"Don't bother about me, Angelface," he said. "I have to do it. I don't mind. It's better than walking the streets and wondering how I'm going to get along"—and he fell to his ideas again.
Angela shook her head. Poor Eugene! If ever a man deserved success for working, he certainly did. And he was really getting nice again—getting conventional. Perhaps it was because he was getting a little older. It might turn out that he would become a splendid man, after all.
CHAPTER XXXVI
There came a time, however, when all this excitement and wrath and quarreling began to unnerve Eugene and to make him feel that he could not indefinitely stand the strain. After all, his was the artistic temperament, not that of a commercial or financial genius. He was too nervous and restless. For one thing he was first astonished, then amused, then embittered by the continual travesty on justice, truth, beauty, sympathy, which he saw enacted before his eyes. Life stripped of its illusion and its seeming becomes a rather deadly thing to contemplate. Because of the ruthless, insistent, inconsiderate attitude of this employer, all the employees of this place followed his example, and there was neither kindness nor courtesy—nor even raw justice anywhere. Eugene was compelled to see himself looked upon from the beginning, not so much by his own staff as by the other employees of the company, as a man who could not last long. He was disliked forsooth because Summerfield displayed some liking for him, and because his manners did not coincide exactly with the prevailing standard of the office. Summerfield did not intend to allow his interest in Eugene to infringe in any way upon his commercial exactions, but this was not enough to save or aid Eugene in any way. The others disliked him, some because he was a true artist to begin with, because of his rather distant air, and because in spite of himself he could not take them all as seriously as he should.
Most of them seemed little mannikins to him—little second, third, and fourth editions or copies of Summerfield. They all copied that worthy's insistent air. They all attempted to imitate his briskness. Like children, they were inclined to try to imitate his bitter persiflage and be smart; and they demanded, as he said they should, the last ounce of consideration and duty from their neighbors. Eugene was too much of a philosopher not to take much of this with a grain of salt, but after all his position depended on his activity and his ability to get results, and it was a pity, he thought, that he could expect neither courtesy nor favor from anyone. Departmental chiefs stormed his room daily, demanding this, that, and the other work immediately. Artists complained that they were not getting enough pay, the business manager railed because expenses were not kept low, saying that Eugene might be an improvement in the matter of the quality of the results obtained and the speed of execution, but that he was lavish in his expenditure. Others cursed openly in his presence at times, and about him to his employer, alleging that the execution of certain ideas was rotten, or that certain work was delayed, or that he was slow or discourteous. There was little in these things, as Summerfield well knew from watching Eugene, but he was too much a lover of quarrels and excitement as being productive of the best results in the long run to wish to interfere. Eugene was soon accused of delaying work generally, of having incompetent men (which was true), of being slow, of being an artistic snob. He stood it all calmly because of his recent experience with poverty, but he was determined to fight ultimately. He was no longer, or at least not going to be, he thought, the ambling, cowardly, dreaming Witla he had been. He was going to stand up, and he did begin to.
"Remember, you are the last word here, Witla," Summerfield had told him on one occasion. "If anything goes wrong here, you're to blame. Don't make any mistakes. Don't let anyone accuse you falsely. Don't run to me. I won't help you."
It was such a ruthless attitude that it shocked Eugene into an attitude of defiance. In time he thought he had become a hardened and a changed man—aggressive, contentious, bitter.
"They can all go to hell!" he said one day to Summerfield, after a terrific row about some delayed pictures, in which one man who was animated by personal animosity more than anything else had said hard things about him. "The thing that's been stated here isn't so. My work is up to and beyond the mark. This individual here"—pointing to the man in question—"simply doesn't like me. The next time he comes into my room nosing about I'll throw him out. He's a damned fakir, and you know it. He lied here today, and you know that."