The Genius (3 page)

It was Lyle who taught him the art of type-setting. He
demonstrated the first day the theory of the squares or pockets in
a case, how some letters were placed more conveniently to the hand
than others, why some letters were well represented as to quantity,
why capitals were used in certain offices for certain purposes, in
others not. "Now on the Chicago
Tribune
we used to
italicize the names of churches, boats, books, hotels, and things
of that sort. That's the only paper I ever knew to do that," he
remarked. What slugs, sticks, galleys, turnovers, meant, came
rapidly to the surface. That the fingers would come to recognize
weights of leads by the touch, that a letter would almost
instinctively find its way back to its proper pocket, even though
you were not thinking, once you became expert, were facts which he
cheerfully communicated. He wanted his knowledge taken seriously,
and this serious attention, Eugene, because of his innate respect
for learning of any kind, was only too glad to give him. He did not
know what he wanted to do, but he knew quite well that he wanted to
see everything. This shop was interesting to him for some little
time for this reason, for though he soon found that he did not want
to be a type-setter or a reporter, or indeed anything much in
connection with a country newspaper, he was learning about life. He
worked at his desk cheerfully, smiling out upon the world, which
indicated its presence to him through an open window, read the
curious bits of news or opinion or local advertisements as he set
them up, and dreamed of what the world might have in store for him.
He was not vastly ambitious as yet, but hopeful and, withal, a
little melancholy. He could see boys and girls whom he knew, idling
in the streets or on the corner squares; he could see where Ted
Martinwood was driving by in his father's buggy, or George Anderson
was going up the street with the air of someone who would never
need to work. George's father owned the one and only hotel. There
were thoughts in his mind of fishing, boating, lolling somewhere
with some pretty girl, but alas, girls did not apparently take to
him so very readily. He was too shy. He thought it must be nice to
be rich. So he dreamed.

Eugene was at that age when he wished to express himself in
ardent phrases. He was also at the age when bashfulness held him in
reserve, even though he were in love and intensely emotional. He
could only say to Stella what seemed trivial things, and look his
intensity, whereas it was the trivial things that were most
pleasing to her, not the intensity. She was even then beginning to
think he was a little strange, a little too tense for her
disposition. Yet she liked him. It became generally understood
around town that Stella was
his
girl. School day mating
usually goes that way in a small city or village. He was seen to go
out with her. His father teased him. Her mother and father deemed
this a manifestation of calf love, not so much on her part, for
they were aware of her tendency to hold lightly any manifestation
of affection on the part of boys, but on his. They thought his
sentimentalism would soon be wearisome to Stella. And they were not
far wrong about her. On one occasion at a party given by several
high school girls, a "country post office" was organized. That was
one of those games which mean kissing only. A system of guessing
results in a series of forfeits. If you miss you must be
postmaster, and call someone for "mail."
Mail
means to be
kissed in a dark room (where the postmaster stands) by someone whom
you like or who likes you. You, as postmaster, have authority or
compulsion—however you feel about it—to call whom you please.

In this particular instance Stella, who was caught before
Eugene, was under compulsion to call someone to kiss. Her first
thought was of him, but on account of the frankness of the deed,
and because there was a lurking fear in her of his eagerness, the
name she felt impelled to speak was Harvey Rutter. Harvey was a
handsome boy whom Stella had met after her first encounter with
Eugene. He was not as yet fascinating to her, but pleasing. She had
a coquettish desire to see what he was like. This was her first
direct chance.

He stepped gaily in, and Eugene was at once insane with
jealousy. He could not understand why she should treat him in that
way. When it came to his turn he called for Bertha Shoemaker, whom
he admired, and who was sweet in a way, but who was as nothing to
Stella in his estimation. The pain of kissing her when he really
wanted the other girl was great. When he came out Stella saw
moodiness in his eyes, but chose to ignore it. He was obviously
half-hearted and downcast in his simulation of joy.

