The Genius by Theodore Dreiser

“Here’s one of the printing floors,” he said to Eugene, throwing open a door which revealed a room full of thundering presses of giant size. “Where’s Dodson, boy? Where’s Dodson? Tell him to come here. He’s foreman of our printing department,” he added, turning to Eugene, as the printer’s devil, who had been working at a press, scurried away to find his master. “I told you, I guess, that we have thirty of these presses. There are four more floors just like this.”

“So you did,” replied Eugene. “It certainly is a great concern. I can see that the possibilities of a thing like this are almost limitless.”

“Limitless—I should say! It depends on what you can do with this,” and he tapped Eugene’s forehead. “If you do your part right, and he does his”—turning to White—”there won’t be any limit to what this house can do. That remains to be seen.”

Just then Dodson came bustling up, a shrewd, keen henchman of White’s, and looked at Eugene curiously.

“Dodson, Mr. Witla, the new advertising manager. He’s going to try to help pay for all this wasteful presswork you’re doing. Witla, Mr. Dodson, manager of the printing department.”

The two men shook hands. Eugene felt in a way as though he were talking to an underling, and did not pay very definite attention to him. Dodson resented his attitude somewhat, but gave no sign. His loyalty was to White, and he felt himself perfectly safe under that man’s supervision.

The next visit was to the composing room where a vast army of men were working away at type racks and linotype machines. A short, fat, ink-streaked foreman in a green striped apron that looked as though it might have been made of bed ticking came forward to greet them ingratiatingly. He was plainly nervous at their presence, and withdrew his hand when Eugene offered to take it.

“It’s too dirty,” he said. “I’ll take the will for the deed, Mr. Witla.”

More explanations and laudations of the extent of the business followed.

Then came the circulation department with its head, a tall dark man who looked solemnly at Eugene, uncertain as to what place he was to have in the organization and uncertain as to what attitude he should ultimately have to take. White was “butting into his affairs,” as he told his wife, and he did not know where it would end. He had heard rumors to the effect that there was to be a new man soon who was to have great authority over various departments. Was this he?

There came next the editors of the various magazines, who viewed this triumphal procession with more or less contempt, for to them both Colfax and White were raw, uncouth upstarts blazoning their material superiority in loud-mouthed phrases. Colfax talked too loud and was too vainglorious. White was too hard, bitter and unreasoning. They hated them both with a secret hate but there was no escaping their domination. The need of living salaries held all in obsequious subjection.

“Here’s Mr. Marchwood,” Colfax said inconsiderately of the editor of the International Review. “He thinks he’s making a wonderful publication of that, but we don’t know whether he is yet or not.”

Eugene winced for Marchwood. He was so calm, so refined, so professional.

“I suppose we can only go by the circulation department,” he replied simply, attracted by Eugene’s sympathetic smile.

“That’s all! That’s all!” exclaimed Colfax.

“That is probably true,” said Eugene, “but a good thing ought to be as easily circulated as a poor one. At least it’s worth trying.”

Mr. Marchwood smiled. It was a bit of intellectual kindness in a world of cruel comment.

“It’s a great institution,” said Eugene finally, on reaching the president’s office again. “I’ll begin now and see what I can do.”

“Good luck, my boy. Good luck!” said Colfax loudly. “I’m laying great stress on what you’re going to do, you know.”

“Don’t lean too hard,” returned Eugene. “Remember, I’m just one in a great organization.”

“I know, I know, but the one is all I need up there—the one, see?”

“Yes, yes,” laughed Eugene, “cheer up. We’ll be able to do a little something, I’m sure.”

“A great man, that,” Colfax declared to White as he went away. “The real stuff in that fellow, no flinching there you notice. He knows how to think. Now, Florrie, unless I miss my guess you and I are going to get somewhere with this thing.”

