The Genius (51 page)

Still time went by, and although things did not improve very
much in his office over the standards which he saw prevailing when
he came there, he was obviously getting things much better arranged
in his private life. In the first place Angela's attitude was
getting much better. The old agony which had possessed her in the
days when he was acting so badly had modified as day by day she saw
him working and conducting himself with reasonable circumspection.
She did not trust him as yet. She was not sure that he had utterly
broken with Carlotta Wilson (she had never found out who his
paramour was), but all the evidence seemed to attest it. There was
a telephone down stairs in a drug store by which, during his days
on the
World
, Angela would call him up at any time, and
whenever she had called him up he was always in the office. He
seemed to have plenty of time to take her to the theatre if she
wished to go, and to have no especial desire to avoid her company.
He had once told her frankly that he did not propose to pretend to
love her any more, though he did care for her, and this frightened
her. In spite of her wrath and suffering she cared for him, and she
believed that he still sympathized with her and might come to care
for her again—that he ought to.

She decided to play the rôle of the affectionate wife whether it
was true or not, and to hug and kiss him and fuss over him if he
would let her, just as though nothing had happened. Eugene did not
understand this. He did not see how Angela could still love him. He
thought she must hate him, having such just grounds, for having by
dint of hard work and absence come out of his vast excitement about
Carlotta he was beginning to feel that he had done her a terrific
injustice and to wish to make amends. He did not want to love her,
he did not feel that he could, but he was perfectly willing to
behave himself, to try to earn a good living, to take her to
theatre and opera as opportunity permitted, and to build up and
renew a social relationship with others which should act as a
substitute for love. He was beginning to think that there was no
honest or happy solution to any affair of the heart in the world.
Most people so far as he could see were unhappily married. It
seemed to be the lot of mankind to make mistakes in its matrimonial
selections. He was probably no more unhappy than many others. Let
the world wag as it would for a time. He would try to make some
money now, and restore himself in the eyes of the world. Later,
life might bring him something—who could tell?

In the next place their financial condition, even before he left
the
World
, was so much better than it had been. By dint of
saving and scraping, refusing to increase their expenses more than
was absolutely necessary, Angela had succeeded by the time he left
the
World
in laying by over one thousand dollars, and
since then it had gone up to three thousand. They had relaxed
sufficiently so that now they were wearing reasonably good clothes,
were going out and receiving company regularly. It was not possible
in their little apartment which they still occupied to entertain
more than three or four at the outside, and two was all that Angela
ever cared to consider as either pleasurable or comfortable; but
they entertained this number frequently. There were some slight
recoveries of friendship and of the old life—Hudson Dula, Jerry
Mathews, who had moved to Newark; William McConnell, Philip
Shotmeyer. MacHugh and Smite were away, one painting in Nova
Scotia, the other working in Chicago. As for the old art crowd,
socialists and radicals included, Eugene attempted to avoid them as
much as possible. He knew nothing of the present whereabouts of
Miriam Finch and Norma Whitmore. Of Christina Channing he heard
much, for she was singing in Grand Opera, her pictures displayed in
the paper and upon the billboards. There were many new friends,
principally young newspaper artists like Adolph Morgenbau, who took
to Eugene and were in a sense his disciples.

Angela's relations showed up from time to time, among them David
Blue, now a sub-lieutenant in the army, with all the army officer's
pride of place and station. There were women friends of Angela's
for whom Eugene cared little—Mrs. Desmas, the wife of the furniture
manufacturer at Riverwood, from whom they had rented their four
rooms there; Mrs. Wertheim, the wife of the multimillionaire, to
whom M. Charles had introduced them; Mrs. Link, the wife of the
West Point army captain who had come to the old Washington Square
studio with Marietta and who was now stationed at Fort Hamilton in
Brooklyn; and a Mrs. Juergens, living in a neighboring apartment.
As long as they were very poor, Angela was very careful how she
revived acquaintances; but when they began to have a little money
she decided that she might indulge her predilection and so make
life less lonesome for herself. She had always been anxious to
build up solid social connections for Eugene, but as yet she did
not see how it was to be done.