A second chance came to her and this time she called him. He
went, but was in a semi-defiant mood. He wanted to punish her. When
they met in the dark she expected him to put his arms around her.
Her own hands were up to about where his shoulders should be.
Instead he only took hold of one of her arms with his hand and
planted a chilly kiss on her lips. If he had only asked, "Why did
you?" or held her close and pleaded with her not to treat him so
badly, the relationship might have lasted longer. Instead he said
nothing, and she grew defiant and she went out gaily. There was a
strain of reserve running between them until the party broke up and
he took her home.

"You must be melancholy tonight," she remarked, after they had
walked two blocks in complete silence. The streets were dark, and
their feet sounded hollowly on the brick pavement.

"Oh, I'm feeling all right," he replied moodily.

"I think it's awfully nice at the Weimers', we always have so
much fun there."

"Yes, lots of fun," he echoed contemptuously.

"Oh, don't be so cross!" she flared. "You haven't any reason for
fussing."

"Haven't I?"

"No, you haven't."

"Well if that's the way you feel about it I suppose I haven't. I
don't see it that way."

"Well, it doesn't make any difference to me how you see it."

"Oh, doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't." Her head was up and she was angry.

"Well I'm sure then it doesn't to me."

There was another silence which endured until they were almost
home.

"Are you coming to the sociable next Thursday?" he inquired. He
was referring to a Methodist evening entertainment which, although
he cared very little about it, was a convenience as it enabled him
to see her and take her home. He was prompted to ask by the fear
that an open rupture was impending.

"No," she said. "I don't think I will."

"Why not?"

"I don't care to."

"I think you're mean," he said reprovingly.

"I don't care," she replied. "I think you're too bossy. I don't
think I like you very much anyhow."

His heart contracted ominously.

"You can do as you please," he persisted.

They reached her gate. It was his wont to kiss her in the
shadow—to hold her tight for a few minutes in spite of her
protests. Tonight, as they approached, he thought of doing it, but
she gave him no chance. When they reached the gate she opened it
quickly and slipped in. "Good-night," she called.

"Good-night," he said, and then as she reached her door,
"Stella!"

It was open, and she slipped in. He stood in the dark, hurt,
sore, oppressed. What should he do? He strolled home cudgelling his
brain whether never to speak to or look at her again until she came
to him, or to hunt her up and fight it all out with her. She was in
the wrong, he knew that. When he went to bed he was grieving over
it, and when he awoke it was with him all day.

He had been gaining rather rapidly as a student of type-setting,
and to a certain extent of the theory of reporting, and he worked
diligently and earnestly at his proposed trade. He loved to look
out of the window and draw, though of late, after knowing Stella so
well and coming to quarrel with her because of her indifference,
there was little heart in it. This getting to the office, putting
on an apron, and starting in on some local correspondence left over
from the day before, or some telegraph copy which had been freshly
filed on his hook, had its constructive value. Williams endeavored
to use him on some local items of news as a reporter, but he was a
slow worker and almost a failure at getting all the facts. He did
not appear to know how to interview anybody, and would come back
with a story which needed to be filled in from other sources. He
really did not understand the theory of news, and Williams could
only make it partially clear to him. Mostly he worked at his case,
but he did learn some things.

For one thing, the theory of advertising began to dawn on him.
These local merchants put in the same ads. day after day, and many
of them did not change them noticeably. He saw Lyle and Summers
taking the same ads. which had appeared unchangingly from month to
month in so far as their main features were concerned, and alter
only a few words before returning them to the forms. He wondered at
the sameness of them, and when, at last, they were given to him to
revise he often wished he could change them a little. The language
seemed so dull.

"Why don't they ever put little drawings in these ads?" he asked
Lyle one day. "Don't you think they'd look a little better?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Jonas. "They look pretty good. These
people around here wouldn't want anything like that. They'd think
it was too fancy." Eugene had seen and in a way studied the ads. in
the magazines. They seemed so much more fascinating to him. Why
couldn't newspaper ads. be different?

