The Genius (28 page)

Eugene set up his easel here, painted from nine to noon some
days, and on others from two to five in the afternoon. If it were
dark, he would walk or ride with Angela or visit the museums, the
galleries and the public buildings or stroll in the factory or
railroad quarters of the city. Eugene sympathized most with sombre
types and was constantly drawing something which represented grim
care. Aside from the dancers in the music halls, the toughs, in
what later became known as the Apache district, the summer
picnicking parties at Versailles and St. Cloud, the boat crowds on
the Seine, he drew factory throngs, watchmen and railroad
crossings, market people, market in the dark, street sweepers,
newspaper vendors, flower merchants, always with a memorable street
scene in the background. Some of the most interesting bits of
Paris, its towers, bridges, river views, façades, appeared in
backgrounds to the grim or picturesque or pathetic character
studies. It was his hope that he could interest America in these
things—that his next exhibition would not only illustrate his
versatility and persistence of talent, but show an improvement in
his art, a surer sense of color values, a greater analytical power
in the matter of character, a surer selective taste in the matter
of composition and arrangement. He did not realize that all this
might be useless—that he was, aside from his art, living a life
which might rob talent of its finest flavor, discolor the aspect of
the world for himself, take scope from imagination and hamper
effort with nervous irritation, and make accomplishment impossible.
He had no knowledge of the effect of one's sexual life upon one's
work, nor what such a life when badly arranged can do to a perfect
art—how it can distort the sense of color, weaken that balanced
judgment of character which is so essential to a normal
interpretation of life, make all striving hopeless, take from art
its most joyous conception, make life itself seem unimportant and
death a relief.

The summer passed, and with it the freshness and novelty of
Paris, though Eugene never really wearied of it. The peculiarities
of a different national life, the variations between this and his
own country in national ideals, an obviously much more complaisant
and human attitude toward morals, a matter-of-fact acceptance of
the ills, weaknesses and class differences, to say nothing of the
general physical appearance, the dress, habitations and amusements
of the people, astonished as much as they entertained him. He was
never weary of studying the differences between American and
European architecture, noting the pacific manner in which the
Frenchman appeared to take life, listening to Angela's unwearied
comments on the cleanliness, economy, thoroughness with which the
French women kept house, rejoicing in the absence of the American
leaning to incessant activity. Angela was struck by the very
moderate prices for laundry, the skill with which their
concierge—who governed this quarter and who knew sufficient English
to talk to her—did her marketing, cooking, sewing and entertaining.
The richness of supply and aimless waste of Americans was alike
unknown. Because she was naturally of a domestic turn Angela became
very intimate with Madame Bourgoche and learned of her a hundred
and one little tricks of domestic economy and arrangement.

"You're a peculiar girl, Angela," Eugene once said to her. "I
believe you would rather sit down stairs and talk to that
French-woman than meet the most interesting literary or artistic
personage that ever was. What do you find that's so interesting to
talk about?"

"Oh, nothing much," replied Angela, who was not unconscious of
the implied hint of her artistic deficiencies. "She's such a smart
woman. She's so practical. She knows more in a minute about saving
and buying and making a little go a long way than any American
woman I ever saw. I'm not interested in her any more than I am in
anyone else. All the artistic people do, that I can see, is to run
around and pretend that they're a whole lot when they're not."

Eugene saw that he had made an irritating reference, not wholly
intended in the way it was being taken.

"I'm not saying she isn't able," he went on. "One talent is as
good as another, I suppose. She certainly looks clever enough to
me. Where is her husband?"

"He was killed in the army," returned Angela dolefully.

"Well I suppose you'll learn enough from her to run a hotel when
you get back to New York. You don't know enough about housekeeping
now, do you?"

Eugene smiled with his implied compliment. He was anxious to get
Angela's mind off the art question. He hoped she would feel or see
that he meant nothing, but she was not so easily pacified.

"You don't think I'm so bad, Eugene, do you?" she asked after a
moment. "You don't think it makes so much difference whether I talk
to Madame Bourgoche? She isn't so dull. She's awfully smart. You
just haven't talked to her. She says she can tell by looking at you
that you're a great artist. You're different. You remind her of a
Mr. Degas that once lived here. Was he a great artist?"

"Was he!" said Eugene. "Well I guess yes. Did he have this
studio?"

"Oh, a long time ago—fifteen years ago."

Eugene smiled beatifically. This was a great compliment. He
could not help liking Madame Bourgoche for it. She was bright, no
doubt of that, or she would not be able to make such a comparison.
Angela drew from him, as before, that her domesticity and
housekeeping skill was as important as anything else in the world,
and having done this was satisfied and cheerful once more. Eugene
thought how little art or conditions or climate or country altered
the fundamental characteristics of human nature. Here he was in
Paris, comparatively well supplied with money, famous, or in
process of becoming so, and quarreling with Angela over little
domestic idiosyncrasies, just as in Washington Square.

