But in some new
way, vaguely different, it was not the all-important fact which it had
been. It was still something to be glad of, something which he was not
going to forget or underestimate. But it was not everything.
Sitting there alone, his pipe dead between his teeth, Greek Conniston
asked himself many questions which had never suggested themselves to
his complacency before. And he answered them, one by one, without fear
or favor. In what was he better than Brayley, than Toothy even? Was he
a better man physically? No. Was he a better man morally? No. Was he a
better man intellectually? He had thought he was; now he hesitated
long before answering that question. Certainly he had had an education
which they had missed. Certainly his intellect had been trained, in a
fashion, by great men, by learned university professors. But was it
any keener than Brayley's and Toothy's; was it any stronger; was it,
after all, any more highly trained? In a crisis now was his intellect
any better than theirs? In his present environment was it any better?
And finally he answered that question as he had answered the others.
Was he a better man in the composite, in the grand total of manhood?
Measured by all the standards by which men are measured, stripping off
the superficialities of surface culture and clothes, the thin veneer
of education which in his case, as in the cases of the great majority
of young men who have been graduated from this or that university, had
imparted only a sort of finish, a neat, gleaming polish, and no great
metamorphosis of the inner and true being, was he a better man? If
there was any one particular, no matter how small, in which Greek
Conniston was a better man than the men among whom he had moved with
careless contempt, he wanted to know what it was!
"I have been a howling young ass!" he told himself, his contempt
suddenly swerving upon himself.
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