Still it was never given to him to trouble over this problem.
Mr. Burgess dealt with the advertisers. He settled how the ads were
to be. He never talked to Eugene or Summers about them, not always
to Lyle. He would sometimes have Williams explain just what their
character and layout was to be. Eugene was so young that Williams
at first did not pay very much attention to him, but after a while
he began to realize that there was a personality here, and then he
would explain things,—why space had to be short for some items and
long for others, why county news, news of small towns around
Alexandria, and about people, was much more important financially
to the paper than the correct reporting of the death of the sultan
of Turkey. The most important thing was to get the local names
right. "Don't ever misspell them," he once cautioned him. "Don't
ever leave out a part of a name if you can help it. People are
awfully sensitive about that. They'll stop their subscription if
you don't watch out, and you won't know what's the matter."

Eugene took all these things to heart. He wanted to see how the
thing was done, though basically it seemed to be a little small. In
fact people seemed a little small, mostly.

One of the things that did interest him was to see the paper put
on the press and run off. He liked to help lock up the forms, and
to see how they were imposed and registered. He liked to hear the
press run, and to help carry the wet papers to the mailing tables
and the distributing counter out in front. The paper hadn't a very
large circulation but there was a slight hum of life about that
time and he liked it. He liked the sense of getting his hands and
face streaked and not caring, and of seeing his hair tousled, in
the mirror. He tried to be useful and the various people on the
paper came to like him, though he was often a little awkward and
slow. He was not strong at this period and his stomach troubled
him. He thought, too, that the smell of the ink might affect his
lungs, though he did not seriously fear it. In the main it was
interesting but small; there was a much larger world outside, he
knew that. He hoped to go to it some day; he hoped to go to
Chicago.

Eugene grew more and more moody and rather restless under
Stella's increasing independence. She grew steadily more
indifferent because of his moods. The fact that other boys were
crazy for her consideration was a great factor; the fact that one
particular boy, Harvey Rutter, was persistently genial, not
insistent, really better looking than Eugene and much better
tempered, helped a great deal. Eugene saw her with him now and
then, saw her go skating with him, or at least with a crowd of
which he was a member. Eugene hated him heartily; he hated her at
times for not yielding to him wholly; but he was none the less wild
over her beauty. It stamped his brain with a type or ideal.
Thereafter he knew in a really definite way what womanhood ought to
be, to be really beautiful.

Another thing it did was to bring home to him a sense of his
position in the world. So far he had always been dependent on his
parents for food, clothes and spending money, and his parents were
not very liberal. He knew other boys who had money to run up to
Chicago or down to Springfield—the latter was nearer—to have a
Saturday and Sunday lark. No such gaieties were for him. His father
would not allow it, or rather would not pay for it. There were
other boys who, in consequence of amply provided spending money,
were the town dandies. He saw them kicking their heels outside the
corner book store, the principal loafing place of the elite, on
Wednesdays and Saturdays and sometimes on Sunday evenings
preparatory to going somewhere, dressed in a luxury of clothing
which was beyond his wildest dreams. Ted Martinwood, the son of the
principal drygoods man, had a frock coat in which he sometimes
appeared when he came down to the barber shop for a shave before he
went to call on his girl. George Anderson was possessed of a dress
suit, and wore dancing pumps at all dances. There was Ed Waterbury,
who was known to have a horse and runabout of his own. These youths
were slightly older, and were interested in girls of a slightly
older set, but the point was the same. These things hurt him.

He himself had no avenue of progress which, so far as he could
see, was going to bring him to any financial prosperity. His father
was never going to be rich, anybody could see that. He himself had
made no practical progress in schoolwork—he knew that. He hated
insurance—soliciting or writing, despised the sewing machine
business, and did not know where he would get with anything which
he might like to do in literature or art. His drawing seemed a
joke, his writing, or wish for writing, pointless. He was
broodingly unhappy.

One day Williams, who had been watching him for a long time,
stopped at his desk.

"I say, Witla, why don't you go to Chicago?" he said. "There's a
lot more up there for a boy like you than down here. You'll never
get anywhere working on a country newspaper."

"I know it," said Eugene.

"Now with me it's different," went on Williams. "I've had my
rounds. I've got a wife and three children and when a man's got a
family he can't afford to take chances. But you're young yet. Why
don't you go to Chicago and get on a paper? You could get
something."

