The Genius (11 page)

Once this idea of New York was fixed in his mind as a necessary
step in his career, it was no trouble for him to carry it out. He
had already put aside sixty dollars in a savings bank since he had
given Angela the ring and he decided to treble it as quickly as
possible and then start. He fancied that all he needed was just
enough to live on for a little while until he could get a start. If
he could not sell drawings to the magazines he might get a place on
a newspaper and anyhow he felt confident that he could live. He
communicated to Howe and Mathews his intention of going East pretty
soon and aroused in their respective bosoms the emotions which were
characteristic of each. Howe, envious from the start, was glad to
have him off the paper, but regretful of the stellar career which
his determination foreboded. He half suspected now that Eugene
would do something exceptional—he was so loose in his moods—so
eccentric. Mathews was glad for Eugene and a little sorry for
himself. He wished he had Eugene's courage, his fire, his
talent.

"You'll make good when you get down there," Mathews said to him
one afternoon when Howe was out of the room, for he realized that
the latter was jealous. "You've got the stuff. Some of the work you
have done here will give you a fine introduction. I wish I were
going."

"Why don't you?" suggested Eugene.

"Who? me? What good would it do me? I'm not ready yet. I can't
do that sort of stuff. I might go down some time."

"I think you do good work," said Eugene generously. He really
did not believe it was good art, but it was fair newspaper
sketching.

"Oh, no, you don't mean that, Witla," replied Mathews. "I know
what I can do."

Eugene was silent.

"I wish when you get down there," went on Mathews, "you would
write us occasionally. I would like to know how you are getting
along."

"Sure, I'll write," replied Eugene, flattered by the interest
his determination had aroused. "Sure I will." But he never did.

In Ruby and Angela he had two problems to adjust which were not
so easy. In the one case it was sympathy, regret, sorrow for her
helplessness, her hopelessness. She was so sweet and lovely in her
way, but not quite big enough mentally or emotionally for him.
Could he really live with her if he wanted to? Could he substitute
her for a girl like Angela? Could he? And now he had involved
Angela, for since her return to tell him that she accepted him as
her affianced lover, there had been some scenes between them in
which a new standard of emotion had been set for him. This girl who
looked so simple and innocent was burning at times with a wild
fire. It snapped in her eyes when Eugene undid her wonderful hair
and ran his hands through its heavy strands. "The Rhine Maiden," he
would say. "Little Lorelei! You are like the mermaid waiting to
catch the young lover in the strands of her hair. You are
Marguerite and I Faust. You are a Dutch Gretchen. I love this
wonderful hair when it is braided. Oh, sweet, you perfect creature!
I will put you in a painting yet. I will make you famous."

Angela thrilled to this. She burned in a flame which was of his
fanning. She put her lips to his in long hot kisses, sat on his
knee and twined her hair about his neck; rubbed his face with it as
one might bathe a face in strands of silk. Finding such a response
he went wild, kissed her madly, would have been still more
masterful had she not, at the slightest indication of his audacity,
leaped from his embrace, not opposition but self protection in her
eyes. She pretended to think better of his love, and Eugene,
checked by her ideal of him, tried to restrain himself. He did
manage to desist because he was sure that he could not do what he
wanted to. Daring such as that would end her love. So they wrestled
in affection.

It was the fall following his betrothal to Angela that he
actually took his departure. He had drifted through the summer,
pondering. He had stayed away from Ruby more and more, and finally
left without saying good-bye to her, though he thought up to the
last that he intended to go out and see her.

As for Angela, when it came to parting from her, he was in a
depressed and downcast mood. He thought now that he did not really
want to go to New York, but was being drawn by fate. There was no
money for him in the West; they could not live on what he could
earn there. Hence he must go and in doing so must lose her. It
looked very tragic.

Out at her aunt's house, where she came for the Saturday and
Sunday preceding his departure, he walked the floor with her
gloomily, counted the lapse of the hours after which he would be
with her no more, pictured the day when he would return successful
to fetch her. Angela had a faint foreboding fear of the events
which might intervene. She had read stories of artists who had gone
to the city and had never come back. Eugene seemed such a wonderful
person, she might not hold him; and yet he had given her his word
and he was madly in love with her—no doubt of that. That fixed,
passionate, yearning look in his eyes—what did it mean if not
enduring, eternal love? Life had brought her a great treasure—a
great love and an artist for a lover.

"Go, Eugene!" she cried at last tragically, almost
melodramatically. His face was in her hands. "I will wait for you.
You need never have one uneasy thought. When you are ready I will
be here, only, come soon—you will, won't you?"

