“Oh, I think its standards aren’t at all unwholesome,” he made reply. He could have justified anything, any standard, against Gavan and his standards.
“Unwholesome, my dear Mr. Grainger? That is just what they are. See the beauty of a life like our friend’s here. It judges your barbarous Christless civilization. He lives laborious, simple days. He does his work, he has his friends. His influence upon them counts for more than an outside observer could compute. Great men are among them. I met Lord Taunton at his house last Sunday. A most impressive personality. Even though Mr. Palairet has abandoned the political career, one can’t call him ineffectual when such a man is among his intimates.”
“The monkish type doesn’t appeal to me, I own.”
“Ah, there you touch the point that has troubled me. It is not good for a man to live alone. My chief wish for him is that he may marry. I often urge it on him.”
“One did hear,” Mr. Best went on, his small, ruddy face taking on a look of retrospective reprobation, “that there was an attachment to a certain young woman--the tale was public property--only as such do I allude to it--a very fashionable, very worldly young woman. I was relieved indeed when the rumor came to nothing. He escaped finally, I can’t help fancying it, this summer. I was much relieved.”
“I am rural, old-fashioned, my dear young man, and that type of young woman is one toward which, I own it, I find it difficult to feel charitably. She represents the pagan, the Christless element that I spoke of in our modern world. Her charm could not have been a noble one. Had our friend here succumbed to it, she could only have meant disaster in his life. She would have urged him into ambition, pleasure-seeking, dissipation. Of course I only cite what I have heard in my quiet corner, though I have had glimpses of her, passing with a friend, a very frivolous person, in a motor-car. She looked completely what I had imagined.”
“If you mean Miss Gifford,” said Grainger, trying for temperateness, “I happen to know her. She is anything but a pleasure-seeker, anything but frivolous, anything, above all, but a pagan. If Palairet had been lucky enough to marry her it would have been the best thing that ever happened to him in his life, and a very dubious thing for her. She is a thousand times too good for him.”