"What could I get?" asked Eugene.

"Well, you might get a job as type-setter if you'd join the
union. I don't know how good you'd be as a reporter—I hardly think
that's your line. But you might study art and learn to draw.
Newspaper artists make good money."

Eugene thought of his art. It wasn't much. He didn't do much
with it. Still he thought of Chicago; the world appealed to him. If
he could only get out of here—if he could only make more than seven
or eight dollars a week. He brooded about this.

One Sunday afternoon he and Stella went with Myrtle to Sylvia's
home, and after a brief stay Stella announced that she would have
to be going; her mother would be expecting her back. Myrtle was for
going with her, but altered her mind when Sylvia asked her to stay
to tea. "Let Eugene take her home," Sylvia said. Eugene was
delighted in his persistent, hopeless way. He was not yet convinced
that she could not be won to love. When they walked out in the
fresh sweet air—it was nearing spring—he felt that now he should
have a chance of saying something which would be winning—which
would lure her to him.

They went out on a street next to the one she lived on quite to
the confines of the town. She wanted to turn off at her street, but
he had urged her not to. "Do you have to go home just yet?" he
asked, pleadingly.

"No, I can walk a little way," she replied.

They reached a vacant place—the last house a little distance
back—talking idly. It was getting hard to make talk. In his efforts
to be entertaining he picked up three twigs to show her how a
certain trick in balancing was performed. It consisted in laying
two at right angles with each other and with a third, using the
latter as an upright. She could not do it, of course. She was not
really very much interested. He wanted her to try and when she did,
took hold of her right hand to steady her efforts.

"No, don't," she said, drawing her hand away. "I can do it."

She trifled with the twigs unsuccessfully and was about to let
them fall, when he took hold of both her hands. It was so sudden
that she could not free herself, and so she looked him straight in
the eye.

"Let go, Eugene, please let go."

He shook his head, gazing at her.

"Please let go," she went on. "You mustn't do this. I don't want
you to."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Well, because I don't."

"Don't you like me any more, Stella, really?" he asked.

"I don't think I do, not that way."

"But you did."

"I thought I did."

"Have you changed your mind?"

"Yes, I think I have."

He dropped her hands and looked at her fixedly and dramatically.
The attitude did not appeal to her. They strolled back to the
street, and when they neared her door he said, "Well, I suppose
there's no use in my coming to see you any more."

"I think you'd better not," she said simply.

She walked in, never looking back, and instead of going back to
his sister's he went home. He was in a very gloomy mood, and after
sitting around for a while went to his room. The night fell, and he
sat there looking out at the trees and grieving about what he had
lost. Perhaps he was not good enough for her—he could not make her
love him. Was it that he was not handsome enough—he did not really
consider himself good looking—or what was it, a lack of courage or
strength?

After a time he noticed that the moon was hanging over the trees
like a bright shield in the sky. Two layers of thin clouds were
moving in different directions on different levels. He stopped in
his cogitations to think where these clouds came from. On sunny
days when there were great argosies of them he had seen them
disappear before his eyes, and then, marvel of marvels, reappear
out of nothingness. The first time he ever saw this it astonished
him greatly, for he had never known up to then what clouds were.
Afterward he read about them in his physical geography. Tonight he
thought of that, and of the great plains over which these winds
swept, and of the grass and trees—great forests of them—miles and
miles. What a wonderful world! Poets wrote about these things,
Longfellow, and Bryant, and Tennyson. He thought of "Thanatopsis,"
and of the "Elegy," both of which he admired greatly. What was this
thing, life?

Then he came back to Stella with an ache. She was actually gone,
and she was so beautiful. She would never really talk to him any
more. He would never get to hold her hand or kiss her. He clenched
his hands with the hurt. Oh, that night on the ice; that night in
the sleigh! How wonderful they were! Finally he undressed and went
to bed. He wanted to be alone—to be lonely. On his clean white
pillow he lay and dreamed of the things that might have been,
kisses, caresses, a thousand joys.

