The Genius by Theodore Dreiser

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BOOK I
------
YOUTH

THE "GENIUS"

CHAPTER I

This story has its beginnings in the town of Alexandria, Illinois,
between 1884 and 1889, at the time when the place had a population of
somewhere near ten thousand. There was about it just enough of the air
of a city to relieve it of the sense of rural life. It had one
street-car line, a theatre,--or rather, an opera house, so-called (why
no one might say, for no opera was ever performed there)--two railroads,
with their stations, and a business district, composed of four brisk
sides to a public square. In the square were the county court-house and
four newspapers. These two morning and two evening papers made the
population fairly aware of the fact that life was full of issues, local
and national, and that there were many interesting and varied things to
do. On the edge of town, several lakes and a pretty stream--perhaps
Alexandria's most pleasant feature--gave it an atmosphere not unakin to
that of a moderate-priced summer resort. Architecturally the town was
not new. It was mostly built of wood, as all American towns were at this
time, but laid out prettily in some sections, with houses that sat back
in great yards, far from the streets, with flower beds, brick walks, and
green trees as concomitants of a comfortable home life. Alexandria was a
city of young Americans. Its spirit was young. Life was all before
almost everybody. It was really good to be alive.

In one part of this city there lived a family which in its character and
composition might well have been considered typically American and
middle western. It was not by any means poor--or, at least, did not
consider itself so; it was in no sense rich. Thomas Jefferson Witla, the
father, was a sewing machine agent with the general agency in that
county of one of the best known and best selling machines made. From
each twenty, thirty-five or sixty-dollar machine which he sold, he took
a profit of thirty-five per cent. The sale of machines was not great,
but it was enough to yield him nearly two thousand dollars a year; and
on that he had managed to buy a house and lot, to furnish it
comfortably, to send his children to school, and to maintain a local
store on the public square where the latest styles of machines were
displayed. He also took old machines of other makes in exchange,
allowing ten to fifteen dollars on the purchase price of a new machine.
He also repaired machines,--and with that peculiar energy of the
American mind, he tried to do a little insurance business in addition.
His first idea was that his son, Eugene Tennyson Witla, might take
charge of this latter work, once he became old enough and the insurance
trade had developed sufficiently. He did not know what his son might
turn out to be, but it was always well to have an anchor to windward.

He was a quick, wiry, active man of no great stature, sandy-haired, with
blue eyes with noticeable eye-brows, an eagle nose, and a rather radiant
and ingratiating smile. Service as a canvassing salesman, endeavoring to
persuade recalcitrant wives and indifferent or conservative husbands to
realize that they really needed a new machine in their home, had taught
him caution, tact, savoir faire. He knew how to approach people
pleasantly. His wife thought too much so.

Certainly he was honest, hard working, and thrifty. They had been
waiting a long time for the day when they could say they owned their own
home and had a little something laid away for emergencies. That day had
come, and life was not half bad. Their house was neat,--white with green
shutters, surrounded by a yard with well kept flower beds, a smooth
lawn, and some few shapely and broad spreading trees. There was a front
porch with rockers, a swing under one tree, a hammock under another, a
buggy and several canvassing wagons in a nearby stable. Witla liked
dogs, so there were two collies. Mrs. Witla liked live things, so there
were a canary bird, a cat, some chickens, and a bird house set aloft on
a pole where a few blue-birds made their home. It was a nice little
place, and Mr. and Mrs. Witla were rather proud of it.

Miriam Witla was a good wife to her husband. A daughter of a hay and
grain dealer in Wooster, a small town near Alexandria in McLean County,
she had never been farther out into the world than Springfield and
Chicago. She had gone to Springfield as a very young girl, to see
Lincoln buried, and once with her husband she had gone to the state fair
or exposition which was held annually in those days on the lake front in
Chicago. She was well preserved, good looking, poetic under a marked
outward reserve. It was she who had insisted upon naming her only son
Eugene Tennyson, a tribute at once to a brother Eugene, and to the
celebrated romanticist of verse, because she had been so impressed with
his "Idylls of the King."

Eugene Tennyson seemed rather strong to Witla pere, as the name of a
middle-western American boy, but he loved his wife and gave her her way
in most things. He rather liked the names of Sylvia and Myrtle with
which she had christened the two girls. All three of the children were
good looking,--Sylvia, a girl of twenty-one, with black hair, dark eyes,
full blown like a rose, healthy, active, smiling. Myrtle was of a less
vigorous constitution, small, pale, shy, but intensely sweet--like the
flower she was named after, her mother said. She was inclined to be
studious and reflective, to read verse and dream. The young bloods of
the high school were all crazy to talk to Myrtle and to walk with her,
but they could find no words. And she herself did not know what to say
to them.

Eugene Witla was the apple of his family's eye, younger than either of
his two sisters by two years. He had straight smooth black hair, dark
almond-shaped eyes, a straight nose, a shapely but not aggressive chin;
his teeth were even and white, showing with a curious delicacy when he
smiled, as if he were proud of them. He was not very strong to begin
with, moody, and to a notable extent artistic. Because of a weak stomach
and a semi-anaemic condition, he did not really appear as strong as he
was. He had emotion, fire, longings, that were concealed behind a wall
of reserve. He was shy, proud, sensitive, and very uncertain of himself.

When at home he lounged about the house, reading Dickens, Thackeray,
Scott and Poe. He browsed idly through one book after another, wondering
about life. The great cities appealed to him. He thought of travel as a
wonderful thing. In school he read Taine and Gibbon between recitation
hours, wondering at the luxury and beauty of the great courts of the
world. He cared nothing for grammar, nothing for mathematics, nothing
for botany or physics, except odd bits here and there. Curious facts
would strike him--the composition of clouds, the composition of water,
the chemical elements of the earth. He liked to lie in the hammock at
home, spring, summer or fall, and look at the blue sky showing through
the trees. A soaring buzzard poised in speculative flight held his
attention fixedly. The wonder of a snowy cloud, high piled like wool,
and drifting as an island, was like a song to him. He had wit, a keen
sense of humor, a sense of pathos. Sometimes he thought he would draw;
sometimes write. He had a little talent for both, he thought, but did
practically nothing with either. He would sketch now and then, but only
fragments--a small roof-top, with smoke curling from a chimney and birds
flying; a bit of water with a willow bending over it and perhaps a boat
anchored; a mill pond with ducks afloat, and a boy or woman on the bank.
He really had no great talent for interpretation at this time, only an
intense sense of beauty. The beauty of a bird in flight, a rose in
bloom, a tree swaying in the wind--these held him. He would walk the
streets of his native town at night, admiring the brightness of the
store windows, the sense of youth and enthusiasm that went with a crowd;
the sense of love and comfort and home that spoke through the glowing
windows of houses set back among trees.

He admired girls,--was mad about them,--but only about those who were
truly beautiful. There were two or three in his school who reminded him
of poetic phrases he had come across--"beauty like a tightened bow,"
"thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face," "a dancing shape, an image
gay"--but he could not talk to them with ease. They were beautiful but
so distant. He invested them with more beauty than they had; the beauty
was in his own soul. But he did not know that. One girl whose yellow
hair lay upon her neck in great yellow braids like ripe corn, was
constantly in his thoughts. He worshiped her from afar but she never
knew. She never knew what solemn black eyes burned at her when she was
not looking. She left Alexandria, her family moving to another town, and
in time he recovered, for there is much of beauty. But the color of her
hair and the wonder of her neck stayed with him always.

There was some plan on the part of Witla to send these children to
college, but none of them showed any great desire for education. They
were perhaps wiser than books, for they were living in the realm of
imagination and feeling. Sylvia longed to be a mother, and was married
at twenty-one to Henry Burgess, the son of Benjamin C. Burgess, editor
of the _Morning Appeal_. There was a baby the first year. Myrtle was
dreaming through algebra and trigonometry, wondering whether she would
teach or get married, for the moderate prosperity of the family demanded
that she do something. Eugene mooned through his studies, learning
nothing practical. He wrote a little, but his efforts at sixteen were
puerile. He drew, but there was no one to tell him whether there was any
merit in the things he did or not. Practical matters were generally
without significance to him. But he was overawed by the fact that the
world demanded practical service--buying and selling like his father,
clerking in stores, running big business. It was a confusing maze, and
he wondered, even at this age, what was to become of him. He did not
object to the kind of work his father was doing, but it did not interest
him. For himself he knew it would be a pointless, dreary way of making a
living, and as for insurance, that was equally bad. He could hardly
bring himself to read through the long rigamarole of specifications
which each insurance paper itemized. There were times--evenings and
Saturdays--when he clerked in his father's store, but it was painful
work. His mind was not in it.

As early as his twelfth year his father had begun to see that Eugene was
not cut out for business, and by the time he was sixteen he was
convinced of it. From the trend of his reading and his percentage marks
at school, he was equally convinced that the boy was not interested in
his studies. Myrtle, who was two classes ahead of him but sometimes in
the same room, reported that he dreamed too much. He was always looking
out of the window.

Eugene's experience with girls had not been very wide. There were those
very minor things that occur in early youth--girls whom we furtively
kiss, or who furtively kiss us--the latter had been the case with
Eugene. He had no particular interest in any one girl. At fourteen he
had been picked by a little girl at a party as an affinity, for the
evening at least, and in a game of "post-office" had enjoyed the wonder
of a girl's arms around him in a dark room and a girl's lips against
his; but since then there had been no re-encounter of any kind. He had
dreamed of love, with this one experience as a basis, but always in a
shy, distant way. He was afraid of girls, and they, to tell the truth,
were afraid of him. They could not make him out.

But in the fall of his seventeenth year Eugene came into contact with
one girl who made a profound impression on him. Stella Appleton was a
notably beautiful creature. She was very fair, Eugene's own age, with
very blue eyes and a slender sylph-like body. She was gay and debonair
in an enticing way, without really realizing how dangerous she was to
the average, susceptible male heart. She liked to flirt with the boys
because it amused her, and not because she cared for anyone in
particular. There was no petty meanness about it, however, for she
thought they were all rather nice, the less clever appealing to her
almost more than the sophisticated. She may have liked Eugene originally
because of his shyness.

He saw her first at the beginning of his last school year when she came
to the city and entered the second high school class. Her father had
come from Moline, Illinois, to take a position as manager of a new
pulley manufactory which was just starting. She had quickly become
friends with his sister Myrtle, being perhaps attracted by her quiet
ways, as Myrtle was by Stella's gaiety.

One afternoon, as Myrtle and Stella were on Main Street, walking home
from the post office, they met Eugene, who was on his way to visit a boy
friend. He was really bashful; and when he saw them approaching he
wanted to escape, but there was no way. They saw him, and Stella
approached confidently enough. Myrtle was anxious to intercept him,
because she had her pretty companion with her.

"You haven't been home, have you?" she asked, stopping. This was her
chance to introduce Stella; Eugene couldn't escape. "Miss Appleton, this
is my brother Eugene."

Stella gave him a sunny encouraging smile, and her hand, which he took
gingerly. He was plainly nervous.

"I'm not very clean," he said apologetically. "I've been helping father
fix a buggy."

"Oh, we don't mind," said Myrtle. "Where are you going?"

"Over to Harry Morris's," he explained.

"What for?"

"We're going for hickory nuts."

"Oh, I wish I had some," said Stella.

"I'll bring you some," he volunteered gallantly.

She smiled again. "I wish you would."

She almost proposed that they should be taken along, but inexperience
hindered her.

Eugene was struck with all her charm at once. She seemed like one of
those unattainable creatures who had swum into his ken a little earlier
and disappeared. There was something of the girl with the corn-
hair about her, only she had been more human, less like a dream. This
girl was fine, delicate, pink, like porcelain. She was fragile and yet
virile. He caught his breath, but he was more or less afraid of her. He
did not know what she might be thinking of him.

"Well, we're going on to the house," said Myrtle.

"I'd go along if I hadn't promised Harry I'd come over."

"Oh, that's all right," replied Myrtle. "We don't mind."

He withdrew, feeling that he had made a very poor impression. Stella's
eyes had been on him in a very inquiring way. She looked after him when
he had gone.

"Isn't he nice?" she said to Myrtle frankly.

"I think so," replied Myrtle; "kind o'. He's too moody, though."

"What makes him?"

"He isn't very strong."

"I think he has a nice smile."

"I'll tell him!"

"No, please don't! You won't, will you?"

"No."

"But he _has_ a nice smile."

"I'll ask you round to the house some evening and you can meet him
again."

"I'd like to," said Stella. "It would be a lot of fun."

"Come out Saturday evening and stay all night. He's home then."

"I will," said Stella. "Won't that be fine!"

"I believe you like him!" laughed Myrtle.

"I think he's awfully nice," said Stella, simply.

The second meeting happened on Saturday evening as arranged, when he
came home from his odd day at his father's insurance office. Stella had
come to supper. Eugene saw her through the open sitting room door, as he
bounded upstairs to change his clothes, for he had a fire of youth which
no sickness of stomach or weakness of lungs could overcome at this age.
A thrill of anticipation ran over his body. He took especial pains with
his toilet, adjusting a red tie to a nicety, and parting his hair
carefully in the middle. He came down after a while, conscious that he
had to say something smart, worthy of himself, or she would not see how
attractive he was; and yet he was fearful as to the result. When he
entered the sitting room she was sitting with his sister before an open
fire-place, the glow of a lamp with a red-flowered shade warmly
illuminating the room. It was a commonplace room, with its blue
cloth-covered center table, its chairs of stereotyped factory design,
and its bookcase of novels and histories, but it was homey, and the
sense of hominess was strong.

Mrs. Witla was in and out occasionally, looking for things which
appertained to her functions as house-mother. The father was not home
yet; he would get there by supper-time, having been to some outlying
town of the county trying to sell a machine. Eugene was indifferent to
his presence or absence. Mr. Witla had a fund of humor which extended to
joking with his son and daughters, when he was feeling good, to noting
their budding interest in the opposite sex; to predicting some
commonplace climax to their one grand passion when it should come. He
was fond of telling Myrtle that she would one day marry a horse-doctor.
As for Eugene, he predicted a certain Elsa Brown, who, his wife said,
had greasy curls. This did not irritate either Myrtle or Eugene. It even
brought a wry smile to Eugene's face for he was fond of a jest; but he
saw his father pretty clearly even at this age. He saw the smallness of
his business, the ridiculousness of any such profession having any claim
on him. He never wanted to say anything, but there was in him a burning
opposition to the commonplace, a molten pit in a crater of reserve,
which smoked ominously now and then for anyone who could have read.
Neither his father nor his mother understood him. To them he was a
peculiar boy, dreamy, sickly, unwitting, as yet, of what he really
wanted.

"Oh, here you are!" said Myrtle, when he came in. "Come and sit down."

Stella gave him an enticing smile.

He walked to the mantel-piece and stood there, posing. He wanted to
impress this girl, and he did not quite know how. He was almost lost for
anything to say.

"You can't guess what we've been doing!" his sister chirped helpfully.

"Well--what?" he replied blankly.

"You ought to guess. Can't you be nice and guess?"

"One guess, anyhow," put in Stella.

"Toasting pop-corn," he ventured with a half smile.

"You're warm." It was Myrtle speaking.

Stella looked at him with round blue eyes. "One more guess," she
suggested.

"Chestnuts!" he guessed.

She nodded her head gaily. "What hair!" he thought. Then--"Where are
they?"

"Here's one," laughed his new acquaintance, holding out a tiny hand.

Under her laughing encouragement he was finding his voice. "Stingy!" he
said.

"Now isn't that mean," she exclaimed. "I gave him the only one I had.
Don't you give him any of yours, Myrtle."

"I take it back," he pleaded. "I didn't know."

"I won't!" exclaimed Myrtle. "Here, Stella," and she held out the few
nuts she had left, "take these, and don't you give him any!" She put
them in Stella's eager hands.

He saw her meaning. It was an invitation to a contest. She wanted him to
try to make her give him some. He fell in with her plan.

"Here!" He stretched out his palm. "That's not right!"

She shook her head.

"One, anyhow," he insisted.

Her head moved negatively from side to side slowly.

"One," he pleaded, drawing near.

Again the golden negative. But her hand was at the side nearest him,
where he could seize it. She started to pass its contents behind her to
the other hand but he jumped and caught it.

"Myrtle! Quick!" she called.

Myrtle came. It was a three-handed struggle. In the midst of the contest
Stella twisted and rose to her feet. Her hair brushed his face. He held
her tiny hand firmly. For a moment he looked into her eyes. What was it?
He could not say. Only he half let go and gave her the victory.

"There," she smiled. "Now I'll give you one."

He took it, laughing. What he wanted was to take her in his arms.

A little while before supper his father came in and sat down, but
presently took a Chicago paper and went into the dining room to read.
Then his mother called them to the table, and he sat by Stella. He was
intensely interested in what she did and said. If her lips moved he
noted just how. When her teeth showed he thought they were lovely. A
little ringlet on her forehead beckoned him like a golden finger. He
felt the wonder of the poetic phrase, "the shining strands of her hair."

After dinner he and Myrtle and Stella went back to the sitting room. His
father stayed behind to read, his mother to wash dishes. Myrtle left the
room after a bit to help her mother, and then these two were left alone.
He hadn't much to say, now that they were together--he couldn't talk.
Something about her beauty kept him silent.

"Do you like school?" she asked after a time. She felt as if they must
talk.

"Only fairly well," he replied. "I'm not much interested. I think I'll
quit one of these days and go to work."

"What do you expect to do?"

"I don't know yet--I'd like to be an artist." He confessed his ambition
for the first time in his life--why, he could not have said.

Stella took no note of it.

"I was afraid they wouldn't let me enter second year high school, but
they did," she remarked. "The superintendent at Moline had to write the
superintendent here."

"They're mean about those things," he cogitated.

She got up and went to the bookcase to look at the books. He followed
after a little.

"Do you like Dickens?" she asked.

He nodded his head solemnly in approval. "Pretty much," he said.

"I can't like him. He's too long drawn out. I like Scott better."

"I like Scott," he said.

"I'll tell you a lovely book that I like." She paused, her lips parted
trying to remember the name. She lifted her hand as though to pick the
title out of the air. "The Fair God," she exclaimed at last.

"Yes--it's fine," he approved. "I thought the scene in the old Aztec
temple where they were going to sacrifice Ahwahee was so wonderful!"

"Oh, yes, I liked that," she added. She pulled out "Ben Hur" and turned
its leaves idly. "And this was so good."

"Wonderful!"

They paused and she went to the window, standing under the cheap lace
curtains. It was a moonlight night. The rows of trees that lined the
street on either side were leafless; the grass brown and dead. Through
the thin, interlaced twigs that were like silver filigree they could see
the lamps of other houses shining through half-drawn blinds. A man went
by, a black shadow in the half-light.

"Isn't it lovely?" she said.

Eugene came near. "It's fine," he answered.

"I wish it were cold enough to skate. Do you skate?" She turned to him.

"Yes, indeed," he replied.

"My, it's so nice on a moonlit night. I used to skate a lot at Moline."

"We skate a lot here. There're two lakes, you know."

He thought of the clear crystal nights when the ice of Green Lake had
split every so often with a great resounding rumble. He thought of the
crowds of boys and girls shouting, the distant shadows, the stars. Up to
now he had never found any girl to skate with successfully. He had never
felt just easy with anyone. He had tried it, but once he had fallen with
a girl, and it had almost cured him of skating forever. He felt as
though he could skate with Stella. He felt that she might like to skate
with him.

"When it gets colder we might go," he ventured. "Myrtle skates."

"Oh, that'll be fine!" she applauded.

Still she looked out into the street.

After a bit she came back to the fire and stood before him, pensively
looking down.

"Do you think your father will stay here?" he asked.

"He says so. He likes it very much."

"Do you?"

"Yes--now."

"Why _now_?"

"Oh, I didn't like it at first."

"Why?"

"Oh, I guess it was because I didn't know anybody. I like it though,
now." She lifted her eyes.

He drew a little nearer.

"It's a nice place," he said, "but there isn't much for me here. I think
I'll leave next year."

"Where do you think you'll go?"

"To Chicago. I don't want to stay here."

She turned her body toward the fire and he moved to a chair behind her,
leaning on its back. She felt him there rather close, but did not move.
He was surprising himself.

"Aren't you ever coming back?" she asked.

"Maybe. It all depends. I suppose so."

"I shouldn't think you'd want to leave yet."

"Why?"

"You say it's so nice."

He made no answer and she looked over her shoulder. He was leaning very
much toward her.

"Will you skate with me this winter?" he asked meaningly.

She nodded her head.

Myrtle came in.

"What are you two talking about?" she asked.

"The fine skating we have here," he said.

"I love to skate," she exclaimed.

"So do I," added Stella. "It's heavenly."

CHAPTER II

Some of the incidents of this courtship that followed, ephemeral as it
was, left a profound impression on Eugene's mind. They met to skate not
long after, for the snow came and the ice and there was wonderful
skating on Green Lake. The frost was so prolonged that men with horses
and ice-saws were cutting blocks a foot thick over at Miller's Point,
where the ice houses were. Almost every day after Thanksgiving there
were crowds of boys and girls from the schools scooting about like water
skippers. Eugene could not always go on week evenings and Saturdays
because he had to assist his father at the store. But at regular
intervals he could ask Myrtle to get Stella and let them all go together
at night. And at other times he would ask her to go alone. Not
infrequently she did.

On one particular occasion they were below a group of houses which crept
near the lake on high ground. The moon was up, its wooing rays reflected
in the polished surfaces of the ice. Through the black masses of trees
that lined the shore could be seen the glow of windows, yellow and
homey. Eugene and Stella had slowed up to turn about, having left the
crowd of skaters some distance back. Stella's golden curls were covered,
except for a few ringlets, with a French cap; her body, to below the
hips, encased in a white wool Jersey, close-fitting and shapely. The
skirt below was a grey mixture of thick wool and the stockings were
covered by white woolen leggings. She looked tempting and knew it.

Suddenly, as they turned, one of her skates came loose and she hobbled
and exclaimed about it. "Wait," said Eugene, "I'll fix it."

She stood before him and he fell to his knees, undoing the twisted
strap. When he had the skate off and ready for her foot he looked up,
and she looked down on him, smiling. He dropped the skate and flung his
arms around her hips, laying his head against her waist.

"You're a bad boy," she said.

For a few minutes she kept silent, for as the center of this lovely
scene she was divine. While he held her she pulled off his wool cap and
laid her hand on his hair. It almost brought tears to his eyes, he was
so happy. At the same time it awakened a tremendous passion. He clutched
her significantly.

"Fix my skate, now," she said wisely.

He got up to hug her but she would not let him.

"No, no," she protested. "You mustn't do like that. I won't come with
you if you do."

"Oh, Stella!" he pleaded.

"I mean it," she insisted. "You mustn't do like that."

He subsided, hurt, half angry. But he feared her will. She was really
not as ready for caresses as he had thought.

Another time a sleighing party was given by some school girls, and
Stella, Eugene and Myrtle were invited. It was a night of snow and
stars, not too cold but bracing. A great box-wagon had been dismantled
of its body and the latter put on runners and filled with straw and warm
robes. Eugene and Myrtle, like the others, had been picked up at their
door after the sleigh had gone the rounds of some ten peaceful little
homes. Stella was not in yet, but in a little while her house was
reached.

"Get in here," called Myrtle, though she was half the length of the box
away from Eugene. Her request made him angry. "Sit by me," he called,
fearful that she would not. She climbed in by Myrtle but finding the
space not to her liking moved farther down. Eugene made a special effort
to have room by him, and she came there as though by accident. He drew a
buffalo robe around her and thrilled to think that she was really there.
The sleigh went jingling around the town for others, and finally struck
out into the country. It passed great patches of dark woods silent in
the snow, little white frame farmhouses snuggled close to the ground,
and with windows that gleamed in a vague romantic way. The stars were
countless and keen. The whole scene made a tremendous impression on him,
for he was in love, and here beside him, in the shadow, her face palely
outlined, was this girl. He could make out the sweetness of her cheek,
her eyes, the softness of her hair.

There was a good deal of chatter and singing, and in the midst of these
distractions he managed to slip an arm about her waist, to get her hand
in his, to look close into her eyes, trying to divine their expression.
She was always coy with him, not wholly yielding. Three or four times he
kissed her cheek furtively and once her mouth. In a dark place he pulled
her vigorously to him, putting a long, sensuous kiss on her lips that
frightened her.

"No," she protested, nervously. "You mustn't."

He ceased for a time, feeling that he had pressed his advantage too
closely. But the night in all its beauty, and she in hers made a lasting
impression.

******

"I think we ought to get Eugene into newspaper work or something like
that," Witla senior suggested to his wife.

"It looks as though that's all he would be good for, at least now,"
replied Mrs. Witla, who was satisfied that her boy had not yet found
himself. "I think he'll do something better later on. His health isn't
very good, you know."

Witla half suspected that his boy was naturally lazy, but he wasn't
sure. He suggested that Benjamin C. Burgess, the prospective
father-in-law of Sylvia and the editor and proprietor of the _Morning
Appeal_, might give him a place as a reporter or type-setter in order
that he might learn the business from the ground up. The _Appeal_
carried few employees, but Mr. Burgess might have no objections to
starting Eugene as a reporter if he could write, or as a student of
type-setting, or both. He appealed to Burgess one day on the street.

"Say, Burgess," he said, "you wouldn't have a place over in your shop
for that boy of mine, would you? He likes to scribble a little, I
notice. I think he pretends to draw a little, too, though I guess it
doesn't amount to much. He ought to get into something. He isn't doing
anything at school. Maybe he could learn type-setting. It wouldn't hurt
him to begin at the bottom if he's going to follow that line. It
wouldn't matter what you paid him to begin with."

Burgess thought. He had seen Eugene around town, knew no harm of him
except that he was lackadaisical and rather moody.

"Send him in to see me some day," he replied noncommittally. "I might do
something for him."

"I'd certainly be much obliged to you if you would," said Witla. "He is
not doing much good as it is now," and the two men parted.

