“You speak of a veneer of civilization. Sometimes I think the veneer is very thin and that man today stands, basically, where he stood five thousand years ago. Dan, it isn’t a question of a veneer of civilization. It’s a question of the adaptability of species to its environment. How long do you suppose it would take you, a white man, to adapt yourself to the environment of such an island, say, as Riva, in eastern Polynesia?”
“I couldn’t hazard a guess.”
“I could, and it would be a fairly accurate guess, since the history of white occupation of the isles of the south Pacific will support my contention. You would be an infinitesimal portion of the moral and physical decay before you had lived there five years. After that you wouldn’t care. It’s like mixing two acids that, combined, produce an explosion. There is never any real adaptability of the human species, you know. As long as you and Tamea lived you would have different thoughts and different thought impulses, different moral values. This difference would prove an attraction at first; then, gradually, you would begin to find her ways inferior to yours, so you would have a contempt for them, which means that presently you would grow to hate Tamea.”
Mellenger sat down and rested his head in his hands. “I wish I could remember my geology and paleontology,” he complained. “However, I never cared for it, so I swept it out of my rag bag of a mind. At any rate, you are much older than Tamea——”
“Oh, not so old as to make a vital difference. About eighteen years.”
“Shut up, you ass. You ditch my train of thought. You are millions of years older than Tamea. She is a Neolithic maid and you’re Paleozoic or Silurian or Cretaceous or something, and in order to reach common ground she’ll have to climb up through a lot of queer strata or you’ll have to dig down. You paint mighty fine pictures, but down in Riva they’re still carving hideous gods out of limestone and making hieroglyphics with a burned stick; they’re still chasing each other around stumps with knobby clubs.”
“You’re the man who can paint pictures!”
Mellenger sighed. “No, I cannot. I used to think I could, but nobody else agrees with me, and now I agree with them. Thought once I’d develop into a great novelist, when all that God Almighty created me for was to be a great newspaper man!. . . Well, I’m not embittered, because I can still think clearly and without illusion. And I can see fairly clearly, too. . . . You’ve got to get rid of this girl.”
“You’re quite bent on clearing the way for Maisie, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But you are my friend, faithful and just to me, and I’ve loved you since our freshman days in college. The years and wealth and success haven’t changed you. You’re still the same shy, helpless, gentle, obstinate, wistful boy, and—and—I—I want to do something for you, old son. The best thing I can do is to clear the decks for Maisie and marry you off to her. She’s a fine woman.”