One Sunday afternoon he was lying in his hammock thinking,
thinking of what a dreary place Alexandria was, anyhow, when he
opened a Chicago Saturday afternoon paper, which was something like
a Sunday one because it had no Sunday edition,—and went gloomily
through it. It was as he had always found, full of a subtle wonder,
the wonder of the city, which drew him like a magnet. Here was the
drawing of a big hotel someone was going to build; there was a
sketch of a great pianist who was coming to play. An account of a
new comedy drama; of a little romantic section of Goose Island in
the Chicago river, with its old decayed boats turned into houses
and geese waddling about; an item of a man falling through a coal
hole on South Halstead street fascinated him. This last was at
sixty-two hundred and something and the idea of such a long street
seized on his imagination. What a tremendous city Chicago must be.
The thought of car lines, crowds, trains, came to him with almost a
yearning appeal.

All at once the magnet got him. It gripped his very soul, this
wonder, this beauty, this life.

"I'm going to Chicago," he thought, and got up.

There was his nice, quiet little home laid out before him.
Inside were his mother, his father, Myrtle. Still he was going. He
could come back. "Sure I can come back," he thought. Propelled by
this magnetic power he went in and upstairs to his room, and got a
little grip or portmanteau he had. He put in it the things he
thought he would immediately need. In his pocket were nine dollars,
money he had been saving for some time. Finally he came downstairs
and stood in the door of the sitting room.

"What's the matter?" asked his mother, looking at his solemn
introspective face.

"I'm going to Chicago," he said.

"When?" she asked, astonished, a little uncertain of just what
he meant.

"Today," he said.

"No, you're joking." She smiled unbelievingly. This was a boyish
prank.

"I'm going today," he said. "I'm going to catch that four
o'clock train."

Her face saddened. "You're not?" she said.

"I can come back," he replied, "if I want to. I want to get
something else to do."

His father came in at this time. He had a little work room out
in the barn where he sometimes cleaned machines and repaired
vehicles. He was fresh from such a task now.

"What's up?" he asked, seeing his wife close to her boy.

"Eugene's going to Chicago."

"Since when?" he inquired amusedly.

"Today. He says he's going right now."

"You don't mean it," said Witla, astonished. He really did not
believe it. "Why don't you take a little time and think it over?
What are you going to live on?"

"I'll live," said Eugene. "I'm going. I've had enough of this
place. I'm going to get out."

"All right," said his father, who, after all, believed in
initiative. Evidently after all he hadn't quite understood this
boy. "Got your trunk packed?"

"No, but mother can send me that."

"Don't go today," pleaded his mother. "Wait until you get
something ready, Eugene. Wait and do a little thinking about it.
Wait until tomorrow."

"I want to go today, ma." He slipped his arm around her. "Little
ma." He was bigger than she by now, and still growing.

"All right, Eugene," she said softly, "but I wish you wouldn't."
Her boy was leaving her—her heart was hurt.

"I can come back, ma. It's only a hundred miles."

"Well, all right," she said finally, trying to brighten. "I'll
pack your bag."

"I have already."

She went to look.

"Well, it'll soon be time," said Witla, who was thinking that
Eugene might back down. "I'm sorry. Still it may be a good thing
for you. You're always welcome here, you know."

"I know," said Eugene.

They went finally to the train together, he and his father and
Myrtle. His mother couldn't. She stayed to cry.

On the way to the depot they stopped at Sylvia's.

"Why, Eugene," she exclaimed, "how ridiculous! Don't go."

"He's set," said Witla.

Eugene finally got loose. He seemed to be fighting love, home
ties, everything, every step of the way. Finally he reached the
depot. The train came. Witla grabbed his hand affectionately. "Be a
good boy," he said, swallowing a gulp.

Myrtle kissed him. "You're so funny, Eugene. Write me."

"I will."

He stepped on the train. The bell rang. Out the cars rolled—out
and on. He looked out on the familiar scenes and then a real ache
came to him—Stella, his mother, his father, Myrtle, the little
home. They were all going out of his life.

"Hm," he half groaned, clearing his throat. "Gee!"

And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must
succeed. That's what the world was made for. That was what he was
made for. That was what he would have to do… .