The Genius (5 page)

One of the things which tended to harden and sharpen his
impressions of life at this time was the show of luxury seen in
some directions. On Michigan Avenue and Prairie Avenue, on Ashland
Avenue and Washington Boulevard, were sections which were crowded
with splendid houses such as Eugene had never seen before. He was
astonished at the magnificence of their appointments, the beauty of
the lawns, the show of the windows, the distinction of the
equipages which accompanied them and served them. For the first
time in his life he saw liveried footmen at doors: he saw at a
distance girls and women grown who seemed marvels of beauty to
him—they were so distinguished in their dress; he saw young men
carrying themselves with an air of distinction which he had never
seen before. These must be the society people the newspapers were
always talking about. His mind made no distinctions as yet. If
there were fine clothes, fine trappings, of course social prestige
went with them. It made him see for the first time what far reaches
lay between the conditions of a beginner from the country and what
the world really had to offer—or rather what it showered on some at
the top. It subdued and saddened him a little. Life was unfair.

These fall days, too, with their brown leaves, sharp winds,
scudding smoke and whirls of dust showed him that the city could be
cruel. He met shabby men, sunken eyed, gloomy, haggard, who looked
at him, apparently out of a deep despair. These creatures all
seemed to be brought where they were by difficult circumstances. If
they begged at all,—and they rarely did of him, for he did not look
prosperous enough, it was with the statement that unfortunate
circumstances had brought them where they were. You could fail so
easily. You could really starve if you didn't look sharp,—the city
quickly taught him that.

During these days he got immensely lonely. He was not very
sociable, and too introspective. He had no means of making friends,
or thought he had none. So he wandered about the streets at night,
marveling at the sights he saw, or staying at home in his little
room. Mrs. Woodruff, the landlady, was nice and motherly enough,
but she was not young and did not fit into his fancies. He was
thinking about girls and how sad it was not to have one to say a
word to him. Stella was gone—that dream was over. When would he
find another like her?

After wandering around for nearly a month, during which time he
was compelled to use some money his mother sent him to buy a suit
of clothes on an instalment plan, he got a place as driver of a
laundry, which, because it paid ten dollars a week, seemed very
good. He sketched now and then when he was not tired, but what he
did seemed pointless. So he worked here, driving a wagon, when he
should have been applying for an art opening, or taking art
lessons.

During this winter Myrtle wrote him that Stella Appleton had
moved to Kansas, whither her father had gone; and that his mother's
health was bad, and that she did so want him to come home and stay
awhile. It was about this time that he became acquainted with a
little Scotch girl named Margaret Duff, who worked in the laundry,
and became quickly involved in a relationship which established a
precedent in his experiences with women. Before this he had never
physically known a girl. Now, and of a sudden, he was plunged into
something which awakened a new, and if not evil, at least
disrupting and disorganizing propensity of his character. He loved
women, the beauty of the curves of their bodies. He loved beauty of
feature and after a while was to love beauty of mind,—he did now,
in a vague, unformed way,—but his ideal was as yet not clear to
him. Margaret Duff represented some simplicity of attitude, some
generosity of spirit, some shapeliness of form, some comeliness of
feature,—it was not more. But, growing by what it fed on, his sex
appetite became powerful. In a few weeks it had almost mastered
him. He burned to be with this girl daily—and she was perfectly
willing that he should, so long as the relationship did not become
too conspicuous. She was a little afraid of her parents, although
those two, being working people, retired early and slept soundly.
They did not seem to mind her early philanderings with boys. This
latest one was no novelty. It burned fiercely for three
months—Eugene was eager, insatiable: the girl not so much so, but
complaisant. She liked this evidence of fire in him,—the hard,
burning flame she had aroused, and yet after a time she got a
little tired. Then little personal differences arose,—differences
of taste, differences of judgment, differences of interest. He
really could not talk to her of anything serious, could not get a
response to his more delicate emotions. For her part she could not
find in him any ready appreciation of the little things she
liked—theater jests, and the bright remarks of other boys and
girls. She had some conception of what was tasteful in dress, but
as for anything else, art, literature, public affairs, she knew
nothing at all, while Eugene, for all his youth, was intensely
alive to what was going on in the great world. The sound of great
names and great fames was in his ears,—Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau,
Whitman. He read of great philosophers, painters, musicians,
meteors that sped across the intellectual sky of the western world,
and he wondered. He felt as though some day he would be called to
do something—in his youthful enthusiasm he half-thought it might be
soon. He knew that this girl he was trifling with could not hold
him. She had lured him, but once lured he was master, judge,
critic. He was beginning to feel that he could get along without
her,—that he could find someone better.

