The Genius (17 page)

"Please sing 'Who is Sylvia,'" he begged a little later. She
complied gladly.

"That was written for you," he said softly as she ceased, for he
had come close to the piano. "You image Sylvia for me." Her cheeks
colored warmly.

"Thanks," she nodded, and her eyes spoke too. She welcomed his
daring and she was glad to let him know it.

The chief trouble with his present situation, and with the
entrance of these two women into his life, and it had begun to be a
serious one to him, was that he was not making money. He had been
able to earn about $1200 the first year; the second he made a
little over two thousand, and this third year he was possibly doing
a little better. But in view of what he saw around him and what he
now knew of life, it was nothing. New York presented a spectacle of
material display such as he had never known existed. The carriages
on Fifth Avenue, the dinners at the great hotels, the constant talk
of society functions in the newspapers, made his brain dizzy. He
was inclined to idle about the streets, to watch the handsomely
dressed crowds, to consider the evidences of show and refinement
everywhere, and he came to the conclusion that he was not living at
all, but existing. Art as he had first dreamed of it, art had
seemed not only a road to distinction but also to affluence. Now,
as he studied those about him, he found that it was not so. Artists
were never tremendously rich, he learned. He remembered reading in
Balzac's story "Cousin Betty," of a certain artist of great
distinction who had been allowed condescendingly by one of the rich
families of Paris to marry a daughter, but it was considered a
great come down for her. He had hardly been able to credit the idea
at the time, so exalted was his notion of the artist. But now he
was beginning to see that it represented the world's treatment of
artists. There were in America a few who were very
popular—meretriciously so he thought in certain cases—who were said
to be earning from ten to fifteen thousand a year. How high would
that place them, he asked himself, in that world of real luxury
which was made up of the so-called
four hundred
—the people
of immense wealth and social position. He had read in the papers
that it took from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars a year to
clothe a débutante. It was nothing uncommon, he heard, for a man to
spend from fifteen to twenty dollars on his dinner at the
restaurant. The prices he heard that tailors demanded—that
dressmakers commanded, the display of jewels and expensive garments
at the opera, made the poor little income of an artist look like
nothing at all. Miss Finch was constantly telling him of the show
and swagger she met with in her circle of acquaintances, for her
tact and adaptability had gained her the friendship of a number of
society people. Miss Channing, when he came to know her better,
made constant references to things she came in contact with—great
singers or violinists paid $1000 a night, or the tremendous
salaries commanded by the successful opera stars. He began, as he
looked at his own meagre little income, to feel shabby again, and
run down, much as he had during those first days in Chicago. Why,
art, outside the fame, was nothing. It did not make for real
living. It made for a kind of mental blooming, which everybody
recognized, but you could be a poor, sick, hungry, shabby
genius—you actually could. Look at Verlaine, who had recently died
in Paris.

A part of this feeling was due to the opening of a golden age of
luxury in New York, and the effect the reiterated sight of it was
having on Eugene. Huge fortunes had been amassed in the preceding
fifty years and now there were thousands of residents in the great
new city who were worth anything from one to fifty and in some
instances a hundred million dollars. The metropolitan area,
particularly Manhattan Island above Fifty-ninth Street, was growing
like a weed. Great hotels were being erected in various parts of
the so-called "white light" district. There was beginning, just
then, the first organized attempt of capital to supply a new
need—the modern sumptuous, eight, ten and twelve story apartment
house, which was to house the world of newly rich middle class folk
who were pouring into New York from every direction. Money was
being made in the West, the South and the North, and as soon as
those who were making it had sufficient to permit them to live in
luxury for the rest of their days they were moving East, occupying
these expensive apartments, crowding the great hotels, patronizing
the sumptuous restaurants, giving the city its air of spendthrift
luxury. All the things which catered to showy material living were
beginning to flourish tremendously, art and curio shops, rug shops,
decorative companies dealing with the old and the new in hangings,
furniture, objects of art; dealers in paintings, jewelry stores,
china and glassware houses—anything and everything which goes to
make life comfortable and brilliant. Eugene, as he strolled about
the city, saw this, felt the change, realized that the drift was
toward greater population, greater luxury, greater beauty. His mind
was full of the necessity of living
now
. He was young
now
; he was vigorous
now
; he was keen
now
; in a few years he might not be—seventy years was the
allotted span and twenty-five of his had already gone. How would it
be if he never came into this luxury, was never allowed to enter
society, was never permitted to live as wealth was now living! The
thought hurt him. He felt an eager desire to tear wealth and fame
from the bosom of the world. Life must give him his share. If it
did not he would curse it to his dying day. So he felt when he was
approaching twenty-six.

