The Genius (88 page)

"If I can," said Eugene quietly, with a deprecating wave of the
hand, and a faint line of self-scorn about the corners of his
mouth. "It may be too late."

"'Too late! Too late!' What nonsense! Do you say that to me? If
you can! If you can! Well, I give you up! You with your velvet
textures and sure lines. It is too much. It is unbelievable!"

He raised his hands, eyes, and eye-brows in Gallic despair. He
shrugged his shoulders, waiting to see a change of expression in
Eugene.

"Very good!" said Eugene, when he heard this. "Only I can't
promise anything. We will see." And he wrote out his address.

This started him once more. The Frenchman, who had often heard
him spoken of and had sold all his earlier pictures, was convinced
that there was money in him—if not here then abroad—money and some
repute for himself as his sponsor. Some American artists must be
encouraged—some
must
rise. Why not Eugene? Here was one
who really deserved it.

So Eugene worked, painting swiftly, feverishly, brilliantly—with
a feeling half the time that his old art force had deserted him for
ever—everything that came into his mind. Taking a north lighted
room near Myrtle he essayed portraits of her and her husband, of
her and baby Angela, making arrangements which were classically
simple. Then he chose models from the streets,—laborers,
washerwomen, drunkards—characters all, destroying canvases
frequently, but, on the whole, making steady progress. He had a
strange fever for painting life as he saw it, for indicating it
with exact portraits of itself, strange, grim presentations of its
vagaries, futilities, commonplaces, drolleries, brutalities. The
mental, fuzzy-wuzzy maunderings and meanderings of the mob
fascinated him. The paradox of a decaying drunkard placed against
the vivid persistence of life gripped his fancy. Somehow it
suggested himself hanging on, fighting on, accusing nature, and it
gave him great courage to do it. This picture eventually sold for
eighteen thousand dollars, a record price.

In the meantime his lost dream in the shape of Suzanne was
traveling abroad with her mother—in England, Scotland, France,
Egypt, Italy, Greece. Aroused by the astonishing storm which her
sudden and uncertain fascination had brought on, she was now so
shaken and troubled by the disasters which had seemed to flow to
Eugene in her wake, that she really did not know what to do or
think. She was still too young, too nebulous. She was strong enough
in body and mind, but very uncertain philosophically and morally—a
dreamer and opportunist. Her mother, fearful of some headstrong,
destructive outburst in which her shrewdest calculations would
prove of no avail, was most anxious to be civil, loving, courteous,
politic anything to avoid a disturbing re-encounter with the facts
of the past, or a sudden departure on the part of Suzanne, which
she hourly feared. What was she to do? Anything Suzanne wanted—her
least whim, her moods in dress, pleasure, travel, friendship, were
most assiduously catered to. Would she like to go here? would she
like to see that? would this amuse her? would that be pleasant? And
Suzanne, seeing always what her mother's motives were, and troubled
by the pain and disgrace she had brought on Eugene, was uncertain
now as to whether her conduct had been right or not. She puzzled
over it continually.

More terrifying, however, was the thought which came to her
occasionally as to whether she had really loved Eugene at all or
not. Was this not a passing fancy? Had there not been some
chemistry of the blood, causing her to make a fool of herself,
without having any real basis in intellectual rapprochement. Was
Eugene truly the one man with whom she could have been happy? Was
he not too adoring, too headstrong, too foolish and mistaken in his
calculations? Was he the able person she had really fancied him to
be? Would she not have come to dislike him—to hate him even—in a
short space of time? Could they have been truly, permanently happy?
Would she not be more interested in one who was sharp, defiant,
indifferent—one whom she could be compelled to adore and fight for
rather than one who was constantly adoring her and needing her
sympathy? A strong, solid, courageous man—was not such a one her
ideal, after all? And could Eugene be said to be that? These and
other questions tormented her constantly.

It is strange, but life is constantly presenting these pathetic
paradoxes—these astounding blunders which temperament and blood
moods bring about and reason and circumstance and convention
condemn. The dreams of man are one thing—his capacity to realize
them another. At either pole are the accidents of supreme failure
and supreme success—the supreme failure of an Abélard for instance,
the supreme success of a Napoleon, enthroned at Paris. But, oh, the
endless failures for one success.

But in this instance it cannot be said that Suzanne had
definitely concluded that she did not love him. Far from it.
Although the cleverest devices were resorted to by Mrs. Dale to
bring her into contact with younger and to her—now—more interesting
personalities, Suzanne—very much of an introspective dreamer and
quiet spectator herself, was not to be swiftly deluded by love
again—if she had been deluded. She had half decided to study men
from now on, and use them, if need be, waiting for the time when
some act, of Eugene's, perhaps, or some other personality, might
decide for her. The strange, destructive spell of her beauty began
to interest her, for now she knew that she really was beautiful.
She looked in her mirror very frequently now—at the artistry of a
curl, the curve of her chin, her cheek, her arm. If ever she went
back to Eugene how well she would repay him for his agony. But
would she? Could she? Would he have not recovered his sanity and be
able to snap his fingers in her face and smile superciliously? For,
after all, no doubt he was a wonderful man and would shine as
something somewhere soon again. And when he did—what would he think
of her—her silence, her desertion, her moral cowardice?

