The Genius (10 page)

"Are you ready?" she asked.

He nodded gloomily, reproachfully.

From drawing from the nude, which Eugene came to do very
successfully that winter, his interest switched to his work in the
illustration class where costume figures were used. Here, for the
first time, he tried his hand at wash drawings, the current medium
for magazine work, and was praised after a time for his execution.
Not always, however; for the instructors, feeling that harsh
criticism would make for steadier effort, pooh-poohed some of his
best work. But he had faith in what he was destined to do, and
after sinking to depths of despair he would rise to great heights
of self-confidence.

His labor for the Peoples' Furniture Company was becoming a
rather dreary grind when Vincent Beers, the instructor in the
illustration class, looking over his shoulder one Wednesday
afternoon said:—"You ought to be able to make a little money by
your work pretty soon, Witla."

"Do you think so?" questioned Eugene.

"It's pretty good. There ought to be a place on one of the
newspapers here for a man like you—an afternoon newspaper possibly.
Did you ever try to get on?"

"I did when I first came to the city, but they didn't want
anyone. I'm rather glad they didn't now. I guess they wouldn't have
kept me very long."

"You draw in pen and ink pretty well, don't you?"

"I thought I liked that best of all at first."

"Well, then, they ought to be able to use you. I wouldn't stay
very long at it though. You ought to go to New York to get in the
magazine illustration field—there's nothing out here. But a little
newspaper work now wouldn't hurt you."

Eugene decided to try the afternoon papers, for he knew that if
he got work on one of these he could still continue his night
classes. He could give the long evening session to the illustration
class and take an occasional night off to work on the life studies.
That would make an admirable arrangement. For several days he took
an hour after his work to make inquiry, taking with him some
examples of his pen and inks. Several of the men he saw liked what
he had to show, but he found no immediate opening. There was only
one paper, one of the poorest, that offered him any encouragement.
The editor-in-chief said he might be in need of a man shortly. If
Eugene would come in again in three or four weeks he could tell
him. They did not pay very much—twenty-five dollars to
beginners.

Eugene thought of this as a great opportunity, and when he went
back in three weeks and actually secured the place, he felt that he
was now fairly on the road to prosperity. He was given a desk in a
small back room on a fourth floor where there was accidentally west
and north light. He was in a department which held two other men,
both several years older than himself, one of whom posed as "dean"
of the staff.

The work here was peculiar in that it included not only pen and
ink but the chalk plate process which was a method of drawing with
a steel point upon a zinc plate covered with a deposit of chalk,
which left a design which was easily reproduced. Eugene had never
done this, he had to be shown by the "dean," but he soon picked it
up. He found it hard on his lungs, for he had constantly to keep
blowing the chalk away as he scratched the surface of the plate,
and sometimes the dust went up into his nostrils. He hoped
sincerely there would not be much of this work, but there was
rather an undue proportion at first owing to the fact that it was
shouldered on to him by the other two—he being the beginner. He
suspected as much after a little time, but by that time he was
beginning to make friends with his companions and things were not
so bad.

These two, although they did not figure vastly in his life,
introduced him to conditions and personalities in the Chicago
newspaper world which broadened him and presented points of view
which were helpful. The elder of the two, the "dean," was dressy
and art-y; his name was Horace Howe. The other, Jeremiah Mathews,
Jerry for short, was short and fat, with a round, cheerful, smiling
countenance and a wealth of coarse black hair. He loved chewing
tobacco, was a little mussy about his clothes, but studious,
generous and good natured. Eugene found that he had several
passions, one for good food, another for oriental curios and a
third for archæology. He was alive to all that was going on in the
world, and was utterly without any prejudices, social, moral or
religious. He liked his work, and whistled or talked as he did it.
Eugene took a secret like for him from the beginning.

It was while working on this paper that Eugene first learned
that he really could write. It came about accidentally for he had
abandoned the idea that he could ever do anything in newspaper
work, which was the field he had originally contemplated. Here
there was great need for cheap Sunday specials of a local
character, and in reading some of these, which were given to him
for illustration, he came to the conclusion that he could do much
better himself.

"Say," he asked Mathews, "who writes the articles in here?" He
was looking over the Sunday issue.

