint creature—something of a mystery.”

“A little more than that, doctor. A man-child, if you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“Unless ye become as little children—Great Scott, fancy an old buccaneer like me—quoting scripture!”

“Isn’t it possible that a buccaneer may have more feeling for—human goodness—than a bishop?”

“Quite likely, Richmond. Unless you have seen life ugly how can you value—the other thing that’s good?”