Dale disposed of this question, but he still lay on the sofa and thought. It had been a gain to him, he said to himself, to see this new side of life; the expedition to Littlehill was well justified. It is good for a man to take a flag of truce and go talk with the enemy in the gate. He may not change his own views,--Dale was conscious of no change in his,--but he comes to see how other people may hold different ones, and the reason, or anyhow the naturalness, of theirs. A man of Roberts' fierce Puritan temper could not feel nor appreciate what appealed to him so strongly in such a life as they lived, for instance, at the Grange. It had a beauty so its own, that unquestioned superiority, not grasped as a prize or valued as an opportunity, but gravely accepted as the parent of duties--the unbroken family life, grasping through many hands the torch undimmed from reverend antiquity--the very house, which seemed to enshrine honorable traditions, at which he could not bring himself to sneer. The sweetness of it all broke back baffled from the wall of the Doctor's stern conviction and iron determination. Yet how sweet it all was! And these people welcomed into their circle any man who had a claim to welcome, freely, ungrudgingly, cordially. All they asked was a little gentleness to their--he supposed they were prejudices, a little deference to their prepossessions, a little smoothing off of the rougher edges of difference. It was not much to ask. Was he churlishly to deny the small concession, to refuse to meet them any part of the way, to intrench himself in the dogmatic intolerance of his most vehement utterances, to shut his mind off from this new source of inspiration? That was what Roberts wanted. Well, then--Roberts be hanged!
The course of these reflections produced in Dale a return to his usual equanimity. It was plainly impossible to please everybody. He must act as seemed right to himself, neglecting the frowns of unreasonable grumblers. No doubt Roberts was devoted to him, and Arthur Angell too. Yet Roberts abused him, and Arthur bothered him with imploring letters, which warned him against the subtle temptations of his new life. It was a curious sort of devotion which showed itself mainly in criticism and disapproval; it was very flattering of these good friends to set him on a pedestal and require him to live up to the position; only, unfortunately, the pedestal was of their choosing, not his. All he asked was to be allowed to live a quiet life and work out his own ideas in his own way. If they could not put up with that, why---- Dale refilled his pipe and opened a story by Maupassant.