"After all, I am not of much account," she said to herself. "But
what he thought of me!—that wild fever—that was wonderful! Really
he was wonderful!"

The dénouement of all this, as much as ever could be, was still
two years off. By that time Suzanne was considerably more sobered,
somewhat more intellectually cultivated, a little cooler—not colder
exactly—and somewhat more critical. Men, when it came to her type
of beauty, were a little too suggestive of their amorousness. After
Eugene their proffers of passion, adoration, undying love, were not
so significant.

But one day in New York on Fifth Avenue, there was a
re-encounter. She was shopping with her mother, but their ways, for
a moment, were divided. By now Eugene was once more in complete
possession of his faculties. The old ache had subsided to a dim but
colorful mirage of beauty that was always in his eye. Often he had
thought what he would do if he saw Suzanne again—what say, if
anything. Would he smile, bow—and if there were an answering light
in her eye, begin his old courtship all over, or would he find her
changed, cold, indifferent? Would he be indifferent, sneering? It
would be hard on him, perhaps, afterwards, but it would pay her out
and serve her right. If she really cared, she ought to be made to
suffer for being a waxy fool and tool in the hands of her mother.
He did not know that she had heard of his wife's death—the birth of
his child—and that she had composed and destroyed five different
letters, being afraid of reprisal, indifference, scorn.

She had heard of his rise to fame as an artist once more, for
the exhibition had finally come about, and with it great praise,
generous acknowledgments of his ability—artists admired him most of
all. They thought him strange, eccentric, but great. M. Charles had
suggested to a great bank director that his new bank in the
financial district be decorated by Eugene alone, which was
eventually done—nine great panels in which he expressed deeply some
of his feeling for life. At Washington, in two of the great public
buildings and in three state capitols were tall, glowing panels
also of his energetic dreaming,—a brooding suggestion of beauty
that never was on land or sea. Here and there in them you might
have been struck by a face—an arm, a cheek, an eye. If you had ever
known Suzanne as she was you would have known the basis—the
fugitive spirit at the bottom of all these things.

But in spite of that he now hated her—or told himself that he
did. Under the heel of his intellectuality was the face, the beauty
that he adored. He despised and yet loved it. Life had played him a
vile trick—love—thus to frenzy his reason and then to turn him out
as mad. Now, never again, should love affect him, and yet the
beauty of woman was still his great lure—only he was the
master.

And then one day Suzanne appeared.

He scarcely recognized her, so sudden it was and so quickly
ended. She was crossing Fifth Avenue at Forty-second Street. He was
coming out of a jeweler's, with a birthday ring for little Angela.
Then the eyes of this girl, a pale look—a flash of something
wonderful that he remembered and then——

He stared curiously—not quite sure.

"He does not even recognize me," thought Suzanne, "or he hates
me now. Oh!—all in five years!"

"It is she, I believe," he said to himself, "though I am not
quite sure. Well, if it is she can go to the devil!" His mouth
hardened. "I will cut her as she deserves to be cut," he thought.
"She shall never know that I care."

And so they passed,—never to meet in this world—each always
wishing, each defying, each folding a wraith of beauty to the
heart.

There appears to be in metaphysics a basis, or no basis,
according as the temperament and the experience of each shall
incline him, for ethical or spiritual ease or peace. Life sinks
into the unknowable at every turn and only the temporary or
historical scene remains as a guide,—and that passes also. It may
seem rather beside the mark that Eugene in his moral and physical
depression should have inclined to various religious abstrusities
for a time, but life does such things in a storm. They constituted
a refuge from himself, from his doubts and despairs as religious
thought always does.

If I were personally to define religion I would say that it is a
bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by
circumstance; an envelope to pocket him from the unescapable and
unstable illimitable. We seek to think of things as permanent and
see them so. Religion gives life a habitation and a name
apparently—though it is an illusion. So we are brought back to time
and space and illimitable mind—as what? And we shall always stand
before them attributing to them all those things which we cannot
know.