By late September Eugene had most of his Paris sketches so well
laid in that he could finish them anywhere. Some fifteen were as
complete as they could be made. A number of others were nearly so.
He decided that he had had a profitable summer. He had worked hard
and here was the work to show for it—twenty-six canvases which were
as good, in his judgment, as those he had painted in New York. They
had not taken so long, but he was surer of himself—surer of his
method. He parted reluctantly with all the lovely things he had
seen, believing that this collection of Parisian views would be as
impressive to Americans as had been his New York views. M. Arkquin
for one, and many others, including the friends of Deesa and Dula
were delighted with them. The former expressed the belief that some
of them might be sold in France.

Eugene returned to America with Angela, and learning that he
might stay in the old studio until December first, settled down to
finish the work for his exhibition there.

The first suggestion that Eugene had that anything was wrong
with him, aside from a growing apprehensiveness as to what the
American people would think of his French work, was in the fall,
when he began to imagine—or perhaps it was really true—that coffee
did not agree with him. He had for several years now been free of
his old-time complaint,—stomach trouble; but gradually it was
beginning to reappear and he began to complain to Angela that he
was feeling an irritation after his meals, that coffee came up in
his throat. "I think I'll have to try tea or something else if this
doesn't stop," he observed. She suggested chocolate and he changed
to that, but this merely resulted in shifting the ill to another
quarter. He now began to quarrel with his work—not being able to
get a certain effect, and having sometimes altered and re-altered
and re-re-altered a canvas until it bore little resemblance to the
original arrangement, he would grow terribly discouraged; or
believe that he had attained perfection at last, only to change his
mind the following morning.

"Now," he would say, "I think I have that thing right at last,
thank heaven!"

Angela would heave a sigh of relief, for she could feel
instantly any distress or inability that he felt, but her joy was
of short duration. In a few hours she would find him working at the
same canvas changing something. He grew thinner and paler at this
time and his apprehensions as to his future rapidly became
morbid.

"By George! Angela," he said to her one day, "it would be a bad
thing for me if I were to become sick now. It's just the time that
I don't want to. I want to finish this exhibition up right and then
go to London. If I could do London and Chicago as I did New York I
would be just about made, but if I'm going to get sick—"

"Oh, you're not going to get sick, Eugene," replied Angela, "you
just think you are. You want to remember that you've worked very
hard this summer. And think how hard you worked last winter! You
need a good rest, that's what you need. Why don't you stop after
you get this exhibition ready and rest awhile? You have enough to
live on for a little bit. M. Charles will probably sell a few more
of those pictures, or some of those will sell and then you can
wait. Don't try to go to London in the spring. Go on a walking tour
or go down South or just rest awhile, anywhere,—that's what you
need."

Eugene realized vaguely that it wasn't rest that he needed so
much as peace of mind. He was not tired. He was merely nervously
excited and apprehensive. He began to sleep badly, to have
terrifying dreams, to feel that his heart was failing him. At two
o'clock in the morning, the hour when for some reason human
vitality appears to undergo a peculiar disturbance, he would wake
with a sense of sinking physically. His pulse would appear to be
very low, and he would feel his wrists nervously. Not infrequently
he would break out in a cold perspiration and would get up and walk
about to restore himself. Angela would rise and walk with him. One
day at his easel he was seized with a peculiar nervous
disturbance—a sudden glittering light before his eyes, a rumbling
in his ears, and a sensation which was as if his body were being
pricked with ten million needles. It was as though his whole
nervous system had given way at every minute point and division.
For the time being he was intensely frightened, believing that he
was going crazy, but he said nothing. It came to him as a
staggering truth that the trouble with him was over-indulgence
physically; that the remedy was abstinence, complete or at least
partial; that he was probably so far weakened mentally and
physically that it would be very difficult for him to recover; that
his ability to paint might be seriously affected—his life
blighted.

He stood before his canvas holding his brush, wondering. When
the shock had completely gone he laid the brush down with a
trembling hand. He walked to the window, wiped his cold, damp
forehead with his hand and then turned to get his coat from the
closet.

"Where are you going?" asked Angela.

"For a little walk. I'll be back soon. I don't feel just as
fresh as I might."

She kissed him good-bye at the door and let him go, but her
heart troubled her.

"I'm afraid Eugene is going to get sick," she thought. "He ought
to stop work."

