reason—because her own unrest and frenzy made her lash out constantly against the world, praising one week, condemning the next, accusing life and people of doing her some injury or wrong that she had done herself—it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Helen now lashed out about Eugene to their mother.
And because Eugene was strung on the same wires, shaped from the same clay, cut from the same kind and plan and quality, he stood there in the hall as he heard her, his face convulsed and livid, his limbs trembling with rage, his bowels and his heart sick and trembling with a hideous grey nausea of hopelessness and despair, his throat choking with an intolerable anguish of resentment and wrong, as he heard Helen’s voice, and before he rushed back into the kitchen to quarrel with her and his mother.
“Well, now,” he heard his mother say in a diplomatic and hopeful tone that somehow only served to increase his feeling of rage and exasperation—“well, now—well, now,” she said, “let’s wait and see! Let’s wait and see what happens with this play. Perhaps he’ll hear tomorrow that they have taken it. Maybe it’s going to be all right, after all!”
“Going to be all right!” Eugene fairly screamed at this juncture, rushing in upon them in the kitchen. “You’re God-damned right it’s going to be all right. I’ll tell you what’s all right!” he panted, because his breath was labouring against his ribs as if he had run up a steep hill—“if it was some damned real-estate man, that would be all right! If it’s some cheap low-down lawyer, that would be all right! If it was some damned rascal sitting on his tail up here in the bank, cheating you out of all you’ve got, that would be all right—hey?” he snarled, conscious that his words had no meaning or coherence, but unable to utter any of the things he wished to say and that welled up in that wave of hot and choking resentment. “O yes! The big man! The great man! The big deacon—Mr. Scroop Pegram—the big bank president—that would be all right, wouldn’t it?” he cried in a choked and trembling voice. “You’d get down on your hands and knees, and crawl if he spoke to you, wouldn’t you?—’O thank you, Mr. Pegram, for letting me put my money in your bank so you can loan it out to a bunch of God-damn real-estate crooks,’” he sneered, in an infuriated parody of whining servility. “’Thank you, sir,’” he said, and in spite of the fact that these words made almost no coherent meaning, his mother began to purse her lips rapidly in an excited fashion, and his sister’s big-boned face reddened with anger.
