"And may I congratulate you, sir, on the boldness of your impertinence in talking against them who have done most in the world for us, and never a farthing's worth of harm to yourself?"
"I think you misunderstand me. The farmers have, in many cases, done their best according to their own ideas, for their labourers, but misplaced philanthropy does more harm than indifference. If ever you had read the works of a certain gentleman called Aristotle—which from your exclusive attention to the particular, when I am discussing the general, I gather you have not—you would have learnt that 'There comes a time when from a false good arises a true evil.'"
"I'll thank you not to mention your particulars and generals when talking with Mike O'Flynn. I've neither read the works of that gentleman you spake of nor do I want to. But what I do say is that if ye's got anything to say against farmers and their wives, the same including Mrs. Robson, God bless her, you'll just step outside the house and repeat it to me slow and careful like before I knock it back down your dhirty throat. For when I had pneumonia and like to die I was with a pain in my chest like a hot iron and seeing the gowlden gates——"
Dawson placed a restraining hand on Mike's shoulder.
"Coom now, Mike, we've heard all that before. Sure enough there's one way yon young chap has you fair beat—at least 'e stops when 'e's finished."
David had finished. His enthusiasm had burnt itself out, and he felt subdued and exhausted. After a few concluding remarks and a suggestion that he would be at the Flying Fox next evening, he left the inn.
The village crouched grey and ghostly in the moonlight under the circling hills. Beyond the road a frosty meadow gleamed like water frozen to white tranquillity. The cottages clustered together for company beside the ribbon of street. David stood at a turn in the road, between the Flying Fox and the Wold Farm. The air was cold, and he shivered a little, after the heat of the smoke-room. Always, when he had allowed himself to be carried away by his emotions in public, he suffered afterwards from depressing reaction. The worst of it was, he was never quite sure exactly what he might or might not have said. He could only remember hearing how the Robsons had treated that poor fellow, Waite, and then becoming violently excited. As the room filled, he had talked faster and faster and more and more wildly. He was as certain now as he had frequently been before that he had made a fool of himself, yet how, and why and to what extent he did not know. Only that Irishman, the discharged soldier, Mrs. Robson's protégé—perhaps one ought not to have been quite so ruthless. But then, as if he needed to be told that the Robsons had never done him any harm when all the time he was feeling such an unspeakable cad for criticizing, not them, no, not them, but the class to which they belonged, among the people whom Mrs. Robson believed to be adoring subjects.
"Well, Mr. Rossitur," called a clear voice, "it seems as if something meant us to meet on the road at night. How are you getting on, and how's your cold?"
Mary had emerged from the path which led to her garden through the smaller pasture. She was carrying a basket on her arm and in the moonlight looked taller than ever.
David stood stupidly silent, staring from Mary to the moon and back again to Mary. This was the woman who paid starvation wages and pauperized a whole village to satisfy her nauseated conscience. That was the moon which told him that he had just made a fool of himself and probably a cad and, anyway, it wasn't worth while forgetting that one was supposed to be a gentleman.