He went home and told Eugene. "Burgess says he might give you a position
as a type-setter or a reporter on the _Appeal_ if you'd come in and see
him some day," he explained, looking over to where his son was reading
by the lamp.

"Does he?" replied Eugene calmly. "Well, I can't write. I might set
type. Did you ask him?"

"Yes," said Witla. "You'd better go to him some day."

Eugene bit his lip. He realized this was a commentary on his loafing
propensities. He wasn't doing very well, that was certain. Still
type-setting was no bright field for a person of his temperament. "I
will," he concluded, "when school's over."

"Better speak before school ends. Some of the other fellows might ask
for it around that time. It wouldn't hurt you to try your hand at it."

"I will," said Eugene obediently.

He stopped in one sunny April afternoon at Mr. Burgess' office. It was
on the ground floor of the three-story _Appeal_ building in the public
square. Mr. Burgess, a fat man, slightly bald, looked at him quizzically
over his steel rimmed spectacles. What little hair he had was gray.

"So you think you would like to go into the newspaper business, do you?"
queried Burgess.

"I'd like to try my hand at it," replied the boy. "I'd like to see
whether I like it."

"I can tell you right now there's very little in it. Your father says
you like to write."

"I'd like to well enough, but I don't think I can. I wouldn't mind
learning type-setting. If I ever could write I'd be perfectly willing
to."

"When do you think you'd like to start?"

"At the end of school, if it's all the same to you."

"It doesn't make much difference. I'm not really in need of anybody, but
I could use you. Would you be satisfied with five a week?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, come in when you are ready. I'll see what I can do."

He waved the prospective type-setter away with a movement of his fat
hand, and turned to his black walnut desk, dingy, covered with
newspapers, and lit by a green shaded electric light. Eugene went out,
the smell of fresh printing ink in his nose, and the equally aggressive
smell of damp newspapers. It was going to be an interesting experience,
he thought, but perhaps a waste of time. He did not think so much of
Alexandria. Some time he was going to get out of it.

The office of the _Appeal_ was not different from that of any other
country newspaper office within the confines of our two hemispheres. On
the ground floor in front was the business office, and in the rear the
one large flat bed press and the job presses. On the second floor was
the composing room with its rows of type cases on their high racks--for
this newspaper was, like most other country newspapers, still set by
hand; and in front was the one dingy office of the so-called editor, or
managing editor, or city editor--for all three were the same person, a
Mr. Caleb Williams whom Burgess had picked up in times past from heaven
knows where. Williams was a small, lean, wiry man, with a black pointed
beard and a glass eye which fixed you oddly with its black pupil. He was
talkative, skipped about from duty to duty, wore most of the time a
green shade pulled low over his forehead, and smoked a brown briar pipe.
He had a fund of knowledge, piled up in metropolitan journalistic
experience, but he was anchored here with a wife and three children,
after sailing, no doubt, a chartless sea of troubles, and was glad to
talk life and experiences after office hours with almost anybody. It
took him from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon to gather
what local news there was, and either write it or edit it. He seemed to
have a number of correspondents who sent him weekly batches of news from
surrounding points. The Associated Press furnished him with a few minor
items by telegraph, and there was a "patent insides," two pages of
fiction, household hints, medicine ads. and what not, which saved him
considerable time and stress. Most of the news which came to him
received short shrift in the matter of editing. "In Chicago we used to
give a lot of attention to this sort of thing," Williams was wont to
declare to anyone who was near, "but you can't do it down here. The
readers really don't expect it. They're looking for local items. I
always look after the local items pretty sharp."

Mr. Burgess took care of the advertising sections. In fact he solicited
advertising personally, saw that it was properly set up as the
advertiser wanted it, and properly placed according to the convenience
of the day and the rights and demands of others. He was the politician
of the concern, the handshaker, the guider of its policy. He wrote
editorials now and then, or, with Williams, decided just what their
sense must be, met the visitors who came to the office to see the
editor, and arbitrated all known forms of difficulties. He was at the
beck and call of certain Republican party-leaders in the county; but
that seemed natural, for he was a Republican himself by temperament and
disposition. He was appointed postmaster once to pay him for some useful
services, but he declined because he was really making more out of his
paper than his postmastership would have brought. He received whatever
city or county advertising it was in the power of the Republican leaders
to give him, and so he did very well. The complications of his political
relationships Williams knew in part, but they never troubled that
industrious soul. He dispensed with moralizing. "I have to make a living
for myself, my wife and three children. That's enough to keep me going
without bothering my head about other people." So this office was really
run very quietly, efficiently, and in most ways pleasantly. It was a
sunny place to work.

Witla, who came here at the end of his eleventh school year and when he
had just turned seventeen, was impressed with the personality of
Mr. Williams. He liked him. He came to like a Jonas Lyle who worked at
what might be called the head desk of the composing room, and a certain
John Summers who worked at odd times--whenever there was an extra rush
of job printing. He learned very quickly that John Summers, who was
fifty-five, grey, and comparatively silent, was troubled with weak lungs
and drank. Summers would slip out of the office at various times in the
day and be gone from five to fifteen minutes. No one ever said anything,
for there was no pressure here. What work was to be done was done. Jonas
Lyle was of a more interesting nature. He was younger by ten years,
stronger, better built, but still a character. He was semi-phlegmatic,
philosophic, feebly literary. He had worked, as Eugene found out in the
course of time, in nearly every part of the United States--Denver,
Portland, St. Paul, St. Louis, where not, and had a fund of
recollections of this proprietor and that. Whenever he saw a name of
particular distinction in the newspapers he was apt to bring the paper
to Williams--and later, when they became familiar, to Eugene--and say,
"I knew that fellow out in ----. He was postmaster (or what not) at
X----. He's come up considerably since I knew him." In most cases he did
not know these celebrities personally at all, but he knew of them, and
the echo of their fame sounding in this out-of-the-way corner of the
world impressed him. He was a careful reader of proof for Williams in a
rush, a quick type-setter, a man who stayed by his tasks faithfully. But
he hadn't got anywhere in the world, for, after all, he was little more
than a machine. Eugene could see that at a glance.

It was Lyle who taught him the art of type-setting. He demonstrated the
first day the theory of the squares or pockets in a case, how some
letters were placed more conveniently to the hand than others, why some
letters were well represented as to quantity, why capitals were used in
certain offices for certain purposes, in others not. "Now on the Chicago
_Tribune_ we used to italicize the names of churches, boats, books,
hotels, and things of that sort. That's the only paper I ever knew to do
that," he remarked. What slugs, sticks, galleys, turnovers, meant, came
rapidly to the surface. That the fingers would come to recognize weights
of leads by the touch, that a letter would almost instinctively find its
way back to its proper pocket, even though you were not thinking, once
you became expert, were facts which he cheerfully communicated. He
wanted his knowledge taken seriously, and this serious attention,
Eugene, because of his innate respect for learning of any kind, was only
too glad to give him. He did not know what he wanted to do, but he knew
quite well that he wanted to see everything. This shop was interesting
to him for some little time for this reason, for though he soon found
that he did not want to be a type-setter or a reporter, or indeed
anything much in connection with a country newspaper, he was learning
about life. He worked at his desk cheerfully, smiling out upon the
world, which indicated its presence to him through an open window, read
the curious bits of news or opinion or local advertisements as he set
them up, and dreamed of what the world might have in store for him. He
was not vastly ambitious as yet, but hopeful and, withal, a little
melancholy. He could see boys and girls whom he knew, idling in the
streets or on the corner squares; he could see where Ted Martinwood was
driving by in his father's buggy, or George Anderson was going up the
street with the air of someone who would never need to work. George's
father owned the one and only hotel. There were thoughts in his mind of
fishing, boating, lolling somewhere with some pretty girl, but alas,
girls did not apparently take to him so very readily. He was too shy. He
thought it must be nice to be rich. So he dreamed.

Eugene was at that age when he wished to express himself in ardent
phrases. He was also at the age when bashfulness held him in reserve,
even though he were in love and intensely emotional. He could only say
to Stella what seemed trivial things, and look his intensity, whereas it
was the trivial things that were most pleasing to her, not the
intensity. She was even then beginning to think he was a little strange,
a little too tense for her disposition. Yet she liked him. It became
generally understood around town that Stella was _his_ girl. School day
mating usually goes that way in a small city or village. He was seen to
go out with her. His father teased him. Her mother and father deemed
this a manifestation of calf love, not so much on her part, for they
were aware of her tendency to hold lightly any manifestation of
affection on the part of boys, but on his. They thought his
sentimentalism would soon be wearisome to Stella. And they were not far
wrong about her. On one occasion at a party given by several high school
girls, a "country post office" was organized. That was one of those
games which mean kissing only. A system of guessing results in a series
of forfeits. If you miss you must be postmaster, and call someone for
"mail." _Mail_ means to be kissed in a dark room (where the postmaster
stands) by someone whom you like or who likes you. You, as postmaster,
have authority or compulsion--however you feel about it--to call whom
you please.

In this particular instance Stella, who was caught before Eugene, was
under compulsion to call someone to kiss. Her first thought was of him,
but on account of the frankness of the deed, and because there was a
lurking fear in her of his eagerness, the name she felt impelled to
speak was Harvey Rutter. Harvey was a handsome boy whom Stella had met
after her first encounter with Eugene. He was not as yet fascinating to
her, but pleasing. She had a coquettish desire to see what he was like.
This was her first direct chance.

He stepped gaily in, and Eugene was at once insane with jealousy. He
could not understand why she should treat him in that way. When it came
to his turn he called for Bertha Shoemaker, whom he admired, and who was
sweet in a way, but who was as nothing to Stella in his estimation. The
pain of kissing her when he really wanted the other girl was great. When
he came out Stella saw moodiness in his eyes, but chose to ignore it. He
was obviously half-hearted and downcast in his simulation of joy.

A second chance came to her and this time she called him. He went, but
was in a semi-defiant mood. He wanted to punish her. When they met in
the dark she expected him to put his arms around her. Her own hands were
up to about where his shoulders should be. Instead he only took hold of
one of her arms with his hand and planted a chilly kiss on her lips. If
he had only asked, "Why did you?" or held her close and pleaded with her
not to treat him so badly, the relationship might have lasted longer.
Instead he said nothing, and she grew defiant and she went out gaily.
There was a strain of reserve running between them until the party broke
up and he took her home.

"You must be melancholy tonight," she remarked, after they had walked
two blocks in complete silence. The streets were dark, and their feet
sounded hollowly on the brick pavement.

"Oh, I'm feeling all right," he replied moodily.

"I think it's awfully nice at the Weimers', we always have so much fun
there."

"Yes, lots of fun," he echoed contemptuously.

"Oh, don't be so cross!" she flared. "You haven't any reason for
fussing."

"Haven't I?"

"No, you haven't."

"Well if that's the way you feel about it I suppose I haven't. I don't
see it that way."

"Well, it doesn't make any difference to me how you see it."

"Oh, doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't." Her head was up and she was angry.

"Well I'm sure then it doesn't to me."

There was another silence which endured until they were almost home.

"Are you coming to the sociable next Thursday?" he inquired. He was
referring to a Methodist evening entertainment which, although he cared
very little about it, was a convenience as it enabled him to see her and
take her home. He was prompted to ask by the fear that an open rupture
was impending.

"No," she said. "I don't think I will."

"Why not?"

"I don't care to."

"I think you're mean," he said reprovingly.

"I don't care," she replied. "I think you're too bossy. I don't think I
like you very much anyhow."

His heart contracted ominously.

"You can do as you please," he persisted.

They reached her gate. It was his wont to kiss her in the shadow--to
hold her tight for a few minutes in spite of her protests. Tonight, as
they approached, he thought of doing it, but she gave him no chance.
When they reached the gate she opened it quickly and slipped in.
"Good-night," she called.

"Good-night," he said, and then as she reached her door, "Stella!"

It was open, and she slipped in. He stood in the dark, hurt, sore,
oppressed. What should he do? He strolled home cudgelling his brain
whether never to speak to or look at her again until she came to him, or
to hunt her up and fight it all out with her. She was in the wrong, he
knew that. When he went to bed he was grieving over it, and when he
awoke it was with him all day.

He had been gaining rather rapidly as a student of type-setting, and to
a certain extent of the theory of reporting, and he worked diligently
and earnestly at his proposed trade. He loved to look out of the window
and draw, though of late, after knowing Stella so well and coming to
quarrel with her because of her indifference, there was little heart in
it. This getting to the office, putting on an apron, and starting in on
some local correspondence left over from the day before, or some
telegraph copy which had been freshly filed on his hook, had its
constructive value. Williams endeavored to use him on some local items
of news as a reporter, but he was a slow worker and almost a failure at
getting all the facts. He did not appear to know how to interview
anybody, and would come back with a story which needed to be filled in
from other sources. He really did not understand the theory of news, and
Williams could only make it partially clear to him. Mostly he worked at
his case, but he did learn some things.

For one thing, the theory of advertising began to dawn on him. These
local merchants put in the same ads. day after day, and many of them did
not change them noticeably. He saw Lyle and Summers taking the same ads.
which had appeared unchangingly from month to month in so far as their
main features were concerned, and alter only a few words before
returning them to the forms. He wondered at the sameness of them, and
when, at last, they were given to him to revise he often wished he could
change them a little. The language seemed so dull.

"Why don't they ever put little drawings in these ads?" he asked Lyle
one day. "Don't you think they'd look a little better?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Jonas. "They look pretty good. These people
around here wouldn't want anything like that. They'd think it was too
fancy." Eugene had seen and in a way studied the ads. in the magazines.
They seemed so much more fascinating to him. Why couldn't newspaper ads.
be different?

Still it was never given to him to trouble over this problem.
Mr. Burgess dealt with the advertisers. He settled how the ads were to
be. He never talked to Eugene or Summers about them, not always to Lyle.
He would sometimes have Williams explain just what their character and
layout was to be. Eugene was so young that Williams at first did not pay
very much attention to him, but after a while he began to realize that
there was a personality here, and then he would explain things,--why
space had to be short for some items and long for others, why county
news, news of small towns around Alexandria, and about people, was much
more important financially to the paper than the correct reporting of
the death of the sultan of Turkey. The most important thing was to get
the local names right. "Don't ever misspell them," he once cautioned
him. "Don't ever leave out a part of a name if you can help it. People
are awfully sensitive about that. They'll stop their subscription if you
don't watch out, and you won't know what's the matter."

Eugene took all these things to heart. He wanted to see how the thing
was done, though basically it seemed to be a little small. In fact
people seemed a little small, mostly.

One of the things that did interest him was to see the paper put on the
press and run off. He liked to help lock up the forms, and to see how
they were imposed and registered. He liked to hear the press run, and to
help carry the wet papers to the mailing tables and the distributing
counter out in front. The paper hadn't a very large circulation but
there was a slight hum of life about that time and he liked it. He liked
the sense of getting his hands and face streaked and not caring, and of
seeing his hair tousled, in the mirror. He tried to be useful and the
various people on the paper came to like him, though he was often a
little awkward and slow. He was not strong at this period and his
stomach troubled him. He thought, too, that the smell of the ink might
affect his lungs, though he did not seriously fear it. In the main it
was interesting but small; there was a much larger world outside, he
knew that. He hoped to go to it some day; he hoped to go to Chicago.

CHAPTER III

Eugene grew more and more moody and rather restless under Stella's
increasing independence. She grew steadily more indifferent because of
his moods. The fact that other boys were crazy for her consideration was
a great factor; the fact that one particular boy, Harvey Rutter, was
persistently genial, not insistent, really better looking than Eugene
and much better tempered, helped a great deal. Eugene saw her with him
now and then, saw her go skating with him, or at least with a crowd of
which he was a member. Eugene hated him heartily; he hated her at times
for not yielding to him wholly; but he was none the less wild over her
beauty. It stamped his brain with a type or ideal. Thereafter he knew in
a really definite way what womanhood ought to be, to be really
beautiful.

Another thing it did was to bring home to him a sense of his position in
the world. So far he had always been dependent on his parents for food,
clothes and spending money, and his parents were not very liberal. He
knew other boys who had money to run up to Chicago or down to
Springfield--the latter was nearer--to have a Saturday and Sunday lark.
No such gaieties were for him. His father would not allow it, or rather
would not pay for it. There were other boys who, in consequence of amply
provided spending money, were the town dandies. He saw them kicking
their heels outside the corner book store, the principal loafing place
of the elite, on Wednesdays and Saturdays and sometimes on Sunday
evenings preparatory to going somewhere, dressed in a luxury of clothing
which was beyond his wildest dreams. Ted Martinwood, the son of the
principal drygoods man, had a frock coat in which he sometimes appeared
when he came down to the barber shop for a shave before he went to call
on his girl. George Anderson was possessed of a dress suit, and wore
dancing pumps at all dances. There was Ed Waterbury, who was known to
have a horse and runabout of his own. These youths were slightly older,
and were interested in girls of a slightly older set, but the point was
the same. These things hurt him.

He himself had no avenue of progress which, so far as he could see, was
going to bring him to any financial prosperity. His father was never
going to be rich, anybody could see that. He himself had made no
practical progress in schoolwork--he knew that. He hated
insurance--soliciting or writing, despised the sewing machine business,
and did not know where he would get with anything which he might like to
do in literature or art. His drawing seemed a joke, his writing, or wish
for writing, pointless. He was broodingly unhappy.

One day Williams, who had been watching him for a long time, stopped at
his desk.

"I say, Witla, why don't you go to Chicago?" he said. "There's a lot
more up there for a boy like you than down here. You'll never get
anywhere working on a country newspaper."

"I know it," said Eugene.

"Now with me it's different," went on Williams. "I've had my rounds.
I've got a wife and three children and when a man's got a family he
can't afford to take chances. But you're young yet. Why don't you go to
Chicago and get on a paper? You could get something."

"What could I get?" asked Eugene.

"Well, you might get a job as type-setter if you'd join the union. I
don't know how good you'd be as a reporter--I hardly think that's your
line. But you might study art and learn to draw. Newspaper artists make
good money."

Eugene thought of his art. It wasn't much. He didn't do much with it.
Still he thought of Chicago; the world appealed to him. If he could only
get out of here--if he could only make more than seven or eight dollars
a week. He brooded about this.

One Sunday afternoon he and Stella went with Myrtle to Sylvia's home,
and after a brief stay Stella announced that she would have to be going;
her mother would be expecting her back. Myrtle was for going with her,
but altered her mind when Sylvia asked her to stay to tea. "Let Eugene
take her home," Sylvia said. Eugene was delighted in his persistent,
hopeless way. He was not yet convinced that she could not be won to
love. When they walked out in the fresh sweet air--it was nearing
spring--he felt that now he should have a chance of saying something
which would be winning--which would lure her to him.

They went out on a street next to the one she lived on quite to the
confines of the town. She wanted to turn off at her street, but he had
urged her not to. "Do you have to go home just yet?" he asked,
pleadingly.

"No, I can walk a little way," she replied.

They reached a vacant place--the last house a little distance
back--talking idly. It was getting hard to make talk. In his efforts to
be entertaining he picked up three twigs to show her how a certain trick
in balancing was performed. It consisted in laying two at right angles
with each other and with a third, using the latter as an upright. She
could not do it, of course. She was not really very much interested. He
wanted her to try and when she did, took hold of her right hand to
steady her efforts.

"No, don't," she said, drawing her hand away. "I can do it."

She trifled with the twigs unsuccessfully and was about to let them
fall, when he took hold of both her hands. It was so sudden that she
could not free herself, and so she looked him straight in the eye.

"Let go, Eugene, please let go."

He shook his head, gazing at her.

"Please let go," she went on. "You mustn't do this. I don't want you
to."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Well, because I don't."

"Don't you like me any more, Stella, really?" he asked.

"I don't think I do, not that way."

"But you did."

"I thought I did."

"Have you changed your mind?"

"Yes, I think I have."

He dropped her hands and looked at her fixedly and dramatically. The
attitude did not appeal to her. They strolled back to the street, and
when they neared her door he said, "Well, I suppose there's no use in my
coming to see you any more."

"I think you'd better not," she said simply.

She walked in, never looking back, and instead of going back to his
sister's he went home. He was in a very gloomy mood, and after sitting
around for a while went to his room. The night fell, and he sat there
looking out at the trees and grieving about what he had lost. Perhaps he
was not good enough for her--he could not make her love him. Was it that
he was not handsome enough--he did not really consider himself good
looking--or what was it, a lack of courage or strength?

After a time he noticed that the moon was hanging over the trees like a
bright shield in the sky. Two layers of thin clouds were moving in
different directions on different levels. He stopped in his cogitations
to think where these clouds came from. On sunny days when there were
great argosies of them he had seen them disappear before his eyes, and
then, marvel of marvels, reappear out of nothingness. The first time he
ever saw this it astonished him greatly, for he had never known up to
then what clouds were. Afterward he read about them in his physical
geography. Tonight he thought of that, and of the great plains over
which these winds swept, and of the grass and trees--great forests of
them--miles and miles. What a wonderful world! Poets wrote about these
things, Longfellow, and Bryant, and Tennyson. He thought of
"Thanatopsis," and of the "Elegy," both of which he admired greatly.
What was this thing, life?

Then he came back to Stella with an ache. She was actually gone, and she
was so beautiful. She would never really talk to him any more. He would
never get to hold her hand or kiss her. He clenched his hands with the
hurt. Oh, that night on the ice; that night in the sleigh! How wonderful
they were! Finally he undressed and went to bed. He wanted to be
alone--to be lonely. On his clean white pillow he lay and dreamed of the
things that might have been, kisses, caresses, a thousand joys.

One Sunday afternoon he was lying in his hammock thinking, thinking of
what a dreary place Alexandria was, anyhow, when he opened a Chicago
Saturday afternoon paper, which was something like a Sunday one because
it had no Sunday edition,--and went gloomily through it. It was as he
had always found, full of a subtle wonder, the wonder of the city, which
drew him like a magnet. Here was the drawing of a big hotel someone was
going to build; there was a sketch of a great pianist who was coming to
play. An account of a new comedy drama; of a little romantic section of
Goose Island in the Chicago river, with its old decayed boats turned
into houses and geese waddling about; an item of a man falling through a
coal hole on South Halstead street fascinated him. This last was at
sixty-two hundred and something and the idea of such a long street
seized on his imagination. What a tremendous city Chicago must be. The
thought of car lines, crowds, trains, came to him with almost a yearning
appeal.

All at once the magnet got him. It gripped his very soul, this wonder,
this beauty, this life.

"I'm going to Chicago," he thought, and got up.

There was his nice, quiet little home laid out before him. Inside were
his mother, his father, Myrtle. Still he was going. He could come back.
"Sure I can come back," he thought. Propelled by this magnetic power he
went in and upstairs to his room, and got a little grip or portmanteau
he had. He put in it the things he thought he would immediately need. In
his pocket were nine dollars, money he had been saving for some time.
Finally he came downstairs and stood in the door of the sitting room.

"What's the matter?" asked his mother, looking at his solemn
introspective face.

"I'm going to Chicago," he said.

"When?" she asked, astonished, a little uncertain of just what he meant.

"Today," he said.

"No, you're joking." She smiled unbelievingly. This was a boyish prank.

"I'm going today," he said. "I'm going to catch that four o'clock
train."

Her face saddened. "You're not?" she said.

"I can come back," he replied, "if I want to. I want to get something
else to do."

His father came in at this time. He had a little work room out in the
barn where he sometimes cleaned machines and repaired vehicles. He was
fresh from such a task now.

"What's up?" he asked, seeing his wife close to her boy.

"Eugene's going to Chicago."

"Since when?" he inquired amusedly.

"Today. He says he's going right now."

"You don't mean it," said Witla, astonished. He really did not believe
it. "Why don't you take a little time and think it over? What are you
going to live on?"

"I'll live," said Eugene. "I'm going. I've had enough of this place. I'm
going to get out."

"All right," said his father, who, after all, believed in initiative.
Evidently after all he hadn't quite understood this boy. "Got your trunk
packed?"

"No, but mother can send me that."

"Don't go today," pleaded his mother. "Wait until you get something
ready, Eugene. Wait and do a little thinking about it. Wait until
tomorrow."

"I want to go today, ma." He slipped his arm around her. "Little ma." He
was bigger than she by now, and still growing.

"All right, Eugene," she said softly, "but I wish you wouldn't." Her boy
was leaving her--her heart was hurt.

"I can come back, ma. It's only a hundred miles."

"Well, all right," she said finally, trying to brighten. "I'll pack your
bag."

"I have already."

She went to look.

"Well, it'll soon be time," said Witla, who was thinking that Eugene
might back down. "I'm sorry. Still it may be a good thing for you.
You're always welcome here, you know."

"I know," said Eugene.

They went finally to the train together, he and his father and Myrtle.
His mother couldn't. She stayed to cry.

On the way to the depot they stopped at Sylvia's.

"Why, Eugene," she exclaimed, "how ridiculous! Don't go."

"He's set," said Witla.

Eugene finally got loose. He seemed to be fighting love, home ties,
everything, every step of the way. Finally he reached the depot. The
train came. Witla grabbed his hand affectionately. "Be a good boy," he
said, swallowing a gulp.

Myrtle kissed him. "You're so funny, Eugene. Write me."

"I will."

He stepped on the train. The bell rang. Out the cars rolled--out and on.
He looked out on the familiar scenes and then a real ache came to
him--Stella, his mother, his father, Myrtle, the little home. They were
all going out of his life.

"Hm," he half groaned, clearing his throat. "Gee!"

And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must
succeed. That's what the world was made for. That was what he was made
for. That was what he would have to do....

CHAPTER IV

The city of Chicago--who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life that
had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of a lake
shore. Miles and miles of dreary little houses; miles and miles of
wooden block-paved streets, with gas lamps placed and water mains laid,
and empty wooden walks set for pedestrians; the beat of a hundred
thousand hammers; the ring of a hundred thousand trowels! Long,
converging lines of telegraph poles; thousands upon thousands of
sentinel cottages, factory plants, towering smoke stacks, and here and
there a lone, shabby church steeple, sitting out pathetically upon
vacant land. The raw prairie stretch was covered with yellow grass; the
great broad highways of the tracks of railroads, ten, fifteen, twenty,
thirty, laid side by side and strung with thousands upon thousands of
shabby cars, like beads upon a string. Engines clanging, trains moving,
people waiting at street crossings--pedestrians, wagon drivers, street
car drivers, drays of beer, trucks of coal, brick, stone, sand--a
spectacle of new, raw, necessary life!