It was the beginning of a period destined to last five or six
years, in which, to say the least, Eugene was not himself. He was
not in any sense out of his mind, if power to reason clearly, jest
sagely, argue and read intelligently are any evidences of sanity;
but privately his mind was a maelstrom of contradictory doubts,
feelings and emotions. Always of a philosophic and introspective
turn, this peculiar faculty of reasoning deeply and feeling
emotionally were now turned upon himself and his own condition and,
as in all such cases where we peer too closely into the subtleties
of creation, confusion was the result. Previously he had been well
satisfied that the world knew nothing. Neither in religion,
philosophy nor science was there any answer to the riddle of
existence. Above and below the little scintillating plane of man's
thought was—what? Beyond the optic strength of the greatest
telescope,—far out upon the dim horizon of space—were clouds of
stars. What were they doing out there? Who governed them? When were
their sidereal motions calculated? He figured life as a grim dark
mystery, a sad semiconscious activity turning aimlessly in the
dark. No one knew anything. God knew nothing—himself least of all.
Malevolence, life living on death, plain violence—these were the
chief characteristics of existence. If one failed of strength in
any way, if life were not kind in its bestowal of gifts, if one
were not born to fortune's pampering care—the rest was misery. In
the days of his strength and prosperity the spectacle of existence
had been sad enough: in the hours of threatened delay and defeat it
seemed terrible. Why, if his art failed him now, what had he?
Nothing. A little puny reputation which he could not sustain, no
money, a wife to take care of, years of possible suffering and
death. The abyss of death! When he looked into that after all of
life and hope, how it shocked him, how it hurt! Here was life and
happiness and love in health—there was death and nothingness—æons
and æons of nothingness.

He did not immediately give up hope—immediately succumb to the
evidences of a crumbling reality. For months and months he fancied
each day that this was a temporary condition; that drugs and
doctors could heal him. There were various remedies that were
advertised in the papers, blood purifiers, nerve restorers, brain
foods, which were announced at once as specifics and cures, and
while he did not think that the ordinary patent medicine had
anything of value in it, he did imagine that some good could be had
from tonics, or
the
tonic. A physician whom he consulted
recommended rest and an excellent tonic which he knew of. He asked
whether he was subject to any wasting disease. Eugene told him no.
He confessed to an over-indulgence in the sex-relationship, but the
doctor did not believe that ordinarily this should bring about a
nervous decline. Hard work must have something to do with it,
over-anxiety. Some temperaments such as his were predisposed at
birth to nervous breakdowns; they had to guard themselves. Eugene
would have to be very careful. He should eat regularly, sleep as
long as possible, observe regular hours. A system of exercise might
not be a bad thing for him. He could get him a pair of Indian clubs
or dumb-bells or an exerciser and bring himself back to health that
way.

Eugene told Angela that he believed he would try exercising and
joined a gymnasium. He took a tonic, walked with her a great deal,
sought to ignore the fact that he was nervously depressed. These
things were of practically no value, for the body had apparently
been drawn a great distance below normal and all the hell of a
subnormal state had to be endured before it could gradually come
into its own again.

In the meantime he was continuing his passional relations with
Angela, in spite of a growing judgment that they were in some way
harmful to him. But it was not easy to refrain, and each failure to
do so made it harder. It was a customary remark of his that "he
must quit this," but it was like the self-apologetic assurance of
the drunkard that he must reform.

Now that he had stepped out into the limelight of public
observation—now that artists and critics and writers somewhat knew
of him, and in their occasional way were wondering what he was
doing, it was necessary that he should bestir himself to especial
effort in order to satisfy the public as to the enduring quality of
his art. He was glad, once he realized that he was in for a siege
of bad weather, that his Paris drawings had been so nearly
completed before the break came. By the day he suffered the
peculiar nervousness which seemed to mark the opening of his real
decline, he had completed twenty-two paintings, which Angela begged
him not to touch; and by sheer strength of will, though he
misdoubted gravely, he managed to complete five more. All of these
M. Charles came to see on occasion, and he approved of them highly.
He was not so sure that they would have the appeal of the American
pictures, for after all the city of Paris had been pretty well done
over and over in illustration and genré work. It was not so new as
New York; the things Eugene chose were not as unconventional.
Still, he could say truly they were exceptional. They might try an
exhibition of them later in Paris if they did not take here. He was
very sorry to see that Eugene was in poor health and urged him to
take care of himself.

It seemed as if some malign planetary influence were affecting
him. Eugene knew of astrology and palmistry and one day, in a
spirit of curiosity and vague apprehensiveness, consulted a
practitioner of the former, receiving for his dollar the statement
that he was destined to great fame in either art or literature but
that he was entering a period of stress which would endure for a
number of years. Eugene's spirits sank perceptibly. The musty old
gentleman who essayed his books of astrological lore shook his
head. He had a rather noble growth of white hair and a white beard,
but his coffee-stained vest was covered with tobacco ash and his
collar and cuffs were dirty.

"It looks pretty bad between your twenty-eighth and your
thirty-second years, but after that there is a notable period of
prosperity. Somewhere around your thirty-eighth or thirty-ninth
year there is some more trouble—a little—but you will come out of
that—that is, it looks as though you would. Your stars show you to
be of a nervous, imaginative character, inclined to worry; and I
see that your kidneys are weak. You ought never to take much
medicine. Your sign is inclined to that but it is without benefit
to you. You will be married twice, but I don't see any
children."

