“People, of course. So do you. But it’s the people who put things first who are in the majority. In the ultimate issue, they weigh what Mr. Wemmick called portable property—things like houses, and furniture, and money—against the personal relations, and the portable property counts most.”
“I know. They are called practical people because they would never postpone a business appointment on account of a child’s birthday party. The birthday party would have to be postponed. And what about the ones who put ideas first?”
Of course, Mary knew as well as I did—or better—what about them. But she also knew that I like long, wandering, impersonal discussions of the kind that I can indulge in with no one else.
I smiled at her, just to show that I knew quite well how she was humoring me.
“The people who put ideas first are, I think fortunately, in a very small minority. Religious enthusiasts, of course—and perhaps the few people who really are thorough-going, matter-of-fact conventionalists.”
“You are thinking of the Kendals,” said Mary unerringly.
I admitted that she was right.
“Can you imagine Mumma, for instance, on a jury, admitting ‘extenuating circumstances’? ‘A crime is crime,’ she would probably say, and as she would say it not less than fourteen times, she would end in hypnotizing all the other eleven into agreeing with her. People like that ought really never to be allowed to have any say in any question affecting their fellow-creatures, but unfortunately there’s generally a sort of spurious worth and solidity about them that compels attention.”
“I remember,” said Mary, “that once at Dheera Dhoon we were talking about a man who had become a Catholic, and someone said that it would be very difficult and require a good deal of moral courage to take a step of that sort. And Mrs. Kendal answered, ‘How can there be any courage in deliberately going from the true to the false? Nothing of the kind.’ And one felt that she would never, by any possibility, see it in any other light.”
I made Mary promise that she would come and help me at the meeting in the library that afternoon. Sallie and Martyn were to be there, of course, and the authors of the production; and we felt that it was probable that one or two of the Kendals might appear in order to inform us that they couldn’t act.