Naturally such an attitude would make for the death of passion,
as the satiation of passion would make for the development of such
an attitude. Margaret became indifferent. She resented his superior
airs, his top-lofty tone at times. They quarreled over little
things. One night he suggested something that she ought to do in
the haughty manner customary with him.

"Oh, don't be so smart!" she said. "You always talk as though
you owned me."

"I do," he said jestingly.

"Do you?" she flared. "There are others."

"Well, whenever you're ready you can have them. I'm
willing."

The tone cut her, though actually it was only an ill-timed bit
of teasing, more kindly meant than it sounded.

"Well, I'm ready now. You needn't come to see me unless you want
to. I can get along."

She tossed her head.

"Don't be foolish, Margy," he said, seeing the ill wind he had
aroused. "You don't mean that."

"Don't I? Well, we'll see." She walked away from him to another
corner of the room. He followed her, but her anger re-aroused his
opposition. "Oh, all right," he said after a time. "I guess I'd
better be going."

She made no response, neither pleas nor suggestions. He went and
secured his hat and coat and came back. "Want to kiss me good-bye?"
he inquired.

"No," she said simply.

"Good-night," he called.

"Good-night," she replied indifferently.

The relationship was never amicably readjusted after this,
although it did endure for some time.

For the time being this encounter stirred to an almost unbridled
degree Eugene's interest in women. Most men are secretly proud of
their triumph with woman—their ability to triumph—and any evidence
of their ability to attract, entertain, hold, is one of those
things which tends to give them an air of superiority and
self-sufficiency which is sometimes lacking in those who are not so
victorious. This was, in its way, his first victory of the sort,
and it pleased him mightily. He felt much more sure of himself
instead of in any way ashamed. What, he thought, did the silly boys
back in Alexandria know of life compared to this? Nothing. He was
in Chicago now. The world was different. He was finding himself to
be a man, free, individual, of interest to other personalities.
Margaret Duff had told him many pretty things about himself. She
had complimented his looks, his total appearance, his taste in the
selection of particular things. He had felt what it is to own a
woman. He strutted about for a time, the fact that he had been
dismissed rather arbitrarily having little weight with him because
he was so very ready to be dismissed, sudden dissatisfaction with
his job now stirred up in him, for ten dollars a week was no sum
wherewith any self-respecting youth could maintain
himself,—particularly with a view to sustaining any such
relationship as that which had just ended. He felt that he ought to
get a better place.

Then one day a woman to whom he was delivering a parcel at her
home in Warren Avenue, stopped him long enough to ask: "What do you
drivers get a week for your work?"

"I get ten dollars," said Eugene. "I think some get more."

"You ought to make a good collector," she went on. She was a
large, homely, incisive, straight-talking woman. "Would you like to
change to that kind of work?"

Eugene was sick of the laundry business. The hours were killing.
He had worked as late as one o'clock Sunday morning.

"I think I would," he exclaimed. "I don't know anything about
it, but this work is no fun."

"My husband is the manager of The People's Furniture Company,"
she went on. "He needs a good collector now and then. I think he's
going to make a change very soon. I'll speak to him."

Eugene smiled joyously and thanked her. This was surely a
windfall. He was anxious to know what collectors were paid but he
thought it scarcely tactful to ask.

"If he gives you a job you will probably get fourteen dollars to
begin with," she volunteered.

Eugene thrilled. That would be really a rise in the world. Four
dollars more! He could get some nice clothes out of that and have
spending money besides. He might get a chance to study art. His
visions began to multiply. One could get up in the world by trying.
The energetic delivery he had done for this laundry had brought him
this. Further effort in the other field might bring him more. And
he was young yet.

