The ''Genius'', Theodore Dreiser [classic reads txt] 📗

don't know—at least any more that I care anything about. I didn't think. I didn't mean to conceal anything. I'll write to everybody that might be interested."

He still felt hurt that she should brutally attack him this way even in her sorrow. He was wrong, no doubt, but she? Was this a way to act, this the nature of true love? He mentally writhed and twisted.

Taking her up in his arms, smoothing her hair, he asked her to forgive him. Finally, when she thought she had punished him enough, and that he was truly sorry and would make amends in the future, she pretended to listen and then of a sudden threw her arms about his neck and began to hug and kiss him. Passion, of course, was the end of this, but the whole thing left a disagreeable taste in Eugene's mouth. He did not like scenes. He preferred the lofty indifference of Miriam, the gay subterfuge of Norma, the supreme stoicism of Christina Channing. This noisy, tempestuous, angry emotion was not quite the thing to have introduced into his life. He did not see how that would make for love between them.

Still Angela was sweet, he thought. She was a little girl—not as wise as Norma Whitmore, not as self-protective as Miriam Finch or Christina Channing. Perhaps after all she needed his care and affection. Maybe it was best for her and for him that he had married her.

So thinking he rocked her in his arms, and Angela, lying there, was satisfied. She had won a most important victory. She was starting right. She was starting Eugene right. She would get the moral, mental and emotional upper hand of him and keep it. Then these women, who thought themselves so superior, could go their way. She would have Eugene and he would be a great man and she would be his wife. That was all she wanted.

CHAPTER IV

The result of Angela's outburst was that Eugene hastened to notify those whom he had not already informed—Shotmeyer, his father and mother, Sylvia, Myrtle, Hudson Dula—and received in return cards and letters of congratulation expressing surprise and interest, which he presented to Angela in a conciliatory spirit. She realized, after it was all over, that she had given him an unpleasant shock, and was anxious to make up to him in personal affection what she had apparently compelled him to suffer for policy's sake. Eugene did not know that in Angela, despite her smallness of body and what seemed to him her babyishness of spirit, he had to deal with a thinking woman who was quite wise as to ways and means of handling her personal affairs. She was, of course, whirled in the maelstrom of her affection for Eugene and this was confusing, and she did not understand the emotional and philosophic reaches of his mind; but she did understand instinctively what made for a stable relationship between husband and wife and between any married couple and the world. To her the utterance of the marriage vow meant just what it said, that they would cleave each to the other; there should be henceforth no thoughts, feelings, or emotions, and decidedly no actions which would not conform with the letter and the spirit of the marriage vow.

Eugene had sensed something of this, but not accurately or completely. He did not correctly estimate either the courage or the rigidity of her beliefs and convictions. He thought that her character might possibly partake of some of his own easy tolerance and good nature. She must know that people—men particularly—were more or less unstable in their make-up. Life could not be governed by hard and fast rules. Why, everybody knew that. You might try, and should hold yourself in check as much as possible for the sake of self-preservation and social appearances, but if you erred—and you might easily—it was no crime. Certainly it was no crime to look at another woman longingly. If you went astray, overbalanced by your desires, wasn't it after all in the scheme of things? Did we make our desires? Certainly we did not, and if we did not succeed completely in controlling them—well—

The drift of life into which they now settled was interesting enough, though for Eugene it was complicated with the thought of possible failure, for he was, as might well be expected of such a temperament, of a worrying nature, and inclined, in his hours of ordinary effort, to look on the dark side of things. The fact that he had married Angela against his will, the fact that he had no definite art connections which produced him as yet anything more than two thousand dollars a year, the fact that he had assumed financial obligations which doubled the cost of food, clothing, entertainment, and rent—for their studio was costing him thirty dollars more than had his share of the Smite-MacHugh chambers—weighed on him. The dinner which he had given to Smite and MacHugh had cost about eight dollars over and above the ordinary expenses of the week. Others of a similar character would cost as much and more. He would have to take Angela to the theatre occasionally. There would be the need of furnishing a new studio the following fall, unless another such windfall as this manifested itself. Although Angela had equipped herself with a varied and serviceable trousseau, her clothes would not last forever. Odd necessities began to crop up not long after they were married, and he began to see that if they lived with anything like the freedom and care with which he had before he was married, his income would have to be larger and surer.

The energy which these thoughts provoked was not without result. For one thing he sent the original of the East Side picture, "Six O'clock" to the American Academy of Design exhibition—a thing which he might have done long before but failed to do.

