The «Genius» II

THE “GENIUS” II

if he would let her, just as though nothing had happened. Eugene did not understand this. He did not see how Angela could still love him. He thought she must hate him, having such just grounds, for having by dint of hard work and absence come out of his vast excitement about Carlotta he was beginning to feel that he had done her a terrific injustice and to wish to make amends. He did not want to love her, he did not feel that he could, but he was perfectly willing to behave himself, to try to earn a good living, to take her to theatre and opera as opportunity permitted, and to build up and renew a social relationship with others which should act as a substitute for love. He was beginning to think that there was no honest or happy solution to any affair of the heart in the world. Most people so far as he could see were unhappily married. It seemed to be the lot of mankind to make mistakes in its matrimonial selections. He was probably no more unhappy than many others. Let the world wag as it would for a time. He would try to make some money now, and restore himself in the eyes of the world. Later, life might bring him something – who could tell?

In the next place their financial condition, even before he left the World, was so much better than it had been. By dint of saving and scraping, refusing to increase their expenses more than was absolutely necessary, Angela had succeeded by the time he left the World in laying by over one thousand dollars, and since then it had gone up to three thousand. They had relaxed sufficiently so that now they were wearing reasonably good clothes, were going out and receiving company regularly. It was not possible in their little apartment which they still occupied to entertain more than three or four at the outside, and two was all that Angela ever cared to consider as either plea-

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surable or comfortable; but they entertained this number frequently. There were some slight recoveries of friendship and of the old life – Hudson Dula, Jerry Mathews, who had moved to Newark; William McConnell, Philip Shotmeyer. MacHugh and Smite were away, one painting in Nova Scotia, the other working in Chicago. As for the old art crowd, socialists and radicals included, Eugene attempted to avoid them as much as possible. He knew nothing of the present whereabouts of Miriam Finch and Norma Whitmore. Of Christina Channing he heard much, for she was singing in Grand Opera, her pictures displayed in the paper and upon the billboards. There were many new friends, principally young newspaper artists like Adolph Morgenbau, who took to Eugene and were in a sense his disciples.

Angela’s relations showed up from time to time, among them David Blue, now a sub-lieutenant in the army, with all the army officer’s pride of place and station. There were women friends of Angela’s for whom Eugene cared little – Mrs. Desmas, the wife of the furniture manufacturer at Riverwood, from whom they had rented their four rooms there; Mrs. Wertheim, the wife of the multimillionaire, to whom M. Charles had introduced them; Mrs. Link, the wife of the West Point army captain who had come to the old Washington Square studio with Marietta and who was now stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn; and a Mrs. Juergens, living in a neighboring apartment. As long as they were very poor, Angela was very careful how she revived acquaintances; but when they began to have a little money she decided that she might indulge her predilection and so make life less lonesome for herself. She had always been anxious to build up solid social connections for Eugene, but as yet she did not see how it was to be done.

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When Eugene’s new connection with the Summerfield company was consummated, Angela was greatly astonished and rather delighted to think that if he had to work in this practical field for long it was to be under such comforting auspices – that is, as a superior and not as an underling. Long ago she had come to feel that Eugene would never make any money in a commercial way. To see him mounting in this manner was curious, but not wholly reassuring. They must save money; that was her one cry. They had to move soon, that was very plain, but they mustn’t spend any more than they had to. She delayed until the attitude of Summerfield, upon an accidental visit to their flat, made it commercially advisable.

Summerfield was a great admirer of Eugene’s artistic ability. He had never seen any of his pictures, but he was rather keen to, and once when Eugene told him that they were still on display, one or two of them at Pottle Frères, Jacob Bergman’s and Henry LaRue’s, he decided to visit these places, but put it off. One night when he was riding uptown on the L road with Eugene he decided because he was in a vagrom mood to accompany him home and see his pictures there. Eugene did not want this. He was chagrined to be compelled to take him into their very little apartment, but there was apparently no way of escaping it. He tried to persuade him to visit Pottle Frères instead, where one picture was still on view, but Summerfield would none of that.

“I don’t like you to see this place,” finally he said apologetically, as they were going up the steps of the five-story apartment house. “We are going to get out of here pretty soon. I came here when I worked on the road.”

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Summerfield looked about at the poor neighborhood, the inlet of a canal some two blocks east where a series of black coal pockets were and to the north where there was flat open country and a railroad yard.

