When he did discover a bit of surplus
energy, he worked it off in the society of his mother and of the
conventional minds and prim teas she surrounded herself with. Result:
A very nice young man, of whom no maid's mother need ever be in
trepidation; a very strong young man, whose substance had not been
wasted in riotous living; a very learned young man, with a Freiberg
mining engineer's diploma and a B.A. sheepskin from Yale; and, lastly,
a very self-centred, self-possessed young man.
Now his greatest virtue lay in this: he had not become hardened in the
mould baked by his several forbears and into which he had been pressed
by his mother's hands. Some atavism had been at work in the making of
him, and he had reverted to that ancestor who sturdily uplifted. But
so far this portion of his heritage had lain dormant. He had simply
remained adjusted to a stable environment. There had been no call upon
the adaptability which was his. But whensoever the call came, being so
constituted, it was manifest that he should adapt, should adjust
himself to the unwonted pressure of new conditions. The maxim of the
rolling stone may be all true; but notwithstanding, in the scheme of
life, the inability to become fixed is an excellence par excellence.
Though he did not know it, this inability was Vance Corliss's most
splendid possession.
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