As Eugene began to draw near it he caught for the first time the sense
and significance of a great city. What were these newspaper shadows he
had been dealing with in his reading compared to this vivid, articulate,
eager thing? Here was the substance of a new world, substantial,
fascinating, different. The handsome suburban station at South Chicago,
the first of its kind he had ever seen, took his eye, as the train
rolled cityward. He had never before seen a crowd of foreigners--working
men--and here were Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, waiting for a local
train. He had never seen a really large factory plant, and here was one,
and another, and another--steel works, potteries, soap-factories,
foundries, all gaunt and hard in the Sunday evening air. There seemed to
be, for all it was Sunday, something youthful, energetic and alive about
the streets. He noted the streetcars waiting; at one place a small river
was crossed on a draw,--dirty, gloomy, but crowded with boats and lined
with great warehouses, grain elevators, coal pockets--that architecture
of necessity and utility. His imagination was fired by this for here was
something that could be done brilliantly in black--a spot of red or
green for ship and bridge lights. There were some men on the magazines
who did things like this, only not so vivid.

The train threaded its way through long lines of cars coming finally
into an immense train shed where arc lights were spluttering--a score
under a great curved steel and glass roof, where people were hurrying to
and fro. Engines were hissing; bells clanging raucously. He had no
relatives, no soul to turn to, but somehow he did not feel lonely. This
picture of life, this newness, fascinated him. He stepped down and
started leisurely to the gate, wondering which way he should go. He came
to a corner where a lamp post already lit blazoned the name Madison. He
looked out on this street and saw, as far as the eye could reach, two
lines of stores, jingling horse cars, people walking. What a sight, he
thought, and turned west. For three miles he walked, musing, and then as
it was dark, and he had arranged for no bed, he wondered where he should
eat and sleep. A fat man sitting outside a livery stable door in a
tilted, cane-seated chair offered a possibility of information.

"Do you know where I can get a room around here?" asked Eugene.

The lounger looked him over. He was the proprietor of the place.

"There's an old lady living over there at seven-thirty-two," he said,
"who has a room, I think. She might take you in." He liked Eugene's
looks.

Eugene crossed over and rang a downstairs bell. The door was opened
shortly by a tall, kindly woman, of a rather matriarchal turn. Her hair
was gray.

"Yes?" she inquired.

"The gentleman at the livery stable over there said I might get a room
here. I'm looking for one."

She smiled pleasantly. This boy looked his strangeness, his wide-eyed
interest, his freshness from the country. "Come in," she said. "I have a
room. You can look at it."

It was a front room--a little bed-room off the one main living room,
clean, simple, convenient. "This looks all right," he said.

She smiled.

"You can have it for two dollars a week," she proffered.

"That's all right," he said, putting down his grip. "I'll take it."

"Have you had supper?" she asked.

"No, but I'm going out soon. I want to see the streets. I'll find some
place."

"I'll give you something," she said.

Eugene thanked her, and she smiled. This was what Chicago did to the
country. It took the boys.

He opened the closed shutters of his window and knelt before it, leaning
on the sill. He looked out idly, for it was all so wonderful. Bright
lights were burning in store windows. These people hurrying--how their
feet sounded--clap, clap, clap. And away east and away west it was all
like this. It was all like this everywhere, a great big, wonderful city.
It was nice to be here. He felt that now. It was all worth while. How
could he have stayed in Alexandria so long! He would get along here.
Certainly he would. He was perfectly sure of that. He knew.

Chicago at this time certainly offered a world of hope and opportunity
to the beginner. It was so new, so raw; everything was in the making.
The long lines of houses and stores were mostly temporary
make-shifts--one and two story frame affairs--with here and there a
three and four story brick building which spoke of better days to come.
Down in the business heart which lay between the lake and the river, the
North Side and the South Side, was a region which spoke of a tremendous
future, for here were stores which served the buying public, not only of
Chicago, but of the Middle West. There were great banks, great office
buildings, great retail stores, great hotels. The section was running
with a tide of people which represented the youth, the illusions, the
untrained aspirations, of millions of souls. When you walked into this
area you could feel what Chicago meant--eagerness, hope, desire. It was
a city that put vitality into almost every wavering heart: it made the
beginner dream dreams; the aged to feel that misfortune was never so
grim that it might not change.

Underneath, of course, was struggle. Youth and hope and energy were
setting a terrific pace. You had to work here, to move, to step lively.
You had to have ideas. This city demanded of you your very best, or it
would have little to do with you. Youth in its search for something--and
age--were quickly to feel this. It was no fool's paradise.

Eugene, once he was settled, realized this. He had the notion, somehow,
that the printer's trade was all over for him. He wanted no more of
that. He wanted to be an artist or something like that, although he
hardly knew how to begin. The papers offered one way, but he was not
sure that they took on beginners. He had had no training whatever. His
sister Myrtle had once said that some of his little thumb-nail sketches
were pretty, but what did she know? If he could study somewhere, find
someone who would teach him.... Meanwhile he would have to work.

He tried the newspapers first of course, for those great institutions
seemed the ideal resort for anyone who wanted to get up in the world,
but the teeming offices with frowning art directors and critical
newspaper workers frightened him. One art director did see something in
the three or four little sketches he showed, but he happened to be in a
crusty mood, and did not want anybody anyway. He simply said no, there
was nothing. Eugene thought that perhaps as an artist also, he was
destined to be a failure.

The trouble with this boy was really that he was not half awake yet. The
beauty of life, its wonder, had cast a spell over him, but he could not
yet interpret it in line and color. He walked about these wonderful
streets, gazing in the windows, looking at the boats on the river,
looking at the ships on the lake. One day, while he was standing on the
lake shore, there came a ship in full sail in the offing--the first he
had ever seen. It gripped his sense of beauty. He clasped his hands
nervously and thrilled to it. Then he sat down on the lake wall and
looked and looked and looked until it gradually sank below the horizon.
So this was how the great lakes were; and how the great seas must
be--the Atlantic and the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Ah, the sea! Some
day, perhaps he would go to New York. That was where the sea was. But
here it was also, in miniature, and it was wonderful.

One cannot moon by lake shores and before store windows and at bridge
draws and live, unless one is provided with the means of living, and
this Eugene was not. He had determined when he left home that he would
be independent. He wanted to get a salary in some way that he could at
least live on. He wanted to write back and be able to say that he was
getting along nicely. His trunk came, and a loving letter from his
mother, and some money, but he sent that back. It was only ten dollars,
but he objected to beginning that way. He thought he ought to earn his
own way, and he wanted to try, anyhow.

After ten days his funds were very low, a dollar and seventy-five cents,
and he decided that any job would have to do. Never mind about art or
type-setting now. He could not get the last without a union card, he
must take anything, and so he applied from store to store. The cheap
little shops in which he asked were so ugly they hurt, but he tried to
put his artistic sensibilities aside. He asked for anything, to be made
a clerk in a bakery, in a dry goods store, in a candy store. After a
time a hardware store loomed up, and he asked there. The man looked at
him curiously. "I might give you a place at storing stoves."

Eugene did not understand, but he accepted gladly. It only paid six
dollars a week, but he could live on that. He was shown to a loft in
charge of two rough men, stove fitters, polishers, and repairers, who
gruffly explained to him that his work was to brush the rust off the
decayed stoves, to help piece and screw them together, to polish and
lift things, for this was a second hand stove business which bought and
repaired stoves from junk dealers all over the city. Eugene had a low
bench near a window where he was supposed to do his polishing, but he
very frequently wasted his time here looking out into the green yards of
some houses in a side street. The city was full of wonder to him--its
every detail fascinating. When a rag-picker would go by calling "rags,
old iron," or a vegetable vender crying "tomatoes, potatoes, green corn,
peas," he would stop and listen, the musical pathos of the cries
appealing to him. Alexandria had never had anything like this. It was
all so strange. He saw himself making pen and ink sketches of things, of
the clothes lines in the back yards and of the maids with baskets.

On one of the days when he thought he was working fairly well (he had
been there two weeks), one of the two repairers said, "Hey, get a move
on you. You're not paid to look out the window." Eugene stopped. He had
not realized that he was loafing.

"What have you got to do with it?" he asked, hurt and half defiant. He
was under the impression that he was working with these men, not under
them.

"I'll show you, you fresh kid," said the older of the two, who was an
individual built on the order of "Bill Sykes." "You're under me. You get
a move on you, and don't give me any more of your lip."

Eugene was startled. It was a flash of brutality out of a clear sky. The
animal, whom he had been scanning as an artist would, as a type, out of
the corner of his eye, was revealing himself.

"You go to the devil," said Eugene, only half awake to the grim reality
of the situation.

"What's that!" exclaimed the man, making for him. He gave him a shove
toward the wall, and attempted to kick him with his big, hob-nailed
boot. Eugene picked up a stove leg. His face was wax white.

"Don't you try that again," he said darkly. He fixed the leg in his hand
firmly.

"Call it off, Jim," said the other man, who saw the uselessness of so
much temper. "Don't hit him. Send him down stairs if you don't like
him."

"You get to hell out of here, then," said Eugene's noble superior.

Eugene walked to a nail where his hat and coat were, carrying the stove
leg. He edged past his assailant cautiously, fearing a second attack.
The man was inclined to kick at him again because of his stubbornness,
but forebore.

"You're too fresh, Willie. You want to wake up, you dough face," he said
as Eugene went.

Eugene slipped out quietly. His spirit was hurt and torn. What a scene!
He, Eugene Witla, kicked at, and almost kicked out, and that in a job
that paid six dollars a week. A great lump came up in his throat, but it
went down again. He wanted to cry but he could not. He went downstairs,
stovepolish on his hands and face and slipped up to the desk.

"I want to quit," he said to the man who had hired him.

"All right, what's the matter?"

"That big brute up there tried to kick me," he explained.

"They're pretty rough men," answered the employer. "I was afraid you
wouldn't get along. I guess you're not strong enough. Here you are." He
laid out three dollars and a half. Eugene wondered at this queer
interpretation of his complaint. He must get along with these men? They
musn't get along with him? So the city had that sort of brutality in it.

He went home and washed up, and then struck out again, for it was no
time now to be without a job. After a week he found one,--as a house
runner for a real estate concern, a young man to bring in the numbers of
empty houses and post up the "For Rent" signs in the windows. It paid
eight dollars and seemed to offer opportunities of advancement. Eugene
might have stayed there indefinitely had it not failed after three
months. He had reached the season of fall clothes then, and the need of
a winter overcoat, but he made no complaint to his family. He wanted to
appear to be getting along well, whether he was or not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do," he said jestingly.

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

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

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

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

She tossed her head.

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

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

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

"No," she said simply.

"Good-night," he called.

"Good-night," she replied indifferently.

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

CHAPTER V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI

Eugene collected and reported faithfully every day, and had managed to
save a little money. Margaret was now a part of his past. His landlady,
Mrs. Woodruff, had gone to live with a daughter in Sedalia, Missouri,
and he had moved to a comparatively nice house in East Twenty-first
Street on the South Side. It had taken his eye because of a tree in a
fifty foot space of ground before it. Like his other room it cost him
little, and he was in a private family. He arranged a twenty cent rate
per meal for such meals as he took there, and thus he managed to keep
his bare living expenses down to five dollars a week. The remaining nine
he spent sparingly for clothes, car-fare, and amusements--almost nothing
of the latter. When he saw he had a little money in reserve he began to
think of looking up the Art Institute, which had been looming up in his
mind as an avenue of advancement, and find out on what condition he
could join a night class in drawing. They were very reasonable, he
heard, only fifteen dollars a quarter, and he decided to begin if the
conditions were not too severe. He was beginning to be convinced that he
was born to be an artist--how soon he could not tell.

The old Art Institute, which preceded the present impressive structure,
was located at Michigan Avenue and Monroe Street, and presented an
atmosphere of distinction which was not present in most of the
structures representing the public taste of the period. It was a large
six storey building of brown stone, and contained a number of studios
for painters, sculptors, and music teachers, besides the exhibition
rooms and the rooms for the classes. There were both day and evening
classes, and even at that time a large number of students. The western
soul, to a certain extent, was fired by the wonder of art. There was so
little of it in the life of the people--the fame of those who could
accomplish things in this field and live in a more refined atmosphere
was great. To go to Paris! To be a student in any one of the great
ateliers of that city! Or of Munich or Rome, to know the character of
the artistic treasures of Europe--the life of the Art quarter--that was
something. There was what might have been termed a wild desire in the
breast of many an untutored boy and girl to get out of the ranks of the
commonplace; to assume the character and the habiliments of the artistic
temperament as they were then supposed to be; to have a refined,
semi-languorous, semi-indifferent manner; to live in a studio, to have a
certain freedom in morals and temperament not accorded to the ordinary
person--these were the great things to do and be. Of course, art
composition was a part of this. You were supposed ultimately to paint
great pictures or do noble sculptures, but in the meanwhile you could
and should live the life of the artist. And that was beautiful and
wonderful and free.

Eugene had long had some sense of this. He was aware that there were
studios in Chicago; that certain men were supposed to be doing good
work--he saw it in the papers. There were mentions now and then of
exhibitions, mostly free, which the public attended but sparingly. Once
there was an exhibition of some of the war pictures of Verestchagin, a
great Russian painter who had come West for some purpose. Eugene saw
them one Sunday afternoon, and was enthralled by the magnificence of
their grasp of the elements of battle; the wonder of color; the truth of
character; the dramatic quality; the sense of force and danger and
horror and suffering which was somehow around and in and through
everything that was shown. This man had virility and insight; stupendous
imagination and temperament. Eugene stood and stared, wondering how such
things could be done. Ever afterward the name of Verestchagin was like a
great call to his imagination; that was the kind of an artist to be if
you were going to be one.

Another picture came there once, which appealed to another side of his
nature, although primarily the basis of its appeal was artistic. It was
a great, warm tinted nude by Bouguereau, a French artist who was
startling his day with his daring portrayal of the nude. The types he
depicted were not namby-pamby little slim-bodied women with spindling
qualities of strength and passion, but great, full-blown women whose
voluptuous contour of neck and arms and torso and hip and thigh was
enough to set the blood of youth at fever heat. The man obviously
understood and had passion, love of form, love of desire, love of
beauty. He painted with a sense of the bridal bed in the background; of
motherhood and of fat, growing babies, joyously nursed. These women
stood up big in their sense of beauty and magnetism, the soft lure of
desire in their eyes, their full lips parted, their cheeks flushed with
the blood of health. As such they were anathema to the conservative and
puritanical in mind, the religious in temperament, the cautious in
training or taste. The very bringing of this picture to Chicago as a
product for sale was enough to create a furore of objection. Such
pictures should not be painted, was the cry of the press; or if painted,
not exhibited. Bouguereau was conceived of by many as one of those
dastards of art who were endeavoring to corrupt by their talent the
morals of the world; there was a cry raised that the thing should be
suppressed; and as is always the case in all such outbursts of special
class opposition, the interest of the general public was aroused.

Eugene was one of those who noted the discussion. He had never seen a
picture by Bouguereau or, indeed, an original nude by any other artist.
Being usually at liberty after three o'clock, he was free to visit some
of these things, and having found it possible to do his work in good
clothes he had come to wear his best suit every day. He was a fairly
presentable youth with a solemn mien, and his request to be shown
anything in any art store would have aroused no surprise. He looked as
though he belonged to the intellectual and artistic classes.

Not being sure of what reception would be accorded one so young--he was
now nearing twenty--he nevertheless ventured to stop at the gallery
where the Bouguereau was being exhibited and ask to see it. The
attendant in charge eyed him curiously, but led him back to a room hung
in dark red, and turning on a burst of incandescent bulbs set in the
ceiling of a red plush hung cabinet, pulled back the curtain revealing
the picture. Eugene had never seen such a figure and face. It was a
dream of beauty--his ideal come to life. He studied the face and neck,
the soft mass of brown, sensuous hair massed at the back of the head,
the flowerlike lips and soft cheeks. He marveled at the suggestion of
the breasts and the abdomen, that potentiality of motherhood that is so
firing to the male. He could have stood there hours dreaming,
luxuriating, but the attendant who had left him alone with it for a few
minutes returned.

"What is the price of this?" Eugene asked.

"Ten thousand dollars," was the reply.

He smiled solemnly. "It's a wonderful thing," he said, and turned to go.
The attendant put out the light.

This picture, like those of Verestchagin, made a sharp impression on
him. Curiously he had no longing to paint anything of this kind. He only
rejoiced to look at it. It spoke to him of his present ideal of
womanhood--physical beauty, and he longed with all his heart to find a
creature like that who would look on him with favor.

There were other exhibitions--one containing a genuine Rembrandt--which
impressed him, but none like these that had definitely stirred him. His
interest in art was becoming eager. He wanted to find out all about
it--to do something himself. One day he ventured to call at the Art
Institute building and consult the secretary, who explained to him what
the charges were. He learned from her, for she was a woman of a
practical, clerical turn, that the classes ran from October to May, that
he could enter a life or antique class or both, though the antique alone
was advisable for the time, and a class in illustration, where costumes
of different periods were presented on different models. He found that
each class had an instructor of supposed note, whom it was not necessary
for him to see. Each class had a monitor and each student was supposed
to work faithfully for his own benefit. Eugene did not get to see the
class rooms, but he gained a sense of the art of it all, nevertheless,
for the halls and offices were decorated in an artistic way, and there
were many plaster casts of arms, legs, busts, and thighs and heads. It
was as though one stood in an open doorway and looked out upon a new
world. The one thing that gratified him was that he could study pen and
ink or brush in the illustration class, and that he could also join a
sketch class from five to six every afternoon without extra charges if
he preferred to devote his evening hours to studying drawing in the life
class. He was a little astonished to learn from a printed prospectus
given him that the life class meant nude models to work from--both men
and women. He was surely approaching a different world now. It seemed
necessary and natural enough, and yet there was an aloof atmosphere
about it, something that suggested the inner precincts of a shrine, to
which only talent was admitted. Was he talented? Wait! He would show the
world, even if he was a raw country boy.

The classes which he decided to enter were first a life class which
convened Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings at seven in one of the
study rooms and remained in session until ten o'clock, and second a
sketch class which met from five to six every afternoon. Eugene felt
that he knew little or nothing about figure and anatomy and had better
work at that. Costume and illustration would have to wait, and as for
the landscapes, or rather city-scapes, of which he was so fond, he could
afford to defer those until he learned something of the fundamentals of
art.

Heretofore he had rarely attempted the drawing of a face or figure
except in miniature and as details of a larger scene. Now he was
confronted with the necessity of sketching in charcoal the head or body
of a living person, and it frightened him a little. He knew that he
would be in a class with fifteen or twenty other male students. They
would be able to see and comment on what he was doing. Twice a week an
instructor would come around and pass upon his work. There were honors
for those who did the best work during any one month, he learned from
the prospectus, namely: first choice of seats around the model at the
beginning of each new pose. The class instructors must be of
considerable significance in the American art world, he thought, for
they were N. A.'s, and that meant National Academicians. He little knew
with what contempt this honor was received in some quarters, or he would
not have attached so much significance to it.

One Monday evening in October, armed with the several sheets of paper
which he had been told to purchase by his all-informing prospectus, he
began his work. He was a little nervous at sight of the brightly lighted
halls and class rooms, and the moving crowd of young men and women did
not tend to allay his fears. He was struck at once with the quality of
gaiety, determination and easy grace which marked the different members
of this company. The boys struck him as interesting, virile, in many
cases good looking; the girls as graceful, rather dashing and confident.
One or two whom he noted were beautiful in a dark way. This was a
wonderful world.

The rooms too, were exceptional. They were old enough in use to be
almost completely covered, as to the walls, with the accumulation of
paint scraped from the palettes. There were no easels or other
paraphernalia, but simply chairs and little stools--the former, as
Eugene learned, to be turned upside down for easels, the latter for the
students to sit on. In the center of the room was a platform, the height
of an ordinary table, for the model to pose on, and in one corner a
screen which constituted a dressing room. There were no pictures or
statuary--just the bare walls--but curiously, in one corner, a piano.
Out in the halls and in the general lounging center were pictures of
nude figures or parts of figures posed in all sorts of ways which
Eugene, in his raw, youthful way, thought suggestive. He secretly
rejoiced to look at them but he felt that he must not say anything about
what he thought. An art student, he felt sure, must appear to be
indifferent to such suggestion--to be above such desire. They were here
to work, not to dream of women.

When the time came for the classes to assemble there was a scurrying to
and fro, conferring between different students, and then the men found
themselves in one set of rooms and the women in another. Eugene saw a
young girl in his room, sitting up near the screen, idly gazing about.
She was pretty, of a slightly Irish cast of countenance, with black hair
and black eyes. She wore a cap that was an imitation of the Polish
national head-dress, and a red cape. Eugene assumed her to be the class
model and secretly wondered if he was really to see her in the nude. In
a few minutes all the students were gathered, and then there was a stir
as there strolled in a rather vigorous and picturesque man of thirty-six
or thereabouts, who sauntered to the front of the room and called the
class to order. He was clad in a shabby suit of grey tweed and crowned
with a little brown hat, shoved rakishly over one ear, which he did not
trouble to take off. He wore a soft blue hickory shirt without collar or
tie, and looked immensely self-sufficient. He was tall and lean and
raw-boned, with a face which was long and narrow; his eyes were large
and wide set, his mouth big and firm in its lines; he had big hands and
feet, and an almost rolling gait. Eugene assumed instinctively that this
was Mr. Temple Boyle, N. A., the class instructor, and he imagined there
would be an opening address of some kind. But the instructor merely
announced that Mr. William Ray had been appointed monitor and that he
hoped that there would be no disorder or wasting of time. There would be
regular criticism days by him--Wednesdays and Fridays. He hoped that
each pupil would be able to show marked improvement. The class would now
begin work. Then he strolled out.

Eugene soon learned from one of the students that this really was
Mr. Boyle. The young Irish girl had gone behind the screen. Eugene could
see partially, from where he was sitting, that she was disrobing. It
shocked him a little, but he kept his courage and his countenance
because of the presence of so many others. He turned a chair upside down
as he saw the others do, and sat down on a stool. His charcoal was lying
in a little box beside him. He straightened his paper on its board and
fidgeted, keeping as still as he could. Some of the students were
talking. Suddenly he saw the girl divest herself of a thin, gauze shirt,
and the next moment she came out, naked and composed, to step upon the
platform and stand perfectly erect, her arms by her side, her head
thrown back. Eugene tingled and blushed and was almost afraid to look
directly at her. Then he took a stick of charcoal and began sketching
feebly, attempting to convey something of this personality and this pose
to paper. It seemed a wonderful thing for him to be doing--to be in this
room, to see this girl posing so; in short, to be an art student. So
this was what it was, a world absolutely different from anything he had
ever known. And he was self-called to be a member of it.

CHAPTER VII

It was after he had decided to enter the art class that Eugene paid his
first visit to his family. Though they were only a hundred miles away,
he had never felt like going back, even at Christmas. Now it seemed to
him he had something definite to proclaim. He was going to be an artist;
and as to his work, he was getting along well in that. Mr. Mitchly
appeared to like him. It was to Mr. Mitchly that he reported daily with
his collections and his unsatisfied bills. The collections were checked
up by Mr. Mitchly with the cash, and the unpaid bills certified.
Sometimes Eugene made a mistake, having too much or too little, but the
"too much" was always credited against the "too little," so that in the
main he came out even. In money matters there was no tendency on
Eugene's part to be dishonest. He thought of lots of things he wanted,
but he was fairly well content to wait and come by them legitimately. It
was this note in him that appealed to Mitchly. He thought that possibly
something could be made of Eugene in a trade way.

He left the Friday night preceding Labor Day, the first Monday in
September, which was a holiday throughout the city. He had told
Mr. Mitchly that he thought of leaving Saturday after work for over
Sunday and Monday, but Mr. Mitchly suggested that he might double up his
Saturday's work with Thursday's and Friday's if he wished, and go Friday
evening.

"Saturday's a short day, anyhow," he said. "That would give three days
at home and still you wouldn't be behind in your work."

Eugene thanked his employer and did as suggested. He packed his bag with
the best he had in the way of clothes, and journeyed homeward, wondering
how he would find things. How different it all was! Stella was gone. His
youthful unsophistication had passed. He could go home as a city man
with some prospects. He had no idea of how boyish he looked--how much
the idealist he was--how far removed from hard, practical judgment which
the world values so highly.

When the train reached Alexandria, his father and Myrtle and Sylvia were
at the depot to greet him--the latter with her two year old son. They
had all come down in the family carryall, which left one seat for
Eugene. He greeted them warmly and received their encomiums on his looks
with a befitting sense of humility.

"You're bigger," his father exclaimed. "You're going to be a tall man
after all, Eugene. I was afraid you had stopped growing."

"I hadn't noticed that I had grown any," said Eugene.

"Ah, yes," put in Myrtle. "You're much bigger, Gene. It makes you look a
little thinner. Are you good and strong?"

"I ought to be," laughed Eugene. "I walk about fifteen or twenty miles a
day, and I'm out in the air all the time. If I don't get strong now I
never will."

Sylvia asked him about his "stomach trouble." About the same, he told
her. Sometimes he thought it was better, sometimes worse. A doctor had
told him to drink hot water in the morning but he didn't like to do it.
It was so hard to swallow the stuff.

While they were talking, asking questions, they reached the front gate
of the house, and Mrs. Witla came out on the front porch. Eugene, at
sight of her in the late dusk, jumped over the front wheel and ran to
meet her.

"Little ma," he exclaimed. "Didn't expect me back so soon, did you?"

"So soon," she said, her arms around his neck. Then she held him so,
quite still for a few moments. "You're getting to be a big man," she
said when she released him.