"Oh, the reporters on the staff—anyone that wants to. I think
they buy some from outsiders. They only pay four dollars a
column."

Eugene wondered if they would pay him, but pay or no pay he
wanted to do them. Maybe they would let him sign his name. He saw
that some were signed. He suggested he believed he could do that
sort of thing but Howe, as a writer himself, frowned on this. He
wrote and drew. Howe's opposition piqued Eugene who decided to try
when the opportunity offered. He wanted to write about the Chicago
River, which he thought he could illustrate effectively. Goose
Island, because of the description he had read of it several years
before, the simple beauties of the city parks where he liked to
stroll and watch the lovers on Sundays. There were many things, but
these stood as susceptible of delicious, feeling illustration and
he wanted to try his hand. He suggested to the Sunday Editor,
Mitchell Goldfarb, with whom he had become friendly, that he
thought something nice in an illustrative way could be done on the
Chicago River.

"Go ahead, try your hand," exclaimed that worthy, who was a
vigorous, robust, young American of about thirty-one, with a gaspy
laugh that sounded as if someone had thrown cold water down his
back. "We need all that stuff. Can you write?"

"I sometimes think I might if I practiced a little."

"Why not," went on the other, who saw visions of a little free
copy. "Try your hand. You might make a good thing of it. If your
writing is anything like your drawing it will be all right. We
don't pay people on the staff, but you can sign your name to
it."

This was enough for Eugene. He tried his hand at once. His art
work had already begun to impress his companions. It was rough,
daring, incisive, with a touch of soul to it. Howe was already
secretly envious, Mathews full of admiration. Encouraged thus by
Goldfarb Eugene took a Sunday afternoon and followed up the
branches of the Chicago River, noting its wonders and
peculiarities, and finally made his drawings. Afterward he went to
the Chicago library and looked up its history—accidentally coming
across the reports of some government engineers who dwelt on the
oddities of its traffic. He did not write an article so much as a
panegyric on its beauty and littleness, finding the former where
few would have believed it to exist. Goldfarb was oddly surprised
when he read it. He had not thought Eugene could do it.

The charm of Eugene's writing was that while his mind was full
of color and poetry he had logic and a desire for facts which gave
what he wrote stability. He liked to know the history of things and
to comment on the current phases of life. He wrote of the parks,
Goose Island, the Bridewell, whatever took his fancy.

His real passion was for art, however. It was a slightly easier
medium for him—quicker. He thrilled to think, sometimes, that he
could tell a thing in words and then actually draw it. It seemed a
beautiful privilege and he loved the thought of making the
commonplace dramatic. It was all dramatic to him—the wagons in the
streets, the tall buildings, the street lamps—anything,
everything.

His drawing was not neglected meantime, but seemed to get
stronger.

"I don't know what there is about your stuff, Witla, that gets
me," Mathews said to him one day, "but you do something to it. Now
why did you put those birds flying above that smokestack?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Eugene. "It's just the way I feel
about it. I've seen pigeons flying like that."

"It's all to the good," replied Mathews. "And then you handle
your masses right. I don't see anybody doing this sort of thing
over here."

He meant in America, for these two art workers considered
themselves connoisseurs of pen and ink and illustration generally.
They were subscribers to
Jugend
,
Simplicissimus
,
Pick-Me-Up
and the radical European art journals. They
were aware of Steinlen and Cheret and Mucha and the whole rising
young school of French poster workers. Eugene was surprised to hear
of these men and these papers. He began to gain confidence in
himself—to think of himself as somebody.