He had been working for the laundry company for six months. Six
weeks later, Mr. Henry Mitchly, manager of the People's Furniture,
wrote him care of the laundry company to call at his home any
evening after eight and he would see him. "My wife has spoken to me
of you," he added.

Eugene complied the same day that he received the note, and was
looked over by a lean, brisk, unctuous looking man of forty, who
asked him various questions as to his work, his home, how much
money he took in as a driver, and what not. Finally he said, "I
need a bright young man down at my place. It's a good job for one
who is steady and honest and hardworking. My wife seems to think
you work pretty well, so I'm willing to give you a trial. I can put
you to work at fourteen dollars. I want you to come to see me a
week from Monday."

Eugene thanked him. He decided, on Mr. Mitchly's advice, to give
his laundry manager a full week's notice. He told Margaret that he
was leaving and she was apparently glad for his sake. The
management was slightly sorry, for Eugene was a good driver. During
his last week he helped break in a new man in his place, and on
Monday appeared before Mr. Mitchly.

Mr. Mitchly was glad to have him, for he had seen him as a young
man of energy and force. He explained the simple nature of the
work, which was to take bills for clocks, silverware, rugs,
anything which the company sold, and go over the various routes
collecting the money due,—which would average from seventy five to
a hundred and twenty-five dollars a day. "Most companies in our
line require a bond," he explained, "but we haven't come to that
yet. I think I know honest young men when I see them. Anyhow we
have a system of inspection. If a man's inclined to be dishonest he
can't get very far with us."

Eugene had never thought of this question of honesty very much.
He had been raised where he did not need to worry about the matter
of a little pocket change, and he had made enough at the
Appeal
to supply his immediate wants. Besides, among the
people he had always associated with it was considered a very right
and necessary thing to be honest. Men were arrested for not being.
He remembered one very sad case of a boy he knew being arrested at
Alexandria for breaking into a store at night. That seemed a
terrible thing to him at the time. Since then he had been
speculating a great deal, in a vague way as to what honesty was,
but he had not yet decided. He knew that it was expected of him to
account for the last penny of anything that was placed in his
keeping and he was perfectly willing to do so. The money he earned
seemed enough if he had to live on it. There was no need for him to
aid in supporting anyone else. So he slipped along rather easily
and practically untested.

Eugene took the first day's package of bills as laid out for
him, and carefully went from door to door. In some places money was
paid him for which he gave a receipt, in others he was put off or
refused because of previous difficulties with the company. In a
number of places people had moved, leaving no trace of themselves,
and packing the unpaid for goods with them. It was his business, as
Mr. Mitchly explained, to try to get track of them from the
neighbors.

Eugene saw at once that he was going to like the work. The fresh
air, the out-door life, the walking, the quickness with which his
task was accomplished, all pleased him. His routes took him into
strange and new parts of the city, where he had never been before,
and introduced him to types he had never met. His laundry work,
taking him from door to door, had been a freshening influence, and
this was another. He saw scenes that he felt sure he could, when he
had learned to draw a little better, make great things of,—dark,
towering factory-sites, great stretches of railroad yards laid out
like a puzzle in rain, snow, or bright sunlight; great smoke-stacks
throwing their black heights athwart morning or evening skies. He
liked them best in the late afternoon when they stood out in a glow
of red or fading purple. "Wonderful," he used to exclaim to
himself, and think how the world would marvel if he could ever come
to do great pictures like those of Doré. He admired the man's
tremendous imagination. He never thought of himself as doing
anything in oils or water colors or chalk—only pen and ink, and
that in great, rude splotches of black and white. That was the way.
That was the way force was had.

But he could not do them. He could only think them.

One of his chief joys was the Chicago river, its black, mucky
water churned by puffing tugs and its banks lined by great red
grain elevators and black coal chutes and yellow lumber yards. Here
was real color and life—the thing to draw; and then there were the
low, drab, rain-soaked cottages standing in lonely, shabby little
rows out on flat prairie land, perhaps a scrubby tree somewhere
near. He loved these. He would take an envelope and try to get the
sense of them—the feel, as he called it—but it wouldn't come. All
he did seemed cheap and commonplace, mere pointless lines and stiff
wooden masses. How did the great artists get their smoothness and
ease? He wondered.