When Eugene's new connection with the Summerfield company was
consummated, Angela was greatly astonished and rather delighted to
think that if he had to work in this practical field for long it
was to be under such comforting auspices—that is, as a superior and
not as an underling. Long ago she had come to feel that Eugene
would never make any money in a commercial way. To see him mounting
in this manner was curious, but not wholly reassuring. They must
save money; that was her one cry. They had to move soon, that was
very plain, but they mustn't spend any more than they had to. She
delayed until the attitude of Summerfield, upon an accidental visit
to their flat, made it commercially advisable.

Summerfield was a great admirer of Eugene's artistic ability. He
had never seen any of his pictures, but he was rather keen to, and
once when Eugene told him that they were still on display, one or
two of them at Pottle Frères, Jacob Bergman's and Henry LaRue's, he
decided to visit these places, but put it off. One night when he
was riding uptown on the L road with Eugene he decided because he
was in a vagrom mood to accompany him home and see his pictures
there. Eugene did not want this. He was chagrined to be compelled
to take him into their very little apartment, but there was
apparently no way of escaping it. He tried to persuade him to visit
Pottle Frères instead, where one picture was still on view, but
Summerfield would none of that.

"I don't like you to see this place," finally he said
apologetically, as they were going up the steps of the five-story
apartment house. "We are going to get out of here pretty soon. I
came here when I worked on the road."

Summerfield looked about at the poor neighborhood, the inlet of
a canal some two blocks east where a series of black coal pockets
were and to the north where there was flat open country and a
railroad yard.

"Why, that's all right," he said, in his direct, practical way.
"It doesn't make any difference to me. It does to you, though,
Witla. You know, I believe in spending money, everybody spending
money. Nobody gets anywhere by saving anything. Pay out! Pay
out—that's the idea. I found that out for myself long ago. You'd
better move when you get a chance soon and surround yourself with
clever people."

Eugene considered this the easy talk of a man who was successful
and lucky, but he still thought there was much in it. Summerfield
came in and viewed the pictures. He liked them, and he liked
Angela, though he wondered how Eugene ever came to marry her. She
was such a quiet little home body. Eugene looked more like a
Bohemian or a club man now that he had been worked upon by
Summerfield. The soft hat had long since been discarded for a stiff
derby, and Eugene's clothes were of the most practical business
type he could find. He looked more like a young merchant than an
artist. Summerfield invited them over to dinner at his house,
refusing to stay to dinner here, and went his way.

Before long, because of his advice they moved. They had
practically four thousand by now, and because of his salary Angela
figured that they could increase their living expenses to say two
thousand five hundred or even three thousand dollars. She wanted
Eugene to save two thousand each year against the day when he
should decide to return to art. They sought about together Saturday
afternoons and Sundays and finally found a charming apartment in
Central Park West overlooking the park, where they thought they
could live and entertain beautifully. It had a large dining-room
and living-room which when the table was cleared away formed one
great room. There was a handsomely equipped bathroom, a nice
kitchen with ample pantry, three bedrooms, one of which Angela
turned into a sewing room, and a square hall or entry which
answered as a temporary reception room. There were plenty of
closets, gas and electricity, elevator service with nicely
uniformed elevator men, and a house telephone. It was very
different from their last place, where they only had a long dark
hall, stairways to climb, gas only, and no phone. The neighborhood,
too, was so much better. Here were automobiles and people walking
in the park or promenading on a Sunday afternoon, and obsequious
consideration or polite indifference to your affairs from everyone
who had anything to do with you.

"Well, the tide is certainly turning," said Eugene, as they
entered it the first day.

He had the apartment redecorated in white and delft-blue and
dark blue, getting a set of library and dining-room furniture in
imitation rosewood. He bought a few choice pictures which he had
seen at various exhibitions to mix with his own, and set a
cut-glass bowl in the ceiling where formerly the commonplace
chandelier had been. There were books enough, accumulated during a
period of years, to fill the attractive white bookcase with its
lead-paned doors. Attractive sets of bedroom furniture in
bird's-eye maple and white enamel were secured, and the whole
apartment given a very cosy and tasteful appearance. A piano was
purchased outright and dinner and breakfast sets of Haviland china.
There were many other dainty accessories, such as rugs, curtains,
portières, and so forth, the hanging of which Angela supervised.
Here they settled down to a comparatively new and attractive
life.