"Will I!" he declared, kissing her, "will I? Look at me. Don't
you know?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" she exclaimed, "of course I know. Oh, yes!
yes!"

The rest was a passionate embrace. And then they parted. He went
out brooding over the subtlety and the tragedy of life. The sharp
October stars saddened him more. It was a wonderful world but
bitter to endure at times. Still it could be endured and there was
happiness and peace in store for him probably. He and Angela would
find it together living in each other's company, living in each
other's embrace and by each other's kisses. It must be so. The
whole world believed it—even he, after Stella and Margaret and Ruby
and Angela. Even he.

The train which bore him to New York bore a very meditative
young man. As it pulled out through the great railroad yards of the
city, past the shabby back yards of the houses, the street
crossings at grade, the great factories and elevators, he thought
of that other time when he had first ventured in the city. How
different! Then he was so green, so raw. Since then he had become a
newspaper artist, he could write, he could find his tongue with
women, he knew a little something about the organization of the
world. He had not saved any money, true, but he had gone through
the art school, had given Angela a diamond ring, had this two
hundred dollars with which he was venturing to reconnoitre the
great social metropolis of the country. He was passing
Fifty-seventh Street; he recognized the neighborhood he traversed
so often in visiting Ruby. He had not said good-bye to her and
there in the distance were the rows of commonplace, two family
frame dwellings, one of which she occupied with her foster parents.
Poor little Ruby! and she liked him. It was a shame, but what was
he to do about it? He didn't care for her. It really hurt him to
think and then he tried not to remember. These tragedies of the
world could not be healed by thinking.

The train passed out into the flat fields of northern Indiana
and as little country towns flashed past he thought of Alexandria
and how he had pulled up his stakes and left it. What was Jonas
Lyle doing and John Summers? Myrtle wrote that she was going to be
married in the spring. She had delayed solely because she wanted to
delay. He thought sometimes that Myrtle was a little like himself,
fickle in her moods. He was sure he would never want to go back to
Alexandria except for a short visit, and yet the thought of his
father and his mother and his old home were sweet to him. His
father! How little he knew of the real world!

As they passed out of Pittsburgh he saw for the first time the
great mountains, raising their heads in solemn majesty in the dark,
and great lines of coke ovens, flaming red tongues of fire. He saw
men working, and sleeping towns succeeding one another. What a
great country America was! What a great thing to be an artist here!
Millions of people and no vast artistic voice to portray these
things—these simple dramatic things like the coke ovens in the
night. If he could only do it! If he could only stir the whole
country, so that his name would be like that of Doré in France or
Verestchagin in Russia. If he could but get fire into his work, the
fire he felt!

He got into his berth after a time and looked out on the dark
night and the stars, longing, and then he dozed. When he awoke
again the train had already passed Philadelphia. It was morning and
the cars were speeding across the flat meadows toward Trenton. He
arose and dressed, watching the array of towns the while, Trenton,
New Brunswick, Metuchen, Elizabeth. Somehow this country was like
Illinois, flat. After Newark they rushed out upon a great meadow
and he caught the sense of the sea. It was beyond this. These were
tide-water streams, the Passaic and the Hackensack, with small
ships and coal and brick barges tied at the water side. The thrill
of something big overtook him as the brakeman began to call "Jersey
City," and as he stepped out into the vast train shed his heart
misgave him a little. He was all alone in New York. It was wealthy,
cold and critical. How should he prosper here? He walked out
through the gates to where low arches concealed ferry boats, and in
another moment it was before him, sky line, bay, the Hudson, the
Statue of Liberty, ferry boats, steamers, liners, all in a grey
mist of fierce rain and the tugs and liners blowing mournfully upon
great whistles. It was something he could never have imagined
without seeing it, and this swish of real salt water, rolling in
heavy waves, spoke to him as music might, exalting his soul. What a
wonderful thing this was, this sea—where ships were and whales and
great mysteries. What a wonderful thing New York was, set down by
it, surrounded by it, this metropolis of the country. Here was the
sea; yonder were the great docks that held the vessels that sailed
to the ports of all the world. He saw them—great grey and black
hulls, tied to long piers jutting out into the water. He listened
to the whistles, the swish of the water, saw the circling gulls,
realized emotionally the mass of people. Here were Jay Gould and
Russell Sage and the Vanderbilts and Morgan—all alive and all here.
Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Madison Square, Broadway—he knew of
these by reputation. How would he do here—how fare? Would the city
ever acclaim him as it did some? He looked wide eyed, with an open
heart, with intense and immense appreciation. Well, he was going to
enter, going to try. He could do that—perhaps, perhaps. But he felt
lonely. He wished he were back with Angela where her soft arms
could shut him safe. He wished he might feel her hands on his
cheeks, his hair. He would not need to fight alone then. But now he
was alone, and the city was roaring about him, a great noise like
the sea. He must enter and do battle.

