Теодор Драйзер - The Genius

"God, I can't stand this!" he exclaimed, and a little later—"By God, I can't! I can't!"

He dismissed his car at the Battery, telling his chauffeur to take it to the garage, and walking gloomily through all the tall dark streets of lower New York. Here was Broadway where he had often been with Colfax and Winfield. Here was this great world of finance around Wall Street in which he had vaguely hoped to shine. Now these buildings were high and silent—receding from him in a way. Overhead were the clear bright stars, cool and refreshing, but without meaning to him now. How was he to settle it? How adjust it? A year! She would never come back—never! It was all gone. A bright cloud faded. A mirage dissolved into its native nothingness. Position, distinction, love, home—where were they? Yet a little while and all these things would be as though they had never been. Hell! Damn! Curse the brooding fates that could thus plot to destroy him!

Back in her room in Daleview Suzanne had locked herself in. She was not without a growing sense of the tragedy of it. She stared at the floor, recalled his face.

"Oh, oh," she said, and for the first time in her life felt as though she could cry from a great heartache—but she could not.

And in Riverside Drive was another woman brooding, lonely, despondently, desperately, over the nature of the tragedy that was upon her. How were things to be adjusted? How was she to be saved? Oh! oh! her life, her child! If Eugene could be made to understand! If he could only be made to see!

During the weeks which followed Colfax's talk with him, and Suzanne's decision, which amounted practically to a dismissal, Eugene tried to wind up his affairs at the United Magazines Corporation, as well as straighten out his relationship with Angela. It was no easy task. Colfax helped him considerably by suggesting that he should say he was going abroad for the company, for the time being, and should make it appear imperative that he go at once. Eugene called in his department heads, and told them what Colfax suggested, but added that his own interests elsewhere, of which they knew, or suspected, were now so involved that he might possibly not return, or only for a little while at best. He put forward an air of great sufficiency and self–satisfaction, considering the difficulties he was encountering, and the thing passed off as a great wonder, but with no suspicion of any immediate misfortune attaching to him. As a matter of fact, it was assumed that he was destined to a much higher estate—the control of his private interests.

In his talk with Angela he made it perfectly plain that he was going to leave her. He would not make any pretence about this. She ought to know. He had lost his position; he was not going to Suzanne soon; he wanted her to leave him, or he would leave her. She should go to Wisconsin or Europe or anywhere, for the time being, and leave him to fight this thing out alone. He was not indispensable to her in her condition. There were nurses she could hire—maternity hospitals where she could stay. He would be willing to pay for that. He would never live with her any more, if he could help it—he did not want to. The sight of her in the face of his longing for Suzanne would be a wretched commentary—a reproach and a sore shame. No, he would leave her and perhaps, possibly, sometime when she obtained more real fighting courage, Suzanne might come to him. She ought to. Angela might die. Yes, brutal as it may seem, he thought this. She might die, and then—and then― No thought of the child that might possibly live, even if she died, held him. He could not understand that, could not grasp it as yet. It was a mere abstraction.

Eugene took a room in an apartment house in Kingsbridge, where he was not known for the time being, and where he was not likely to be seen. Then there was witnessed that dreary spectacle of a man whose life has apparently come down in a heap, whose notions, emotions, tendencies and feelings are confused and disappointed by some untoward result. If Eugene had been ten or fifteen years older, the result might have been suicide. A shade of difference in temperament might have resulted in death, murder, anything. As it was, he sat blankly at times among the ruins of his dreams speculating on what Suzanne was doing, on what Angela was doing, on what people were saying and thinking, on how he could gather up the broken pieces of his life and make anything out of them at all.

The one saving element in it all was his natural desire to work, which, although it did not manifest itself at first, by degrees later on began to come back. He must do something, if it was not anything more than to try to paint again. He could not be running around looking for a position. There was nothing for him in connection with Blue Sea. He had to work to support Angela, of whom he was now free, if he did not want to be mean; and as he viewed it all in the light of what had happened, he realized that he had been bad enough. She had not been temperamentally suited to him, but she had tried to be. Fundamentally it was not her fault. How was he to work and live and be anything at all from now on?

There were long arguments over this situation between him and Angela—pleas, tears, a crashing downward of everything which was worth while in life to Angela, and then, in spite of her pathetic situation, separation. Because it was November and the landlord had heard of Eugene's financial straits, or rather reverse of fortune, it was possible to relinquish the lease, which had several years to run, and the apartment was given up. Angela, distraught, scarcely knew which way to turn. It was one of those pitiless, scandalous situations in life which sicken us of humanity. She ran helplessly to Eugene's sister, Myrtle, who first tried to conceal the scandal and tragedy from her husband, but afterward confessed and deliberated as to what should be done. Frank Bangs, who was a practical man, as well as firm believer in Christian Science because of his wife's to him miraculous healing from a tumor several years before, endeavored to apply his understanding of the divine science—the omnipresence of good to this situation.

"There is no use worrying about it, Myrtle," he said to his wife, who, in spite of her faith, was temporarily shaken and frightened by the calamities which seemingly had overtaken her brother. "It's another evidence of the workings of mortal mind. It is real enough in its idea of itself, but nothing in God's grace. It will come out all right, if we think right. Angela can go to a maternity hospital for the time being, or whenever she's ready. We may be able to persuade Eugene to do the right thing."

Angela was persuaded to consult a Christian Science practitioner, and Myrtle went to the woman who had cured her and begged her to use her influence, or rather her knowledge of science to effect a rehabilitation for her brother. She was told that this could not be done without his wish, but that she would pray for him. If he could be persuaded to come of his own accord, seeking spiritual guidance or divine aid, it would be a different matter. In spite of his errors, and to her they seemed palpable and terrible enough at present, her faith would not allow her to reproach him, and besides she loved him. He was a strong man, she said, always strange. He and Angela might not have been well mated. But all could be righted in Science . There was a dreary period of packing and storing for Angela, in which she stood about amid the ruins of her previous comfort and distinction and cried over the things that had seemed so lovely to her. Here were all Eugene's things, his paintings, his canes, his pipes, his clothes. She cried over a handsome silk dressing gown in which he had been wont to lounge about—it smacked so much, curiously, of older and happier days. There were hard, cold and determined conferences also in which some of Angela's old fighting, ruling spirit would come back, but not for long. She was beaten now, and she knew it—wrecked. The roar of a cold and threatening sea was in her ears.