Angela had never really forgiven him his indiscretions of the
past, his radical brutality in the last instance, but she was not
holding them up insistently against him. There were occasional
scenes even yet, the echoes of a far-off storm; but as long as they
were making money and friends were beginning to come back she did
not propose to quarrel. Eugene was very considerate. He was very,
very hard-working. Why should she nag him? He would sit by a window
overlooking the park at night and toil over his sketches and ideas
until midnight. He was up and dressed by seven, down to his office
by eight-thirty, out to lunch at one or later, and only back home
at eight or nine o'clock at night. Sometimes Angela would be cross
with him for this, sometimes rail at Mr. Summerfield for an inhuman
brute, but seeing that the apartment was so lovely and that Eugene
was getting along so well, how could she quarrel? It was for her
benefit as much as for his that he appeared to be working. He did
not think about spending money. He did not seem to care. He would
work, work, work, until she actually felt sorry for him.

"Certainly Mr. Summerfield ought to like you," she said to him
one day, half in compliment, half in a rage at a man who would
exact so much from him. "You're valuable enough to him. I never saw
a man who could work like you can. Don't you ever want to
stop?"

"Don't bother about me, Angelface," he said. "I have to do it. I
don't mind. It's better than walking the streets and wondering how
I'm going to get along"—and he fell to his ideas again.

Angela shook her head. Poor Eugene! If ever a man deserved
success for working, he certainly did. And he was really getting
nice again—getting conventional. Perhaps it was because he was
getting a little older. It might turn out that he would become a
splendid man, after all.

There came a time, however, when all this excitement and wrath
and quarreling began to unnerve Eugene and to make him feel that he
could not indefinitely stand the strain. After all, his was the
artistic temperament, not that of a commercial or financial genius.
He was too nervous and restless. For one thing he was first
astonished, then amused, then embittered by the continual travesty
on justice, truth, beauty, sympathy, which he saw enacted before
his eyes. Life stripped of its illusion and its seeming becomes a
rather deadly thing to contemplate. Because of the ruthless,
insistent, inconsiderate attitude of this employer, all the
employees of this place followed his example, and there was neither
kindness nor courtesy—nor even raw justice anywhere. Eugene was
compelled to see himself looked upon from the beginning, not so
much by his own staff as by the other employees of the company, as
a man who could not last long. He was disliked forsooth because
Summerfield displayed some liking for him, and because his manners
did not coincide exactly with the prevailing standard of the
office. Summerfield did not intend to allow his interest in Eugene
to infringe in any way upon his commercial exactions, but this was
not enough to save or aid Eugene in any way. The others disliked
him, some because he was a true artist to begin with, because of
his rather distant air, and because in spite of himself he could
not take them all as seriously as he should.

Most of them seemed little mannikins to him—little second,
third, and fourth editions or copies of Summerfield. They all
copied that worthy's insistent air. They all attempted to imitate
his briskness. Like children, they were inclined to try to imitate
his bitter persiflage and be smart; and they demanded, as he said
they should, the last ounce of consideration and duty from their
neighbors. Eugene was too much of a philosopher not to take much of
this with a grain of salt, but after all his position depended on
his activity and his ability to get results, and it was a pity, he
thought, that he could expect neither courtesy nor favor from
anyone. Departmental chiefs stormed his room daily, demanding this,
that, and the other work immediately. Artists complained that they
were not getting enough pay, the business manager railed because
expenses were not kept low, saying that Eugene might be an
improvement in the matter of the quality of the results obtained
and the speed of execution, but that he was lavish in his
expenditure. Others cursed openly in his presence at times, and
about him to his employer, alleging that the execution of certain
ideas was rotten, or that certain work was delayed, or that he was
slow or discourteous. There was little in these things, as
Summerfield well knew from watching Eugene, but he was too much a
lover of quarrels and excitement as being productive of the best
results in the long run to wish to interfere. Eugene was soon
accused of delaying work generally, of having incompetent men
(which was true), of being slow, of being an artistic snob. He
stood it all calmly because of his recent experience with poverty,
but he was determined to fight ultimately. He was no longer, or at
least not going to be, he thought, the ambling, cowardly, dreaming
Witla he had been. He was going to stand up, and he did begin
to.

"Remember, you are the last word here, Witla," Summerfield had
told him on one occasion. "If anything goes wrong here, you're to
blame. Don't make any mistakes. Don't let anyone accuse you
falsely. Don't run to me. I won't help you."

It was such a ruthless attitude that it shocked Eugene into an
attitude of defiance. In time he thought he had become a hardened
and a changed man—aggressive, contentious, bitter.