He went into the old sitting room and looked around. It was all quite
the same--no change. There were the same books, the same table, the same
chairs, the same pulley lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling. In
the parlor there was nothing new, nor in the bed rooms or the kitchen.
His mother looked a little older--his father not. Sylvia had changed
greatly--being slightly "peaked" in the face compared to her former
plumpness; it was due to motherhood, he thought. Myrtle seemed a little
more calm and happy. She had a real "steady" now, Frank Bangs, the
superintendent of the local furniture factory. He was quite young,
good-looking, going to be well-off some day, so they thought. "Old
Bill," one of the big horses, had been sold. Rover, one of the two
collies, was dead. Jake the cat had been killed in a night brawl
somewhere.

Somehow, as Eugene stood in the kitchen watching his mother fry a big
steak and make biscuits and gravy in honor of his coming, he felt that
he did not belong to this world any more. It was smaller, narrower than
he had ever thought. The town had seemed smaller as he had come through
its streets, the houses too; and yet it was nice. The yards were sweet
and simple, but countrified. His father, running a sewing machine
business, seemed tremendously limited. He had a country or small town
mind. It struck Eugene as curious now, that they had never had a piano.
And Myrtle liked music, too. As for himself, he had learned that he was
passionately fond of it. There were organ recitals in the Central Music
Hall, of Chicago, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, and he had managed
to attend some after his work. There were great preachers like Prof.
Swing and the Rev. H. W. Thomas and the Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus and Prof.
Saltus, liberal thinkers all, whose public services in the city were
always accompanied by lovely music. Eugene had found all these men and
their services in his search for life and to avoid being lonely. Now
they had taught him that his old world was no world at all. It was a
small town. He would never come to this any more.

After a sound night's rest in his old room he went down the next day to
see Mr. Caleb Williams at the _Appeal_ office, and Mr. Burgess, and
Jonas Lyle, and John Summers. As he went, on the court house square he
met Ed Mitchell and George Taps and Will Groniger, and four or five
others whom he had known in school. From them he learned how things
were. It appeared that George Anderson had married a local girl and was
in Chicago, working out in the stock yards. Ed Waterbury had gone to San
Francisco. The pretty Sampson girl, Bessie Sampson, who had once gone
with Ted Martinwood so much, had run away with a man from Anderson,
Indiana. There had been a lot of talk about it at the time. Eugene
listened.

It all seemed less, though, than the new world that he had entered. Of
these fellows none knew the visions that were now surging in his brain.
Paris--no less--and New York--by what far route he could scarcely tell.
And Will Groniger had got to be a baggage clerk at one of the two depots
and was proud of it. Good Heavens!

At the office of the _Appeal_ things were unchanged. Somehow Eugene had
had the feeling that two years would make a lot of difference, whereas
the difference was in him only. He was the one who had undergone
cataclysmic changes. He had a been a stove polisher, a real estate
assistant, a driver and a collector. He had known Margaret Duff, and
Mr. Redwood, of the laundry, and Mr. Mitchly. The great city had dawned
on him; Verestchagin, and Bouguereau, and the Art Institute. He was
going on at one pace, the town was moving at another one--a slower, but
quite as fast as it had ever gone.

Caleb Williams was there, skipping about as of yore, cheerful,
communicative, interested. "I'm glad to see you back, Eugene," he
declared, fixing him with the one good eye which watered. "I'm glad
you're getting along--that's fine. Going to be an artist, eh? Well, I
think that's what you were cut out for. I wouldn't advise every young
fellow to go to Chicago, but that's where you belong. If it wasn't for
my wife and three children I never would have left it. When you get a
wife and family though--" he paused and shook his head. "I gad! You got
to do the best you can." Then he went to look up some missing copy.

Jonas Lyle was as portly, phlegmatic and philosophic as ever. He greeted
Eugene with a solemn eye in which there was inquiry. "Well, how is it?"
he asked.

Eugene smiled. "Oh, pretty good."

"Not going to be a printer, then?"

"No, I think not."

"Well, it's just as well, there're an awful lot of them."

While they were talking John Summers sidled up.

"How are you, Mr. Witla?" he inquired.

Eugene looked at him. John was certainly marked for the grave in the
near future. He was thinner, of a bluish-grey color, bent at the
shoulders.

"Why, I'm fine, Mr. Summers," Eugene said.

"I'm not so good," said the old printer. He tapped his chest
significantly. "This thing's getting the best of me."

"Don't you believe it," put in Lyle. "John's always gloomy. He's just as
good as ever. I tell him he'll live twenty years yet."

"No, no," said Summers, shaking his head, "I know."

He left after a bit to "go across the street," his customary drinking
excuse.

"He can't last another year," Lyle observed the moment the door was
closed. "Burgess only keeps him because it would be a shame to turn him
out. But he's done for."

"Anyone can see that," said Eugene. "He looks terrible."

So they talked.

At noon he went home. Myrtle announced that he was to come with her and
Mr. Bangs to a party that evening. There were going to be games and
refreshments. It never occurred to him that in this town there had never
been dancing among the boys and girls he moved with, and scarcely any
music. People did not have pianos--or at least only a few of them.

After supper Mr. Bangs called, and the three of them went to a typical
small town party. It was not much different from the ones Eugene had
attended with Stella, except that the participants were, in the main,
just that much older. Two years make a great deal of difference in
youth. There were some twenty-two young men and women all crowded into
three fair sized rooms and on a porch, the windows and doors leading to
which were open. Outside were brown grass and some autumn flowers. Early
crickets were chirping, and there were late fire-flies. It was warm and
pleasant.

The opening efforts to be sociable were a little stiff. There were
introductions all around, much smart badinage among town dandies, for
most of them were here. There were a number of new faces--girls who had
moved in from other towns or blossomed into maturity since Eugene had
left.

"If you'll marry me, Madge, I'll buy you a nice new pair of seal skin
earrings," he heard one of the young bloods remark.

Eugene smiled, and the girl laughed back. "He always thinks he's so
cute."

It was almost impossible for Eugene to break through the opening sense
of reserve which clogged his actions at everything in the way of social
diversion. He was a little nervous because he was afraid of criticism.
That was his vanity and deep egotism. He stood about, trying to get into
the swing of the thing with a bright remark or two. Just as he was
beginning to bubble, a girl came in from one of the other rooms. Eugene
had not met her. She was with his prospective brother-in-law, Bangs, and
was laughing in a sweet, joyous way which arrested his attention. She
was dressed in white, he noticed, with a band of golden brown ribbon
pulled through the loops above the flounces at the bottom of her dress.
Her hair was a wonderful ashen yellow, a great mass of it--and laid in
big, thick braids above her forehead and ears. Her nose was straight,
her lips were thin and red, her cheek-bones faintly but curiously
noticeable. Somehow there was a sense of distinction about her--a faint
aroma of personality which Eugene did not understand. It appealed to
him.

Bangs brought her over. He was a tight, smiling youth, as sound as oak,
as clear as good water.

"Here's Miss Blue, Eugene. She's from up in Wisconsin, and comes down to
Chicago occasionally. I told her you ought to know her. You might meet
up there sometime."

"Say, but that's good luck, isn't it?" smiled Eugene. "I'm sure I'm glad
to know you. What part of Wisconsin do you come from?"

"Blackwood," she laughed, her greenish-blue eyes dancing.

"Her hair is yellow, her eyes are blue, and she comes from Blackwood,"
commented Bangs. "How's that?" His big mouth, with its even teeth, was
wide with a smile.

"You left out the blue name and the white dress. She ought to wear white
all the time."

"Oh, it does harmonize with my name, doesn't it?" she cried. "At home I
do wear white mostly. You see I'm just a country girl, and I make most
of my things."

"Did you make that?" asked Eugene.

"Of course I did."

Bangs moved away a little, looking at her as if critically. "Well,
that's really pretty," he pronounced.

"Mr. Bangs is such a flatterer," she smiled at Eugene. "He doesn't mean
any thing he says. He just tells me one thing after another."

"He's right," said Eugene. "I agree as to the dress, and it fits the
hair wonderfully."

"You see, he's lost, too," laughed Bangs. "That's the way they all do.
Well, I'm going to leave you two. I've got to get back. I left your
sister in the hands of a rival of mine."

Eugene turned to this girl and laughed his reserved laugh. "I was just
thinking what was going to become of me. I've been away for two years,
and I've lost track of some of these people."

"I'm worse yet. I've only been here two weeks and I scarcely know
anybody. Mrs. King takes me around everywhere, but it's all so new I
can't get hold of it. I think Alexandria is lovely."

"It is nice. I suppose you've been out on the lakes?"

"Oh, yes. We've fished and rowed and camped. I have had a lovely time
but I have to go back tomorrow."

"Do you?" said Eugene. "Why I do too. I'm going to take the
four-fifteen."

"So am I!" she laughed. "Perhaps we can go together."

"Why, certainly. That's fine. I thought I'd have to go back alone. I
only came down for over Sunday. I've been working up in Chicago."

They fell to telling each other their histories. She was from Blackwood,
only eighty-five miles from Chicago, and had lived there all her life.
There were several brothers and sisters. Her father was evidently a
farmer and politician and what not, and Eugene gleaned from stray
remarks that they must be well thought of, though poor. One
brother-in-law was spoken of as a banker; another as the owner of a
grain elevator; she herself was a school teacher at Blackwood--had been
for several years.

Eugene did not realize it, but she was fully five years older than
himself, with the tact and the superior advantage which so much
difference in years brings. She was tired of school-teaching, tired of
caring for the babies of married sisters, tired of being left to work
and stay at home when the ideal marrying age was rapidly passing. She
was interested in able people, and silly village boys did not appeal to
her. There was one who was begging her to marry him at this moment, but
he was a slow soul up in Blackwood, not actually worthy of her nor able
to support her well. She was hopefully, sadly, vaguely, madly longing
for something better, and as yet nothing had ever turned up. This
meeting with Eugene was not anything which promised a way out to her.
She was not seeking so urgently--nor did she give introductions that
sort of a twist in her consciousness. But this young man had an appeal
for her beyond anyone she had met recently. They were in sympathetic
accord, apparently. She liked his clear, big eyes, his dark hair, his
rather waxen complexion. He seemed something better than she had known,
and she hoped that he would be nice to her.

CHAPTER VIII

The rest of that evening Eugene spent not exactly with, but near Miss
Blue--Miss Angela Blue, as he found her name to be. He was interested in
her not so much from the point of view of looks, though she was charming
enough, but because of some peculiarity of temperament which lingered
with him as a grateful taste might dwell on the palate. He thought her
young; and was charmed by what he considered her innocence and
unsophistication. As a matter of fact she was not so much young and
unsophisticated as an unconscious simulator of simplicity. In the
conventional sense she was a thoroughly good girl, loyal, financially
honest, truthful in all commonplace things, and thoroughly virtuous,
moreover, in that she considered marriage and children the fate and duty
of all women. Having had so much trouble with other peoples' children
she was not anxious to have any, or at least many, of her own. Of
course, she did not believe that she would escape with what seemed to be
any such good fortune. She fancied that she would be like her sisters,
the wife of a good business or professional man; the mother of three or
four or five healthy children; the keeper of an ideal middle class home;
the handmaiden of her husband's needs. There was a deep current of
passion in her which she had come to feel would never be satisfied. No
man would ever understand, no man at least whom she was likely to meet;
but she knew she had a great capacity to love. If someone would only
come along and arouse that--be worthy of it--what a whirlwind of
affection she would return to him! How she would love, how sacrifice!
But it seemed now that her dreams were destined never to be fulfilled,
because so much time had slipped by and she had not been courted by the
right one. So here she was now at twenty-five, dreaming and longing--the
object of her ideals thus accidentally brought before her, and no
immediate consciousness that that was the case.

It does not take sexual affinity long to manifest itself, once its
subjects are brought near to each other. Eugene was older in certain
forms of knowledge, broader in a sense, potentially greater than she
would ever comprehend; but nevertheless, swayed helplessly by emotion
and desire. Her own emotions, though perhaps stronger than his, were
differently aroused. The stars, the night, a lovely scene, any exquisite
attribute of nature could fascinate him to the point of melancholy. With
her, nature in its largest aspects passed practically unnoticed. She
responded to music feelingly, as did Eugene. In literature, only realism
appealed to him; for her, sentiment, strained though not necessarily
unreal, had the greatest charm. Art in its purely aesthetic forms meant
nothing at all to her. To Eugene it was the last word in the matter of
emotional perception. History, philosophy, logic, psychology, were
sealed books to her. To Eugene they were already open doors, or, better
yet, flowery paths of joy, down which he was wandering. Yet in spite of
these things they were being attracted toward each other.

And there were other differences. With Eugene convention meant nothing
at all, and his sense of evil and good was something which the ordinary
person would not have comprehended. He was prone to like all sorts and
conditions of human beings--the intellectual, the ignorant, the clean,
the dirty, the gay, the sorrowful, white, yellow, black. As for Angela,
she had a distinct preference for those who conducted themselves
according to given standards of propriety. She was brought up to think
of those people as best who worked the hardest, denied themselves the
most, and conformed to the ordinary notions of right and wrong. There
was no questioning of current standards in her mind. As it was written
socially and ethically upon the tables of the law, so was it. There
might be charming characters outside the pale, but they were not
admitted to association or sympathy. To Eugene a human being was a human
being. The ruck of misfits or ne'er-do-wells he could laugh joyously
with or at. It was all wonderful, beautiful, amusing. Even its grimness
and tragedy were worth while, although they hurt him terribly at times.
Why, under these circumstances, he should have been so thoroughly
attracted to Angela remains a mystery. Perhaps they complemented each
other at this time as a satellite complements a larger luminary--for
Eugene's egoism required praise, sympathy, feminine coddling; and Angela
caught fire from the warmth and geniality of his temperament.

On the train next day Eugene had nearly three hours of what he deemed
most delightful talk with her. They had not journeyed far before he had
told her how he had traveled this way, on this train, at this hour, two
years before; how he had walked about the streets of the big city,
looking for a place to sleep, how he had got work and stayed away until
he felt that he had found himself. Now he was going to study art and
then to New York or Paris, and do magazine illustrating and possibly
paint pictures. He was truly your flamboyant youth of talent when he got
to talking--when he had a truly sympathetic ear. He loved to boast to
someone who really admired him, and he felt that he had admiration here.
Angela looked at him with swimming eyes. He was really different from
anything she had ever known, young, artistic, imaginative, ambitious. He
was going out into a world which she had longed for but never hoped to
see--that of art. Here he was telling her of his prospective art
studies, and talking of Paris. What a wonderful thing!

As the train neared Chicago she explained that she would have to make an
almost immediate connection with one which left over the Chicago
Milwaukee and St. Paul, for Blackwood. She was a little lonely, to tell
the truth, a little sick at heart, for the summer vacation was over and
she was going back to teach school. Alexandria, for the two weeks she
had been there visiting Mrs. King (formerly a Blackwood girl and
school-day chum of hers), was lovely. Her girlhood friend had tried to
make things most pleasant and now it was all over. Even Eugene was over,
for he said nothing much of seeing her again, or had not so far. She was
wishing she might see more of this world he painted in such glowing
colors, when he said:

"Mr. Bangs said that you come down to Chicago every now and then?"

"I do," she replied. "I sometimes come down to go to the theatres and
shop." She did not say that there was an element of practical household
commercialism in it, for she was considered one of the best buyers in
the family and that she was sent to buy by various members of the family
in quantities. From a practical household point of view she was a
thoroughbred and was valued by her sisters and friends as someone who
loved to do things. She might have come to be merely a family pack
horse, solely because she loved to work. It was instinct to do
everything she did thoroughly, but she worked almost exclusively in
minor household matters.

"How soon do you expect to come down again?" he asked.

"Oh, I can't tell. I sometimes come down when Opera is on in the winter.
I may be here around Thanksgiving."

"Not before that?"

"I don't think so," she replied archly.

"That's too bad. I thought maybe I'd see you a few times this fall. When
you do come I wish you could let me know. I'd like to take you to the
theatre."

Eugene spent precious little money on any entertainment, but he thought
he could venture this. She would not be down often. Then, too, he had
the notion that he might get a rise one of these days--that would make a
difference. When she came again he would be in art school, opening up
another field for himself. Life looked hopeful.

"That's so nice of you," she replied. "And when I come I'll let you
know. I'm just a country girl," she added, with a toss of her head, "and
I don't get to the city often."

Eugene liked what he considered the guileless naivete of her
confessions--the frankness with which she owned up to simplicity and
poverty. Most girls didn't. She almost made a virtue out of these
thing--at least they were charming as a confession in her.

"I'll hold you to that," he assured her.

"Oh, you needn't. I'll be glad to let you know."

They were nearing the station. He forgot, for the moment that she was
not as remote and delicate in her beauty as Stella, that she was
apparently not as passionate temperamentally as Margaret. He saw her
wonderfully dull hair and her thin lips and peculiar blue eyes, and
admired her honesty and simplicity. He picked up her grip and helped her
to find her train. When they came to part he pressed her hand warmly,
for she had been very nice to him, so attentive and sympathetic and
interested.

"Now remember!" he said gaily, after he had put her in her seat in the
local.

"I won't forget."

"You wouldn't mind if I wrote you now and then?"

"Not at all. I'd like it."

"Then I will," he said, and went out.

He stood outside and looked at her through the train window as it pulled
out. He was glad to have met her. This was the right sort of girl,
clean, honest, simple, attractive. That was the way the best women
were--good and pure--not wild pieces of fire like Margaret; nor
unconscious, indifferent beauties like Stella, he was going to add, but
couldn't. There was a voice within him that said that artistically
Stella was perfect and even now it hurt him a little to remember. But
Stella was gone forever, there was no doubt about that.

During the days that followed he thought of the girl often. He wondered
what sort of a town Blackwood was; what sort of people she moved with,
what sort of a house she lived in. They must be nice, simple people like
his own in Alexandria. These types of city bred people whom he
saw--girls particularly--and those born to wealth, had no appeal for him
as yet. They were too distant, too far removed from anything he could
aspire to. A good woman such as Miss Blue obviously was, must be a
treasure anywhere in the world. He kept thinking he would write to
her--he had no other girl acquaintance now; and just before he entered
art school he did this, penning a little note saying that he remembered
so pleasantly their ride; and when was she coming? Her answer, after a
week, was that she expected to be in the city about the middle or the
end of October and that she would be glad to have him call. She gave him
the number of an aunt who lived out on the North Side in Ohio Street,
and said she would notify him further. She was hard at work teaching
school now, and didn't even have time to think of the lovely summer she
had had.

"Poor little girl," he thought. She deserved a better fate. "When she
comes I'll surely look her up," he thought, and there was a lot that
went with the idea. Such wonderful hair!

CHAPTER IX

The succeeding days in the art school after his first admission revealed
many new things to Eugene. He understood now, or thought he did, why
artists were different from the rank and file of mankind. This Art
Institute atmosphere was something so refreshing after his days rambling
among poor neighborhoods collecting, that he could hardly believe that
he, Eugene Witla, belonged there. These were exceptional young people;
some of them, anyhow. If they weren't cut out to be good artists they
still had imagination--the dream of the artist. They came, as Eugene
gradually learned, from all parts of the West and South, from Chicago
and St. Louis--from Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa--from Texas and California
and Minnesota. One boy was in from Saskatchewan of the Canadian north
west, another from the then territory of New Mexico. Because his name
was Gill they called him the Gila monster--the difference in the
pronunciation of the "G's" not troubling them at all. A boy who came
down from Minnesota was a farmer's son, and talked about going back to
plow and sow and reap during the next spring and summer. Another boy was
the son of a Kansas City millionaire.

The mechanics of drawing interested Eugene from the first. He learned
the first night that there was some defect in his understanding of light
and shade as it related to the human form. He could not get any
roundness or texture in his drawings.

"The darkest shadow is always closest to the high light," observed his
instructor laconically on Wednesday evening, looking over his shoulder.
"You're making everything a dull, even tone." So that was it.

"You're drawing this figure as a bricklayer who isn't an architect might
start to build a house. You're laying bricks without having a plan.
Where's your plan?" The voice was that of Mr. Boyle looking over his
shoulder.

Eugene looked up. He had begun to draw the head only.

"A plan! A plan!" said his instructor, making a peculiar motion with his
hands which described the outline of the pose in a single motion. "Get
your general lines first. Then you can put in the details afterward."

Eugene saw at once.

Another time his instructor was watching him draw the female breast. He
was doing it woodenly--without much beauty of contour.

"They're round! They're round! I tell you!" exclaimed Boyle. "If you
ever see any square ones let me know."

This caught Eugene's sense of humor. It made him laugh, even though he
flushed painfully, for he knew he had a lot to learn.

The cruelest thing he heard this man say was to a boy who was rather
thick and fat but conscientious. "You can't draw," he said roughly.
"Take my advice and go home. You'll make more money driving a wagon."

The class winced, but this man was ugly in his intolerance of futility.
The idea of anybody wasting his time was obnoxious to him. He took art
as a business man takes business, and he had no time for the misfit, the
fool, or the failure. He wanted his class to know that art meant effort.

Aside from this brutal insistence on the significance of art, there was
another side to the life which was not so hard and in a way more
alluring. Between the twenty-five minute poses which the model took,
there were some four or five minute rests during the course of the
evening in which the students talked, relighted their pipes and did much
as they pleased. Sometimes students from other classes came in for a few
moments.

The thing that astonished Eugene though, was the freedom of the model
with the students and the freedom of the students with her. After the
first few weeks he observed some of those who had been there the year
before going up to the platform where the girl sat, and talking with
her. She had a little pink gauze veil which she drew around her
shoulders or waist that instead of reducing the suggestiveness of her
attitudes heightened them.

"Say, ain't that enough to make everything go black in front of your
eyes," said one boy sitting next to Eugene.

"Well, I guess," he laughed. "There's some edge to that."

The boys would sit and laugh and jest with this girl, and she would
laugh and coquette in return. He saw her strolling about looking at some
of the students' drawings of her over their shoulders, standing face to
face with others--and so calmly. The strong desire which it invariably
aroused in Eugene he quelled and concealed, for these things were not to
be shown on the surface. Once, while he was looking at some photographs
that a student had brought, she came and looked over his shoulder, this
little flower of the streets, her body graced by the thin scarf, her
lips and cheeks red with color. She came so close that she leaned
against his shoulder and arm with her soft flesh. It pulled him tense,
like a great current; but he made no sign, pretending that it was the
veriest commonplace. Several times, because the piano was there, and
because students would sing and play in the interludes, she came and sat
on the piano stool herself, strumming out an accompaniment to which some
one or three or four would sing. Somehow this, of all things, seemed
most sensuous to him--most oriental. It set him wild. He felt his teeth
click without volition on his part. When she resumed her pose, his
passion subsided, for then the cold, aesthetic value of her beauty became
uppermost. It was only the incidental things that upset him.

In spite of these disturbances, Eugene was gradually showing improvement
as a draughtsman and an artist. He liked to draw the figure. He was not
as quick at that as he was at the more varied outlines of landscapes and
buildings, but he could give lovely sensuous touches to the human
form--particularly to the female form--which were beginning to be
impressive. He'd got past the place where Boyle had ever to say "They're
round." He gave a sweep to his lines that attracted the instructor's
attention.

"You're getting the thing as a whole, I see," he said quietly, one day.
Eugene thrilled with satisfaction. Another Wednesday he said:--"A little
colder, my boy, a little colder. There's sex in that. It isn't in the
figure. You ought to make a good mural decorator some day, if you have
the inclination," Boyle went on; "you've got the sense of beauty." The
roots of Eugene's hair tingled. So art was coming to him. This man saw
his capacity. He really had art in him.

One evening a paper sign pasted up on the bulletin board bore the
significant legend: "Artists! Attention! We eat! We eat! Nov. 16th. at
Sofroni's. All those who want to get in give their names to the
monitor."

Eugene had heard nothing of this, but he judged that it originated in
one of the other classes. He spoke to the monitor and learned that only
seventy-five cents was required of him. Students could bring girls if
they wished. Most of them would. He decided that he would go. But where
to get a girl? Sofroni's was an Italian restaurant in lower Clark
Street, which had originally started out as an eating place for Italian
laborers, because it was near an Italian boarding house section. It was
located in an old house that was not exactly homely. A yard in the back
had been set with plain wooden tables, and benches had been placed for
use in the summer time and, later, this had been covered with a mouldy
tent-cloth to protect the diners from rain. Still later this became
glass and was used in winter. The place was clean and the food good.
Some struggling craftsman in journalism and art had found it and by
degrees Signor Sofroni had come to realize that he was dealing with a
better element. He began to exchange greetings with these people to set
aside a little corner for them. Finally he entertained a small group of
them at dinner--charging them hardly more than cost price--and so he was
launched. One student told another. Sofroni now had his yard covered in
so that he could entertain a hundred at dinner, even in winter. He could
serve several kinds of wines and liquors with a dinner for seventy-five
cents a piece. So he was popular.

The dinner was the culmination of several other class treats. It was the
custom of a class, whenever a stranger, or even a new member appeared,
to yell "Treat! Treat!" at which the victim or new member was supposed
to produce two dollars as a contribution to a beer fund. If the money
was not produced--the stranger was apt to be thrown out or some
ridiculous trick played upon him--if it was forthcoming, work for the
evening ceased. A collection was immediately taken up. Kegs of beer were
sent for, with sandwiches and cheese. Drinking, singing, piano playing,
jesting followed. Once, to Eugene's utter astonishment, one of the
students--a big, good natured, carousing boy from Omaha--lifted the nude
model to his shoulders, set her astride his neck and proceeded around
the room, jigging as he went--the girl meantime pulling his black hair,
the other students following and shouting uproariously. Some of the
girls in an adjoining room, studying in an evening life class, stopped
their work to peep through a half dozen small holes which had been
punched in the intervening partition. The sight of Showalter carrying
the girl so astonished the eavesdroppers that the news of it was soon
all over the building. Knowledge of the escapade reached the Secretary
and the next day the student was dropped. But the Bacchic dance had been
enacted--its impression was left.

