The Conflict [118]
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.
Of all the weeds that infest the human garden snobbishness, the commonest, is the most prolific, and it is a mighty cross breeder, too--modifying every flower in the garden, changing colors from rich to glaring, changing odors from perfumes to sickening-sweet or to stenches. The dead hands of Martin Hastings scattered showers of shining gold upon his daughter's garden; and from these seeds was springing a heavy crop of that most prolific of weeds.
She was beginning to resent Charlton's manner-- bluff, unceremonious, candid, at times rude. He treated women exactly as he treated men, and he treated all men as intimates, free and easy fellow travelers afoot upon a dusty, vulgar highway. She had found charm in that manner, so natural to the man of no pretense, of splendid physical proportions, of the health of a fine tree. She was beginning to get into the state of mind at which practically all very rich people in a civilized society sooner or later arrive--a state of mind that makes it impossible for any to live with or near them except hirelings and dependents. The habit of power of any kind breeds intolerance of equality of level intercourse. This is held in check, often held entirely in check, where the power is based upon mental superiority; for the very superiority
``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.
Of all the weeds that infest the human garden snobbishness, the commonest, is the most prolific, and it is a mighty cross breeder, too--modifying every flower in the garden, changing colors from rich to glaring, changing odors from perfumes to sickening-sweet or to stenches. The dead hands of Martin Hastings scattered showers of shining gold upon his daughter's garden; and from these seeds was springing a heavy crop of that most prolific of weeds.
She was beginning to resent Charlton's manner-- bluff, unceremonious, candid, at times rude. He treated women exactly as he treated men, and he treated all men as intimates, free and easy fellow travelers afoot upon a dusty, vulgar highway. She had found charm in that manner, so natural to the man of no pretense, of splendid physical proportions, of the health of a fine tree. She was beginning to get into the state of mind at which practically all very rich people in a civilized society sooner or later arrive--a state of mind that makes it impossible for any to live with or near them except hirelings and dependents. The habit of power of any kind breeds intolerance of equality of level intercourse. This is held in check, often held entirely in check, where the power is based upon mental superiority; for the very superiority