“You’re too tiresome, my dear man,” Mrs. Brook returned, “with your ridiculous simplifications. Fanny’s NOT ‘bad’; she’s magnificently good—in the sense of being generous and simple and true, too adorably unaffected and without the least mesquinerie. She’s a great calm silver statue.”
Mr. Cashmore showed, on this, something of the strength that comes from the practice of public debate. “Then why are you glad your daughter doesn’t like her?”
Mrs. Brook smiled as with the sadness of having too much to triumph. “Because I’m not, like Fanny, without mesquinerie. I’m not generous and simple. I’m exaggeratedly anxious about Nanda. I care, in spite of myself, for what people may say. Your wife doesn’t—she towers above them. I can be a shade less brave through the chance of my girl’s not happening to feel her as the rest of us do.”
Mr. Cashmore too heavily followed. “To ‘feel’ her?”
Mrs. Brook floated over. “There would be in that case perhaps something to hint to her not to shriek on the house-tops. When you say,” she continued, “that one admits, as regards Fanny, anything wrong, you pervert dreadfully what one does freely grant—that she’s a great glorious pagan. It’s a real relief to know such a type—it’s like a flash of insight into history. None the less if you ask me why then it isn’t all right for young things to ‘shriek’ as I say, I have my answer perfectly ready.” After which, as her visitor seemed not only too reduced to doubt it, but too baffled to distinguish audibly, for his credit, between resignation and admiration, she produced: “Because she’s purely instinctive. Her instincts are splendid—but it’s terrific.”
“That’s all I ever maintained it to be!” Mr. Cashmore cried. “It IS terrific.”
“Well,” his friend answered, “I’m watching her. We’re all watching her. It’s like some great natural poetic thing—an Alpine sunrise or a big high tide.”
“You’re amazing!” Mr. Cashmore laughed. “I’m watching her too.”
“And I’m also watching YOU!” Mrs. Brook lucidly continued. “What I don’t for a moment believe is that her bills are paid by any one. It’s MUCH more probable,” she sagaciously observed, “that they’re not paid at all.”
“Oh well, if she can get on that way—!”