He rambled on dolefully and Eugene left in great gloom. So it
was written in the stars that he was to suffer a period of decline
and there was to be more trouble for him in the future. But he did
see a period of great success for him between his thirty-second and
his thirty-eighth years. That was some comfort. Who was the second
woman he was to marry? Was Angela going to die? He walked the
streets this early December afternoon, thinking, thinking.

The Blue family had heard a great deal of Eugene's success since
Angela had come to New York. There had never been a week but at
least one letter, and sometimes two, had gone the rounds of the
various members of the family. It was written to Marietta
primarily, but Mrs. Blue, Jotham, the boys and the several sisters
all received it by turns. Thus the whole regiment of Blue
connections knew exactly how it was with Angela and even better
than it was; for although things had looked prosperous enough,
Angela had not stayed within the limits of bare fact in describing
her husband's success. She added atmosphere, not fictitious, but
the seeming glory which dwelt in her mind, until the various
connections of the Blue family, Marietta in particular, were
convinced that there was nothing but dignity and bliss in store for
the wife of so talented a man. The studio life which Angela had
seen, here and in Paris, the picturesque descriptions which came
home from London and Paris, the personalities of M. Charles, M.
Arkquin, Isaac Wertheim, Henry L. Tomlins, Luke Severas—all the
celebrities whom they met, both in New York and abroad, had been
described at length. There was not a dinner, a luncheon, a
reception, a tea party, which was not pictured in all its native
colors and more. Eugene had become somewhat of a demi-god to his
Western connections. The quality of his art was never questioned.
It was only a little time now before he would be rich or at least
well-to-do.

All the relatives hoped that he would bring Angela home some day
on a visit. To think that she should have married such a
distinguished man!

In the Witla family it was quite the same. Eugene had not been
home to see his parents since his last visit to Blackwood, but they
had not been without news. For one thing, Eugene had been
neglectful, and somewhat because of this Angela had taken it upon
herself to open up a correspondence with his mother. She wrote that
of course she didn't know her but that she was terribly fond of
Eugene, that she hoped to make him a good wife and that she hoped
to make her a satisfactory daughter-in-law. Eugene was so dilatory
about writing. She would write for him now and his mother should
hear every week. She asked if she and her husband couldn't manage
to come and see them sometime. She would be so glad and it would do
Eugene so much good. She asked if she couldn't have Myrtle's
address—they had moved from Ottumwa—and if Sylvia wouldn't write
occasionally. She sent a picture of herself and Eugene, a sketch of
the studio which Eugene had made one day, a sketch of herself
looking pensively out of the window into Washington Square.
Pictures from his first show published in the newspapers, accounts
of his work, criticisms,—all reached the members of both families
impartially and they were kept well aware of how things were
going.

During the time that Eugene was feeling so badly and because, if
he were going to lose his health, it might be necessary to
economize greatly, it occurred to Angela that it might be advisable
for them to go home for a visit. While her family were not rich,
they had sufficient means to live on. Eugene's mother also was
constantly writing, wanting to know why they didn't come out there
for a while. She could not see why Eugene could not paint his
pictures as well in Alexandria as in New York or Paris. Eugene
listened to this willingly, for it occurred to him that instead of
going to London he might do Chicago next, and he and Angela could
stay awhile at Blackwood and another while at his own home. They
would be welcome guests.

The condition of his finances at this time was not exactly bad,
but it was not very good. Of the thirteen hundred dollars he had
received for the first three pictures sold, eleven hundred had been
used on the foreign trip. He had since used three hundred dollars
of his remaining capital of twelve hundred, but M. Charles' sale of
two pictures at four hundred each had swelled his bank balance to
seventeen hundred dollars; however, on this he had to live now
until additional pictures were disposed of. He daily hoped to hear
of additional sales, but none occurred.

Moreover, his exhibition in January did not produce quite the
impression he thought it would. It was fascinating to look at; the
critics and the public imagined that by now he must have created a
following for himself, else why should M. Charles make a feature of
his work. But Charles pointed out that these foreign studies could
not hope to appeal to Americans as did the American things. He
indicated that they might take better in France. Eugene was
depressed by the general tone of the opinions, but this was due
more to his unhealthy state of mind than to any inherent reason for
feeling so. There was still Paris to try and there might be some
sales of his work here. The latter were slow in materializing,
however, and because by February he had not been able to work and
because it was necessary that he should husband his resources as
carefully as possible, he decided to accept Angela's family's
invitation as well as that of his own parents and spend some time
in Illinois and Wisconsin. Perhaps his health would become better.
He decided also that, if his health permitted, he would work in
Chicago.