There were other treats like this in which Eugene was urged to drink,
and he did--a very little. He had no taste for beer. He also tried to
smoke, but he did not care for it. He could become nervously intoxicated
at times, by the mere sight of such revelry, and then he grew witty,
easy in his motions, quick to say bright things. On one of these
occasions one of the models said to him: "Why, you're nicer than I
thought. I imagined you were very solemn."

"Oh, no," he said, "only at times. You don't know me."

He seized her about the waist, but she pushed him away. He wished now
that he danced, for he saw that he might have whirled her about the room
then and there. He decided to learn at once.

The question of a girl for the dinner, troubled him. He knew of no one
except Margaret, and he did not know that she danced. There was Miss
Blue, of Blackwood--whom he had seen when she made her promised visit to
the city--but the thought of her in connection with anything like this
was to him incongruous. He wondered what she would think if she saw such
scenes as he had witnessed.

It chanced that one day when he was in the members' room, he met Miss
Kenny, the girl whom he had seen posing the night he had entered the
school. Eugene remembered her fascination, for she was the first nude
model he had ever seen and she was pretty. She was also the one who had
come and stood by him when she was posing. He had not seen her since
then. She had liked Eugene, but he had seemed a little distant and, at
first, a little commonplace. Lately he had taken to a loose, flowing tie
and a soft round hat which became him. He turned his hair back loosely
and emulated the independent swing of Mr. Temple Boyle. That man was a
sort of god to him--strong and successful. To be like that!

The girl noted a change for what she deemed the better. He was so nice
now, she thought, so white-skinned and clear-eyed and keen.

She pretended to be looking at the drawing of a nude when she saw him.

"How are you?" he asked, smiling, venturing to speak to her because he
was lonely and because he knew no other girl.

She turned gaily, and returned the question, facing him with smiling
lips and genial eyes.

"I haven't seen you for some time," he said. "Are you back here now?"

"For this week," she said. "I'm doing studio work. I don't care for
classes when I can get the other."

"I thought you liked them!" he replied, recalling her gaiety of mood.

"Oh, I don't dislike it. Only, studio work is better."

"We've missed you," he said. "The others haven't been nearly as nice."

"Aren't you complimentary," she laughed, her black eyes looking into his
with a twinkle.

"No, it's so," he returned, and then asked hopefully, "Are you going to
the dinner on the 16th?"

"Maybe," she said. "I haven't made up my mind. It all depends."

"On what?"

"On how I feel and who asks me."

"I shouldn't think there'd be any trouble about that," he observed. "If
I had a girl I'd go," he went on, making a terrific effort to reach the
point where he could ask her. She saw his intention.

"Well?" she laughed.

"Would you go with me?" he ventured, thus so shamelessly assisted.

"Sure!" she said, for she liked him.

"That's fine!" he exclaimed. "Where do you live? I'll want to know
that." He searched for a pencil.

She gave him her number on West Fifty-seventh Street.

Because of his collecting he knew the neighborhood. It was a street of
shabby frame houses far out on the South Side. He remembered great mazes
of trade near it, and unpaved streets and open stretches of wet prairie
land. Somehow it seemed fitting to him that this little flower of the
muck and coal yard area should be a model.

"I'll be sure and get you," he laughed. "You won't forget, will you,
Miss--"

"Just Ruby," she interrupted. "Ruby Kenny."

"It's a pretty name, isn't it?" he said. "It's euphonious. You wouldn't
let me come out some Sunday and see just where it is?"

"Yes, you may," she replied, pleased by his comment on her name. "I'm
home most every Sunday. Come out next Sunday afternoon, if you want to."

"I will," said Eugene.

He walked out to the street with her in a very buoyant mood.

CHAPTER X

Ruby Kenny was the adopted child of an old Irish laborer and his wife
who had taken her from a quarrelling couple when they had practically
deserted her at the age of four years. She was bright, good natured, not
at all informed as to the social organization of the world, just a
simple little girl with a passion for adventure and no saving insight
which would indicate beforehand whither adventure might lead. She began
life as a cash girl in a department store and was spoiled of her virtue
at fifteen. She was rather fortunate in that her smartness attracted the
rather superior, capable, self-protecting type of man; and these were
fortunate too, in that she was not utterly promiscuous, appetite with
her waiting on strong liking, and in one or two cases real affection,
and culminating only after a period of dalliance which made her as much
a victim of her moods as were her lovers. Her foster parents provided no
guidance of any intelligent character. They liked her, and since she was
brighter than they were, submitted to her rule, her explanations of
conduct, her taste. She waved aside with a laughing rejoinder any slight
objections they might make, and always protested that she did not care
what the neighbors thought.

The visits which Eugene paid, and the companionship which ensued, were
of a piece with every other relationship of this character which he ever
entered into. He worshiped beauty as beauty, and he never wholly missed
finding a certain quality of mind and heart for which he longed. He
sought in women, besides beauty, good nature and sympathy; he shunned
criticism and coldness, and was never apt to select for a sweetheart
anyone who could outshine him either in emotion or rapidity or
distinction of ideas.

He liked, at this time, simple things, simple homes, simple
surroundings, the commonplace atmosphere of simple life, for the more
elegant and imposing overawed him. The great mansions which he saw, the
great trade structures, the great, significant personalities, seemed
artificial and cold. He liked little people--people who were not known,
but who were sweet and kindly in their moods. If he could find female
beauty with anything like that as a background he was happy and settled
down near it, if he could, in comfort. His drawing near to Ruby was
governed by this mood.

The Sunday Eugene called, it rained and the neighborhood in which she
lived was exceedingly dreary. Looking around here and there one could
see in the open spaces between the houses pools of water standing in the
brown, dead grass. He had crossed a great maze of black cindered car
tracks, where engines and cars were in great masses, and speculated on
the drawings such scenes would make--big black engines throwing up
clouds of smoke and steam in a grey, wet air; great mazes of
parti- cars dank in the rain but lovely. At night the switch
lights in these great masses of yards bloomed like flowers. He loved the
sheer yellows, reds, greens, blues, that burned like eyes. Here was the
stuff that touched him magnificently, and somehow he was glad that this
raw flowering girl lived near something like this.

When he reached the door and rang the bell he was greeted by an old
shaky Irish-American who seemed to him rather low in the scale of
intelligence--the kind of a man who would make a good crossing guard,
perhaps. He had on common, characterful clothes, the kind that from long
wear have taken the natural outlines of the body. In his fingers was a
short pipe which he had been smoking.

"Is Miss Kenny in?" Eugene inquired.

"Yus," said the man. "Come in. I'll git her." He poked back through a
typical workingman's parlor to a rear room. Someone had seen to it that
almost everything in the room was red--the big silk-shaded lamp, the
family album, the carpet and the red flowered wall paper.

While he was waiting he opened the album and looked at what he supposed
were her relatives--commonplace people, all--clerks, salesmen,
store-keepers. Presently Ruby came, and then his eye lighted, for there
was about her a smartness of youth--she was not more than
nineteen--which captivated his fancy. She had on a black cashmere dress
with touches of red velvet at the neck and elsewhere, and she wore a
loose red tie, much as a boy might. She looked gay and cheerful and held
out her hand.

"Did you have much trouble in getting here?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I know this country pretty well. I collect all
through here week days. I work for the Peoples' Furniture Company, you
know."

"Oh, then it's all right," she said, enjoying his frankness. "I thought
you'd have a hard time finding it. It's a pretty bad day, isn't it?"

Eugene admitted that it was, but commented on the car tracks he had
seen. "If I could paint at all I'd like to paint those things. They're
so big and wonderful."

He went to the window and gazed out at the neighborhood.

Ruby watched him with interest. His movements were pleasing to her. She
felt at home in his company--as though she were going to like him very
much. It was so easy to talk to him. There were the classes, her studio
work, his own career, this neighborhood, to give her a feeling of
congeniality with him.

"Are there many big studios in Chicago?" he asked when they finally got
around to that phase of her work. He was curious to know what the art
life of the city was.

"No, not so very many--not, at least, of the good ones. There are a lot
of fellows who think they can paint."

"Who are the big ones?" he asked.

"Well, I only know by what I hear artists say. Mr. Rose is pretty good.
Byam Jones is pretty fine on _genre_ subjects, so they say. Walter Low
is a good portrait painter, and so is Manson Steele. And let's
see--there's Arthur Biggs--he does landscapes only; I've never been in
his studio; and Finley Wood, he's another portrait man; and Wilson
Brooks, he does figures--Oh! I don't know, there are quite a number."

Eugene listened entranced. This patter of art matters was more in the
way of definite information about personalities than he had heard during
all the time he had been in the city. The girl knew these things. She
was in the movement. He wondered what her relationship to these various
people was?

He got up after a time and looked out of the window again. She came
also. "It's not very nice around here," she explained, "but papa and
mamma like to live here. It's near papa's work."

"Was that your father I met at the door?"

"They're not my real parents," she explained. "I'm an adopted child.
They're just like real parents to me, though, I certainly owe them a
lot."

"You can't have been posing in art very long," said Eugene thoughtfully,
thinking of her age.

"No; I only began about a year ago."

She told how she had been a clerk in The Fair and how she and another
girl had got the idea from seeing articles in the Sunday papers. There
was once a picture in the Tribune of a model posing in the nude before
the local life class. This had taken her eye and she had consulted with
the other girl as to whether they had not better try posing, too. Her
friend, like herself, was still posing. She was coming to the dinner.

Eugene listened entranced. It reminded him of how he was caught by the
picture of Goose Island in the Chicago River, of the little tumble-down
huts and upturned hulls of boats used for homes. He told her of that and
of how he came, and it touched her fancy. She thought he was sentimental
but nice--and then he was big, too, and she was so much smaller.

"You play?" he asked, "don't you?"

"Oh, just a little. But we haven't got a piano. I learned what I know by
practising at the different studios."

"Do you dance?" asked Eugene.

"Yes, indeed," she replied.

"I wish I did," he commented ruefully.

"Why don't you? It's easy. You could learn in no time. I could teach you
in a lesson."

"I wish you would," he said persuasively.

"It isn't hard," she went on, moving away from him. "I can show you the
steps. They always begin with the waltz."

She lifted her skirts and exposed her little feet. She explained what to
do and how to do it. He tried it alone, but failed; so she got him to
put his arm around her and placed her hand in his. "Now, follow me," she
said.

It was so delightful to find her in his arms! And she was apparently in
no hurry to conclude the lesson, for she worked with him quite
patiently, explaining the steps, stopping and correcting him, laughing
at her mistakes and his. "You're getting it, though," she said, after
they had turned around a few times.

They had looked into each other's eyes a number of times and she gave
him frank smiles in return for his. He thought of the time when she
stood by him in the studio, looking over his shoulder. Surely, surely
this gap of formalities might be bridged over at once if he tried if he
had the courage. He pulled her a little closer and when they stopped he
did not let go.

"You're mighty sweet to me," he said with an effort.

"No, I'm just good natured," she laughed, not endeavoring to break away.

He became emotionally tense, as always.

She rather liked what seemed the superiority of his mood. It was
different, stronger than was customary in the men she knew.

"Do you like me?" he asked, looking at her.

She studied his face and hair and eyes.

"I don't know," she returned calmly.

"Are you sure you don't?"

There was another pause in which she looked almost mockingly at him and
then, sobering, away at the hall door.

"Yes, I think I do," she said.

He picked her up in his arms. "You're as cute as a doll," he said and
carried her to the red settee. She spent the rest of the rainy afternoon
resting in his arms and enjoying his kisses. He was a new and peculiar
kind of boy.

CHAPTER XI

A little while before, Angela Blue at Eugene's earnest solicitation had
paid her first Fall visit to Chicago. She had made a special effort to
come, lured by a certain poignancy of expression which he could give to
any thought, particularly when it concerned his desires. In addition to
the art of drawing he had the gift of writing--very slow in its
development from a structural and interpretative point of view, but
powerful already on its descriptive side. He could describe anything,
people, houses, horses, dogs, landscapes, much as he could draw them and
give a sense of tenderness and pathos in the bargain which was moving.
He could describe city scenes and the personal atmosphere which
surrounded him in the most alluring fashion. He had little time to
write, but he took it in this instance to tell this girl what he was
doing and how he was doing it. She was captivated by the quality of the
world in which he was moving, and the distinction of his own
personality, which he indicated rather indirectly than otherwise. By
contrast her own little world began to look very shabby indeed.

She came shortly after his art school opened, and at her invitation he
went out to the residence of her aunt on the North Side, a nice,
pleasant brick house in a quiet side street, which had all the airs of
middle class peace and comfort. He was impressed with what seemed to him
a sweet, conservative atmosphere--a fitting domicile for a girl so
dainty and refined as Angela. He paid his respects early Saturday
morning because her neighborhood happened to be in the direction of his
work.

She played for him--better than anyone he had ever known. It seemed to
him a great accomplishment. Her temperament attracted her to music of a
high emotional order and to songs and instrumental compositions of
indefinable sweetness. In the half hour he stayed she played several
things, and he noted with a new pleasure her small shapely body in a
dress of a very simple, close fitting design; her hair hung in two great
braids far below her waist. She reminded him the least bit of Marguerite
in "Faust."

He went again in the evening, shining and eager, and arrayed in his
best. He was full of the sense of his art prospects, and happy to see
her again, for he was satisfied that he was going to fall in love with
her. She had a strong, sympathetic attitude which allured him. She
wanted to be nice to this youth--wanted him to like her--and so the
atmosphere was right.

That evening he took her to the Chicago Opera House, where there was
playing an extravaganza. This fantasy, so beautiful in its stage-craft,
so gorgeous in its show of costumes and pretty girls, so idle in its
humor and sweet in its love songs, captivated both Eugene and Angela.
Neither had been to a theatre for a long time; both were en rapport with
some such fantastic interpretation of existence. After the short
acquaintance at Alexandria it was a nice coming together. It gave point
to their reunion.

After the performance he guided her through the surging crowds to a
North Division Street car--they had laid cables since his arrival--and
together they went over the beauties and humor of the thing they had
seen. He asked permission to call again next day, and at the end of an
afternoon in her company, proposed that they go to hear a famous
preacher who was speaking in Central Music Hall evenings.

Angela was pleased at Eugene's resourcefulness. She wanted to be with
him; this was a good excuse. They went early and enjoyed it. Eugene
liked the sermon as an expression of youth and beauty and power to
command. He would have liked to be an orator like that, and he told
Angela so. And he confided more and more of himself to her. She was
impressed by his vivid interest in life, his selective power, and felt
that he was destined to be a notable personality.

There were other meetings. She came again in early November and before
Christmas and Eugene was fast becoming lost in the meshes of her hair.
Although he met Ruby in November and took up a tentative relation on a
less spiritual basis--as he would have said at the time--he nevertheless
held this acquaintanceship with Angela in the background as a superior
and more significant thing. She was purer than Ruby; there was in her
certainly a deeper vein of feeling, as expressed in her thoughts and
music. Moreover she represented a country home, something like his own,
a nice simple country town, nice people. Why should he part with her, or
ever let her know anything of this other world that he touched? He did
not think he ought to. He was afraid that he would lose her, and he knew
that she would make any man an ideal wife. She came again in December
and he almost proposed to her--he must not be free with her or draw too
near too rapidly. She made him feel the sacredness of love and marriage.
And he did propose in January.

The artist is a blend of subtleties in emotion which can not be
classified. No one woman could have satisfied all sides of Eugene's
character at that time. Beauty was the point with him. Any girl who was
young, emotional or sympathetic to the right degree and beautiful would
have attracted and held him for a while. He loved beauty--not a plan of
life. He was interested in an artistic career, not in the founding of a
family. Girlhood--the beauty of youth--was artistic, hence he craved it.

Angela's mental and emotional composition was stable. She had learned to
believe from childhood that marriage was a fixed thing. She believed in
one life and one love. When you found that, every other relationship
which did not minister to it was ended. If children came, very good; if
not, very good; marriage was permanent anyhow. And if you did not marry
happily it was nevertheless your duty to endure and suffer for whatever
good might remain. You might suffer badly in such a union, but it was
dangerous and disgraceful to break it. If you could not stand it any
more, your life was a failure.

Of course, Eugene did not know what he was trifling with. He had no
conception of the nature of the relationship he was building up. He went
on blindly dreaming of this girl as an ideal, and anticipating eventual
marriage with her. When that would be, he had no idea, for though his
salary had been raised at Christmas he was getting only eighteen dollars
a week; but he deemed it would come within a reasonable time.

Meanwhile, his visits to Ruby had brought the inevitable result. The
very nature of the situation seemed to compel it. She was young,
brimming over with a love of adventure, admiring youth and strength in
men. Eugene, with his pale face, which had just a touch of melancholy
about it, his sex magnetism, his love of beauty, appealed to her.
Uncurbed passion was perhaps uppermost to begin with; very shortly it
was confounded with affection, for this girl could love. She was sweet,
good natured, ignorant of life from many points of view. Eugene
represented the most dramatic imagination she had yet seen. She
described to him the character of her foster parents, told how simple
they were and how she could do about as she pleased. They did not know
that she posed in the nude. She confided to him her particular
friendship for certain artists, denying any present intimacies. She
admitted them in the past, but asserted that they were bygones. Eugene
really did not believe this. He suspected her of meeting other
approaches in the spirit in which she had met his own. It aroused his
jealousy, and he wished at once that she were not a model. He said as
much and she laughed. She knew he would act like that, it was the first
proof of real, definite interest in her on his part.

From that time on there were lovely days and evenings spent in her
company. Before the dinner she invited him over to breakfast one Sunday.
Her foster parents were to be away and she was to have the house to
herself. She wanted to cook Eugene a breakfast--principally to show him
she could cook--and then it was novel. She waited till he arrived at
nine to begin operations and then, arrayed in a neat little lavender,
close fitting house dress, and a ruffled white apron, went about her
work, setting the table, making biscuit, preparing a kidney ragout with
strong wine, and making coffee.

Eugene was delighted. He followed her about, delaying her work by taking
her in his arms and kissing her. She got flour on her nose and he
brushed it off with his lips.

It was on this occasion that she showed him a very pleasing little dance
she could do--a clog dance, which had a running, side-ways motion, with
frequent and rapid clicking of the heels. She gathered her skirts a
little way above her ankles and twinkled her feet through a maze of
motions. Eugene was beside himself with admiration. He told himself he
had never met such a girl--to be so clever at posing, playing and
dancing, and so young. He thought she would make a delightful creature
to live with, and he wished now he had money enough to make it possible.
At this high-flown moment and at some others he thought he might almost
marry her.

On the night of the dinner he took her to Sofroni's, and was surprised
to find her arrayed in a red dress with a row of large black leather
buttons cutting diagonally across the front. She had on red stockings
and shoes and wore a red carnation in her hair. The bodice was cut low
in the neck and the sleeves were short. Eugene thought she looked
stunning and told her so. She laughed. They went in a cab, for she had
warned him beforehand that they would have to. It cost him two dollars
each way but he excused his extravagance on the ground of necessity. It
was little things like this that were beginning to make him think
strongly of the problem of getting on.

The students who had got up this dinner were from all the art classes,
day and night. There were over two hundred of them, all of them young,
and there was a mixed collection of girl art students, artist's models
and girl friends of various grades of thought and condition, who were
brought as companions. The big dining-room was tempestuous with the
rattling of dishes, the shouting of jests, the singing of songs and the
exchange of greetings. Eugene knew a few of these people outside his own
classes, enough to give him the chance to be sociable and not appear
lonely or out of it.

From the outset it was apparent that she, Ruby, was generally known and
liked. Her costume--a little bold--made her conspicuous. From various
directions there were cries of "Hey! Rube!" which was a familiar
interpretation of her first name, Ruby.

Eugene was surprised at this--it shocked him a little. All sorts of boys
he did not know came and talked to her, exchanging familiar gossip. She
was called away from him a dozen times in as many minutes. He saw her
laughing and chatting at the other end of the hall, surrounded by half a
dozen students. It made him jealous.

As the evening progressed the attitude of each toward the other and all
toward anyone became more and more familiar. When the courses were over,
a space was cleared at one end and a screen of green cloth rigged up in
one corner as a dressing room for _stunts_. Eugene saw one of the
students called with much applause to do an Irish monologue, wearing
green whiskers, which he adjusted in the presence of the crowd. There
was another youth who pretended to have with him an immense roll of
verse--an epic, no less--wound in so tight a manner that it looked as
though it might take all night to read it. The crowd groaned. With
amazing savoir faire he put up one hand for silence, dropped the roll,
holding, of course, to the outer end and began reading. It was not bad
verse, but the amusing part was that it was really short, not more than
twenty lines. The rest of the paper had been covered with scribbling to
deceive the crowd. It secured a round of applause. There was one
second-year man who sang a song--"Down in the Lehigh Valley"--and
another who gave imitations of Temple Boyle and other instructors at
their work of criticising and painting for the benefit of the class.
These were greatly enjoyed. Finally one of the models, after much
calling by the crowd of "Desmond! Desmond!"--her last name--went behind
the green cloth screen and in a few moments reappeared in the short
skirt of a Spanish dancer, with black and silver spangles, and
castanets. Some friendly student had brought a mandolin and "La Paloma"
was danced.

Eugene had little of Ruby's company during all these doings. She was too
much sought after. As the other girl was concluding her dance he heard
the cry of "Hey, Rube! Why don't you do your turn?" Someone else, eager
to see her dance, called "Come on, Ruby!" The rest of the room, almost
unthinkingly took it up. Some boys surrounding her had started to push
her toward the dancing space. Before Eugene knew it she was up in
someone's arms being passed from group to group for a joke. The crowd
cheered. Eugene, however, having come so close to her, was irritated by
this familiarity. She did not appear to belong to him, but to the whole
art-student body. And she was laughing. When she was put down in the
clear space she lifted her skirts as she had done for him and danced. A
crowd of students got very close. He had to draw near to see her at all.
And there she was, unconscious of him, doing her gay clog dance. When
she stopped, three or four of the more daring youths urged her, seizing
her by the hands and arms, to do something else. Someone cleared a table
and someone else picked her up and put her on it. She did still other
dances. Someone cried, "Hey, Kenny, do you need the red dress?" So this
was his temporary sweetheart.

When she was finally ready to go home at four o'clock in the morning, or
when the others were agreed to let her go, she hardly remembered that
she had Eugene with her. She saw him waiting as two students were asking
for the privilege of taking her home.

"No," she exclaimed, seeing him, "I have my escort. I'm going now.
Good-bye," and came toward him. He felt rather frozen and out of it.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

He nodded gloomily, reproachfully.

CHAPTER XII

From drawing from the nude, which Eugene came to do very successfully
that winter, his interest switched to his work in the illustration class
where costume figures were used. Here, for the first time, he tried his
hand at wash drawings, the current medium for magazine work, and was
praised after a time for his execution. Not always, however; for the
instructors, feeling that harsh criticism would make for steadier
effort, pooh-poohed some of his best work. But he had faith in what he
was destined to do, and after sinking to depths of despair he would rise
to great heights of self-confidence.

His labor for the Peoples' Furniture Company was becoming a rather
dreary grind when Vincent Beers, the instructor in the illustration
class, looking over his shoulder one Wednesday afternoon said:--"You
ought to be able to make a little money by your work pretty soon,
Witla."

"Do you think so?" questioned Eugene.

"It's pretty good. There ought to be a place on one of the newspapers
here for a man like you--an afternoon newspaper possibly. Did you ever
try to get on?"

"I did when I first came to the city, but they didn't want anyone. I'm
rather glad they didn't now. I guess they wouldn't have kept me very
long."

"You draw in pen and ink pretty well, don't you?"

"I thought I liked that best of all at first."

"Well, then, they ought to be able to use you. I wouldn't stay very long
at it though. You ought to go to New York to get in the magazine
illustration field--there's nothing out here. But a little newspaper
work now wouldn't hurt you."

Eugene decided to try the afternoon papers, for he knew that if he got
work on one of these he could still continue his night classes. He could
give the long evening session to the illustration class and take an
occasional night off to work on the life studies. That would make an
admirable arrangement. For several days he took an hour after his work
to make inquiry, taking with him some examples of his pen and inks.
Several of the men he saw liked what he had to show, but he found no
immediate opening. There was only one paper, one of the poorest, that
offered him any encouragement. The editor-in-chief said he might be in
need of a man shortly. If Eugene would come in again in three or four
weeks he could tell him. They did not pay very much--twenty-five dollars
to beginners.

Eugene thought of this as a great opportunity, and when he went back in
three weeks and actually secured the place, he felt that he was now
fairly on the road to prosperity. He was given a desk in a small back
room on a fourth floor where there was accidentally west and north
light. He was in a department which held two other men, both several
years older than himself, one of whom posed as "dean" of the staff.

The work here was peculiar in that it included not only pen and ink but
the chalk plate process which was a method of drawing with a steel point
upon a zinc plate covered with a deposit of chalk, which left a design
which was easily reproduced. Eugene had never done this, he had to be
shown by the "dean," but he soon picked it up. He found it hard on his
lungs, for he had constantly to keep blowing the chalk away as he
scratched the surface of the plate, and sometimes the dust went up into
his nostrils. He hoped sincerely there would not be much of this work,
but there was rather an undue proportion at first owing to the fact that
it was shouldered on to him by the other two--he being the beginner. He
suspected as much after a little time, but by that time he was beginning
to make friends with his companions and things were not so bad.

These two, although they did not figure vastly in his life, introduced
him to conditions and personalities in the Chicago newspaper world which
broadened him and presented points of view which were helpful. The elder
of the two, the "dean," was dressy and art-y; his name was Horace Howe.
The other, Jeremiah Mathews, Jerry for short, was short and fat, with a
round, cheerful, smiling countenance and a wealth of coarse black hair.
He loved chewing tobacco, was a little mussy about his clothes, but
studious, generous and good natured. Eugene found that he had several
passions, one for good food, another for oriental curios and a third for
archaeology. He was alive to all that was going on in the world, and was
utterly without any prejudices, social, moral or religious. He liked his
work, and whistled or talked as he did it. Eugene took a secret like for
him from the beginning.