White smiled gloomily, almost cynically. He was not so sure. Eugene was pretty good, but he was obviously too independent, too artistic, to be really stable and dependable. He would never run to him for advice, but he would probably make mistakes. He might lose his head. What must he do to offset this new invasion of authority? Discredit him? Certainly. But he needn’t worry about that. Eugene would do something. He would make mistakes of some kind. He felt sure of it. He was almost positive of it.

Chapter 41

The opening days of this their second return to New York were a period of great joy to Angela. Unlike that first time when she was returning after seven months of loneliness and unhappiness to a sick husband and a gloomy outlook, she was now looking forward to what, in spite of her previous doubts, was a glorious career of dignity, prosperity and abundance. Eugene was such an important man now. His career was so well marked and in a way almost certified. They had a good bit of money in the bank. Their investments in stocks, on which they obtained a uniform rate of interest of about seven per cent., aggregated $30,000. They had two lots, two hundred by two hundred, in Montclair, which were said to be slowly increasing in value and which Eugene now estimated to be worth about six thousand. He was talking about investing what additional money he might save in stocks bearing better interest or some sound commercial venture. When the proper time came, a little later, he might even abandon the publishing field entirely and renew his interest in art. He was certainly getting near the possibility of this.

The place which they selected for their residence in New York was in a new and very sumptuous studio apartment building on Riverside Drive near Seventy-ninth Street, where Eugene had long fancied he would like to live. This famous thoroughfare and show place with its restricted park atmosphere, its magnificent and commanding view of the lordly Hudson, its wondrous woods of color and magnificent sunsets had long taken his eye. When he had first come to New York it had been his delight to stroll here watching the stream of fashionable equipages pour out towards Grant’s Tomb and return. He had sat on a park bench many an afternoon at this very spot or farther up, and watched the gay company of horsemen and horsewomen riding cheerfully by, nodding to their social acquaintances, speaking to the park keepers and road scavengers in a condescending and superior way, taking their leisure in a comfortable fashion and looking idly at the river. It seemed a wonderful world to him at that time. Only millionaires could afford to live there, he thought—so ignorant was he of the financial tricks of the world. These handsomely garbed men in riding coats and breeches; the chic looking girls in stiff black hats, trailing black riding skirts, yellow gloved, and sporting short whips which looked more like dainty canes than anything else, took his fancy greatly. It was his idea at that time that this was almost the apex of social glory—to be permitted to ride here of an afternoon.

Since then he had come a long way and learned a great deal, but he still fancied this street as one of the few perfect expressions of the elegance and luxury of metropolitan life, and he wanted to live on it. Angela was given authority, after discussion, to see what she could find in the way of an apartment of say nine or eleven rooms with two baths or more, which should not cost more than three thousand or three thousand five hundred. As a matter of fact, a very handsome apartment of nine rooms and two baths including a studio room eighteen feet high, forty feet long and twenty-two feet wide was found at the now, to them, comparatively moderate sum of three thousand two hundred. The chambers were beautifully finished in old English oak carved and stained after a very pleasing fifteenth century model, and the walls were left to the discretion of the incoming tenant. Whatever was desired in the way of tapestries, silks or other wall furnishing would be supplied.

Eugene chose green-brown tapestries representing old Rhine Castles for his studio, and blue and brown silks for his wall furnishings elsewhere. He now realized a long cherished dream of having the great wooden cross of brown stained oak, ornamented with a figure of the bleeding Christ, which he set in a dark shaded corner behind two immense wax candles set in tall heavy bronze candlesticks, the size of small bed posts. These when lighted in an otherwise darkened room and flickering ruefully, cast a peculiar spell of beauty over the gay throngs which sometimes assembled here. A grand piano in old English oak occupied one corner, a magnificent music cabinet in French burnt woodwork, stood near by. There were a number of carved and fluted high back chairs, a carved easel with one of his best pictures displayed, a black marble pedestal bearing a yellow stained marble bust of Nero, with his lascivious, degenerate face, scowling grimly at the world, and two gold plated candelabra of eleven branches each hung upon the north wall.