The effect of Christina Channing's friendship for him was
particularly to emphasize this. She was not so much older than he,
was possessed of very much the same temperament, the same hopes and
aspirations, and she discerned almost as clearly as he did the
current of events. New York was to witness a golden age of luxury.
It was already passing into it. Those who rose to distinction in
any field, particularly music or the stage, were likely to share in
a most notable spectacle of luxury. Christina hoped to. She was
sure she would. After a few conversations with Eugene she was
inclined to feel that he would. He was so brilliant, so
incisive.

"You have such a way with you," she said the second time he
came. "You are so commanding. You make me think you can do almost
anything you want to."

"Oh, no," he deprecated. "Not as bad as that. I have just as
much trouble as anyone getting what I want."

"Oh, but you will though. You have ideas."

It did not take these two long to reach an understanding. They
confided to each other their individual histories, with
reservations, of course, at first. Christina told him of her
musical history, beginning at Hagerstown, Maryland, and he went
back to his earliest days in Alexandria. They discussed the
differences in parental control to which they had been subject. He
learned of her father's business, which was that of oyster farming,
and confessed on his part to being the son of a sewing machine
agent. They talked of small town influences, early illusions, the
different things they had tried to do. She had sung in the local
Methodist church, had once thought she would like to be a milliner,
had fallen in the hands of a teacher who tried to get her to marry
him and she had been on the verge of consenting. Something
happened—she went away for the summer, or something of that sort,
and changed her mind.

After an evening at the theatre with her, a late supper one
night and a third call, to spend a quiet evening in her room, he
took her by the hand. She was standing by the piano and he was
looking at her cheeks, her large inquiring eyes, her smooth rounded
neck and chin.

"You like me," he said suddenly à propos of nothing save the
mutual attraction that was always running strong between them.

Without hesitation she nodded her head, though the bright blood
mounted to her neck and cheeks.

"You are so lovely to me," he went on, "that words are of no
value. I can paint you. Or you can sing me what you are, but mere
words won't show it. I have been in love before, but never with
anyone like you."

"Are you in love?" she asked naïvely.

"What is this?" he asked and slipped his arms about her, drawing
her close.

She turned her head away, leaving her rosy cheek near his lips.
He kissed that, then her mouth and her neck. He held her chin and
looked into her eyes.

"Be careful," she said, "mamma may come in."

"Hang mamma!" he laughed.

"She'll hang you if she sees you. Mamma would never suspect me
of anything like this."

"That shows how little mamma knows of her Christina," he
answered.

"She knows enough at that," she confessed gaily. "Oh, if we were
only up in the mountains now," she added.

"What mountains," he inquired curiously.

"The Blue Ridge. We have a bungalow up at Florizel. You must
come up when we go there next summer."

"Will mamma be there?" he asked.

"And papa," she laughed.

"And I suppose Cousin Annie."

"No, brother George will be."

"Nix for the bungalow," he replied, using a slang word that had
become immensely popular.

"Oh, but I know all the country round there. There are some
lovely walks and drives." She said this archly, naïvely,
suggestively, her bright face lit with an intelligence that seemed
perfection.

"Well—such being the case!" he smiled, "and meanwhile—"

"Oh, meanwhile you just have to wait. You see how things are."
She nodded her head towards an inside room where Mrs. Channing was
lying down with a slight headache. "Mamma doesn't leave me very
often."

