This was the question the answer to which was bound to influence the answer that should be given to the other question.
She could not bring herself to think of him as a fool. To be sure it could not be denied that his attitude in relation to certain matters was not at all that which the majority of people would think justifiable; and in the eyes of most persons, her father included, this fact was in itself strong presumptive evidence that he was inclined to be a young fool. A man who declines to fall into line with the prejudices and the conventionalities of the majority of his elders is looked on as a bit of a fool. Yes; unless he succeeds in becoming a leader of thought, in which case he becomes a hero, though as a rule he has been dead some time before this happens. Priscilla knew a good deal in a general way of the history of the world, and the men who made history, in action and by putting their thoughts on paper; but she could not remember one of these who had not begun life by being looked on as a bit of a fool.
Now, of all the institutions that have existed for the conservation of the conventional, Oxford University is the most notorious; and yet people were ready to call that undergraduate, Mr. Wingfield, a giddy young fool because he had refused to accede to one of the most cherished--one of the least worthily cherished--of its conventions!
Putting the matter in this way, she felt that she had every right to decline to accept the judgment of such people.
But what about his own confession to her? Had he not confessed quite frankly to her that he had no brains?
He certainly had done so; but what did this prove except that he had brains? It is only the empty-headed man who thinks that he is largely endowed with brains. She could recall several little things that Jack Wingfield had done--she left out of consideration altogether the things that he had said--which convinced her that he had some ability, and that he possessed something of the supreme gift of understanding how to make people do what he wanted them to do. If he had failed to exercise this valuable endowment of his upon the authorities at Oxford, he had succeeded in doing so upon the two young women who had paid him that remarkable visit on the day of his arrival at his home. By the exercise of extraordinary tact he had induced them to take lunch with him, and to sit with him afterwards in his drawing-room. If any one had said to her the day before this happened, "You will go boldly into a strange house, and you will there meet a young man whom you have never seen before; he will ask you to remain to lunch before you have even heard his name, or he yours, and you will accept his invitation without feeling--you who have been to a 'finishing school'--that you have done anything _outre_"--if any one had said this to her she would at once have denied the possibility of such an incident taking place. And yet it had taken place, and the tact shown by the young man had made it seem quite an ordinary matter.