Free Root of His Evil by James M. Cain Page B

nothing to do with the money at all but was really on account of my marrying Grant. I felt warm and friendly and a little weepy, because it meant something after the day I had had to know I had friends, but at the same time I wanted to get out of there, because what they had in mind was a successful Cinderella and I didn’t feel that way about it at all and even hated the very idea. Besides, no matter how angry I had been at Grant, I had to get back to him.
    Mr. Holden must have guessed what I was thinking, because he banged for order again and made them a little speech saying I had to leave and for them to continue with the reelection of a new president and he would be back. So next day, I found out, they elected a girl by the name of Shirley Silverstein from the Brooklyn restaurant.
    When we got to the street we didn’t take a taxi, we went to a little coffee pot around the corner and I ordered bacon and eggs, and Mr. Holden had a cup of coffee. His whole manner changed as soon as we had done our ordering, and he sat there studying me until finally a bitter little smile came over his face. “Well—how does it feel to be rich, envied and socially prominent?”
    I could see he was horribly disappointed in me for having, as he thought, engaged in a cold-blooded piece of gold-digging, and I had to exercise control to keep from laughing in wild shrieks. However, I merely said: “Please—I didn’t know anything about that until I read the papers.”
    “I think you’re lying.”
    “I’m not lying.”
    He lit a cigarette and studied me for a time, then took my hand again. “How’s it going?”
    “Terribly.”
    “I wanted you myself.”
    “Then why didn’t you ask me?”
    “I made up my mind long ago I would never ask any woman unless I knew she wanted me to—a great deal.”
    “I thought you meant something else.”
    “I did. If you didn’t want me enough for that I wouldn’t want you enough for this.”
    I felt somehow guilty, as though I ought not to be talking of such things with him at all, so I said nothing. After a moment he went on: “Did you?”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you did—and do—that other-way is still open and this one will be—I mean a wedding, a ring and all the rest of it—as soon as you can get an annulment and forget what you did today. Here we are—if you want me you simply don’t go back to him at all.”
    I thought a long time over that and then I said: “I married the man I wanted.”
    “You can’t get away with it. You aren’t of his class—”
    “If I hear any more about his class I’ll—I’ll scream! I’ll stand right up here and scream.”
    “You can scream from now until doomsday and you’ll not scream down his class—his class can’t be destroyed by screaming. I didn’t say he was better than you are—he and a million like him are not worth one girl like you and for all of them together I wouldn’t give the powder it would take to blow them to hell. But he is of one class and you are of another. They have never mixed—from the time of Cromwell, from the time of Danton, from the time of Lenin, they have made war, the one upon the other. The trouble with you is, that you’re American and you have this stupid illusion of equality. If you came from Europe, as I do, you’d know you’re attempting something that can never come to pass, even when a whole caravan of camels march through the eye of a needle. Carrie, you’re doomed. Give this foolish thing up, come with me tonight and we’ll start out together, two people of a similar kind with some chance of success.”
    My eggs came then and I ate them, weighing every word he had said. When I was through I replied: “I married the man I want.”
    When I got home Grant was sitting in a big chair reading a book, but I could tell from the quick way he was breathing that he had just grabbed the book when he heard my key in the lock. He looked up, then looked back to the book. “Oh, hello,