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.
It was thus that Eugene floundered to and fro, and it was in this state,
brooding and melancholy, that Angela found him on her arrival. He was as
gay as ever at times, when he was not thinking, but he was very thin and
hollow-eyed, and Angela fancied that it was overwork and worry which
kept him in this state. Why had she left him? Poor Eugene! She had clung
desperately to the money he had given her, and had most of it with her
ready to be expended now for his care. She was so anxious for his
recovery and his peace of mind that she was ready to go to work herself
at anything she could find, in order to make his path more easy. She was
thinking that fate was terribly unjust to him, and when he had gone to
sleep beside her the first night she lay awake and cried. Poor Eugene!
To think he should be tried so by fate. Nevertheless, he should not be
tortured by anything which she could prevent. She was going to make him
as comfortable and happy as she could. She set about to find some nice
little apartment or rooms where they could live in peace and where she
could cook Eugene's meals for him. She fancied that maybe his food had
not been exactly right, and when she got him where she could manifest a
pretence of self-confidence and courage that he would take courage from
her and grow better. So she set briskly about her task, honeying Eugene
the while, for she was confident that this above all things was the
thing he needed. She little suspected what a farce it all appeared to
him, how mean and contemptible he appeared to himself. He did not care
to be mean--to rapidly disillusion her and go his way; and yet this dual
existence sickened him. He could not help but feel that from a great
many points of view Angela was better than Carlotta. Yet the other woman
was wider in her outlook, more gracious in her appearance, more
commanding, more subtle. She was a princess of the world, subtle, deadly
Machiavellian, but a princess nevertheless. Angela was better described
by the current and acceptable phrase of the time--a "thoroughly good
woman," honest, energetic, resourceful, in all things obedient to the
race spirit and the conventional feelings of the time. He knew that
society would support her thoroughly and condemn Carlotta, and yet
Carlotta interested him more. He wished that he might have both and no
fussing. Then all would be beautiful. So he thought.