"What do you think I mean?"
"Well, I don't know. It sounds as if you were trying to tell me that
you'd never cared anything about me."
"How much did you ever care about me?"
"I used to think I couldn't live without you."
"And you've found out that you can."
"I've had to, for one thing; and for another, I'm older now, and I know
that nobody is really essential to anybody else. All the same--"
"Yes, Tom; all the same--what?"
"If you'd be willing to take what I can offer you--"
"Take what you can offer me! You're not offering me anything."
He explained his ambitions, for her as well as for himself. Life was
big; it was full of opportunity; his origin didn't chain any man who
knew how to burst its bonds. He did know. He didn't know how he knew,
but he did. He just had it in him. When you knew you had it in you,
you didn't depend on anyone to tell you; you yourself became your own
corroboration.
But in order to fulfil this conviction of inner power you needed to
know things. You needed the experience, the standing, the rubbing up
against other men, which you got in college in a way that you didn't
get anywhere else. You got some of it by going into business, but only
some of it. In any case, it was no more than a chance in business.
You might get it or you might not. With the best will in the world on
your part, it might slip by you. In college it couldn't slip by you,
if you had any intelligence at all. All the past experience of mankind
was gathered up there for you to profit by. You could only absorb a
little of it, of course. But you acquired the habit of absorbing. It
was not so much what you learned that gave college its value; it was
the learning of a habit of learning. You got an attitude of mind. Your
attitude of mind was what made you, what determined your place in the
world. With a closed mind you got nowhere; with an open mind the world
was as the sea driving all its fish into your net. College opened the
mind; it was the easiest method by which it could be done. If she would
only be patient till he had got through the preliminary training and
had found the job for which he would be fitted....
"But what's the use of waiting when you can get a job for which you'd
be fitted right off the bat? There's a family up here on the hill that
wants a shofer. They give a hundred and twenty-five a month. Why go to
all that trouble about opening your mind when here's the job handed out
to you? The gentleman-friend I told you about says that business has
got college skinned. He says colleges are punk. He says lots of men in
business won't take a man if he's been to college. They'd want a fellow
with some get-up-and-get to him."
He began to understand her as he had never done before. Maisie had
the closed mind. She was Honey's "orthodock," the type which accepts
the limitations other people fix for it. He registered the thought,
long forming in his mind subconsciously, that among American types the
orthodock is the commonest. It was not true, as so often assumed, that
the average American is keen to forge ahead and become something bigger
than he is. That was one of the many self-flattering American ideals
that had no relation to life. Mrs. Ansley's equality of opportunity was
another. People passed these phrases on, and took for granted they were
true, when in everyday practice they were false.
There could be no breaking forth into a larger life so long as the
national spirit made for repression, suppression, restriction, and
denial. Maisie was but one of the hundred and sixteen millions of
Americans out of a possible hundred and seventeen on whom all the
pressure of social, industrial, educational, and religious life had
been brought to bear to keep her mind shut, her tastes puerile, and
her impulses to expansion thwarted. With a great show of helping and
blessing the less fortunate, American life, he was coming to believe,
was organized to force them back, and beat them into subjection. The
hundred and seventeenth million loved to believe that it wasn't so; it
was not according to their consciences that it should be so; but the
result could be seen in the hundred and sixteen million minds drilled
to disability, as Maisie's was.
A young man not yet hardened to life's injustices, he saw himself
rushing to Maisie's aid, to make the best of her. Experience would
help her as it had helped him. The shriveled bud of her mind would
unfold in warmth and sunshine. This would be in their future together.
In the meantime he must clear the ground of the present by getting rid
of pretence.
"There's one thing I want to tell you, Maisie, something I'm rather
ashamed of."
The lapis lazuli eyes widened in a look of wonder. He might be going to
tell her of another girl.
"You know, as I've just said, that when we got engaged I was only
sixteen. I didn't know anything about anything. I thought I did, of
course; but then all fellows of sixteen think that. I'd never had
anyone to teach me, or show me the right hang of things. You saw for
yourself how I lived with Honey; and before that, as you know, I'd been
a State ward. Further back than that--but I can't talk about it yet.
Some day when we're married, and know each other better--"
"I'm not asking you. I don't care."
"No, I know you don't care, and that you're not asking me; but I want
you to understand how it was that I was so ignorant, so much more
ignorant than I suppose any other fellow would have been. When I went
out to buy that ring you've got on--"
He knew by the horror in her face that she divined what he had to tell
her. He knew too that she had already been afraid of it.
"You're not going to say that it isn't a real diamond?"
To nerve himself he had to look at her steadily. Confessing a murder
would have been easier.
"No, Maisie, it isn't a real diamond. At the time I bought it I didn't
know what a real diamond was. I'm not sure that I know now--"
He stopped because, without taking her eyes from his, she was slipping
the ring from her finger. She was slipping, too, an illusion from her
mind. He knew now that to be trifled with in love, to be betrayed in a
great trust, would be small things to Maisie as compared to this kind
of deception. Her wrath and contempt were the more scathing to behold
because of her cherry-colored prettiness.
The ring lay on the table. Drawing in the second finger of her right
hand, she made of it a spring against her thumb. She loosed the spring
suddenly. The faked diamond sped across the table hitting against his
hand. He picked it up, putting it out of sight in his waistcoat pocket.
For a fellow of nineteen, eager to be something big, no lower depth of
humiliation could ever be imagined.