The Genius (42 page)

She walked to the window and stared out. Her mother shook her
head. Such effrontery was beyond her. It was like her daughter,
though. She took after her father and herself. Both were
self-willed and determined when aroused. At the same time she was
sorry for her girl, for Carlotta was a capable woman in her way and
very much dissatisfied with life.

"I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, Carlotta,
whether you admit it to me or not," she went on. "The truth is the
truth and it must hurt you a little. You were in that room. We
won't argue that, though. You set out deliberately to do this and
you have done it. Now what I have to say is this: You are going
back to your apartment today, and Mr. Witla is going to leave here
as quick as he can get a room somewhere else. You're not going to
continue this wretched relationship any longer if I can help it.
I'm going to write to his wife and to Norman too, if I can't do
anything else to break this up. You're going to let this man alone.
You have no right to come between him and Mrs. Witla. It's an
outrage, and no one but a vile, conscienceless woman would do it.
I'm not going to say anything to him now, but he's going to leave
here and so are you. When it's all over you can come back if you
want to. I'm ashamed for you. I'm ashamed for myself. If it hadn't
been for my own feelings and those of Davis, I would have ordered
you both out of the house yesterday and you know it. It's
consideration for myself that's made me smooth it over as much as I
have. He, the vile thing, after all the courtesy I have shown him.
Still I don't blame him as much as I do you, for he would never
have looked at you if you hadn't made him. My own daughter! My own
house! Tch! Tch! Tch!"

There was more conversation—that fulgurous, coruscating
reiteration of charges. Eugene was no good. Carlotta was vile. Mrs.
Hibberdell wouldn't have believed it possible if she hadn't seen it
with her own eyes. She was going to tell Norman if Carlotta didn't
reform—over and over, one threat after another.

"Well," she said, finally, "you're going to get your things
ready and go into the city this afternoon. I'm not going to have
you here another day."

"No I'm not," said Carlotta boldly, pondering over all that had
been said. It was a terrible ordeal, but she would not go today.
"I'm going in the morning. I'm not going to pack that fast. It's
too late. I'm not going to be ordered out of here like a
servant."

Her mother groaned, but she gave in. Carlotta could not be made
to do anything she did not want to do. She went to her room, and
presently Mrs. Hibberdell heard her singing. She shook her head.
Such a personality. No wonder Eugene succumbed to her
blandishments. What man wouldn't?

The sequel of this scene was not to be waited for. At dinner
time Mrs. Hibberdell announced in the presence of Carlotta and
Davis that the house was going to be closed up for the present, and
very quickly. She and Carlotta were going to Narragansett for the
month of September and a part of October. Eugene, having been
forewarned by Carlotta, took it with a show of polite surprise. He
was sorry. He had spent such a pleasant time here. Mrs. Hibberdell
could not be sure whether Carlotta had told him or not, he seemed
so innocent, but she assumed that she had and that he like Carlotta
was "putting on." She had informed Davis that for reasons of her
own she wanted to do this. He suspected what they were, for he had
seen signs and slight demonstrations which convinced him that
Carlotta and Eugene had reached an understanding. He did not
consider it anything very much amiss, for Carlotta was a woman of
the world, her own boss and a "good fellow." She had always been
nice to him. He did not want to put any obstacles in her way. In
addition, he liked Eugene. Once he had said to Carlotta jestingly,
"Well, his arms are almost as long as Norman's—not quite
maybe."

"You go to the devil," was her polite reply.

Tonight a storm came up, a brilliant, flashing summer storm.
Eugene went out on the porch to watch it. Carlotta came also.

"Well, wise man," she said, as the thunder rolled. "It's all
over up here. Don't let on. I'll see you wherever you go, but this
was so nice. It was fine to have you near me. Don't get blue, will
you? She says she may write your wife, but I don't think she will.
If she thinks I'm behaving, she won't. I'll try and fool her. It's
too bad, though. I'm crazy about you, Genie."

Now that he was in danger of losing Carlotta, her beauty took on
a special significance for Eugene. He had come into such close
contact with her, had seen her under such varied conditions, that
he had come to feel a profound admiration for not only her beauty
but her intellect and ability as well. One of his weaknesses was
that he was inclined to see much more in those he admired than was
really there. He endowed them with the romance of his own moods—saw
in them the ability to do things which he only could do. In doing
this of course he flattered their vanity, aroused their
self-confidence, made them feel themselves the possessors of latent
powers and forces which before him they had only dreamed of.
Margaret, Ruby, Angela, Christina and Carlotta had all gained this
feeling from him. They had a better opinion of themselves for
having known him. Now as he looked at Carlotta he was intensely
sorry, for she was so calm, so affable, so seemingly efficient and
self reliant, and such a comfort to him in these days.

"Circe!" he said, "this is too bad. I'm sorry. I'm going to hate
to lose you."