"They can all go to hell!" he said one day to Summerfield, after
a terrific row about some delayed pictures, in which one man who
was animated by personal animosity more than anything else had said
hard things about him. "The thing that's been stated here isn't so.
My work is up to and beyond the mark. This individual
here"—pointing to the man in question—"simply doesn't like me. The
next time he comes into my room nosing about I'll throw him out.
He's a damned fakir, and you know it. He lied here today, and you
know that."

"Good for you, Witla!" exclaimed Summerfield joyously. The idea
of a fighting attitude on Eugene's part pleased him. "You're coming
to life. You'll get somewhere now. You've got the ideas, but if you
let these wolves run over you they'll do it, and they'll eat you. I
can't help it. They're all no good. I wouldn't trust a single
God-damned man in the place!"

So it went. Eugene smiled. Could he ever get used to such a
life? Could he ever learn to live with such cheap, inconsiderate,
indecent little pups? Summerfield might like them, but he didn't.
This might be a marvellous business policy, but he couldn't see it.
Somehow it seemed to reflect the mental attitude and temperament of
Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield and nothing more. Human nature ought to
be better than that.

It is curious how fortune sometimes binds up the wounds of the
past, covers over the broken places as with clinging vines, gives
to the miseries and mental wearinesses of life a look of sweetness
and comfort. An illusion of perfect joy is sometimes created where
still, underneath, are cracks and scars. Here were Angela and
Eugene living together now, beginning to be visited by first one
and then the other of those they had known in the past, seemingly
as happy as though no storm had ever beset the calm of their
present sailing. Eugene, despite all his woes, was interested in
this work. He liked to think of himself as the captain of a score
of men, having a handsome office desk, being hailed as chief by
obsequious subordinates and invited here and there by Summerfield,
who still liked him. The work was hard, but it was so much more
profitable than anything he had ever had before. Angela was
happier, too, he thought, than she had been in a long time, for she
did not need to worry about money and his prospects were
broadening. Friends were coming back to them in a steady stream,
and they were creating new ones. It was possible to go to a seaside
resort occasionally, winter or summer, or to entertain three or
four friends at dinner. Angela had a maid. The meals were served
with considerable distinction under her supervision. She was
flattered to hear nice things said about her husband in her
presence, for it was whispered abroad in art circles with which
they were now slightly in touch again that half the effectiveness
of the Summerfield ads was due to Eugene's talent. It was no shame
for him to come out now and say where he was, for he was getting a
good salary and was a department chief. He, or rather the house
through him, had made several great hits, issuing series of ads
which attracted the attention of the public generally to the
products which they advertised. Experts in the advertising world
first, and then later the public generally, were beginning to
wonder who it was that was primarily responsible for the hits.

The Summerfield company had not had them during the previous six
years of its history. There were too many of them coming close
together not to make a new era in the history of the house.
Summerfield, it was understood about the office, was becoming a
little jealous of Eugene, for he could not brook the presence of a
man with a reputation; and Eugene, with his five thousand dollars
in cash in two savings banks, with practically two thousand five
hundred dollars' worth of tasteful furniture in his apartment and
with a ten-thousand life-insurance policy in favor of Angela, was
carrying himself with quite an air. He was not feeling so anxious
about his future.

Angela noted it. Summerfield also. The latter felt that Eugene
was beginning to show his artistic superiority in a way which was
not entirely pleasant. He was coming to have a direct, insistent,
sometimes dictatorial manner. All the driving Summerfield had done
had not succeeded in breaking his spirit. Instead, it had developed
him. From a lean, pale, artistic soul, wearing a soft hat, he had
straightened up and filled out until now he looked more like a
business man than an artist, with a derby hat, clothes of the
latest cut, a ring of oriental design on his middle finger, and
pins and ties which reflected the prevailing modes.

Eugene's attitude had not as yet changed completely, but it was
changing. He was not nearly so fearsome as he had been. He was
beginning to see that he had talents in more directions than one,
and to have the confidence of this fact. Five thousand dollars in
cash, with two or three hundred dollars being added monthly, and
interest at four per cent, being paid upon it, gave him a reserve
of self-confidence. He began to joke Summerfield himself, for he
began to realize that other advertising concerns might be glad to
have him. Word had been brought to him once that the Alfred Cookman
Company, of which Summerfield was a graduate, was considering
making him an offer, and the Twine-Campbell Company, the largest in
the field, was also interested in what he was doing. His own
artists, mostly faithful because he had sought to pay them well and
to help them succeed, had spread his fame greatly. According to
them, he was the sole cause of all the recent successes which had
come to the house, which was not true at all.

