The "Genius"

CHAPTER XXXV

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.

CHAPTER XXXVI

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.

It was the policy of this house to select young men and to select from among all the available candidates just the one particular one to suit the fancy of the owner and who had a record of successful effort behind him. Now Eugene was not any more an advertising manager by experience than he was an art director, but having worked for Summerfield for nearly two years he had come to know a great deal about advertising, and the public thought he knew a great deal more. He knew by now just how Summerfield had his business organized. He knew how he specialized his forces, giving this line to one and that line to another. He had been able to learn by sitting in conferences and consultations what it was that advertisers wanted, how they wanted their goods displayed, what they wanted said. He had learned that novelty, force and beauty were the keynotes and he had to work these elements out under the most galling fire so often that he knew how it ought to be done. He knew also about commissions, rebates, long-time contracts, and so forth. He had fancied more than once that he might run a little advertising business of his own to great profit if he only could find an honest and capable business manager or partner. Since this person was not forthcoming, he was content to bide his time.

But the Kalvin Publishing Company of Philadelphia had heard of him. In his search for a man, Obadiah Kalvin, the founder of the company, had examined many individuals through agents in Chicago, in St. Louis, in Baltimore, Boston, and New York, but he had not yet made up his mind. He was slow in his decisions, and always flattered himself that once he made a selection he was sure of a good result. He had not heard of Eugene until toward the end of his search, but one day in the Union Club in Philadelphia, when he was talking to a big advertising agent with whom he did considerable business, the latter said:

"I hear you are looking for an advertising manager for your weekly."

"I am," he said.

"I heard of a man the other day who might suit you. He's with the Summerfield Company in New York. They've been getting up some very striking ads of late, as you may have noticed."

"I think I have seen some of them," replied Kalvin.

"I'm not sure of the man's name – Witla, or Gitla, or some such thing as that; but, anyhow, he's over there, and they say he's pretty good. Just what he is in the house I don't know. You might look him up."

"Thanks; I will," replied Kalvin. He was really quite grateful, for he was not quite satisfied with any of those he had seen or heard of. He was an old man, extremely sensitive to ability, wanting to combine force with refinement if he could; he was a good Christian, and was running Christian, or rather their happy correlatives, decidedly conservative publications. When he went back to his office he consulted with his business partner, a man named Fredericks, who held but a minor share in the company, and asked him if he couldn't find out something about this promising individual. Fredericks did so. He called up Cookman, in New York, who was delighted to injure his old employee, Summerfield, to the extent of taking away his best man if he could. He told Fredericks that he thought Eugene was very capable, probably the most capable young man in the field, and in all likelihood the man he was looking for – a hustler.