It was while working on this paper that Eugene first learned that he
really could write. It came about accidentally for he had abandoned the
idea that he could ever do anything in newspaper work, which was the
field he had originally contemplated. Here there was great need for
cheap Sunday specials of a local character, and in reading some of
these, which were given to him for illustration, he came to the
conclusion that he could do much better himself.

"Say," he asked Mathews, "who writes the articles in here?" He was
looking over the Sunday issue.

"Oh, the reporters on the staff--anyone that wants to. I think they buy
some from outsiders. They only pay four dollars a column."

Eugene wondered if they would pay him, but pay or no pay he wanted to do
them. Maybe they would let him sign his name. He saw that some were
signed. He suggested he believed he could do that sort of thing but
Howe, as a writer himself, frowned on this. He wrote and drew. Howe's
opposition piqued Eugene who decided to try when the opportunity
offered. He wanted to write about the Chicago River, which he thought he
could illustrate effectively. Goose Island, because of the description
he had read of it several years before, the simple beauties of the city
parks where he liked to stroll and watch the lovers on Sundays. There
were many things, but these stood as susceptible of delicious, feeling
illustration and he wanted to try his hand. He suggested to the Sunday
Editor, Mitchell Goldfarb, with whom he had become friendly, that he
thought something nice in an illustrative way could be done on the
Chicago River.

"Go ahead, try your hand," exclaimed that worthy, who was a vigorous,
robust, young American of about thirty-one, with a gaspy laugh that
sounded as if someone had thrown cold water down his back. "We need all
that stuff. Can you write?"

"I sometimes think I might if I practiced a little."

"Why not," went on the other, who saw visions of a little free copy.
"Try your hand. You might make a good thing of it. If your writing is
anything like your drawing it will be all right. We don't pay people on
the staff, but you can sign your name to it."

This was enough for Eugene. He tried his hand at once. His art work had
already begun to impress his companions. It was rough, daring, incisive,
with a touch of soul to it. Howe was already secretly envious, Mathews
full of admiration. Encouraged thus by Goldfarb Eugene took a Sunday
afternoon and followed up the branches of the Chicago River, noting its
wonders and peculiarities, and finally made his drawings. Afterward he
went to the Chicago library and looked up its history--accidentally
coming across the reports of some government engineers who dwelt on the
oddities of its traffic. He did not write an article so much as a
panegyric on its beauty and littleness, finding the former where few
would have believed it to exist. Goldfarb was oddly surprised when he
read it. He had not thought Eugene could do it.

The charm of Eugene's writing was that while his mind was full of color
and poetry he had logic and a desire for facts which gave what he wrote
stability. He liked to know the history of things and to comment on the
current phases of life. He wrote of the parks, Goose Island, the
Bridewell, whatever took his fancy.

His real passion was for art, however. It was a slightly easier medium
for him--quicker. He thrilled to think, sometimes, that he could tell a
thing in words and then actually draw it. It seemed a beautiful
privilege and he loved the thought of making the commonplace dramatic.
It was all dramatic to him--the wagons in the streets, the tall
buildings, the street lamps--anything, everything.

His drawing was not neglected meantime, but seemed to get stronger.

"I don't know what there is about your stuff, Witla, that gets me,"
Mathews said to him one day, "but you do something to it. Now why did
you put those birds flying above that smokestack?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Eugene. "It's just the way I feel about it.
I've seen pigeons flying like that."

"It's all to the good," replied Mathews. "And then you handle your
masses right. I don't see anybody doing this sort of thing over here."

He meant in America, for these two art workers considered themselves
connoisseurs of pen and ink and illustration generally. They were
subscribers to _Jugend_, _Simplicissimus_, _Pick-Me-Up_ and the radical
European art journals. They were aware of Steinlen and Cheret and Mucha
and the whole rising young school of French poster workers. Eugene was
surprised to hear of these men and these papers. He began to gain
confidence in himself--to think of himself as somebody.

It was while he was gaining this knowledge--finding out who was who and
what and why that he followed up his relationship with Angela Blue to
its logical conclusion--he became engaged to her. In spite of his
connection with Ruby Kenny, which continued unbroken after the dinner,
he nevertheless felt that he must have Angela; partly because she
offered more resistance than any girl since Stella, and partly because
she appeared to be so innocent, simple and good hearted. And she was
altogether lovely. She had a beautiful figure, which no crudity of
country dressmaking could conceal. She had her wonderful wealth of hair
and her large, luring, water-clear blue eyes. She had colorful lips and
cheeks, a natural grace in walking, could dance and play the piano.
Eugene looked at her and came to the conclusion after a time that she
was as beautiful as any girl he had ever seen--that she had more soul,
more emotion, more sweetness. He tried to hold her hand, to kiss her, to
take her in his arms, but she eluded him in a careful, wary and yet half
yielding way. She wanted him to propose to her, not because she was
anxious to trap him, but because her conventional conscience told her
these things were not right outside a definite engagement and she wanted
to be engaged first. She was already in love with him. When he pleaded,
she was anxious to throw herself in his arms in a mad embrace, but she
restrained herself, waiting. At last he flung his arms about her as she
was sitting at the piano one evening and holding her tight pressed his
lips to her cheek.

She struggled to her feet. "You musn't," she said. "It isn't right. I
can't let you do that."

"But I love you," he exclaimed, pursuing her. "I want to marry you. Will
you have me, Angela? Will you be mine?"

She looked at him yearningly, for she realized that she had made him do
things her way--this wild, unpractical, artistic soul. She wanted to
yield then and there but something told her to wait.

"I won't tell you now," she said, "I want to talk to papa and mamma. I
haven't told them anything as yet. I want to ask them about you, and
then I'll tell you when I come again."

"Oh, Angela," he pleaded.

"Now, please wait, Mr. Witla," she pleaded. She had never yet called him
Eugene. "I'll come again in two or three weeks. I want to think it over.
It's better."

He curbed his desire and waited, but it made all the more vigorous and
binding the illusion that she was the one woman in the world for him.
She aroused more than any woman yet a sense of the necessity of
concealing the eagerness of his senses--of pretending something higher.
He even tried to deceive himself into the belief that this was a
spiritual relationship, but underneath all was a burning sense of her
beauty, her physical charm, her passion. She was sleeping as yet, bound
in convention and a semi-religious interpretation of life. If she were
aroused! He closed his eyes and dreamed.

CHAPTER XIII

In two weeks Angela came back, ready to plight her faith; and Eugene was
waiting, eager to receive it. He had planned to meet her under the smoky
train shed of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul depot, to escort her
to Kinsley's for dinner, to bring her some flowers, to give her a ring
he had secured in anticipation, a ring which had cost him seventy-five
dollars and consumed quite all his savings; but she was too regardful of
the drama of the situation to meet him anywhere but in the parlor of her
aunt's house, where she could look as she wished. She wrote that she
must come down early and when he arrived at eight of a Saturday evening
she was dressed in the dress that seemed most romantic to her, the one
she had worn when she first met him at Alexandria. She half suspected
that he would bring flowers and so wore none, and when he came with pink
roses, she added those to her corsage. She was a picture of rosy youth
and trimness and not unlike the character by whose name he had
christened her--the fair Elaine of Arthur's court. Her yellow hair was
done in a great mass that hung sensuously about her neck; her cheeks
were rosy with the elation of the hour; her lips moist; her eyes bright.
She fairly sparkled her welcome as he entered.

At the sight of her Eugene was beside himself. He was always at the
breaking point over any romantic situation. The beauty of the idea--the
beauty of love as love; the delight of youth filled his mind as a song
might, made him tense, feverish, enthusiastic.

"You're here at last, Angela!" he said, trying to keep hold of her
hands. "What word?"

"Oh, you musn't ask so soon," she replied. "I want to talk to you first.
I'll play you something."

"No," he said, following her as she backed toward the piano. "I want to
know. I must. I can't wait."

"I haven't made up my mind," she pleaded evasively. "I want to think.
You had better let me play."

"Oh, no," he urged.

"Yes, let me play."

She ignored him and swept into the composition, but all the while she
was conscious of him hovering over her--a force. At the close, when she
had been made even more emotionally responsive by the suggestion of the
music, he slipped his arms about her as he had once before, but she
struggled away again, slipping to a corner and standing at bay. He liked
her flushed face, her shaken hair, the roses awry at her waist.

"You must tell me now," he said, standing before her. "Will you have
me?"

She dropped her head down as though doubting, and fearing familiarities;
he slipped to one knee to see her eyes. Then, looking up, he caught her
about the waist. "Will you?" he asked.

She looked at his soft hair, dark and thick, his smooth pale brow, his
black eyes and even chin. She wanted to yield dramatically and this was
dramatic enough. She put her hands to his head, bent over and looked
into his eyes; her hair fell forward about her face. "Will you be good
to me?" she asked, yearning into his eyes.

"Yes, yes," he declared. "You know that. Oh, I love you so."

She put his head far back and laid her lips to his. There was fire,
agony in it. She held him so and then he stood up heaping kisses upon
her cheeks, her lips, her eyes, her neck.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, "how wonderful you are!"

The expression shocked her.

"You mustn't," she said.

"I can't help it. You are so beautiful!"

She forgave him for the compliment.

There were burning moments after this, moments in which they clung to
each other desperately, moments in which he took her in his arms,
moments in which he whispered his dreams of the future. He took the ring
he had bought and put it on her finger. He was going to be a great
artist, she was going to be an artist's bride; he was going to paint her
lovely face, her hair, her form. If he wanted love scenes he would paint
these which they were now living together. They talked until one in the
morning and then she begged him to go, but he would not. At two he left,
only to come early the next morning to take her to church.

There ensued for Eugene a rather astonishing imaginative and emotional
period in which he grew in perception of things literary and artistic
and in dreams of what marriage with Angela would mean to him. There was
a peculiar awareness about Eugene at this time, which was leading him
into an understanding of things. The extraordinary demands of some
phases of dogma in the matter of religion; the depths of human
perversity in the matter of morality; the fact that there were worlds
within worlds of our social organism; that really basically and actually
there was no fixed and definite understanding of anything by
anybody. From Mathews he learned of philosophies--Kant, Hegel,
Schopenhauer--faint inklings of what they believed. From association
with Howe he heard of current authors who expressed new moods, Pierre
Loti, Thomas Hardy, Maeterlinck, Tolstoi. Eugene was no person to
read--he was too eager to live,--but he gained much by conversation and
he liked to talk. He began to think he could do almost anything if he
tried--write poems, write plays, write stories, paint, illustrate, etc.
He used to conceive of himself as a general, an orator, a
politician--thinking how wonderful he would be if he could set himself
definitely to any one thing. Sometimes he would recite passages from
great speeches he had composed in his imagination as he walked. The
saving grace in his whole make-up was that he really loved to work and
he would work at the things he could do. He would not shirk his
assignments or dodge his duties.

After his evening class Eugene would sometimes go out to Ruby's house,
getting there by eleven and being admitted by an arrangement with her
that the front door be left open so that he could enter quietly. More
than once he found her sleeping in her little room off the front room,
arrayed in a red silk dressing gown and curled up like a little
black-haired child. She knew he liked her art instincts and she strove
to gratify them, affecting the peculiar and the exceptional. She would
place a candle under a red shade on a small table by her bed and pretend
to have been reading, the book being usually tossed to one side on the
coverlet where he would see it lying when he came. He would enter
silently, gathering her up in his arms as she dozed, kissing her lips to
waken her, carrying her in his arms into the front room to caress her
and whisper his passion. There was no cessation of this devotion to Ruby
the while he was declaring his love for Angela, and he really did not
see that the two interfered greatly. He loved Angela, he thought. He
liked Ruby, thought she was sweet. He felt sorry for her at times
because she was such a little thing, so unthinking. Who was going to
marry her eventually? What was going to become of her?

Because of this very attitude he fascinated the girl who was soon ready
to do anything for him. She dreamed dreams of how nice it would be if
they could live in just a little flat together--all alone. She would
give up her art posing and just keep house for him. He talked to her of
this--imagining it might possibly come to pass--realizing quite fully
that it probably wouldn't. He wanted Angela for his wife, but if he had
money he thought Ruby and he might keep a separate place--somehow. What
Angela would think of this did not trouble him--only that she should not
know. He never breathed anything to either of the other, but there were
times when he wondered what they would think each of the other if they
knew. Money, money, that was the great deterrent. For lack of money he
could not marry anybody at present--neither Angela nor Ruby nor anyone
else. His first duty, he thought, was so to place himself financially
that he could talk seriously to any girl. That was what Angela expected
of him, he knew. That was what he would have to have if he wanted Ruby.

There came a time when the situation began to grow irksome. He had
reached the point where he began to understand how limited his life was.
Mathews and Howe, who drew more money, were able to live better than he.
They went out to midnight suppers, theatre parties, and expeditions to
the tenderloin section (not yet known by that name). They had time to
browse about the sections of the city which had peculiar charms for them
as Bohemians after dark--the levee, as a certain section of the Chicago
River was called; Gambler's Row in South Clark Street; the Whitechapel
Club, as a certain organization of newspaper men was called, and other
places frequented by the literati and the more talented of the newspaper
makers. Eugene, first because of a temperament which was introspective
and reflective, and second because of his aesthetic taste, which was
offended by much that he thought was tawdry and cheap about these
places, and third by what he considered his lack of means, took
practically no part in these diversions. While he worked in his class he
heard of these things--usually the next day--and they were amplified and
made more showy and interesting by the narrative powers of the
participants. Eugene hated coarse, vulgar women and ribald conduct, but
he felt that he was not even permitted to see them at close range had he
wanted to. It took money to carouse and he did not have it.

Perhaps, because of his youth and a certain air of unsophistication and
impracticability which went with him, his employers were not inclined to
consider money matters in connection with him. They seemed to think he
would work for little and would not mind. He was allowed to drift here
six months without a sign of increase, though he really deserved more
than any one of those who worked with him during the same period. He was
not the one to push his claims personally but he grew restless and
slightly embittered under the strain and ached to be free, though his
work was as effective as ever.

It was this indifference on their part which fixed his determination to
leave Chicago, although Angela, his art career, his natural restlessness
and growing judgment of what he might possibly become were deeper
incentives. Angela haunted him as a dream of future peace. If he could
marry her and settle down he would be happy. He felt now, having fairly
satiated himself in the direction of Ruby, that he might leave her. She
really would not care so very much. Her sentiments were not deep enough.
Still, he knew she would care, and when he began going less regularly to
her home, really becoming indifferent to what she did in the artists'
world, he began also to feel ashamed of himself, for he knew that it was
a cruel thing to do. He saw by her manner when he absented himself that
she was hurt and that she knew he was growing cold.

"Are you coming out Sunday night?" she asked him once, wistfully.

"I can't," he apologized; "I have to work."

"Yes, I know how you have to work. But go on. I don't mind, I know."

"Oh, Ruby, how you talk. I can't always be here."

"I know what it is, Eugene," she replied. "You don't care any more. Oh,
well, don't mind me."

"Now, sweet, don't talk like that," he would say, but after he was gone
she would stand by her window and look out upon the shabby neighborhood
and sigh sadly. He was more to her than anyone she had met yet, but she
was not the kind that cried.

"He is going to leave me," was her one thought. "He is going to leave
me."

Goldfarb had watched Eugene a long time, was interested in him, realized
that he had talent. He was leaving shortly to take a better
Sunday-Editorship himself on a larger paper, and he thought Eugene was
wasting his time and ought to be told so.

"I think you ought to try to get on one of the bigger papers here,
Witla," he said to him one Saturday afternoon when things were closing
up. "You'll never amount to anything on this paper. It isn't big enough.
You ought to get on one of the big ones. Why don't you try the
_Tribune_--or else go to New York? I think you ought to do magazine
work."

Eugene drank it all in. "I've been thinking of that," he said. "I think
I'll go to New York. I'll be better off there."

"I would either do one or the other. If you stay too long in a place
like this it's apt to do you harm."

Eugene went back to his desk with the thought of change ringing in his
ears. He would go. He would save up his money until he had one hundred
and fifty or two hundred dollars and then try his luck in the East. He
would leave Ruby and Angela, the latter only temporarily, the former for
good very likely, though he only vaguely confessed this to himself. He
would make some money and then he would come back and marry his dream
from Blackwood. Already his imaginative mind ran forward to a poetic
wedding in a little country church, with Angela standing beside him in
white. Then he would bring her back with him to New York--he, Eugene
Witla, already famous in the East. Already the lure of the big eastern
city was in his mind, its palaces, its wealth, its fame. It was the
great world he knew, this side of Paris and London. He would go to it
now, shortly. What would he be there? How great? How soon?

So he dreamed.

CHAPTER XIV

Once this idea of New York was fixed in his mind as a necessary step in
his career, it was no trouble for him to carry it out. He had already
put aside sixty dollars in a savings bank since he had given Angela the
ring and he decided to treble it as quickly as possible and then start.
He fancied that all he needed was just enough to live on for a little
while until he could get a start. If he could not sell drawings to the
magazines he might get a place on a newspaper and anyhow he felt
confident that he could live. He communicated to Howe and Mathews his
intention of going East pretty soon and aroused in their respective
bosoms the emotions which were characteristic of each. Howe, envious
from the start, was glad to have him off the paper, but regretful of the
stellar career which his determination foreboded. He half suspected now
that Eugene would do something exceptional--he was so loose in his
moods--so eccentric. Mathews was glad for Eugene and a little sorry for
himself. He wished he had Eugene's courage, his fire, his talent.

"You'll make good when you get down there," Mathews said to him one
afternoon when Howe was out of the room, for he realized that the latter
was jealous. "You've got the stuff. Some of the work you have done here
will give you a fine introduction. I wish I were going."

"Why don't you?" suggested Eugene.

"Who? me? What good would it do me? I'm not ready yet. I can't do that
sort of stuff. I might go down some time."

"I think you do good work," said Eugene generously. He really did not
believe it was good art, but it was fair newspaper sketching.

"Oh, no, you don't mean that, Witla," replied Mathews. "I know what I
can do."

Eugene was silent.

"I wish when you get down there," went on Mathews, "you would write us
occasionally. I would like to know how you are getting along."

"Sure, I'll write," replied Eugene, flattered by the interest his
determination had aroused. "Sure I will." But he never did.

In Ruby and Angela he had two problems to adjust which were not so easy.
In the one case it was sympathy, regret, sorrow for her helplessness,
her hopelessness. She was so sweet and lovely in her way, but not quite
big enough mentally or emotionally for him. Could he really live with
her if he wanted to? Could he substitute her for a girl like Angela?
Could he? And now he had involved Angela, for since her return to tell
him that she accepted him as her affianced lover, there had been some
scenes between them in which a new standard of emotion had been set for
him. This girl who looked so simple and innocent was burning at times
with a wild fire. It snapped in her eyes when Eugene undid her wonderful
hair and ran his hands through its heavy strands. "The Rhine Maiden," he
would say. "Little Lorelei! You are like the mermaid waiting to catch
the young lover in the strands of her hair. You are Marguerite and I
Faust. You are a Dutch Gretchen. I love this wonderful hair when it is
braided. Oh, sweet, you perfect creature! I will put you in a painting
yet. I will make you famous."

Angela thrilled to this. She burned in a flame which was of his fanning.
She put her lips to his in long hot kisses, sat on his knee and twined
her hair about his neck; rubbed his face with it as one might bathe a
face in strands of silk. Finding such a response he went wild, kissed
her madly, would have been still more masterful had she not, at the
slightest indication of his audacity, leaped from his embrace, not
opposition but self protection in her eyes. She pretended to think
better of his love, and Eugene, checked by her ideal of him, tried to
restrain himself. He did manage to desist because he was sure that he
could not do what he wanted to. Daring such as that would end her love.
So they wrestled in affection.

It was the fall following his betrothal to Angela that he actually took
his departure. He had drifted through the summer, pondering. He had
stayed away from Ruby more and more, and finally left without saying
good-bye to her, though he thought up to the last that he intended to go
out and see her.

As for Angela, when it came to parting from her, he was in a depressed
and downcast mood. He thought now that he did not really want to go to
New York, but was being drawn by fate. There was no money for him in the
West; they could not live on what he could earn there. Hence he must go
and in doing so must lose her. It looked very tragic.

Out at her aunt's house, where she came for the Saturday and Sunday
preceding his departure, he walked the floor with her gloomily, counted
the lapse of the hours after which he would be with her no more,
pictured the day when he would return successful to fetch her. Angela
had a faint foreboding fear of the events which might intervene. She had
read stories of artists who had gone to the city and had never come
back. Eugene seemed such a wonderful person, she might not hold him; and
yet he had given her his word and he was madly in love with her--no
doubt of that. That fixed, passionate, yearning look in his eyes--what
did it mean if not enduring, eternal love? Life had brought her a great
treasure--a great love and an artist for a lover.

"Go, Eugene!" she cried at last tragically, almost melodramatically. His
face was in her hands. "I will wait for you. You need never have one
uneasy thought. When you are ready I will be here, only, come soon--you
will, won't you?"

"Will I!" he declared, kissing her, "will I? Look at me. Don't you
know?"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" she exclaimed, "of course I know. Oh, yes! yes!"

The rest was a passionate embrace. And then they parted. He went out
brooding over the subtlety and the tragedy of life. The sharp October
stars saddened him more. It was a wonderful world but bitter to endure
at times. Still it could be endured and there was happiness and peace in
store for him probably. He and Angela would find it together living in
each other's company, living in each other's embrace and by each other's
kisses. It must be so. The whole world believed it--even he, after
Stella and Margaret and Ruby and Angela. Even he.

The train which bore him to New York bore a very meditative young man.
As it pulled out through the great railroad yards of the city, past the
shabby back yards of the houses, the street crossings at grade, the
great factories and elevators, he thought of that other time when he had
first ventured in the city. How different! Then he was so green, so raw.
Since then he had become a newspaper artist, he could write, he could
find his tongue with women, he knew a little something about the
organization of the world. He had not saved any money, true, but he had
gone through the art school, had given Angela a diamond ring, had this
two hundred dollars with which he was venturing to reconnoitre the great
social metropolis of the country. He was passing Fifty-seventh Street;
he recognized the neighborhood he traversed so often in visiting Ruby.
He had not said good-bye to her and there in the distance were the rows
of commonplace, two family frame dwellings, one of which she occupied
with her foster parents. Poor little Ruby! and she liked him. It was a
shame, but what was he to do about it? He didn't care for her. It really
hurt him to think and then he tried not to remember. These tragedies of
the world could not be healed by thinking.

The train passed out into the flat fields of northern Indiana and as
little country towns flashed past he thought of Alexandria and how he
had pulled up his stakes and left it. What was Jonas Lyle doing and John
Summers? Myrtle wrote that she was going to be married in the spring.
She had delayed solely because she wanted to delay. He thought sometimes
that Myrtle was a little like himself, fickle in her moods. He was sure
he would never want to go back to Alexandria except for a short visit,
and yet the thought of his father and his mother and his old home were
sweet to him. His father! How little he knew of the real world!

As they passed out of Pittsburgh he saw for the first time the great
mountains, raising their heads in solemn majesty in the dark, and great
lines of coke ovens, flaming red tongues of fire. He saw men working,
and sleeping towns succeeding one another. What a great country America
was! What a great thing to be an artist here! Millions of people and no
vast artistic voice to portray these things--these simple dramatic
things like the coke ovens in the night. If he could only do it! If he
could only stir the whole country, so that his name would be like that
of Dore in France or Verestchagin in Russia. If he could but get fire
into his work, the fire he felt!

He got into his berth after a time and looked out on the dark night and
the stars, longing, and then he dozed. When he awoke again the train had
already passed Philadelphia. It was morning and the cars were speeding
across the flat meadows toward Trenton. He arose and dressed, watching
the array of towns the while, Trenton, New Brunswick, Metuchen,
Elizabeth. Somehow this country was like Illinois, flat. After Newark
they rushed out upon a great meadow and he caught the sense of the sea.
It was beyond this. These were tide-water streams, the Passaic and the
Hackensack, with small ships and coal and brick barges tied at the water
side. The thrill of something big overtook him as the brakeman began to
call "Jersey City," and as he stepped out into the vast train shed his
heart misgave him a little. He was all alone in New York. It was
wealthy, cold and critical. How should he prosper here? He walked out
through the gates to where low arches concealed ferry boats, and in
another moment it was before him, sky line, bay, the Hudson, the Statue
of Liberty, ferry boats, steamers, liners, all in a grey mist of fierce
rain and the tugs and liners blowing mournfully upon great whistles. It
was something he could never have imagined without seeing it, and this
swish of real salt water, rolling in heavy waves, spoke to him as music
might, exalting his soul. What a wonderful thing this was, this
sea--where ships were and whales and great mysteries. What a wonderful
thing New York was, set down by it, surrounded by it, this metropolis of
the country. Here was the sea; yonder were the great docks that held the
vessels that sailed to the ports of all the world. He saw them--great
grey and black hulls, tied to long piers jutting out into the water. He
listened to the whistles, the swish of the water, saw the circling
gulls, realized emotionally the mass of people. Here were Jay Gould and
Russell Sage and the Vanderbilts and Morgan--all alive and all here.
Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Madison Square, Broadway--he knew of these by
reputation. How would he do here--how fare? Would the city ever acclaim
him as it did some? He looked wide eyed, with an open heart, with
intense and immense appreciation. Well, he was going to enter, going to
try. He could do that--perhaps, perhaps. But he felt lonely. He wished
he were back with Angela where her soft arms could shut him safe. He
wished he might feel her hands on his cheeks, his hair. He would not
need to fight alone then. But now he was alone, and the city was roaring
about him, a great noise like the sea. He must enter and do battle.

CHAPTER XV

Not knowing routes or directions in New York, Eugene took a Desbrosses
Street ferry, and coming into West Street wandered along that curious
thoroughfare staring at the dock entrances. Manhattan Island seemed a
little shabby to him from this angle but he thought that although
physically, perhaps, it might not be distinguished, there must be other
things which made it wonderful. Later when he saw the solidity of it,
the massed houses, the persistent streams of people, the crush of
traffic, it dawned on him that mere humanity in packed numbers makes a
kind of greatness, and this was the island's first characteristic. There
were others, like the prevailing lowness of the buildings in its old
neighborhoods, the narrowness of the streets in certain areas, the
shabbiness of brick and stone when they have seen an hundred years of
weather, which struck him as curious or depressing. He was easily
touched by exterior conditions.