Eugene did not know exactly how to take Christina. He had never
encountered this attitude before. Her directness, in connection
with so much talent, such real ability, rather took him by
surprise. He did not expect it—did not think she would confess
affection for him; did not know just what she meant by speaking in
the way she did of the bungalow and Florizel. He was flattered,
raised in his own self-esteem. If such a beautiful, talented
creature as this could confess her love for him, what a personage
he must be. And she was thinking of freer conditions—just what?

He did not want to press the matter too closely then and she was
not anxious to have him do so—she preferred to be enigmatic. But
there was a light of affection and admiration in her eye which made
him very proud and happy with things just as they were.

As she said, there was little chance for love-making under
conditions then existing. Her mother was with her most of the time.
Christina invited Eugene to come and hear her sing at the
Philharmonic Concerts; so once in a great ball-room at the
Waldorf-Astoria and again in the imposing auditorium of Carnegie
Hall and a third time in the splendid auditorium of the Arion
Society, he had the pleasure of seeing her walk briskly to the
footlights, the great orchestra waiting, the audience expectant,
herself arch, assured—almost defiant, he thought, and so beautiful.
When the great house thundered its applause he was basking in one
delicious memory of her.

"Last night she had her arms about my neck. Tonight when I call
and we are alone she will kiss me. That beautiful, distinguished
creature standing there bowing and smiling loves me and no one
else. If I were to ask her she would marry me—if I were in a
position and had the means."

"If I were in a position—" that thought cut him, for he knew
that he was not. He could not marry her. In reality she would not
have him knowing how little he made—or would she? He wondered.

Towards the end of spring Eugene concluded he would rather go up
in the mountains near Christina's bungalow this summer, than back
to see Angela. The memory of that precious creature was, under the
stress and excitement of metropolitan life, becoming a little
tarnished. His recollections of her were as delightful as ever, as
redolent of beauty, but he was beginning to wonder. The smart crowd
in New York was composed of a different type. Angela was sweet and
lovely, but would she fit in?

Meanwhile Miriam Finch with her subtle eclecticism continued her
education of Eugene. She was as good as a school. He would sit and
listen to her descriptions of plays, her appreciation of books, her
summing up of current philosophies, and he would almost feel
himself growing. She knew so many people, could tell him where to
go to see just such and such an important thing. All the startling
personalities, the worth while preachers, the new actors, somehow
she knew all about them.

"Now, Eugene," she would exclaim on seeing him, "you positively
must go and see Haydon Boyd in 'The Signet,'" or—"see Elmina Deming
in her new dances," or—"look at the pictures of Winslow Homer that
are being shown at Knoedler's."

She would explain with exactness why she wanted him to see them,
what she thought they would do for him. She frankly confessed to
him that she considered him a genius and always insisted on knowing
what new thing he was doing. When any work of his appeared and she
liked it she was swift to tell him. He almost felt as if he owned
her room and herself, as if all that she was—her ideas, her
friends, her experiences—belonged to him. He could go and draw on
them by sitting at her feet or going with her somewhere. When
spring came she liked to walk with him, to listen to his comments
on nature and life.

"That's splendid!" she would exclaim. "Now, why don't you write
that?" or "why don't you paint that?"

He showed her some of his poems once and she had made copies of
them and pasted them in a book of what she called exceptional
things. So he was coddled by her.

In another way Christina was equally nice. She was fond of
telling Eugene how much she thought of him, how nice she thought he
was. "You're so big and smarty," she said to him once,
affectionately, pinioning his arms and looking into his eyes. "I
like the way you part your hair, too! You're kind o' like an artist
ought to be!"

"That's the way to spoil me," he replied. "Let me tell you how
nice you are. Want to know how nice you are?"

"Uh-uh," she smiled, shaking her head to mean "no."

"Wait till we get to the mountains. I'll tell you." He sealed
her lips with his, holding her until her breath was almost
gone.

"Oh," she exclaimed; "you're terrible. You're like steel."

"And you're like a big red rose. Kiss me!"