"You won't lose me," she replied. "You can't. I won't let you.
I've found you now and I'm going to keep you. This don't mean
anything. We can find places to meet. Get a place where they have a
phone if you can. When do you think you'll go?"

"Right away," said Eugene. "I'll take tomorrow morning off and
look."

"Poor Eugene," she said sympathetically. "It's too bad. Never
mind though. Everything will come out right."

She was still not counting on Angela. She thought that even if
Angela came back, as Eugene told her she would soon, a joint
arrangement might possibly be made. Angela could be here, but she,
Carlotta, could share Eugene in some way. She thought she would
rather live with him than any other man on earth.

It was only about noon the next morning when Eugene had found
another room, for, in living here so long, he had thought of
several methods by which he might have obtained a room in the first
place. There was another church, a library, the postmaster and the
ticket agent at Speonk who lived in the village. He went first to
the postmaster and learned of two families, one the home of a civil
engineer, where he might be welcome, and it was here that he
eventually settled. The view was not quite so attractive, but it
was charming, and he had a good room and good meals. He told them
that he might not stay long, for his wife was coming back soon. The
letters from Angela were becoming most importunate.

He gathered up his belongings at Mrs. Hibberdell's and took a
polite departure. After he was gone Mrs. Hibberdell of course
changed her mind, and Carlotta returned to her apartment in New
York. She communicated with Eugene not only by phone but by special
delivery, and had him meet her at a convenient inn the second
evening of his departure. She was planning some sort of a separate
apartment for them, when Eugene informed her that Angela was
already on her way to New York and that nothing could be done at
present.

Since Eugene had left her at Biloxi, Angela had spent a most
miserable period of seven months. She had been grieving her heart
out, for she imagined him to be most lonely, and at the same time
she was regretful that she had ever left him. She might as well
have been with him. She figured afterward that she might have
borrowed several hundred dollars from one of her brothers, and
carried out the fight for his mental recovery by his side. Once he
had gone she fancied she might have made a mistake matrimonially,
for he was so impressionable—but his condition was such that she
did not deem him to be interested in anything save his recovery.
Besides, his attitude toward her of late had been so affectionate
and in a way dependent. All her letters since he had left had been
most tender, speaking of his sorrow at this necessary absence and
hoping that the time would soon come when they could be together.
The fact that he was lonely finally decided her and she wrote that
she was coming whether he wanted her to or not.

Her arrival would have made little difference except that by now
he was thoroughly weaned away from her again, had obtained a new
ideal and was interested only to see and be with Carlotta. The
latter's easy financial state, her nice clothes, her familiarity
with comfortable and luxurious things—better things than Eugene had
ever dreamed of enjoying—her use of the automobile, her freedom in
the matter of expenditures—taking the purchase of champagne and
expensive meals as a matter of course—dazzled and fascinated him.
It was rather an astonishing thing, he thought, to have so fine a
woman fall in love with him. Besides, her tolerance, her
indifference to petty conventions, her knowledge of life and
literature and art—set her in marked contrast to Angela, and in all
ways she seemed rare and forceful to him. He wished from his heart
that he could be free and could have her.

Into this peculiar situation Angela precipitated herself one
bright Saturday afternoon in September. She was dying to see Eugene
again. Full of grave thoughts for his future, she had come to share
it whatever it might be. Her one idea was that he was sick and
depressed and lonely. None of his letters had been cheerful or
optimistic, for of course he did not dare to confess the pleasure
he was having in Carlotta's company. In order to keep her away he
had to pretend that lack of funds made it inadmissible for her to
be here. The fact that he was spending, and by the time she arrived
had spent, nearly the whole of the three hundred dollars his
picture sold to Carlotta had brought him, had troubled him—not
unduly, of course, or he would not have done it. He had qualms of
conscience, severe ones, but they passed with the presence of
Carlotta or the reading of his letters from Angela.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," he said to himself
from time to time. "I guess I'm no good." He thought it was a
blessing that the world could not see him as he was.