As he wandered he kept looking for some place where he might like to
live, some house that had a yard or a tree. At length he found a row of
houses in lower Seventh Avenue with an array of iron balconies in front
which appealed to him. He applied here and in one house found a room for
four dollars which he thought he had better take for the present. It was
cheaper than any hotel. His hostess was a shabby woman in black who made
scarcely any impression on him as a personality, merely giving him a
thought as to what a dreary thing it was to keep roomers and the room
itself was nothing, a commonplace, but he had a new world before him and
all his interests were outside. He wanted to see this city. He deposited
his grip and sent for his trunk and then took to the streets, having
come to see and hear things which would be of advantage to him.

He went about this early relationship to the city in the right spirit.
For a little while he did not try to think what he would do, but struck
out and walked, here, there and everywhere, this very first day down
Broadway to the City Hall and up Broadway from 14th to 42nd street the
same night. Soon he knew all Third Avenue and the Bowery, the wonders of
Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive, the beauties of the East River, the
Battery, Central Park and the lower East Side. He sought out quickly the
wonders of metropolitan life--its crowds at dinner and theatre time in
Broadway, its tremendous throngs morning and afternoon in the shopping
district, its amazing world of carriages in Fifth Avenue and Central
Park. He had marveled at wealth and luxury in Chicago, but here it took
his breath away. It was obviously so much more fixed, so definite and
comprehensible. Here one felt intuitively the far reaches which separate
the ordinary man from the scion of wealth. It curled him up like a
frozen leaf, dulled his very soul, and gave him a clear sense of his
position in the social scale. He had come here with a pretty high
estimate of himself, but daily, as he looked, he felt himself crumbling.
What was he? What was art? What did the city care? It was much more
interested in other things, in dressing, eating, visiting, riding
abroad. The lower part of the island was filled with cold commercialism
which frightened him. In the upper half, which concerned only women and
show--a voluptuous sybaritism--caused him envy. He had but two hundred
dollars with which to fight his way, and this was the world he must
conquer.

Men of Eugene's temperament are easily depressed. He first gorged the
spectacle of life and then suffered from mental indigestion. He saw too
much of it too quickly. He wandered about for weeks, looking in the shop
windows, the libraries, the museums, the great streets, growing all the
while more despondent. At night he would return to his bare room and
indite long epistles to Angela, describing what he had seen and telling
her of his undying love for her--largely because he had no other means
of ridding himself of his superabundant vitality and moods. They were
beautiful letters, full of color and feeling, but to Angela they gave a
false impression of emotion and sincerity because they appeared to be
provoked by absence from her. In part of course they were, but far more
largely they were the result of loneliness and the desire for expression
which this vast spectacle of life itself incited. He also sent her some
tentative sketches of things he had seen--a large crowd in the dark at
34th Street; a boat off 86th Street in the East River in the driving
rain; a barge with cars being towed by a tug. He could not think exactly
what to do with these things at that time, but he wanted to try his hand
at illustrating for the magazines. He was a little afraid of these great
publications, however, for now that he was on the ground with them his
art did not appear so significant.

It was during the first few weeks that he received his only letter from
Ruby. His parting letter to her, written when he reached New York, had
been one of those makeshift affairs which faded passion indites. He was
so sorry he had to leave without seeing her. He had intended to come out
but the rush of preparation at the last moment, and so forth; he hoped
to come back to Chicago one of these days and he would look her up. He
still loved her, but it was necessary for him to leave--to come where
the greatest possibilities were. "I remember how sweet you were when I
first saw you," he added. "I shall never forget my first impressions,
little Ruby."

It was cruel to add this touch of remembrance, but the artist in him
could not refrain. It cut Ruby as a double edged sword, for she
understood that he cared well enough that way--aesthetically. It was not
her but beauty that he loved, and her particular beauty had lost its
appeal.

She wrote after a time, intending to be defiant, indifferent, but she
really could not be. She tried to think of something sharp to say, but
finally put down the simple truth.

"Dear Eugene:" she wrote, "I got your note several weeks ago, but I
could not bring myself to answer it before this. I know everything is
over between us and that is all right, for I suppose it has to be. You
couldn't love any woman long, I think. I know what you say about your
having to go to New York to broaden your field is true. You ought to,
but I'm sorry you didn't come out. You might have. Still I don't blame
you, Eugene. It isn't much different from what has been going on for
some time. I have cared but I'll get over that, I know, and I won't ever
think hard of you. Won't you return me the notes I have sent you from
time to time and my pictures? You won't want them now.

   "Ruby."

There was a little blank space on the paper and then:--

"I stood by the window last night and looked out on the street. The
moon was shining and those dead trees were waving in the wind. I saw the
moon on that pool of water over in the field. It looked like silver. Oh,
Eugene, I wish I were dead."

He jumped up as he read these words and clenched the letter in his
hands. The pathos of it all cut him to the quick, raised his estimate of
her, made him feel as if he had made a mistake in leaving her. He really
cared for her after all. She was sweet. If she were here now he could
live with her. She might as well be a model in New York as in Chicago.
He was on the verge of writing this, when one of the long, almost daily
epistles Angela was sending arrived and changed his mood. He did not see
how, in the face of so great and clean a love as hers, he could go on
with Ruby. His affection had obviously been dying. Should he try to
revive it now?

This conflict of emotions was so characteristic of Eugene's nature, that
had he been soundly introspective, he would have seen that he was an
idealist by temperament, in love with the aesthetic, in love with love,
and that there was no permanent faith in him for anybody--except the
impossible she.

As it was, he wrote Ruby a letter breathing regret and sorrow but not
inviting her to come. He could not have supported her long if she had,
he thought. Besides he was anxious to secure Angela. So that affair
lapsed.

In the meantime he visited the magazine offices. On leaving Chicago he
had put in the bottom of his trunk a number of drawings which he had
done for the _Globe_--his sketches of the Chicago River, of Blue Island
Avenue, of which he had once made a study as a street, of Goose Island
and of the Lake front. There were some street scenes, too, all forceful
in the peculiar massing of their blacks, the unexpected, almost
flashing, use of a streak of white at times. There was emotion in them,
a sense of life. He should have been appreciated at once, but, oddly,
there was just enough of the radically strange about what he did to make
his work seem crude, almost coarse. He drew a man's coat with a single
dash of his pen. He indicated a face by a spot. If you looked close
there was seldom any detail, frequently none at all. From the praise he
had received at the art school and from Mathews and Goldfarb he was
slowly coming to the conclusion that he had a way of his own. Being so
individual he was inclined to stick to it. He walked with an air of
conviction which had nothing but his own belief in himself to back it
up, and it was not an air which drew anybody to him. When he showed his
pictures at the _Century_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, they were received
with an air of weary consideration. Dozens of magnificent drawings were
displayed on their walls signed by men whom Eugene now knew to be
leaders in the illustration world. He returned to his room convinced
that he had made no impression at all. They must be familiar with
artists a hundred times better than himself.

As a matter of fact Eugene was simply overawed by the material face of
things. These men whose pictures he saw displayed on the walls of the
art and editorial rooms of the magazines were really not, in many
instances, any better than himself, if as good. They had the advantage
of solid wood frames and artistic acceptance. He was a long way as yet
from magazine distinction but the work he did later had no more of the
fire than had this early stuff. It was a little broader in treatment, a
little less intolerant of detail, but no more vigorous if as much so.
The various art directors were weary of smart young artists showing
drawings. A little suffering was good for them in the beginning. So
Eugene was incontinently turned away with a little faint praise which
was worse than opposition. He sank very low in spirits.

There were still the smaller magazines and the newspapers, however, and
he hunted about faithfully, trying to get something to do. From one or
two of the smaller magazines, he secured commissions, after a time,
three or four drawings for thirty-five dollars; and from that had to be
extracted models' fees. He had to have a room where he could work as an
artist, receiving models to pose, and he finally found one in West 14th
Street, a back bedroom, looking out over an open court and with a public
stair which let all come who might without question. This cost him
twenty-five dollars a month, but he thought he had better risk it. If he
could get a few commissions he could live.

CHAPTER XVI

The art world of New York is peculiar. It was then and for some time
after, broken up into cliques with scarcely any unity. There was a world
of sculptors, for instance, in which some thirty or forty sculptors had
part--but they knew each other slightly, criticised each other severely
and retired for the most part into a background of relatives and
friends. There was a painting world, as distinguished from an
illustrating world, in which perhaps a thousand alleged artists, perhaps
more, took part. Most of these were men and women who had some
ability--enough to have their pictures hung at the National Academy of
Design exhibition--to sell some pictures, get some decorative work to
do, paint some portraits. There were studio buildings scattered about
various portions of the city; in Washington Square; in Ninth and Tenth
Streets; in odd places, such as Macdougal Alley and occasional cross
streets from Washington Square to Fifty-ninth Street, which were filled
with painters, illustrators, sculptors and craftsmen in art generally.
This painting world had more unity than the world of sculptors and, in a
way, included the latter. There were several art clubs--the Salmagundi,
the Kit-Kat and the Lotus--and there were a number of exhibitions, ink,
water color, oil, with their reception nights where artists could meet
and exchange the courtesies and friendship of their world. In addition
to this there were little communal groups such as those who resided in
the Tenth Street studios; the Twenty-third Street Y. M. C. A.; the Van
Dyck studios, and so on. It was possible to find little crowds, now and
then, that harmonized well enough for a time and to get into a group,
if, to use a colloquialism, one _belonged_. If you did not, art life in
New York might be a very dreary thing and one might go a long time
without finding just the particular crowd with which to associate.

Beside the painting world there was the illustrating world, made up of
beginners and those who had established themselves firmly in editorial
favor. These were not necessarily a part of the painting or sculpture
worlds and yet, in spirit, were allied to them, had their clubs also,
and their studios were in the various neighborhoods where the painters
and sculptors were. The only difference was that in the case of the
embryo illustrators they were to be found living three or four in one
studio, partly because of the saving in expense, but also because of the
love of companionship and because they could hearten and correct one
another in their work. A number of such interesting groups were in
existence when Eugene arrived, but of course he did not know of them.

It takes time for the beginner to get a hearing anywhere. We all have to
serve an apprenticeship, whatever field we enter. Eugene had talent and
determination, but no experience, no savoir faire, no circle of friends
and acquaintances. The whole city was strange and cold, and if he had
not immediately fallen desperately in love with it as a spectacle he
would have been unconscionably lonely and unhappy. As it was the great
fresh squares, such as Washington, Union and Madison; the great streets,
such as Broadway, Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue; the great spectacles,
such as the Bowery at night, the East River, the water front, the
Battery, all fascinated him with an unchanging glamor.

He was hypnotized by the wonder of this thing--the beauty of it. Such
seething masses of people! such whirlpools of life! The great hotels,
the opera, the theatres, the restaurants, all gripped him with a sense
of beauty. These lovely women in magnificent gowns; these swarms of
cabs, with golden eyes, like monstrous insects; this ebb and surge of
life at morning and evening, made him forget his loneliness. He had no
money to spend, no immediate hope of a successful career, he could walk
these streets, look in these windows, admire these beautiful women;
thrill at the daily newspaper announcements of almost hourly successes
in one field or another. Here and there in the news an author had made a
great success with a book; a scientist with a discovery; a philosopher
with a new theory; a financier with an investment. There was news of
great plays being put on; great actors and actresses coming from abroad;
great successes being made by debutantes in society; great movements
forwarded generally. Youth and ambition had the call--he saw that. It
was only a question of time, if you had talent, when you would get your
hearing. He longed ardently for his but he had no feeling that it was
coming to him quickly, so he got the blues. It was a long road to
travel.

One of his pet diversions these days and nights was to walk the streets
in rain or fog or snow. The city appealed to him, wet or white,
particularly the public squares. He saw Fifth Avenue once in a driving
snowstorm and under sputtering arc lights, and he hurried to his easel
next morning to see if he could not put it down in black and white. It
was unsuccessful, or at least he felt so, for after an hour of trying he
threw it aside in disgust. But these spectacles were drawing him. He was
wanting to do them--wanting to see them shown somewhere in color.
Possible success was a solace at a time when all he could pay for a meal
was fifteen cents and he had no place to go and not a soul with whom to
talk.

It was an interesting phase of Eugene's character that he had a passion
for financial independence. He might have written home from Chicago at
times when he was hard pressed; he might have borrowed some money from
his father now, but preferred to earn it--to appear to be further along
than he was. If anyone had asked him he would have said he was doing
fine. Practically he so wrote to Angela, giving as an excuse for further
delay that he wanted to wait until he had ample means. He was trying all
this time to make his two hundred dollars go as far as possible and to
add to it by any little commissions he could get, however small. He
figured his expenses down to ten dollars a week and managed to stay
within that sum.

The particular building in which he had settled was really not a studio
building but an old, run-down boarding and apartment house turned
partially to uses of trade. The top floor contained three fair sized
rooms and two hall bedrooms, all occupied by lonely individuals plying
some craft or other. Eugene's next door neighbor chanced to be a hack
illustrator, who had had his training in Boston and had set up his easel
here in the hope of making a living. There were not many exchanges of
courtesies between them at first, although, the door being open the
second day he arrived, he saw that an artist worked there, for the easel
was visible.

No models applying at first he decided to appeal to the Art Students'
League. He called on the Secretary and was given the names of four, who
replied to postal cards from him. One he selected, a young Swedish
American girl who looked somewhat like the character in the story he had
in mind. She was neat and attractive, with dark hair, a straight nose
and pointed chin, and Eugene immediately conceived a liking for her. He
was ashamed of his surroundings, however, and consequently diffident.
This particular model was properly distant, and he finished his pictures
with as much expedition and as little expense as he possibly could.

Eugene was not given to scraping odd acquaintances, though he made
friends fast enough when the balance of intellect was right. In Chicago
he had become friendly with several young artists as a result of working
with them at the Institute, but here he knew no one, having come without
introductions. He did become acquainted with his neighbor, Philip
Shotmeyer. He wanted to find out about local art life from him, but
Shotmeyer was not brilliant, and could not supply him with more than
minor details of what Eugene desired to know. Through him he learnt a
little of studio regions, art personalities; the fact that young
beginners worked in groups. Shotmeyer had been in such a group the year
before, though why he was alone now he did not say. He sold drawings to
some of the minor magazines, better magazines than Eugene had yet had
dealings with. One thing he did at once for Eugene which was very
helpful: he admired his work. He saw, as had others before him,
something of his peculiar distinction as an artist, attended every show
and one day he gave him a suggestion which was the beginning of Eugene's
successful magazine career. Eugene was working on one of his street
scenes--a task which he invariably essayed when he had nothing else to
do. Shotmeyer had drifted in and was following the strokes of his brush
as he attempted to portray a mass of East Side working girls flooding
the streets after six o'clock. There were dark walls of buildings, a
flaring gas lamp or two, some yellow lighted shop windows, and many
shaded, half seen faces--bare suggestions of souls and pulsing life.

"Say," said Shotmeyer at one point, "that kind o' looks like the real
thing to me. I've seen a crowd like that."

"Have you?" replied Eugene.

"You ought to be able to get some magazine to use that as a
frontispiece. Why don't you try _Truth_ with that?"

"Truth" was a weekly which Eugene, along with many others in the West,
had admired greatly because it ran a double page color insert every week
and occasionally used scenes of this character. Somehow he always needed
a shove of this kind to make him act when he was drifting. He put more
enthusiasm into his work because of Shotmeyer's remark, and when it was
done decided to carry it to the office of _Truth_. The Art Director
approved it on sight, though he said nothing, but carried it in to the
Editor.

"Here's a thing that I consider a find in its way."

He set it proudly upon the editorial desk.

"Say," said the Editor, laying down a manuscript, "that's the real
thing, isn't it? Who did that?"

"A young fellow by the name of Witla, who has just blown in here. He
looks like the real thing to me."

"Say," went on the Editor, "look at the suggestion of faces back there!
What? Reminds me just a little of the masses in Dore stuff--It's good,
isn't it?"

"It's fine," echoed the Art Director. "I think he's a comer, if nothing
happens to him. We ought to get a few centre pages out of him."

"How much does he want for this?"

"Oh, he doesn't know. He'll take almost anything. I'll give him
seventy-five dollars."

"That's all right," said the Editor as the Art Director took the drawing
down. "There's something new there. You ought to hang on to him."

"I will," replied his associate. "He's young yet. He doesn't want to be
encouraged too much."

He went out, pulling a solemn countenance.

"I like this fairly well," he said. "We may be able to find room for it.
I'll send you a check shortly if you'll let me have your address."

Eugene gave it. His heart was beating a gay tattoo in his chest. He did
not think anything of price, in fact it did not occur to him. All that
was in his mind was the picture as a double page spread. So he had
really sold one after all and to _Truth_! Now he could honestly say he
had made some progress. Now he could write Angela and tell her. He could
send her copies when it came out. He could really have something to
point to after this and best of all, now he knew he could do street
scenes.

He went out into the street treading not the grey stone pavement but
air. He threw back his head and breathed deep. He thought of other
scenes like this which he could do. His dreams were beginning to be
realized--he, Eugene Witla, the painter of a double page spread in
_Truth_! Already he was doing a whole series in his imagination, all he
had ever dreamed of. He wanted to run and tell Shotmeyer--to buy him a
good meal. He almost loved him, commonplace hack that he was--because he
had suggested to him the right thing to do.

"Say, Shotmeyer," he said, sticking his head in that worthy's door, "you
and I eat tonight. _Truth_ took that drawing."

"Isn't that fine," said his floor-mate, without a trace of envy. "Well,
I'm glad. I thought they'd like it."

Eugene could have cried. Poor Shotmeyer! He wasn't a good artist, but he
had a good heart. He would never forget him.

CHAPTER XVII

This one significant sale with its subsequent check of seventy-five
dollars and later the appearance of the picture in color, gave Eugene
such a lift in spirit that he felt, for the time being, as though his
art career had reached a substantial basis, and he began to think of
going to Blackwood to visit Angela. But first he must do some more work.

He concentrated his attention on several additional scenes, doing a view
of Greeley Square in a sopping drizzle, and a picture of an L train
speeding up the Bowery on its high, thin trestle of steel. He had an eye
for contrasts, picking out lights and shadows sharply, making wonderful
blurs that were like colors in precious stones, confused and suggestive.
He took one of these after a month to _Truth_, and again the Art
Director was his victim. He tried to be indifferent, but it was hard.
The young man had something that he wanted.

"You might show me anything else you do in this line," he said. "I can
use a few if they come up to these two."

Eugene went away with his head in the air. He was beginning to get the
courage of his ability.

It takes quite a number of drawings at seventy-five and one hundred
dollars each to make a living income, and artists were too numerous to
make anyone's opportunity for immediate distinction easy. Eugene waited
months to see his first drawing come out. He stayed away from the
smaller magazines in the hope that he would soon be able to contribute
to the larger ones, but they were not eagerly seeking new artists. He
met, through Shotmeyer, two artists who were living in one studio in
Waverly Place and took a great liking to them. One of them, McHugh, was
an importation from Wyoming with delicious stories of mountain farming
and mining; the other, Smite, was a fisher lad from Nova Scotia. McHugh,
tall and lean, with a face that looked like that of a raw yokel, but
with some gleam of humor and insight in the eyes which redeemed it
instantly, was Eugene's first choice of a pleasing, genial personality.
Joseph Smite had a sense of the sea about him. He was short and stout,
and rather solidly put together, like a blacksmith. He had big hands and
feet, a big mouth, big, bony eye sockets and coarse brown hair. When he
talked, ordinarily, it was with a slow, halting air and when he smiled
or laughed it was with his whole face. When he became excited or gay
something seemed to happen distinctly to every part of his body. His
face became a curious cross-hatch of genial lines. His tongue loosened
and he talked fast. He had a habit of emphasizing his language with
oaths on these occasions--numerous and picturesque, for he had worked
with sea-faring men and had accumulated a vast vocabulary of picturesque
expressions. They were vacant of evil intent so far as he was concerned,
for there was no subtlety or guile in him. He was kindly and genial all
through. Eugene wanted to be friendly and struck a gay relationship with
these two. He found that he got along excellently well with them and
could swap humorous incidents and character touches by the hour. It was
some months before he could actually say that he was intimate with them,
but he began to visit them regularly and after a time they called on
him.

It was during this year that he came to know several models passingly
well, to visit the various art exhibitions, to be taken up by Hudson
Dula, the Art Director of _Truth_ and invited to two or three small
dinners given to artists and girls. He did not find anyone he liked
exceptionally well barring one Editor of a rather hopeless magazine
called _Craft_, devoted to art subjects, a young blond, of poetic
temperament, who saw in him a spirit of beauty and tried to make friends
with him. Eugene responded cheerfully and thereafter Richard Wheeler was
a visitor at his studio from time to time. He was not making enough to
house himself much better these days, but he did manage to buy a few
plaster casts and to pick up a few nice things in copper and brass for
his studio. His own drawings, his street scenes, were hung here and
there. The way in which the exceptionally clever looked at them
convinced him by degrees that he had something big to say.

It was while he was settling himself in this atmosphere--the spring of
the second year--that he decided to go back and visit Angela and
incidentally Alexandria and Chicago. He had been away now sixteen
months, had not seen anyone who had won his affections or alienated him
from his love of Angela. He wrote in March that he thought he would be
coming in May or June. He did get away in July--a season when the city
was suffering from a wave of intense heat. He had not done so
much--illustrated eight or ten stories and drawn four double page
pictures for _Truth_, one of which had appeared; but he was getting
along. Just as he was starting for Chicago and Blackwood a second one
was put on the news-stand and he proudly carried a copy of it with him
on the train. It was the Bowery by night, with the L train rushing
overhead and, as reproduced, it had color and life. He felt intensely
proud and knew that Angela would also. She had written him such a
glowing appreciation of the East Side picture called "Six O'clock."

As he rode he dreamed.

He reached it at last, the long stretch between New York and Chicago
traversed; he arrived in the Lake city in the afternoon, and without
pausing to revisit the scenes of his earlier efforts took a five o'clock
train for Blackwood. It was sultry, and on the way heavy thunder clouds
gathered and broke in a short, splendid summer rain. The trees and grass
were thoroughly wet and the dust of the roads was laid. There was a
refreshing coolness about the air which caressed the weary flesh. Little
towns nestling among green trees came into view and passed again, and at
last Blackwood appeared. It was smaller than Alexandria, but not so
different. Like the other it was marked by a church steeple, a saw mill,
a pretty brick business street and many broad branching green trees.
Eugene felt drawn to it at sight. It was such a place as Angela should
live in.

It was seven o'clock and nearing dusk when he arrived. He had not given
Angela the definite hour of his arrival and so decided to stay over
night at the little inn or so-called hotel which he saw up the street.
He had brought only a large suit case and a traveling bag. He inquired
of the proprietor the direction and distance of the Blue house from the
town, found that he could get a vehicle any time in the morning which
would take him over, as the phrase ran, for a dollar. He ate his supper
of fried steak and poor coffee and fried potatoes and then sat out on
the front porch facing the street in a rocking chair, to see how the
village of Blackwood wagged and to enjoy the cool of the evening. As he
sat he thought of Angela's home and how nice it must be. This town was
such a little place--so quiet. There would not be another train coming
up from the city until after eleven.

After a time he rose and took a short walk, breathing the night air.
Later he came back and throwing wide the windows of the stuffy room sat
looking out. The summer night with its early rain, its wet trees, its
smell of lush, wet, growing things, was impressing itself on Eugene as
one might impress wet clay with a notable design. Eugene's mood was soft
toward the little houses with their glowing windows, the occasional
pedestrians with their "howdy Jakes" and "evenin' Henrys." He was
touched by the noise of the crickets, the chirp of the tree toads, the
hang of the lucent suns and planets above the tree tops. The whole night
was quick with the richness of fertility, stirring subtly about some
work which concerned man very little or not at all, yet of which he was
at least a part, till his eyelids drooped after a time and he went to
bed to sleep deeply and dreamlessly.

Next morning he was up early, eager for the hour to arrive when he might
start. He did not think it advisable to leave before nine o'clock, and
attracted considerable attention by strolling about, his tall, spare,
graceful figure and forceful profile being an unusual sight to the
natives. At nine o'clock a respectable carryall was placed at his
disposal and he was driven out over a long yellow road, damp with the
rain of the night before and shaded in places by overhanging trees.
There were so many lovely wild flowers growing in the angles of the rail
fences--wild yellow and pink roses, elder flower, Queen Anne's lace,
dozens of beautiful blooms, that Eugene was lost in admiration. His
heart sang over the beauty of yellowing wheatfields, the young corn,
already three feet high, the vistas of hay and clover, with patches of
woods enclosing them, and over all, house martens and swallows scudding
after insects and high up in the air his boyhood dream of beauty, a
soaring buzzard.

As he rode the moods of his boyhood days came back to him--his love of
winging butterflies and birds; his passion for the voice of the
wood-dove (there was one crying in the still distance now)--his
adoration for the virile strength of the men of the countryside. He
thought as he rode that he would like to paint a series of country
scenes that would be as simple as those cottage dooryards that they now
and then passed; this little stream that cut the road at right angles
and made a drinking place for the horses; this skeleton of an old
abandoned home, doorless and windowless, where the roof sagged and
hollyhocks and morning glories grew high under the eaves. "We city
dwellers do not know," he sighed, as though he had not taken the country
in his heart and carried it to town as had every other boy and girl who
had gone the way of the metropolis.