It was while he was gaining this knowledge—finding out who was
who and what and why that he followed up his relationship with
Angela Blue to its logical conclusion—he became engaged to her. In
spite of his connection with Ruby Kenny, which continued unbroken
after the dinner, he nevertheless felt that he must have Angela;
partly because she offered more resistance than any girl since
Stella, and partly because she appeared to be so innocent, simple
and good hearted. And she was altogether lovely. She had a
beautiful figure, which no crudity of country dressmaking could
conceal. She had her wonderful wealth of hair and her large,
luring, water-clear blue eyes. She had colorful lips and cheeks, a
natural grace in walking, could dance and play the piano. Eugene
looked at her and came to the conclusion after a time that she was
as beautiful as any girl he had ever seen—that she had more soul,
more emotion, more sweetness. He tried to hold her hand, to kiss
her, to take her in his arms, but she eluded him in a careful, wary
and yet half yielding way. She wanted him to propose to her, not
because she was anxious to trap him, but because her conventional
conscience told her these things were not right outside a definite
engagement and she wanted to be engaged first. She was already in
love with him. When he pleaded, she was anxious to throw herself in
his arms in a mad embrace, but she restrained herself, waiting. At
last he flung his arms about her as she was sitting at the piano
one evening and holding her tight pressed his lips to her
cheek.

She struggled to her feet. "You musn't," she said. "It isn't
right. I can't let you do that."

"But I love you," he exclaimed, pursuing her. "I want to marry
you. Will you have me, Angela? Will you be mine?"

She looked at him yearningly, for she realized that she had made
him do things her way—this wild, unpractical, artistic soul. She
wanted to yield then and there but something told her to wait.

"I won't tell you now," she said, "I want to talk to papa and
mamma. I haven't told them anything as yet. I want to ask them
about you, and then I'll tell you when I come again."

"Oh, Angela," he pleaded.

"Now, please wait, Mr. Witla," she pleaded. She had never yet
called him Eugene. "I'll come again in two or three weeks. I want
to think it over. It's better."

He curbed his desire and waited, but it made all the more
vigorous and binding the illusion that she was the one woman in the
world for him. She aroused more than any woman yet a sense of the
necessity of concealing the eagerness of his senses—of pretending
something higher. He even tried to deceive himself into the belief
that this was a spiritual relationship, but underneath all was a
burning sense of her beauty, her physical charm, her passion. She
was sleeping as yet, bound in convention and a semi-religious
interpretation of life. If she were aroused! He closed his eyes and
dreamed.

In two weeks Angela came back, ready to plight her faith; and
Eugene was waiting, eager to receive it. He had planned to meet her
under the smoky train shed of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul
depot, to escort her to Kinsley's for dinner, to bring her some
flowers, to give her a ring he had secured in anticipation, a ring
which had cost him seventy-five dollars and consumed quite all his
savings; but she was too regardful of the drama of the situation to
meet him anywhere but in the parlor of her aunt's house, where she
could look as she wished. She wrote that she must come down early
and when he arrived at eight of a Saturday evening she was dressed
in the dress that seemed most romantic to her, the one she had worn
when she first met him at Alexandria. She half suspected that he
would bring flowers and so wore none, and when he came with pink
roses, she added those to her corsage. She was a picture of rosy
youth and trimness and not unlike the character by whose name he
had christened her—the fair Elaine of Arthur's court. Her yellow
hair was done in a great mass that hung sensuously about her neck;
her cheeks were rosy with the elation of the hour; her lips moist;
her eyes bright. She fairly sparkled her welcome as he entered.

At the sight of her Eugene was beside himself. He was always at
the breaking point over any romantic situation. The beauty of the
idea—the beauty of love as love; the delight of youth filled his
mind as a song might, made him tense, feverish, enthusiastic.

"You're here at last, Angela!" he said, trying to keep hold of
her hands. "What word?"

"Oh, you musn't ask so soon," she replied. "I want to talk to
you first. I'll play you something."

"No," he said, following her as she backed toward the piano. "I
want to know. I must. I can't wait."

"I haven't made up my mind," she pleaded evasively. "I want to
think. You had better let me play."

"Oh, no," he urged.

"Yes, let me play."

She ignored him and swept into the composition, but all the
while she was conscious of him hovering over her—a force. At the
close, when she had been made even more emotionally responsive by
the suggestion of the music, he slipped his arms about her as he
had once before, but she struggled away again, slipping to a corner
and standing at bay. He liked her flushed face, her shaken hair,
the roses awry at her waist.

"You must tell me now," he said, standing before her. "Will you
have me?"

She dropped her head down as though doubting, and fearing
familiarities; he slipped to one knee to see her eyes. Then,
looking up, he caught her about the waist. "Will you?" he
asked.

