Turning from the fire-place towards Sarah he regarded her with his most charming smile, and running one thin hand through his hair—a favourite gesture, he began, with dangerous calm:
"But, Mrs. Bannister, don't you think there is something to be said for the unions?"
"Now, young man, if you've anything to say for the unions you'd better say it. You may be very clever. I'm sure I don't know. All you young folk to-day think you know everything. I heard tell you were a socialist or something at Hardrascliffe to-day——"
"So that's why she called," thought Mary. "Ursula told her, and she wanted to see what he was like."
"And you may have written books, and met a lot of people and done a deal of talking, but when you come up against Sarah Jane Bannister you'll find yourself in a very different situation."
Well, of course, that settled it. There was no longer any hope of leading Sarah gently away to remove her bonnet. An appealing glance at David met with no response. Mary knew she might as well ask the wind to stop blowing as ask David to stop talking once Sarah had practically defied him to do his worst, her slow stare sweeping him from his red head to his shabbily shod feet.
"At least he's a gentleman," thought Mary. "Thank Heaven she can't help seeing that!"
And David spoke. For ten minutes not even Sarah was able to utter a word. Standing on the hearth-rug as though it were a public platform, his thin arms jerking with electric energy, he addressed them. At first he argued quietly enough about the disadvantages of capitalism, the need for co-operation among the lower classes, the slow growth of organized resistance. Slowly his passion rose. "You can say what you like," he cried. "You can shut yourself up in snug little houses locked up against cold and change and misery, and you can say to yourselves 'No change will come. We and our fathers have seen the world as it is. Only fools meant it to be, or think it can be any different. We, the middle class, the half-cultured, half-emancipated half-refined middle class, with our safe bank balance, and vested interests and comfortable prosperity, we are the salt of the earth. We are in power—we are happy. Fools and extremists may rage and storm outside our gates. We are safe, fortified by the solidarity of human conservatism, battening on the fruits of human folly.' But I tell you that your gates are shut, not to shield you from the change, but to blind your eyes to it, till it is too late to see. The nineteenth century has gone, and though you and your class, unfortunately for England, have survived it, you can't carry your century with you to the grave."
Sarah blinked at him with wide, indignant eyes.
"You stand for an ideal that is, thank Heaven, outworn. The new generation knocks at your door—a generation of men, independent, not patronized, enjoying their own rights, not the philanthropy of their exploiters, respecting themselves, not their so-called superiors. You can't stop them, but they may stop you. You can't shut them out, but they may shut you in." He swept his hand round with a dramatic gesture, that brought it into unpremeditated contact with one of Mary's china jugs on the mantelpiece. A tragedy was narrowly averted. "I tell you that you are locking yourselves up in a house of circumstance which has been condemned as unsafe at the tribunal of progress. You've got to move, and if you can't see that, there are those waiting who will thrust realization upon you when it's too late to find a remedy."