One of the particular weaknesses of Eugene's which should be set
forth here and which will help to illuminate the bases of his
conduct was that he was troubled with a dual point of view—a
condition based upon a peculiar power of analysis—self-analysis in
particular, which was constantly permitting him to tear himself up
by the roots in order to see how he was getting along. He would
daily and hourly when not otherwise employed lift the veil from his
inner mental processes as he might lift the covering from a well,
and peer into its depths. What he saw was not very inviting and
vastly disconcerting, a piece of machinery that was not going as a
true man should, clock fashion, and corresponding in none of its
moral characteristics to the recognized standard of a man. He had
concluded by now, from watching various specimens, that sane men
were honest, some inherently moral, some regulated by a keen sense
of duty, and occasionally all of these virtues and others were
bound up in one man. Angela's father was such an one. M. Charles
appeared to be another. He had concluded from his association with
Jerry Mathews, Philip Shotmeyer, Peter MacHugh and Joseph Smite
that they were all rather decent in respect to morals. He had never
seen them under temptation but he imagined they were. Such a man as
William Haverford, the Engineer of Maintenance of Way, and Henry C.
Litlebrown, the Division Engineer of this immense road, struck him
as men who must have stuck close to a sense of duty and the
conventions of the life they represented, working hard all the
time, to have attained the positions they had. All this whole
railroad system which he was watching closely from day to day from
his little vantage point of connection with it, seemed a clear
illustration of the need of a sense of duty and reliability. All of
these men who worked for this company had to be in good health, all
had to appear at their posts on the tick of the clock, all had to
perform faithfully the duties assigned them, or there would be
disasters. Most of them had climbed by long, arduous years of work
to very modest positions of prominence, as conductors, engineers,
foremen, division superintendents. Others more gifted or more
blessed by fortune became division engineers, superintendents,
vice-presidents and presidents. They were all slow climbers, rigid
in their sense of duty, tireless in their energy, exact,
thoughtful. What was he?

He looked into the well of his being and there he saw nothing
but shifty and uncertain currents. It was very dark down there. He
was not honest, he said to himself, except in money matters—he
often wondered why. He was not truthful. He was not moral. This
love of beauty which haunted him seemed much more important than
anything else in the world, and his pursuit of that seemed to fly
in the face of everything else which was established and important.
He found that men everywhere did not think much of a man who was
crazy after women. They might joke about an occasional lapse as an
amiable vice or one which could be condoned, but they wanted little
to do with a man who was overpowered by it. There was a case over
in the railroad yard at Speonk recently which he had noted, of a
foreman who had left his wife and gone after some hoyden in White
Plains, and because of this offense he was promptly discharged. It
appeared, though, that before this he had occasionally had such
lapses and that each time he had been discharged, but had been
subsequently forgiven. This one weakness, and no other, had given
him a bad reputation among his fellow railroad men—much as that a
drunkard might have. Big John Peters, the engineer, had expressed
it aptly to Eugene one day when he told him in confidence that "Ed
Bowers would go to hell for his hide," the latter being the local
expression for women. Everybody seemed to pity him, and the man
seemed in a way to pity himself. He had a hang-dog look when he was
re-instated, and yet everybody knew that apart from this he was a
fairly competent foreman. Still it was generally understood that he
would never get anywhere.

From that Eugene argued to himself that a man who was cursed
with this peculiar vice could not get anywhere; that he, if he kept
it up, would not. It was like drinking and stealing, and the face
of the world was against it. Very frequently it went hand in hand
with those things—"birds of a feather" he thought. Still he was
cursed with it, and he no more than Ed Bowers appeared to be able
to conquer it. At least he was yielding to it now as he had before.
It mattered not that the women he chose were exceptionally
beautiful and fascinating. They were women, and ought he to want
them? He had one. He had taken a solemn vow to love and cherish
her, or at least had gone through the formality of such a vow, and
here he was running about with Carlotta, as he had with Christina
and Ruby before her. Was he not always looking for some such woman
as this? Certainly he was. Had he not far better be seeking for
wealth, distinction, a reputation for probity, chastity, impeccable
moral honor? Certainly he had. It was the way to distinction
apparently, assuming the talent, and here he was doing anything but
take that way. Conscience was his barrier, a conscience unmodified
by cold self-interest. Shame upon himself! Shame upon his
weak-kneed disposition, not to be able to recover from this
illusion of beauty. Such were some of the thoughts which his
moments of introspection brought him.

On the other hand, there came over him that other phase of his
duality—the ability to turn his terrible searchlight of
intelligence which swept the heavens and the deep as with a great
white ray—upon the other side of the question. It revealed
constantly the inexplicable subtleties and seeming injustices of
nature. He could not help seeing how the big fish fed upon the
little ones, the strong were constantly using the weak as pawns;
the thieves, the grafters, the murderers were sometimes allowed to
prey on society without let or hindrance. Good was not always
rewarded—frequently terribly ill-rewarded. Evil was seen to
flourish beautifully at times. It was all right to say that it
would be punished, but would it? Carlotta did not think so. She did
not think the thing she was doing with him was very evil. She had
said to him over and over that it was an open question, that he was
troubled with an ingrowing conscience. "I don't think it's so bad,"
she once told him. "It depends somewhat on how you were raised."
There was a system apparently in society, but also apparently it
did not work very well. Only fools were held by religion, which in
the main was an imposition, a graft and a lie. The honest man might
be very fine but he wasn't very successful. There was a great to-do
about morals, but most people were immoral or unmoral. Why worry?
Look to your health! Don't let a morbid conscience get the better
of you. Thus she counselled, and he agreed with her. For the rest
the survival of the fittest was the best. Why should he worry? He
had talent.