“Listen!”
There were similarities enough between them. She also could drive full force toward a single point: whip her intensity till it became almost a deterrent to the average dull person. But Tom could meet her at any pitch. He had one talent which she lacked and he knew this and would ruthlessly exploit it. He had a ready sense of the ridiculous: a light riding mood with which to damper her flame.
Cornelia swung upon him and thrust out her hand; her eyes blazed: “Listen!”
Tom, on the couch, curled his legs under him; he straightened like a schoolboy before his teacher, and threw a mock-serious frown across his face. Cornelia’s onslaught could not resist. It turned into argument—argument gradually stiffer, less alive against his mocking.
“David is not fit, Tom, he never could be, for your sort of life.” He was still. “What he needs, it seems to me, is a training that will permit him to develop what is deepest and truest in him: his sense of reserve, his great purity of heart. The finest thing about David is his nature’s implicit criticism of the life about him.” Tom still listened. “If he is flung into a sophisticated life, his own incorrigible innocence will merely thwart whatever he does: while that life goes on thwarting his nature. He will be nothing, arrive nowhere.” She stopped.
“You women have a genius for simplifying reality!” Tom threw this out in order to gain time. He knew it would goad Cornelia into eloquence. Any disparaging generalization on her sex did always.
“Indeed! Well, you men have a genius for complicating reality till it’s as false and absurd as a wired and painted and lace-draped lily. A fine botch you’ve made of your reality. Every step of the world is so cluttered with barbed-wire rules and pitfall standards that only an acrobat can keep his feet. Why don’t you answer me? David is no man to go to the top, tricking and beating every one else down, is he?”
“No.”
“He is a simple, gentle boy. That’s what he must remain.” Tom smiled: Cornelia answered his smile. “Fortunately, he has an excellent place at his uncle’s. There is design in that. At least, there is luck. It means something. It means the pure and the brave in Davie may have a chance to grow in peace. We need that. We’ve enough of you acrobats.”
Now Tom was ready. “David’s lovely sense of right will be as useful, unless it comes in touch with the real world, as a violet under a hedge.”