I said I didn't suppose that Rudd had noticed anything. He didn't seem to me to notice that kind of thing.
She agreed, but said he had moments of lucidity which were unexpected and disconcerting. "For one second," she said, "he suspected we were laughing at him. Aunt Netty manages him perfectly. He loves her. She knows exactly what to say to him. He knows she is not critical. I think he is rather suspicious. How funny clever men are!" she said, after a pause.
I said she really meant to say, "How stupid clever men are!" I reminded her of the profound saying of one of Kipling's women, that the stupidest woman could manage a clever man, but it took a very clever woman to manage a fool.
She said she had always found the most disconcerting element in stupid people—or people who were thought to be stupid—was their sudden flashes of lucidity, when they saw things quite plainly. Clever men didn't have these flashes, but the curious thing was that Rudd did.
I said I thought this was because, apart from his literary talent, which was an accomplishment like conjuring or acting, quite separate from the rest of his personality, Rudd was not a clever man. All his cleverness went into his books. I said I thought there were two kinds of writers: those who were better than their books, and of whom the books were only the overflow, and those who put every drop of their being into the books and were left with a dry and uninteresting shell.
She said she thought she had only met that kind.
"Aunt Netty," she said, "loves all authors and it's odd considering——"
She stopped, but I ended her sentence: "She has never read a book in her life."
Miss Brandon laughed and said I was unfair.
"Reading tires her. I don't think anyone has time to read a book after they are eighteen. I haven't. But I feel I am a terrible wet blanket to all Aunt Netty's friends. I can't even pretend to be enthusiastic. You see I like the other sort of people so much better."