She looked at his soft hair, dark and thick, his smooth pale
brow, his black eyes and even chin. She wanted to yield
dramatically and this was dramatic enough. She put her hands to his
head, bent over and looked into his eyes; her hair fell forward
about her face. "Will you be good to me?" she asked, yearning into
his eyes.

"Yes, yes," he declared. "You know that. Oh, I love you so."

She put his head far back and laid her lips to his. There was
fire, agony in it. She held him so and then he stood up heaping
kisses upon her cheeks, her lips, her eyes, her neck.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, "how wonderful you are!"

The expression shocked her.

"You mustn't," she said.

"I can't help it. You are so beautiful!"

She forgave him for the compliment.

There were burning moments after this, moments in which they
clung to each other desperately, moments in which he took her in
his arms, moments in which he whispered his dreams of the future.
He took the ring he had bought and put it on her finger. He was
going to be a great artist, she was going to be an artist's bride;
he was going to paint her lovely face, her hair, her form. If he
wanted love scenes he would paint these which they were now living
together. They talked until one in the morning and then she begged
him to go, but he would not. At two he left, only to come early the
next morning to take her to church.

There ensued for Eugene a rather astonishing imaginative and
emotional period in which he grew in perception of things literary
and artistic and in dreams of what marriage with Angela would mean
to him. There was a peculiar awareness about Eugene at this time,
which was leading him into an understanding of things. The
extraordinary demands of some phases of dogma in the matter of
religion; the depths of human perversity in the matter of morality;
the fact that there were worlds within worlds of our social
organism; that really basically and actually there was no fixed and
definite understanding of anything by anybody. From Mathews he
learned of philosophies—Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer—faint inklings of
what they believed. From association with Howe he heard of current
authors who expressed new moods, Pierre Loti, Thomas Hardy,
Maeterlinck, Tolstoi. Eugene was no person to read—he was too eager
to live,—but he gained much by conversation and he liked to talk.
He began to think he could do almost anything if he tried—write
poems, write plays, write stories, paint, illustrate, etc. He used
to conceive of himself as a general, an orator, a
politician—thinking how wonderful he would be if he could set
himself definitely to any one thing. Sometimes he would recite
passages from great speeches he had composed in his imagination as
he walked. The saving grace in his whole make-up was that he really
loved to work and he would work at the things he could do. He would
not shirk his assignments or dodge his duties.

After his evening class Eugene would sometimes go out to Ruby's
house, getting there by eleven and being admitted by an arrangement
with her that the front door be left open so that he could enter
quietly. More than once he found her sleeping in her little room
off the front room, arrayed in a red silk dressing gown and curled
up like a little black-haired child. She knew he liked her art
instincts and she strove to gratify them, affecting the peculiar
and the exceptional. She would place a candle under a red shade on
a small table by her bed and pretend to have been reading, the book
being usually tossed to one side on the coverlet where he would see
it lying when he came. He would enter silently, gathering her up in
his arms as she dozed, kissing her lips to waken her, carrying her
in his arms into the front room to caress her and whisper his
passion. There was no cessation of this devotion to Ruby the while
he was declaring his love for Angela, and he really did not see
that the two interfered greatly. He loved Angela, he thought. He
liked Ruby, thought she was sweet. He felt sorry for her at times
because she was such a little thing, so unthinking. Who was going
to marry her eventually? What was going to become of her?

Because of this very attitude he fascinated the girl who was
soon ready to do anything for him. She dreamed dreams of how nice
it would be if they could live in just a little flat together—all
alone. She would give up her art posing and just keep house for
him. He talked to her of this—imagining it might possibly come to
pass—realizing quite fully that it probably wouldn't. He wanted
Angela for his wife, but if he had money he thought Ruby and he
might keep a separate place—somehow. What Angela would think of
this did not trouble him—only that she should not know. He never
breathed anything to either of the other, but there were times when
he wondered what they would think each of the other if they knew.
Money, money, that was the great deterrent. For lack of money he
could not marry anybody at present—neither Angela nor Ruby nor
anyone else. His first duty, he thought, was so to place himself
financially that he could talk seriously to any girl. That was what
Angela expected of him, he knew. That was what he would have to
have if he wanted Ruby.