From Christina he learned all about the musical world and
musical personalities. He gained an insight into the different
forms of music, operatic, symphonic, instrumental. He learned of
the different forms of composition, the terminology, the mystery of
the vocal cords, the methods of training. He learned of the
jealousies within the profession, and what the best musical
authorities thought of such and such composers, or singers. He
learned how difficult it was to gain a place in the operatic world,
how bitterly singers fought each other, how quick the public was to
desert a fading star. Christina took it all so unconcernedly that
he almost loved her for her courage. She was so wise and so good
natured.

"You have to give up a lot of things to be a good artist," she
said to Eugene one day. "You can't have the ordinary life, and art
too."

"Just what do you mean, Chrissy?" he asked, petting her hand,
for they were alone together.

"Why, you can't get married very well and have children, and you
can't do much in a social way. Oh, I know they do get married, but
sometimes I think it is a mistake. Most of the singers I know don't
do so very well tied down by marriage."

"Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curiously.

"I don't know," she replied, realizing what he was driving at.
"I'd want to think about that. A woman artist is in a d— of a
position anyway," using the letter d only to indicate the word
"devil." "She has so many things to think about."

"For instance?"

"Oh, what people think and her family think, and I don't know
what all. They ought to get a new sex for artists—like they have
for worker bees."

Eugene smiled. He knew what she was driving at. But he did not
know how long she had been debating the problem of her virginity as
conflicting with her love of distinction in art. She was nearly
sure she did not want to complicate her art life with marriage. She
was almost positive that success on the operatic stage—particularly
the great opportunity for the beginner abroad—was complicated with
some liaison. Some escaped, but it was not many. She was wondering
in her own mind whether she owed it to current morality to remain
absolutely pure. It was assumed generally that girls should remain
virtuous and marry, but this did not necessarily apply to
her—should it apply to the artistic temperament? Her mother and her
family troubled her. She was virtuous, but youth and desire had
given her some bitter moments. And here was Eugene to emphasize
it.

"It is a difficult problem," he said sympathetically, wondering
what she would eventually do. He felt keenly that her attitude in
regard to marriage affected his relationship to her. Was she wedded
to her art at the expense of love?

"It's a big problem," she said and went to the piano to
sing.

He half suspected for a little while after this that she might
be contemplating some radical step—what, he did not care to say to
himself, but he was intensely interested in her problem. This
peculiar freedom of thought astonished him—broadened his horizon.
He wondered what his sister Myrtle would think of a girl discussing
marriage in this way—the to be or not to be of it—what Sylvia? He
wondered if many girls did that. Most of the women he had known
seemed to think more logically along these lines than he did. He
remembered asking Ruby once whether she didn't think illicit love
was wrong and hearing her reply, "No. Some people thought it was
wrong, but that didn't make it so to her." Here was another girl
with another theory.

They talked more of love, and he wondered why she wanted him to
come up to Florizel in the summer. She could not be thinking—no,
she was too conservative. He began to suspect, though, that she
would not marry him—would not marry anyone at present. She merely
wanted to be loved for awhile, no doubt.

May came and with it the end of Christina's concert work and
voice study so far as New York was concerned. She had been in and
out of the city all the winter—to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, St.
Paul and now after a winter's hard work retired to Hagerstown with
her mother for a few weeks prior to leaving for Florizel.

"You ought to come down here," she wrote to Eugene early in
June. "There is a sickle moon that shines in my garden and the
roses are in bloom. Oh, the odors are so sweet, and the dew! Some
of our windows open out level with the grass and I sing! I sing!! I
sing!!!"

He had a notion to run down but restrained himself, for she told
him that they were leaving in two weeks for the mountains. He had a
set of drawings to complete for a magazine for which they were in a
hurry. So he decided to wait till that was done.

In late June he went up to the Blue Ridge, in Southern
Pennsylvania, where Florizel was situated. He thought at first he
would be invited to stay at the Channing bungalow, but Christina
warned him that it would be safer and better for him to stay at one
of the adjoining hotels. There were several on the slope of
adjacent hills at prices ranging from five to ten dollars a day.
Though this was high for Eugene he decided to go. He wanted to be
with this marvellous creature—to see just what she did mean by
wishing they were in the mountains together.

