Overlooked

"Mabel always keeps up with everybody she makes friends with. She doesn't often make new friends. She told me she had made two new friends here. You and Kranitski."

"She likes him?" I said.

"She likes him very much. She's very fastidious, very hard to please, very critical."

I said everyone seemed to like Kranitski.

"Aunt Netty says he's commonplace, but that's because Mr. Rudd said he was commonplace."

I said Rudd always had theories about people.

"You like Mr. Rudd?" she asked.

I said I did, and reminded her that she had told me she did.

"If you want to know the truth," she said, "I don't. I think he's awful." She laughed. "Isn't it funny? A week ago I would have rather died than admit this to you, but now I don't care. Of course I know he's a good writer and clever and subtle, and all that – but I've come to the conclusion – "

"To what conclusion?"

"Well, that I don't – that I like the other sort of people better."

"The stupid people?"

"No."

"The clever people?"

"No."

"What people?"

"I don't know. Nice people."

"People like – "

"People like Mabel Summer and Princess Kouragine," she interrupted.

"They are both very clever, I think," I said.

"Yes, but it's not that that matters."

I said I thought intelligence mattered a great deal.

"When it's natural," she said.

"Do you think people can become religious if they're not?" she asked suddenly.

I said that I didn't feel that I could, but it certainly did happen to some people.

"I'm afraid it will never happen to me," she said. "I used to hope it might never happen, but now I hope the opposite. Last night, after you went in, Aunt Netty took us to the café, and we all sat there: Mr. Rudd, Mabel, a Frenchman whose name I don't know, and M. Kranitski. The Frenchman was talking about China, and said he had stayed with a French priest there. The priest had asked him why he didn't go to Mass. The Frenchman said he had no faith. The priest had said it was quite simple, he had only to pray to the Sainte Vierge for faith, Mon enfant, c'est bien simple: il faut demander la foi à la Sainte Vierge. He said this, imitating the priest, in a falsetto voice. They all laughed except M. Kranitski, who said, seriously, 'Of course, you should ask the Sainte Vierge.' When the Frenchman and M. Kranitski went away, Mr. Rudd said that in matters of religion Russians were childish, and that M. Kranitski has a simpliste mind."

I said that Kranitski was obviously religious.

"Yes," she said, "but to be like that, one must be born like that."

I said that curious explosions often happened to people. I had heard people talk of divine dynamite.

"Yes, but not to the people who want them to happen."

I said perhaps the method of the French priest in China was the best.

"Yes, if only one could do it – I can't."

I said that I felt as she did about these things.

"I know so many people who are just in the same state," she said. "Perhaps it's like wishing to be musical when one isn't. But after all one does change, doesn't one?"

I said some people did, certainly. When one was in one frame of mind one couldn't imagine what it would be like to be in another.

"Yes," she said, "but I suppose there's a difference between being in one frame of mind and not wishing ever to be in another, and in being in the same frame of mind but longing to be in another."

I asked if she knew how long Kranitski was going to stay at Haréville.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, "it all depends."

"On his health?"

"I don't think so. He's quite well."

"Religion must be all or nothing," I said, going back to the topic.

"Yes, of course."

"If I was religious I should – "

She interrupted me in the middle of my sentence.

"Mr. Rudd is writing a book," she said. "Aunt Netty asked him what it was about, and he said it was going to be a private book, a book that he would only write in his holidays for his own amusement. She asked him whether he had begun it. He said he was only planning it, but he had got an idea. He doesn't like Mabel Summer. He thinks she is laughing at him. She isn't really, but she sees through him. I don't mean he pretends to be anything he isn't, but she sees all there is to see, and no more. He likes one to see more. Aunt Netty sees a great deal more. I see less probably. I'm unfair to him, I know. I know I'm very intolerant. You are so tolerant."

I said I wasn't really, but kept my intolerances to myself out of policy. It was a prudent policy for one in my position.

"Mr. Rudd adores you," she said. "He says you are so acute, so sensitive and so sensible."

I said I was a good listener.

"Has he told you about his book?"

I said that he had told me what he had told them.