There came a time when the situation began to grow irksome. He
had reached the point where he began to understand how limited his
life was. Mathews and Howe, who drew more money, were able to live
better than he. They went out to midnight suppers, theatre parties,
and expeditions to the tenderloin section (not yet known by that
name). They had time to browse about the sections of the city which
had peculiar charms for them as Bohemians after dark—the levee, as
a certain section of the Chicago River was called; Gambler's Row in
South Clark Street; the Whitechapel Club, as a certain organization
of newspaper men was called, and other places frequented by the
literati and the more talented of the newspaper makers. Eugene,
first because of a temperament which was introspective and
reflective, and second because of his æsthetic taste, which was
offended by much that he thought was tawdry and cheap about these
places, and third by what he considered his lack of means, took
practically no part in these diversions. While he worked in his
class he heard of these things—usually the next day—and they were
amplified and made more showy and interesting by the narrative
powers of the participants. Eugene hated coarse, vulgar women and
ribald conduct, but he felt that he was not even permitted to see
them at close range had he wanted to. It took money to carouse and
he did not have it.

Perhaps, because of his youth and a certain air of
unsophistication and impracticability which went with him, his
employers were not inclined to consider money matters in connection
with him. They seemed to think he would work for little and would
not mind. He was allowed to drift here six months without a sign of
increase, though he really deserved more than any one of those who
worked with him during the same period. He was not the one to push
his claims personally but he grew restless and slightly embittered
under the strain and ached to be free, though his work was as
effective as ever.

It was this indifference on their part which fixed his
determination to leave Chicago, although Angela, his art career,
his natural restlessness and growing judgment of what he might
possibly become were deeper incentives. Angela haunted him as a
dream of future peace. If he could marry her and settle down he
would be happy. He felt now, having fairly satiated himself in the
direction of Ruby, that he might leave her. She really would not
care so very much. Her sentiments were not deep enough. Still, he
knew she would care, and when he began going less regularly to her
home, really becoming indifferent to what she did in the artists'
world, he began also to feel ashamed of himself, for he knew that
it was a cruel thing to do. He saw by her manner when he absented
himself that she was hurt and that she knew he was growing
cold.

"Are you coming out Sunday night?" she asked him once,
wistfully.

"I can't," he apologized; "I have to work."

"Yes, I know how you have to work. But go on. I don't mind, I
know."

"Oh, Ruby, how you talk. I can't always be here."

"I know what it is, Eugene," she replied. "You don't care any
more. Oh, well, don't mind me."

"Now, sweet, don't talk like that," he would say, but after he
was gone she would stand by her window and look out upon the shabby
neighborhood and sigh sadly. He was more to her than anyone she had
met yet, but she was not the kind that cried.

"He is going to leave me," was her one thought. "He is going to
leave me."

Goldfarb had watched Eugene a long time, was interested in him,
realized that he had talent. He was leaving shortly to take a
better Sunday-Editorship himself on a larger paper, and he thought
Eugene was wasting his time and ought to be told so.

"I think you ought to try to get on one of the bigger papers
here, Witla," he said to him one Saturday afternoon when things
were closing up. "You'll never amount to anything on this paper. It
isn't big enough. You ought to get on one of the big ones. Why
don't you try the
Tribune
—or else go to New York? I think
you ought to do magazine work."

Eugene drank it all in. "I've been thinking of that," he said.
"I think I'll go to New York. I'll be better off there."

"I would either do one or the other. If you stay too long in a
place like this it's apt to do you harm."

Eugene went back to his desk with the thought of change ringing
in his ears. He would go. He would save up his money until he had
one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars and then try his luck
in the East. He would leave Ruby and Angela, the latter only
temporarily, the former for good very likely, though he only
vaguely confessed this to himself. He would make some money and
then he would come back and marry his dream from Blackwood. Already
his imaginative mind ran forward to a poetic wedding in a little
country church, with Angela standing beside him in white. Then he
would bring her back with him to New York—he, Eugene Witla, already
famous in the East. Already the lure of the big eastern city was in
his mind, its palaces, its wealth, its fame. It was the great world
he knew, this side of Paris and London. He would go to it now,
shortly. What would he be there? How great? How soon?

So he dreamed.