``I am scientific,'' replied he.``It's very intelligent to go about distributing praise and blame.To do that is to obey a slightly higher development of the instinct that leads one to scowl at and curse the stone he stumps his toe on.The sensible thing to do is to look at the causes of things--of brutishness in human beings, for example--and to remove those causes.''
``It was wonderful, the way you dragged father back to life and almost saved him.That reminds me.Wait a second, please.''
She went up to her room and got the envelope addressed to Charlton which she had found in the drawer, as her father directed.Charlton opened it, took out five bank notes each of a thousand dollars.She glanced at the money, then at his face.
It did not express the emotion she was expecting.On the contrary, its look was of pleased curiosity.
``Five thousand dollars,'' he said, reflectively.``Your father certainly was a queer mixture of surprises and contradictions.
Now, who would have suspected him of a piece of sentiment like this? Pure sentiment.He must have felt that I'd not be able to save him, and he knew my bill wouldn't be one-tenth this sum.''
``He liked you, and admired you,'' said Jane.
``He was very generous where he liked and admired.''
Charlton put the money back in the envelope, put the envelope in his pocket.``I'll give the money to the Children's Hospital,''
said he.``About six months ago I completed the sum I had fixed on as necessary to my independence; so, I've no further use for money--except to use it up as it comes in.''
``You may marry some day,'' suggested Jane.
``Not a woman who wishes to be left richer than independent,''
replied he.``As for the children, they'll be brought up to earn their own independence.I'll leave only incubators and keepsakes when I die.But no estate.I'm not that foolish and inconsiderate.''
``What a queer idea!'' exclaimed Jane.
``On the contrary, it's simplest common sense.The idea of giving people something they haven't earned-- that's the queer idea.''
``You are SO like Victor Dorn!''
``That reminds me!'' exclaimed Charlton.``It was very negligent of me to forget.The day your father died I dropped in on Victor and told him--him and Selma Gordon--about it.And both asked me to take you their sympathy.They said a great deal about your love for your father, and how sad it was to lose him.They were really distressed.''
Jane's face almost brightened.``I've been rather hurt because Ihadn't received a word of sympathy from-- them,'' she said.
``They'd have come, themselves, except that politics has made a very ugly feeling against them--and Galland's your brother-in-law.''
``I understand,'' said Jane.``But I'm not Galland-- and not of that party.''
``Oh, yes, you are of that party,'' replied Charlton.``You draw your income from it, and one belongs to whatever he draws his income from.Civilization means property--as yet.And it doesn't mean men and women --as yet.So, to know the man or the woman we look at the property.''
``That's hideously unjust,'' cried Jane.
``Don't be utterly egotistical,'' said Charlton.``Don't attach so much importance to your little, mortal, WEAK personality.Try to realize that you're a mere chip in the great game of chance.
You're a chip with the letter P on it--which stands for Plutocracy.And you'll be played as you're labeled.''
``You make it very hard for any one to like you.''
``Well--good-by, then.''
And ignoring her hasty, half-laughing, half-serious protests he took himself away.She was intensely irritated.A rapid change in her outward character had been going forward since her father's death--a change in the direction of intensifying the traits that had always been really dominant, but had been less apparent because softened by other traits now rapidly whithering.
The cause of the change was her inheritance.
Martin Hastings, remaining all his life in utter ignorance of the showy uses of wealth and looking on it with the eyes of a farm hand, had remained the enriched man of the lower classes, at heart a member of his original class to the end.The effect of this upon Jane had been to keep in check all the showy and arrogant, all the upper class, tendencies which education and travel among the upper classes of the East and of Europe had implanted in her.So long as plain old Martin lived, she could not FEEL the position she had--or, rather, would some day have--in the modern social system.But just as soon as he passed away, just as soon as she became a great heiress, actually in possession of that which made the world adore, that which would buy servility, flattery, awe--just so soon did she begin to be an upper-class lady.
She had acquired a superficial knowledge of business --enough to enable her to understand what the various items in the long, long schedule of her holdings meant.Symbols of her importance, of her power.She had studied the ``great ladies'' she had met in her travels and visitings.She had been impressed by the charm of the artistic, carefully cultivated air of simplicity and equality affected by the greatest of these great ladies as those born to wealth and position.To be gentle and natural, to be gracious--that was the ``proper thing.'' So, she now adopted a manner that was if anything too kindly.Her pose, her mask, behind which she was concealing her swollen and still swelling pride and sense of superiority, as yet fitted badly.She ``overacted,'' as youth is apt to do.She would have given a shrewd observer--one not dazzled by her wealth beyond the power of clear sight--the impression that she was pitying the rest of mankind, much as we all pity and forbear with a hopeless cripple.
But the average observer would simply have said: ``What a sweet, natural girl, so unspoiled by her wealth!''--just as the hopeless cripple says, ``What a polite person,'' as he gets the benefit of effusive good manners that would, if he were shrewd, painfully remind him that he was an unfortunate creature.