Not knowing routes or directions in New York, Eugene took a
Desbrosses Street ferry, and coming into West Street wandered along
that curious thoroughfare staring at the dock entrances. Manhattan
Island seemed a little shabby to him from this angle but he thought
that although physically, perhaps, it might not be distinguished,
there must be other things which made it wonderful. Later when he
saw the solidity of it, the massed houses, the persistent streams
of people, the crush of traffic, it dawned on him that mere
humanity in packed numbers makes a kind of greatness, and this was
the island's first characteristic. There were others, like the
prevailing lowness of the buildings in its old neighborhoods, the
narrowness of the streets in certain areas, the shabbiness of brick
and stone when they have seen an hundred years of weather, which
struck him as curious or depressing. He was easily touched by
exterior conditions.

As he wandered he kept looking for some place where he might
like to live, some house that had a yard or a tree. At length he
found a row of houses in lower Seventh Avenue with an array of iron
balconies in front which appealed to him. He applied here and in
one house found a room for four dollars which he thought he had
better take for the present. It was cheaper than any hotel. His
hostess was a shabby woman in black who made scarcely any
impression on him as a personality, merely giving him a thought as
to what a dreary thing it was to keep roomers and the room itself
was nothing, a commonplace, but he had a new world before him and
all his interests were outside. He wanted to see this city. He
deposited his grip and sent for his trunk and then took to the
streets, having come to see and hear things which would be of
advantage to him.

He went about this early relationship to the city in the right
spirit. For a little while he did not try to think what he would
do, but struck out and walked, here, there and everywhere, this
very first day down Broadway to the City Hall and up Broadway from
14th to 42nd street the same night. Soon he knew all Third Avenue
and the Bowery, the wonders of Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive,
the beauties of the East River, the Battery, Central Park and the
lower East Side. He sought out quickly the wonders of metropolitan
life—its crowds at dinner and theatre time in Broadway, its
tremendous throngs morning and afternoon in the shopping district,
its amazing world of carriages in Fifth Avenue and Central Park. He
had marveled at wealth and luxury in Chicago, but here it took his
breath away. It was obviously so much more fixed, so definite and
comprehensible. Here one felt intuitively the far reaches which
separate the ordinary man from the scion of wealth. It curled him
up like a frozen leaf, dulled his very soul, and gave him a clear
sense of his position in the social scale. He had come here with a
pretty high estimate of himself, but daily, as he looked, he felt
himself crumbling. What was he? What was art? What did the city
care? It was much more interested in other things, in dressing,
eating, visiting, riding abroad. The lower part of the island was
filled with cold commercialism which frightened him. In the upper
half, which concerned only women and show—a voluptuous
sybaritism—caused him envy. He had but two hundred dollars with
which to fight his way, and this was the world he must conquer.

Men of Eugene's temperament are easily depressed. He first
gorged the spectacle of life and then suffered from mental
indigestion. He saw too much of it too quickly. He wandered about
for weeks, looking in the shop windows, the libraries, the museums,
the great streets, growing all the while more despondent. At night
he would return to his bare room and indite long epistles to
Angela, describing what he had seen and telling her of his undying
love for her—largely because he had no other means of ridding
himself of his superabundant vitality and moods. They were
beautiful letters, full of color and feeling, but to Angela they
gave a false impression of emotion and sincerity because they
appeared to be provoked by absence from her. In part of course they
were, but far more largely they were the result of loneliness and
the desire for expression which this vast spectacle of life itself
incited. He also sent her some tentative sketches of things he had
seen—a large crowd in the dark at 34th Street; a boat off 86th
Street in the East River in the driving rain; a barge with cars
being towed by a tug. He could not think exactly what to do with
these things at that time, but he wanted to try his hand at
illustrating for the magazines. He was a little afraid of these
great publications, however, for now that he was on the ground with
them his art did not appear so significant.

It was during the first few weeks that he received his only
letter from Ruby. His parting letter to her, written when he
reached New York, had been one of those makeshift affairs which
faded passion indites. He was so sorry he had to leave without
seeing her. He had intended to come out but the rush of preparation
at the last moment, and so forth; he hoped to come back to Chicago
one of these days and he would look her up. He still loved her, but
it was necessary for him to leave—to come where the greatest
possibilities were. "I remember how sweet you were when I first saw
you," he added. "I shall never forget my first impressions, little
Ruby."