He had saved some eight hundred dollars, which was in a savings
bank and he withdrew three hundred for his little outing. He took
Christina a very handsomely bound copy of Villon, of whom she was
fond, and several volumes of new verse. Most of these, chosen
according to his most recent mood, were sad in their poetic
texture; they all preached the nothingness of life, its sadness,
albeit the perfection of its beauty.

At this time Eugene had quite reached the conclusion that there
was no hereafter—there was nothing save blind, dark force moving
aimlessly—where formerly he had believed vaguely in a heaven and
had speculated as to a possible hell. His reading had led him
through some main roads and some odd by-paths of logic and
philosophy. He was an omnivorous reader now and a fairly logical
thinker. He had already tackled Spencer's "First Principles," which
had literally torn him up by the roots and set him adrift and from
that had gone back to Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Spinoza and
Schopenhauer—men who ripped out all his private theories and made
him wonder what life really was. He had walked the streets for a
long time after reading some of these things, speculating on the
play of forces, the decay of matter, the fact that thought-forms
had no more stability than cloud-forms. Philosophies came and went,
governments came and went, races arose and disappeared. He walked
into the great natural history museum of New York once to discover
enormous skeletons of prehistoric animals—things said to have lived
two, three, five millions of years before his day and he marvelled
at the forces which produced them, the indifference, apparently,
with which they had been allowed to die. Nature seemed lavish of
its types and utterly indifferent to the persistence of anything.
He came to the conclusion that he was nothing, a mere shell, a
sound, a leaf which had no general significance, and for the time
being it almost broke his heart. It tended to smash his egotism, to
tear away his intellectual pride. He wandered about dazed, hurt,
moody, like a lost child. But he was thinking persistently.

Then came Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lubbock—a whole string of
British thinkers who fortified the original conclusions of the
others, but showed him a beauty, a formality, a lavishness of form
and idea in nature's methods which fairly transfixed him. He was
still reading—poets, naturalists, essayists, but he was still
gloomy. Life was nothing save dark forces moving aimlessly.

The manner in which he applied this thinking to his life was
characteristic and individual. To think that beauty should blossom
for a little while and disappear for ever seemed sad. To think that
his life should endure but for seventy years and then be no more
was terrible. He and Angela were chance acquaintances—chemical
affinities—never to meet again in all time. He and Christina, he
and Ruby—he and anyone—a few bright hours were all they could have
together, and then would come the great silence, dissolution, and
he would never be anymore. It hurt him to think of this, but it
made him all the more eager to live, to be loved while he was here.
If he could only have a lovely girl's arms to shut him in safely
always!

It was while he was in this mood that he reached Florizel after
a long night's ride, and Christina who was a good deal of a
philosopher and thinker herself at times was quick to notice it.
She was waiting at the depot with a dainty little trap of her own
to take him for a drive.

The trap rolled out along the soft, yellow, dusty roads. The
mountain dew was still in the earth though and the dust was heavy
with damp and not flying. Green branches of trees hung low over
them, charming vistas came into view at every turn. Eugene kissed
her, for there was no one to see, twisting her head to kiss her
lips at leisure.

"It's a blessed thing this horse is tame or we'd be in for some
accident. What makes you so moody?" she said.

"I'm not moody—or am I? I've been thinking a lot of things of
late—of you principally."

"Do I make you sad?"

"From one point of view, yes."

"And what is that, sir?" she asked with an assumption of
severity.

"You are so beautiful, so wonderful, and life is so short."

"You have only fifty years to love me in," she laughed,
calculating his age. "Oh, Eugene, what a boy you are!—Wait a
minute," she added after a pause, drawing the horse to a stop under
some trees. "Hold these," she said, offering him the reins. He took
them and she put her arms about his neck. "Now, you silly," she
exclaimed, "I love you, love you, love you! There was never anyone
quite like you. Will that help you?" she smiled into his eyes.

"Yes," he answered, "but it isn't enough. Seventy years isn't
enough. Eternity isn't enough of life as it is now."

"As it is now," she echoed and then took the reins, for she felt
what he felt, the need of persistent youth and persistent beauty to
keep it as it should be, and these things would not stay.