Yet the need for religion is impermanent, like all else in life.
As the soul regains its health, it becomes prone to the old
illusions. Again women entered his life—never believe
otherwise—drawn, perhaps, by a certain wistfulness and loneliness
in Eugene, who though quieted by tragedy for a little while was
once more moving in the world. He saw their approach with more
skepticism, and yet not unmoved—women who came through the drawing
rooms to which he was invited, wives and daughters who sought to
interest him in themselves and would scarcely take no for an
answer; women of the stage—women artists, poetasters, "varietists,"
critics, dreamers. From the many approaches, letters and meetings,
some few relationships resulted, ending as others had ended. Was he
not changed, then? Not much—no. Only hardened intellectually and
emotionally—tempered for life and work. There were scenes, too,
violent ones, tears, separations, renouncements, cold meetings—with
little Angela always to one side in Myrtle's care as a stay and
consolation.

In Eugene one saw an artist who, pagan to the core, enjoyed
reading the Bible for its artistry of expression, and Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Spinoza and James for the mystery of things which they
suggested. In his child he found a charming personality and a study
as well—one whom he could brood over with affectionate interest at
times, seeing already something of himself and something of Angela,
and wondering at the outcome. What would she be like? Would art
have any interest for her? She was so daring, gay, self-willed, he
thought.

"You've a Tartar on your hands," Myrtle once said to him, and he
smiled as he replied:

"Just the same I'll see if I can't keep up with her."

One of his occasional thoughts was that if he and Angela,
junior, came to understand each other thoroughly, and she did not
marry too soon, he could build a charming home around her. Perhaps
her husband might not object to living with them.

The last scene of all may be taken from his studio in Montclair,
where with Myrtle and her husband as resident housekeepers and
Angela as his diversion he was living and working. He was sitting
in front of his fireplace one night reading, when a thought in some
history recalled to his mind a paragraph somewhere in Spencer's
astonishing chapters on "the unknowable" in his "Facts and
Comments," and he arose to see if he could find it. Rummaging
around in his books he extracted the volume and reread it, with a
kind of smack of intellectual agreement, for it suited his mood in
regard to life and his own mental state in particular. Because it
was so peculiarly related to his own viewpoint I quote it:

"Beyond the reach of our intelligence as are the mysteries of
the objects known by our senses, those presented in this universal
matrix are, if we may say so, still further beyond the reach of our
intelligence, for whereas, those of the one kind may be, and are,
thought of by many as explicable on the hypothesis of creation, and
by the rest on the hypothesis of evolution, those of the other kind
cannot by either be regarded as thus explicable. Theist and
Agnostic must agree in recognizing the properties of Space as
inherent, eternal, uncreated—as anteceding all creation, if
creation has taken place. Hence, could we penetrate the mysteries
of existence, there would still remain more transcendent mysteries.
That which can be thought of as neither made nor evolved presents
us with facts the origin of which is even more remote from
conceivability than is the origin of the facts presented by visible
and tangible things… . The thought of this blank form of existence
which, explored in all directions as far as eye can reach, has,
beyond that, an unexplored region compared with which the part
imagination has traversed is but infinitesimal—the thought of a
space, compared with which our immeasurable sidereal system
dwindles to a point, is a thought too overwhelming to be dwelt
upon. Of late years the consciousness that without origin or cause,
infinite space has ever existed and must ever exist produces in me
a feeling from which I shrink."

"Well," said Eugene, turning as he thought he heard a slight
noise, "that is certainly the sanest interpretation of the
limitations of human thought I have ever read"—and then seeing the
tiny Angela enter, clad in a baggy little sleeping suit which was
not unrelated to a Harlequin costume, he smiled, for he knew her
wheedling, shifty moods and tricks.

"Now what are you coming in here for?" he asked, with mock
severity. "You know you oughn't to be up so late. If Auntie Myrtle
catches you!"

"But I can't sleep, Daddy," she replied trickily, anxious to be
with him a little while longer before the fire, and tripping
coaxingly across the floor. "Won't you take me?"

"Yes, I know all about your not being able to sleep, you scamp.
You're coming in here to be cuddled. You beat it!"

"Oh, no, Daddy!"

"All right, then, come here." And he gathered her up in his arms
and reseated himself by the fire. "Now you go to sleep or back you
go to bed."

She snuggled down, her yellow head in his crook'd elbow while he
looked at her cheek, recalling the storm in which she had
arrived.

"Little flower girl," he said. "Sweet little kiddie."

His offspring made no reply. Presently he carried her asleep to
her couch, tucked her in, and, coming back, went out on the brown
lawn, where a late November wind rustled in the still clinging
brown leaves. Overhead were the star—Orion's majestic belt and
those mystic constellations that make Dippers, Bears, and that
remote cloudy formation known as the Milky Way.

"Where in all this—in substance," he thought, rubbing his hand
through his hair, "is Angela? Where in substance will be that which
is me? What a sweet welter life is—how rich, how tender, how grim,
how like a colorful symphony."

Great art dreams welled up into his soul as he viewed the
sparkling deeps of space.

"The sound of the wind—how fine it is tonight," he thought.

Then he went quietly in and closed the door.