It was cruel to add this touch of remembrance, but the artist in
him could not refrain. It cut Ruby as a double edged sword, for she
understood that he cared well enough that way—æsthetically. It was
not her but beauty that he loved, and her particular beauty had
lost its appeal.

She wrote after a time, intending to be defiant, indifferent,
but she really could not be. She tried to think of something sharp
to say, but finally put down the simple truth.

"Dear Eugene:" she wrote, "I got your note several weeks ago,
but I could not bring myself to answer it before this. I know
everything is over between us and that is all right, for I suppose
it has to be. You couldn't love any woman long, I think. I know
what you say about your having to go to New York to broaden your
field is true. You ought to, but I'm sorry you didn't come out. You
might have. Still I don't blame you, Eugene. It isn't much
different from what has been going on for some time. I have cared
but I'll get over that, I know, and I won't ever think hard of you.
Won't you return me the notes I have sent you from time to time and
my pictures? You won't want them now.
"
Ruby.
"

There was a little blank space on the paper and then:—

"I stood by the window last night and looked out on the street.
The moon was shining and those dead trees were waving in the wind.
I saw the moon on that pool of water over in the field. It looked
like silver. Oh, Eugene, I wish I were dead."

He jumped up as he read these words and clenched the letter in
his hands. The pathos of it all cut him to the quick, raised his
estimate of her, made him feel as if he had made a mistake in
leaving her. He really cared for her after all. She was sweet. If
she were here now he could live with her. She might as well be a
model in New York as in Chicago. He was on the verge of writing
this, when one of the long, almost daily epistles Angela was
sending arrived and changed his mood. He did not see how, in the
face of so great and clean a love as hers, he could go on with
Ruby. His affection had obviously been dying. Should he try to
revive it now?

This conflict of emotions was so characteristic of Eugene's
nature, that had he been soundly introspective, he would have seen
that he was an idealist by temperament, in love with the æsthetic,
in love with love, and that there was no permanent faith in him for
anybody—except the impossible she.

As it was, he wrote Ruby a letter breathing regret and sorrow
but not inviting her to come. He could not have supported her long
if she had, he thought. Besides he was anxious to secure Angela. So
that affair lapsed.

In the meantime he visited the magazine offices. On leaving
Chicago he had put in the bottom of his trunk a number of drawings
which he had done for the
Globe
—his sketches of the
Chicago River, of Blue Island Avenue, of which he had once made a
study as a street, of Goose Island and of the Lake front. There
were some street scenes, too, all forceful in the peculiar massing
of their blacks, the unexpected, almost flashing, use of a streak
of white at times. There was emotion in them, a sense of life. He
should have been appreciated at once, but, oddly, there was just
enough of the radically strange about what he did to make his work
seem crude, almost coarse. He drew a man's coat with a single dash
of his pen. He indicated a face by a spot. If you looked close
there was seldom any detail, frequently none at all. From the
praise he had received at the art school and from Mathews and
Goldfarb he was slowly coming to the conclusion that he had a way
of his own. Being so individual he was inclined to stick to it. He
walked with an air of conviction which had nothing but his own
belief in himself to back it up, and it was not an air which drew
anybody to him. When he showed his pictures at the
Century
,
Harper's
,
Scribner's
, they were
received with an air of weary consideration. Dozens of magnificent
drawings were displayed on their walls signed by men whom Eugene
now knew to be leaders in the illustration world. He returned to
his room convinced that he had made no impression at all. They must
be familiar with artists a hundred times better than himself.

As a matter of fact Eugene was simply overawed by the material
face of things. These men whose pictures he saw displayed on the
walls of the art and editorial rooms of the magazines were really
not, in many instances, any better than himself, if as good. They
had the advantage of solid wood frames and artistic acceptance. He
was a long way as yet from magazine distinction but the work he did
later had no more of the fire than had this early stuff. It was a
little broader in treatment, a little less intolerant of detail,
but no more vigorous if as much so. The various art directors were
weary of smart young artists showing drawings. A little suffering
was good for them in the beginning. So Eugene was incontinently
turned away with a little faint praise which was worse than
opposition. He sank very low in spirits.

There were still the smaller magazines and the newspapers,
however, and he hunted about faithfully, trying to get something to
do. From one or two of the smaller magazines, he secured
commissions, after a time, three or four drawings for thirty-five
dollars; and from that had to be extracted models' fees. He had to
have a room where he could work as an artist, receiving models to
pose, and he finally found one in West 14th Street, a back bedroom,
looking out over an open court and with a public stair which let
all come who might without question. This cost him twenty-five
dollars a month, but he thought he had better risk it. If he could
get a few commissions he could live.