Angela had heard from Eugene that the National Academy of Design was a forum for the display of art to which the public was invited or admitted for a charge. To have a picture accepted by this society and hung on the line was in its way a mark of merit and approval, though Eugene did not think very highly of it. All the pictures were judged by a jury of artists which decided whether they should be admitted or rejected, and if admitted whether they should be given a place of honor or hung in some inconspicuous position. To be hung "on the line" was to have your picture placed in the lower tier where the light was excellent and the public could get a good view of it. Eugene had thought the first two years he was in New York that he was really not sufficiently experienced or meritorious, and the previous year he had thought that he would hoard all that he was doing for his first appearance in some exhibition of his own, thinking the National Academy commonplace and retrogressive. The exhibitions he had seen thus far had been full of commonplace, dead-and-alive stuff, he thought. It was no great honor to be admitted to such a collection. Now, because MacHugh was trying, and because he had accumulated nearly enough pictures for exhibition at a private gallery which he hoped to interest, he was anxious to see what the standard body of American artists thought of his work. They might reject him. If so that would merely prove that they did not recognize a radical departure from accepted methods and subject matter as art. The impressionists, he understood, were being so ignored. Later they would accept him. If he were admitted it would simply mean that they knew better than he believed they did.

"I believe I will do it," he said; "I'd like to know what they think of my stuff anyhow."

The picture was sent as he had planned, and to his immense satisfaction it was accepted and hung. It did not, for some reason, attract as much attention as it might, but it was not without its modicum of praise. Owen Overman, the poet, met him in the general reception entrance of the Academy on the opening night, and congratulated him sincerely. "I remember seeing that in Truth," he said, "but it's much better in the original. It's fine. You ought to do a lot of those things."

"I am," replied Eugene. "I expect to have a show of my own one of these days."

He called Angela, who had wandered away to look at a piece of statuary, and introduced her.

"I was just telling your husband how much I like his picture," Overman informed her.

Angela was flattered that her husband was so much of a personage that he could have his picture hung in a great exhibition such as this, with its walls crowded with what seemed to her magnificent canvases, and its rooms filled with important and distinguished people. As they strolled about Eugene pointed out to her this well known artist and that writer, saying almost always that they were very able. He knew three or four of the celebrated collectors, prize givers, and art patrons by sight, and told Angela who they were. There were a number of striking looking models present whom Eugene knew either by reputation, whispered comment of friends, or personally—Zelma Desmond, who had posed for Eugene, Hedda Anderson, Anna Magruder and Laura Matthewson among others. Angela was struck and in a way taken by the dash and beauty of these girls. They carried themselves with an air of personal freedom and courage which surprised her. Hedda Anderson was bold in her appearance but immensely smart. Her manner seemed to comment on the ordinary woman as being indifferent and not worth while. She looked at Angela walking with Eugene and wondered who she was.

"Isn't she striking," observed Angela, not knowing she was anyone whom Eugene knew.

"I know her well," he replied; "she's a model."

Just then Miss Anderson in return for his nod gave him a fetching smile. Angela chilled.

Elizabeth Stein passed by and he nodded to her.

"Who is she?" asked Angela.

"She's a socialist agitator and radical. She sometimes speaks from a soap-box on the East Side."

Angela studied her carefully. Her waxen complexion, smooth black hair laid in even plaits over her forehead, her straight, thin, chiseled nose, even red lips and low forehead indicated a daring and subtle soul. Angela did not understand her. She could not understand a girl as good looking as that doing any such thing as Eugene said, and yet she had a bold, rather free and easy air. She thought Eugene certainly knew strange people. He introduced to her William McConnell, Hudson Dula, who had not yet been to see them, Jan Jansen, Louis Deesa, Leonard Baker and Paynter Stone.

In regard to Eugene's picture the papers, with one exception, had nothing to say, but this one in both Eugene's and Angela's minds made up for all the others. It was the Evening Sun, a most excellent medium for art opinion, and it was very definite in its conclusions in regard to this particular work. The statement was:

"A new painter, Eugene Witla, has an oil entitled 'Six O'clock' which for directness, virility, sympathy, faithfulness to detail and what for want of a better term we may call totality of spirit, is quite the best thing in the exhibition. It looks rather out of place surrounded by the weak and spindling interpretations of scenery and water which so readily find a place in the exhibition of the Academy, but it is none the weaker for that. The artist has a new, crude, raw and almost rough method, but his picture seems to say quite clearly what he sees and feels. He may have to wait—if this is not a single burst of