A number, perhaps the majority, of things recently had started
with him; but they had been amplified by Summerfield, worked over
by the ad-writing department, revised by the advertisers
themselves, and so on and so forth, until notable changes had been
effected and success achieved. There was no doubt that Eugene was
directly responsible for a share of this. His presence was
inspiring, constructive. He keyed up the whole tone of the
Summerfield Company merely by being there; but he was not all there
was to it by many a long step. He realized this himself.

He was not at all offensively egotistic—simply surer, calmer,
more genial, less easily ruffled; but even this was too much.
Summerfield wanted a frightened man, and seeing that Eugene might
be getting strong enough to slip away from him, he began to think
how he should either circumvent his possible sudden flight, or
discredit his fame, so that if he did leave he would gain nothing
by it. Neither of them was directly manifesting any ill-will or
indicating his true feelings, but such was the situation just the
same. The things which Summerfield thought he might do were not
easy to do under any circumstances. It was particularly hard in
Eugene's case. The man was beginning to have an air. People liked
him. Advertisers who met him, the big manufacturers, took note of
him. They did not understand him as a trade figure, but thought he
must have real force. One man—a great real estate plunger in New
York, who saw him once in Summerfield's office—spoke to the latter
about him.

"That's a most interesting man you have there, that man Witla,"
he said, when they were out to lunch together. "Where does he come
from?"

"Oh, the West somewhere!" replied Summerfield evasively. "I
don't know. I've had so many art directors I don't pay much
attention to them."

Winfield (ex-Senator Kenyon C. Winfield, of Brooklyn) perceived
a slight undercurrent of opposition and belittling. "He looks like
a bright fellow," he said, intending to drop the subject.

"He is, he is," returned Summerfield; "but like all artists,
he's flighty. They're the most unstable people in the world. You
can't depend upon them. Good for one idea today—worth nothing
tomorrow—I have to handle them like a lot of children. The weather
sometimes makes all the difference in the world."

Winfield fancied this was true. Artists generally were worth
nothing in business. Still, he remembered Eugene pleasantly.

As Summerfield talked here, so was it in the office and
elsewhere. He began to say in the office and out that Eugene was
really not doing as well as he might, and that in all likelihood he
would have to drop him. It was sad; but all directors, even the
best of them, had their little day of ability and usefulness, and
then ran to seed. He did not see why it was that all these
directors failed so, but they did. They never really made good in
the company. By this method, his own undiminished ability was made
to stand out free and clear, and Eugene was not able to appear as
important. No one who knew anything about Eugene, however, at this
time believed this; but they did believe—in the office—that he
might lose his position. He was too bright—too much of a leader.
They felt that this condition could not continue in a one-man
concern; and this made the work harder, for it bred disloyalty in
certain quarters. Some of his men were disposed to counsel with the
enemy.

But as time passed and in spite of the change of attitude which
was coming over Summerfield, Eugene became even stronger in his own
self-esteem. He was not getting vainglorious as yet—merely sure.
Because of his art work his art connections had revived
considerably, and he had heard again from such men as Louis Deesa,
M. Charles, Luke Severas, and others who now knew where he was and
wondered why he did not come back to painting proper. M. Charles
was disgusted. "A great error," he said. He always spoke of him to
others as a great loss to art. Strange to relate, one of his
pictures was sold the spring following his entry into the
Summerfield Company, and another the following winter. Each netted
him two hundred and fifty dollars, Pottle Frères being the agents
in one case, Jacob Bergman in the other. These sales with their
consequent calls for additional canvases to show, cheered him
greatly. He felt satisfied now that if anything happened to him he
could go back to his art and that he could make a living,
anyhow.

There came a time when he was sent for by Mr. Alfred Cookman,
the advertising agent for whom Summerfield had worked; but nothing
came of that, for the latter did not care to pay more than six
thousand a year and Summerfield had once told Eugene that he would
eventually pay him ten thousand if he stayed with him. He did not
think it was fair to leave him just then, and, besides, Cookman's
firm had not the force and go and prestige which Summerfield had at
this time. His real chance came some six months later, when one of
the publishing houses of Philadelphia having an important weekly to
market, began looking for an advertising manager.