“Why, that’s all right,” he said, in his direct, practical way. “It doesn’t make any difference to me. It does to you, though, Witla. You know, I believe in spending money, everybody spending money. Nobody gets anywhere by saving anything. Pay out! Pay out – that’s the idea. I found that out for myself long ago. You’d better move when you get a chance soon and surround yourself with clever people.”

Eugene considered this the easy talk of a man who was successful and lucky, but he still thought there was much in it. Summerfield came in and viewed the pictures. He liked them, and he liked Angela, though he wondered how Eugene ever came to marry her. She was such a quiet little home body. Eugene looked more like a Bohemian or a club man now that he had been worked upon by Summerfield. The soft hat had long since been discarded for a stiff derby, and Eugene’s clothes were of the most practical business type he could find. He looked more like a young merchant than an artist. Summerfield invited them over to dinner at his house, refusing to stay to dinner here, and went his way.

Before long, because of his advice they moved. They had practically four thousand by now, and because of his salary Angela figured that they could increase their living expenses to say two thousand five hundred or even three thousand dollars. She wanted Eugene to save two thousand each year against the day when he should decide to return to art. They sought about together Saturday afternoons and Sundays and finally found

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a charming apartment in Central Park West overlooking the park, where they thought they could live and entertain beautifully. It had a large dining-room and living-room which when the table was cleared away formed one great room. There was a handsomely equipped bathroom, a nice kitchen with ample pantry, three bedrooms, one of which Angela turned into a sewing room, and a square hall or entry which answered as a temporary reception room. There were plenty of closets, gas and electricity, elevator service with nicely uniformed elevator men, and a house telephone. It was very different from their last place, where they only had a long dark hall, stairways to climb, gas only, and no phone. The neighborhood, too, was so much better. Here were automobiles and people walking in the park or promenading on a Sunday afternoon, and obsequious consideration or polite indifference to your affairs from everyone who had anything to do with you.

“Well, the tide is certainly turning,” said Eugene, as they entered it the first day.

He had the apartment redecorated in white and delft-blue and dark blue, getting a set of library and dining-room furniture in imitation rosewood. He bought a few choice pictures which he had seen at various exhibitions to mix with his own, and set a cut-glass bowl in the ceiling where formerly the commonplace chandelier had been. There were books enough, accumulated during a period of years, to fill the attractive white bookcase with its lead-paned doors. Attractive sets of bedroom furniture in bird’s-eye maple and white enamel were secured, and the whole apartment given a very cosy and tasteful appearance. A piano was purchased outright and dinner and breakfast sets of Haviland china. There were many other dain-

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ty accessories, such as rugs, curtains, portières, and so forth, the hanging of which Angela supervised. Here they settled down to a comparatively new and attractive life.

Angela had never really forgiven him his indiscretions of the past, his radical brutality in the last instance, but she was not holding them up insistently against him. There were occasional scenes even yet, the echoes of a far-off storm; but as long as they were making money and friends were beginning to come back she did not propose to quarrel. Eugene was very considerate. He was very, very hard-working. Why should she nag him? He would sit by a window overlooking the park at night and toil over his sketches and ideas until midnight. He was up and dressed by seven, down to his office by eight-thirty, out to lunch at one or later, and only back home at eight or nine o’clock at night. Sometimes Angela would be cross with him for this, sometimes rail at Mr. Summerfield for an inhuman brute, but seeing that the apartment was so lovely and that Eugene was getting along so well, how could she quarrel? It was for her benefit as much as for his that he appeared to be working. He did not think about spending money. He did not seem to care. He would work, work, work, until she actually felt sorry for him.

“Certainly Mr. Summerfield ought to like you,” she said to him one day, half in compliment, half in a rage at a man who would exact so much from him. “You’re valuable enough to him. I never saw a man who could work like you can. Don’t you ever want to stop?”

“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 won-

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dering 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.

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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

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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

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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.”

“Good for you, Witla!” exclaimed Summerfield joyously. The idea of a fighting attitude on Eugene’s part pleased him. “You’re coming to life. You’ll get somewhere now. You’ve got the ideas, but if you let these wolves run over you they’ll do it, and they’ll eat you. I can’t help it. They’re all no good. I wouldn’t trust a single God-damned man in the place!”

So it went. Eugene smiled. Could he ever get used to such a life? Could he ever learn to live with such cheap, inconsiderate, indecent little pups? Summerfield might like them, but he didn’t. This might be a marvellous business policy, but he

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