The Blue homestead was located in the centre of a rather wide rolling
stretch of country which lay between two gently rising ridges of hill
covered with trees. One corner of the farm, and that not so very far
from the house, was cut by a stream, a little shallow thing, singing
over pebbles and making willows and hazel bushes to grow in profusion
along its banks, and there was a little lake within a mile of the house.
In front of it was a ten acre field of wheat, to the right of it a
grazing patch of several acres, to the left a field of clover; and near
the house by a barn, a well, a pig pen, a corn crib and some smaller
sheds. In front of the house was a long open lawn, down the centre of
which ran a gravel path, lined on either side by tall old elm trees. The
immediate dooryard was shut from this noble lawn by a low picket fence
along the length of which grew lilac bushes and inside which, nearer the
house, were simple beds of roses, calycanthus and golden glow. Over an
arbor leading from the backdoor to a rather distant summer kitchen
flourished a grapevine, and there was a tall remnant of a tree trunk
covered completely with a yellow blooming trumpet vine. The dooryard's
lawn was smooth enough, and the great lawn was a dream of green grass,
graced with the shadows of a few great trees. The house was long and of
no great depth, the front a series of six rooms ranged in a row, without
an upper storey. The two middle rooms which had originally, perhaps
seventy years before, been all there was of the house. Since then all
the other rooms had been added, and there was in addition to these a
lean-to containing a winter kitchen and dining room, and to the west of
the arbor leading to the summer kitchen, an old unpainted frame
storehouse. In all its parts the place was shabby and run down but
picturesque and quaint.

Eugene was surprised to find the place so charming. It appealed to him,
the long, low front, with doors opening from the centre and end rooms
direct upon the grass, with windows set in climbing vines and the lilac
bushes forming a green wall between the house and the main lawn. The
great rows of elm trees throwing a grateful shade seemed like sentinel
files. As the carryall turned in at the wagon gate in front he thought
"What a place for love! and to think Angela should live here."

The carryall rattled down the pebble road to the left of the lawn and
stopped at the garden gate. Marietta came out. Marietta was twenty-two
years old, and as gay and joyous as her elder sister Angela was sober
and in a way morbid. Light souled as a kitten, looking always on the
bright side of things, she made hosts of friends everywhere she went,
having a perfect swarm of lovers who wrote her eager notes, but whom she
rebuffed with good natured, sympathetic simplicity. Here on this farm
there was not supposed to be so much opportunity for social life as in
town, but beaux made their way here on one pretext and another. Marietta
was the magnet, and in the world of gaiety which she created Angela
shared.

Angela was now in the dining room--easy to be called--but Marietta
wanted to see for herself what sort of lover her sister had captured.
She was surprised at his height, his presence, the keenness of his eyes.
She hardly understood so fine a lover for her own sister, but held out
her hand smilingly.

"This is Mr. Witla, isn't it?" she asked.

"The same," he replied, a little pompously. "Isn't it a lovely drive
over here?"

"We think it nice in nice weather," she laughed. "You wouldn't like it
so much in winter. Won't you come in and put your grip here in the hall?
David will take it to your room."

Eugene obeyed, but he was thinking of Angela and when she would appear
and how she would look. He stepped into the large, low ceiled, dark,
cool parlor and was delighted to see a piano and some music piled on a
rack. Through an open window he saw several hammocks out on the main
lawn, under the trees. It seemed a wonderful place to him, the substance
of poetry--and then Angela appeared. She was dressed in plain white
linen. Her hair, braided as he liked it in a great rope, lay as a band
across her forehead. She had picked a big pink rose and put it in her
waist. At sight of her Eugene held out his arms and she flew to them. He
kissed her vigorously, for Marietta had discreetly retired and they were
left alone.

"So I have you at last," he whispered, and kissed her again.

"Oh, yes, yes, and it has been so long," she sighed.

"You couldn't have suffered any more than I have," he consoled. "Every
minute has been torture, waiting, waiting, waiting!"

"Let's not think of that now," she urged. "We have each other. You are
here."

"Yes, here I am," he laughed, "all the virtues done up in one brown
suit. Isn't it lovely--these great trees, that beautiful lawn?"

He paused from kissing to look out of the window.

"I'm glad you like it," she replied joyously. "We think it's nice, but
this place is so old."

"I love it for that," he cried appreciatively. "Those bushes are so
nice--those roses. Oh, dear, you don't know how sweet it all seems--and
you--you are so nice."

He held her off at arm's length and surveyed her while she blushed
becomingly. His eager, direct, vigorous onslaught confused her at
times--caused her pulse to beat at a high rate.

They went out into the dooryard after a time and then Marietta appeared
again, and with her Mrs. Blue, a comfortable, round bodied mother of
sixty, who greeted Eugene cordially. He could feel in her what he felt
in his own mother--in every good mother--love of order and peace, love
of the well being of her children, love of public respect and private
honor and morality. All these things Eugene heartily respected in
others. He was glad to see them, believed they had a place in society,
but was uncertain whether they bore any fixed or important relationship
to him. He was always thinking in his private conscience that life was
somehow bigger and subtler and darker than any given theory or order of
living. It might well be worth while for a man or woman to be honest and
moral within a given condition or quality of society, but it did not
matter at all in the ultimate substance and composition of the universe.
Any form or order of society which hoped to endure must have individuals
like Mrs. Blue, who would conform to the highest standards and theories
of that society, and when found they were admirable, but they meant
nothing in the shifting, subtle forces of nature. They were just
accidental harmonies blossoming out of something which meant everything
here to this order, nothing to the universe at large. At twenty-two
years of age he was thinking these things, wondering whether it would be
possible ever to express them; wondering what people would think of him
if they actually knew what he did think; wondering if there was
anything, anything, which was really stable--a rock to cling to--and not
mere shifting shadow and unreality.

Mrs. Blue looked at her daughter's young lover with a kindly eye. She
had heard a great deal about him. Having raised her children to be
honest, moral and truthful she trusted them to associate only with those
who were equally so. She assumed that Eugene was such a man, and his
frank open countenance and smiling eyes and mouth convinced her that he
was basically good. Also, what to her were his wonderful drawings, sent
to Angela in the form of proofs from time to time, particularly the one
of the East Side crowd, had been enough to prejudice her in his favor.
No other daughter of the family, and there were three married, had
approximated to this type of man in her choice. Eugene was looked upon
as a prospective son-in-law who would fulfill all the conventional
obligations joyfully and as a matter of course.

"It's very good of you to put me up, Mrs. Blue," Eugene said pleasantly.
"I've always wanted to come out here for a visit--I've heard so much of
the family from Angela."

"It's just a country home we have, not much to look at, but we like it,"
replied his hostess. She smiled blandly, asked if he wouldn't make
himself comfortable in one of the hammocks, wanted to know how he was
getting along with his work in New York and then returned to her
cooking, for she was already preparing his first meal. Eugene strolled
with Angela to the big lawn under the trees and sat down. He was
experiencing the loftiest of human emotions on earth--love in youth,
accepted and requited, hope in youth, justified in action by his success
in New York; peace in youth, for he had a well earned holiday in his
grasp, was resting with the means to do so and with love and beauty and
admiration and joyous summer weather to comfort him.

As he rocked to and fro in the hammock gazing at the charming lawn and
realizing all these things, his glance rested at last upon Angela, and
he thought, "Life can really hold no finer thing than this."

CHAPTER XVIII

Toward noon old Jotham Blue came in from a cornfield where he had been
turning the earth between the rows. Although sixty-five and with snowy
hair and beard he looked to be vigorous, and good to live until ninety
or a hundred. His eyes were blue and keen, his color rosy. He had great
broad shoulders set upon a spare waist, for he had been a handsome
figure of a man in his youth.

"How do you do, Mr. Witla," he inquired with easy grace as he strolled
up, the yellow mud of the fields on his boots. He had pulled a big
jackknife out of his pocket and begun whittling a fine twig he had
picked up. "I'm glad to see you. My daughter, Angela, has been telling
me one thing and another about you."

He smiled as he looked at Eugene. Angela, who was sitting beside him,
rose and strolled toward the house.

"I'm glad to see you," said Eugene. "I like your country around here. It
looks prosperous."

"It is prosperous," said the old patriarch, drawing up a chair which
stood at the foot of a tree and seating himself. Eugene sank back into
the hammock.

"It's a soil that's rich in lime and carbon and sodium--the things which
make plant life grow. We need very little fertilizer here--very little.
The principal thing is to keep the ground thoroughly cultivated and to
keep out the bugs and weeds."

He cut at his stick meditatively. Eugene noted the chemical and physical
knowledge relative to farming. It pleased him to find brain coupled with
crop cultivation.

"I noticed some splendid fields of wheat as I came over," he observed.

"Yes, wheat does well here," Blue went on, "when the weather is
moderately favorable. Corn does well. We have a splendid apple crop and
grapes are generally successful in this state. I have always thought
that Wisconsin had a little the best of the other valley states, for we
are blessed with a moderate climate, plenty of streams and rivers and a
fine, broken landscape. There are good mines up north and lots of
lumber. We are a prosperous people, we Wisconsiners, decidedly
prosperous. This state has a great future."

Eugene noted the wide space between his clear blue eyes as he talked. He
liked the bigness of his conception of his state and of his country. No
petty little ground-harnessed ploughman this, but a farmer in the big
sense of the word--a cultivator of the soil, with an understanding of
it--an American who loved his state and his country.

"I have always thought of the Mississippi valley as the country of the
future," said Eugene. "We have had the Valley of the Nile and the Valley
of the Euphrates with big populations, but this is something larger. I
rather feel as though a great wave of population were coming here in the
future."

"It is the new paradise of the world," said Jotham Blue, pausing in his
whittling and holding up his right hand for emphasis. "We haven't come
to realize its possibilities. The fruit, the corn, the wheat, to feed
the nations of the world can be raised here. I sometimes marvel at the
productivity of the soil. It is so generous. It is like a great mother.
It only asks to be treated kindly to give all that it has."

Eugene smiled. The bigness of his prospective father-in-law's feelings
lured him. He felt as though he could love this man.

They talked on about other things, the character of the surrounding
population, the growth of Chicago, the recent threat of a war with
Venezuela, the rise of a new leader in the Democratic party, a man whom
Jotham admired very much. As he was telling of the latter's exploits--it
appeared he had recently met him at Blackwood--Mrs. Blue appeared in the
front door.

"Jotham!" she called.

He rose. "My wife must want a bucket of water," he said, and strolled
away.

Eugene smiled. This was lovely. This was the way life should
be--compounded of health, strength, good nature, understanding,
simplicity. He wished he were a man like Jotham, as sound, as hearty, as
clean and strong. To think he had raised eight children. No wonder
Angela was lovely. They all were, no doubt.

While he was rocking, Marietta came back smiling, her blond hair blowing
about her face. Like her father she had blue eyes, like him a sanguine
temperament, warm and ruddy. Eugene felt drawn to her. She reminded him
a little of Ruby--a little of Margaret. She was bursting with young
health.

"You're stronger than Angela," he said, looking at her.

"Oh, yes, I can always outrun Angel-face," she exclaimed. "We fight
sometimes but I can get things away from her. She has to give in.
Sometimes I feel older--I always take the lead."

Eugene rejoiced in the sobriquet of Angel-face. It suited Angela, he
thought. She looked like pictures of Angels in the old prints and in the
stained glass windows he had seen. He wondered in a vague way, however,
whether Marietta did not have the sweeter temperament--were not really
more lovable and cosy. But he put the thought forcefully out of his
mind. He felt he must be loyal to Angela here.

While they were talking the youngest boy, David, came up and sat down on
the grass. He was short and stocky for his years--sixteen--with an
intelligent face and an inquiring eye. Eugene noted stability and quiet
force in his character at once. He began to see that these children had
inherited character as well as strength from their parents. This was a
home in which successful children were being reared. Benjamin came up
after awhile, a tall, overgrown, puritanical youth, with western
modifications and then Samuel, the oldest of the living boys and the
most impressive. He was big and serene like his father, of brown
complexion and hickory strength. Eugene learned in the conversation that
he was a railroad man in St. Paul--home for a brief vacation, after
three years of absence. He was with a road called the Great Northern,
already a Second Assistant Passenger Agent and with great prospects, so
the family thought. Eugene could see that all the boys and girls, like
Angela, were ruggedly and honestly truthful. They were written all over
with Christian precept--not church dogma--but Christian precept, lightly
and good naturedly applied. They obeyed the ten commandments in so far
as possible and lived within the limits of what people considered sane
and decent. Eugene wondered at this. His own moral laxity was a puzzle
to him. He wondered whether he were not really all wrong and they all
right. Yet the subtlety of the universe was always with him--the mystery
of its chemistry. For a given order of society no doubt he was out of
place--for life in general, well, he could not say.

At 12.30 dinner was announced from the door by Mrs. Blue and they all
rose. It was one of those simple home feasts common to any intelligent
farming family. There was a generous supply of fresh vegetables, green
peas, new potatoes, new string beans. A steak had been secured from the
itinerant butcher who served these parts and Mrs. Blue had made hot
light biscuit. Eugene expressed a predilection for fresh buttermilk and
they brought him a pitcherful, saying that as a rule it was given to the
pigs; the children did not care for it. They talked and jested and he
heard odd bits of information concerning people here and there--some
farmer who had lost a horse by colic; some other farmer who was
preparing to cut his wheat. There were frequent references to the three
oldest sisters, who lived in other Wisconsin towns. Their children
appeared to be numerous and fairly troublesome. They all came home
frequently, it appeared, and were bound up closely with the interests of
the family as a whole.

"The more you know about the Blue family," observed Samuel to Eugene,
who expressed surprise at the solidarity of interest, "the more you
realize that they're a clan not a family. They stick together like
glue."

"That's a rather nice trait, I should say," laughed Eugene, who felt no
such keen interest in his relatives.

"Well, if you want to find out how the Blue family stick together just
do something to one of them," observed Jake Doll, a neighbor who had
entered.

"That's sure true, isn't it, Sis," observed Samuel, who was sitting next
to Angela, putting his hand affectionately on his sister's arm. Eugene
noted the movement. She nodded her head affectionately.

"Yes, we Blues all hang together."

Eugene almost begrudged him his sister's apparent affection. Could such
a girl be cut out of such an atmosphere--separated from it completely,
brought into a radically different world, he wondered. Would she
understand him; would he stick by her. He smiled at Jotham and Mrs. Blue
and thought he ought to, but life was strange. You never could tell what
might happen.

During the afternoon there were more lovely impressions. He and Angela
sat alone in the cool parlor for two hours after dinner while he
restated his impressions of her over and over. He told her how charming
he thought her home was, how nice her father and mother, what
interesting brothers she had. He made a genial sketch of Jotham as he
had strolled up to him at noon, which pleased Angela and she kept it to
show to her father. He made her pose in the window and sketched her head
and her halo of hair. He thought of his double page illustration of the
Bowery by night and went to fetch it, looking for the first time at the
sweet cool room at the end of the house which he was to occupy. One
window, a west one, had hollyhocks looking in, and the door to the north
gave out on the cool, shady grass. He moved in beauty, he thought; was
treading on showered happiness. It hurt him to think that such joy might
not always be, as though beauty were not everywhere and forever present.

When Angela saw the picture which _Truth_ had reproduced, she was beside
herself with joy and pride and happiness. It was such a testimony to her
lover's ability. He had written almost daily of the New York art world,
so she was familiar with that in exaggerated ideas, but these actual
things, like reproduced pictures, were different. The whole world would
see this picture. He must be famous already, she imagined.

That evening and the next and the next as they sat in the parlor alone
he drew nearer and nearer to that definite understanding which comes
between a man and woman when they love. Eugene could never stop with
mere kissing and caressing in a reserved way, if not persistently
restrained. It seemed natural to him that love should go on. He had not
been married. He did not know what its responsibilities were. He had
never given a thought to what his parents had endured to make him worth
while. There was no instinct in him to tell him. He had no yearnings for
parenthood, that normal desire which gives visions of a home and the
proper social conditions for rearing a family. All he thought of was the
love making period--the billing and cooing and the transports of delight
which come with it. With Angela he felt that these would be super-normal
precisely because she was so slow in yielding--so on the defensive
against herself. He could look in her eyes at times and see a swooning
veil which foreshadowed a storm of emotion. He would sit by her stroking
her hands, touching her cheek, smoothing her hair, or at other times
holding her in his arms. It was hard for her to resist those significant
pressures he gave, to hold him at arm's length, for she herself was
eager for the delights of love.

It was on the third night of his stay and in the face of his growing
respect for every member of this family, that he swept Angela to the
danger line--would have carried her across it had it not been for a
fortuitous wave of emotion, which was not of his creation, but of hers.

They had been to the little lake, Okoonee, a little way from the house
during the afternoon for a swim.

Afterward he and Angela and David and Marietta had taken a drive. It was
one of those lovely afternoons that come sometimes in summer and speak
direct to the heart of love and beauty. It was so fair and warm, the
shadows of the trees so comforting that they fairly made Eugene's heart
ache. He was young now, life was beautiful, but how would it be when he
was old? A morbid anticipation of disaster seemed to harrow his soul.

The sunset had already died away when they drew near home. Insects
hummed, a cow-bell tinkled now and then; breaths of cool air, those
harbingers of the approaching eve, swept their cheeks as they passed
occasional hollows. Approaching the house they saw the blue smoke curls
rising from the kitchen chimney, foretelling the preparation of the
evening meal. Eugene clasped Angela's hand in an ecstasy of emotion.

He wanted to dream--sitting in the hammock with Angela as the dusk fell,
watching the pretty scene. Life was all around. Jotham and Benjamin came
in from the fields and the sound of their voices and of the splashing
water came from the kitchen door where they were washing. There was an
anticipatory stamping of horses' feet in the barn, the lowing of a
distant cow, the hungry grunt of pigs. Eugene shook his head--it was so
pastoral, so sweet.

At supper he scarcely touched what was put before him, the group at the
dining table holding his attention as a spectacle. Afterwards he sat
with the family on the lawn outside the door, breathing the odor of
flowers, watching the stars over the trees, listening to Jotham and
Mrs. Blue, to Samuel, Benjamin, David, Marietta and occasionally Angela.
Because of his mood, sad in the face of exquisite beauty, she also was
subdued. She said little, listening to Eugene and her father, but when
she did talk her voice was sweet.

Jotham arose, after a time, and went to bed, and one by one the others
followed. David and Marietta went into the sitting room and then Samuel
and Benjamin left. They gave as an excuse hard work for the morning.
Samuel was going to try his hand again at thrashing. Eugene took Angela
by the hand and led her out where some hydrangeas were blooming, white
as snow by day, but pale and silvery in the dark. He took her face in
his hands, telling her again of love.

"It's been such a wonderful day I'm all wrought up," he said. "Life is
so beautiful here. This place is so sweet and peaceful. And you! oh,
you!" kisses ended his words.

They stood there a little while, then went back into the parlor where
she lighted a lamp. It cast a soft yellow glow over the room, just
enough to make it warm, he thought. They sat first side by side on two
rocking chairs and then later on a settee, he holding her in his arms.
Before supper she had changed to a loose cream  house gown. Now
Eugene persuaded her to let her hair hang in the two braids.

Real passion is silent. It was so intense with him that he sat
contemplating her as if in a spell. She leaned back against his shoulder
stroking his hair, but finally ceased even that, for her own feeling was
too intense to make movement possible. She thought of him as a young
god, strong, virile, beautiful--a brilliant future before him. All these
years she had waited for someone to truly love her and now this splendid
youth had apparently cast himself at her feet. He stroked her hands, her
neck, cheeks, then slowly gathered her close and buried his head against
her bosom.

Angela was strong in convention, in the precepts of her parents, in the
sense of her family and its attitude, but this situation was more than
she could resist. She accepted first the pressure of his arm, then the
slow subtlety with which he caressed her. Resistance seemed almost
impossible now for he held her close--tight within the range of his
magnetism. When finally she felt the pressure of his hand upon her
quivering limbs, she threw herself back in a transport of agony and
delight.

"No, no, Eugene," she begged. "No, no! Save me from myself. Save me from
myself. Oh, Eugene!"

He paused a moment to look at her face. It was wrought in lines of
intense suffering--pale as though she were ill. Her body was quite limp.
Only the hot, moist lips told the significant story. He could not stop
at once. Slowly he drew his hand away, then let his sensitive artists'
fingers rest gently on her neck--her bosom.

She struggled lamely at this point and slipped to her knees, her dress
loosened at the neck.

"Don't, Eugene," she begged, "don't. Think of my father, my mother. I,
who have boasted so. I of whom they feel so sure. Oh, Eugene, I beg of
you!"

He stroked her hair, her cheeks, looking into her face as Abelard might
have looked at Heloise.

"Oh, I know why it is," she exclaimed, convulsively. "I am no better
than any other, but I have waited so long, so long! But I mustn't! Oh,
Eugene, I mustn't! Help me!"

Vaguely Eugene understood. She had been without lovers. Why? he thought.
She was beautiful. He got up, half intending to carry her to his room,
but he paused, thinking. She was such a pathetic figure. Was he really
as bad as this? Could he not be fair in this one instance? Her father
had been so nice to him--her mother--He saw Jotham Blue before him,
Mrs. Blue, her admiring brothers and sisters, as they had been a little
while before. He looked at her and still the prize lured him--almost
swept him on in spite of himself, but he stayed.

"Stand up, Angela," he said at last, pulling himself together, looking
at her intensely. She did so. "Leave me now," he went on, "right away! I
won't answer for myself if you don't. I am really trying. Please go."

She paused, looking at him fearfully, regretfully.

"Oh, forgive me, Eugene," she pleaded.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm the one. But you go now, sweet. You don't
know how hard this is. Help me by going."

She moved away and he followed her with his eyes, yearningly, burningly,
until she reached the door. When she closed it softly he went into his
own room and sat down. His body was limp and weary. He ached from head
to foot from the intensity of the mood he had passed through. He went
over the recent incidents, almost stunned by his experience and then
went outside and stood under the stairs, listening. Tree toads were
chirping, there were suspicious cracklings in the grass as of bugs
stirring. A duck quacked somewhere feebly. The bell of the family cow
tinkled somewhere over near the water of the little stream. He saw the
great dipper in the sky, Sirius, Canopus, the vast galaxy of the Milky
Way.

"What is life anyway?" he asked himself. "What is the human body? What
produces passion? Here we are for a few years surging with a fever of
longing and then we burn out and die." He thought of some lines he might
write, of pictures he might paint. All the while, reproduced before his
mind's eye like a cinematograph, were views of Angela as she had been
tonight in his arms, on her knees. He had seen her true form. He had
held her in his arms. He had voluntarily resigned her charms for
tonight; anyhow, no harm had come. It never should.

CHAPTER XIX

It would be hard to say in what respect, if any, the experiences of this
particular night altered Eugene's opinion of Angela. He was inclined to
like her better for what he would have called her humanness. Thus
frankly to confess her weakness and inability to save herself was
splendid. That he was given the chance to do a noble deed was fortunate
and uplifting. He knew now that he could take her if he wished, but once
calm again he resolved to be fair and not to insist. He could wait.

The state of Angela's mind, on the contrary, once she had come out of
her paroxysm and gained the privacy of her own room, or rather the room
she shared with Marietta at the other extreme of the house, was
pitiable. She had for so long considered herself an estimable and
virtuous girl. There was in her just a faint trace of prudery which
might readily have led to an unhappy old maid existence for her if
Eugene, with his superiority, or non-understanding, or indifference to
conventional theories and to old-maidish feelings, had not come along
and with his customary blindness to material prosperity and age
limitations, seized upon and made love to her. He had filled her brain
with a whirlwind of notions hitherto unfamiliar to her world and set
himself up in her brain as a law unto himself. He was not like other
men--she could see that. He was superior to them. He might not make much
money, being an artist, but he could make other things which to her
seemed more desirable. Fame, beautiful pictures, notable friends, were
not these things far superior to money? She had had little enough money
in all conscience, and if Eugene made anything at all it would be enough
for her. He seemed to be under the notion that he needed a lot to get
married, whereas she would have been glad to risk it on almost anything
at all.

This latest revelation of herself, besides tearing her mind from a
carefully nurtured belief in her own virtuous impregnability, raised at
the same time a spectre of disaster in so far as Eugene's love for her
was concerned. Would he, now that she had allowed him those precious
endearments which should have been reserved for the marriage bed only,
care for her as much as he had before? Would he not think of her as a
light minded, easily spoiled creature who was waiting only for a
propitious moment to yield herself? She had been lost to all sense of
right and wrong in that hour, that she knew. Her father's character and
what he stood for, her mother's decency and love of virtue, her
cleanly-minded, right-living brothers and sisters,--all had been
forgotten and here she was, a tainted maiden, virtuous in technical
sense it is true, but tainted. Her convention-trained conscience smote
her vigorously and she groaned in her heart. She went outside the door
of her own room and sat down on the damp grass in the early morning to
think. It was so cool and calm everywhere but in her own soul. She held
her face in her hands, feeling her hot cheeks, wondering what Eugene was
thinking now. What would her father think, her mother? She wrung her
hands more than once and finally went inside to see if she could not
rest. She was not unconscious of the beauty and joy of the episode, but
she was troubled by what she felt she ought to think, what the
consequences to her future might be. To hold Eugene now--that was a
subtle question. To hold up her head in front of him as she had, could
she? To keep him from going further. It was a difficult situation and
she tossed restlessly all night, getting little sleep. In the morning
she arose weary and disturbed, but more desperately in love than ever.
This wonderful youth had revealed an entirely new and intensely dramatic
world to her.

When they met on the lawn again before breakfast, Angela was garbed in
white linen. She looked waxen and delicate and her eyes showed dark
rings as well as the dark thoughts that were troubling her. Eugene took
her hand sympathetically.

"Don't worry," he said, "I know. It isn't as bad as you think." And he
smiled tenderly.

"Oh, Eugene, I don't understand myself now," she said sorrowfully. "I
thought I was better than that."

"We're none of us better than that," he replied simply. "We just think
we are sometimes. You are not any different to me. You just think you
are."

"Oh, are you sure?" she asked eagerly.

"Quite sure," he replied. "Love isn't a terrible thing between any two.
It's just lovely. Why should I think worse of you?"

"Oh, because good girls don't do what I have done. I have been raised to
know better--to do better."

"All a belief, my dear, which you get from what has been taught you. You
think it wrong. Why? Because your father and mother told you so. Isn't
that it?"

"Oh, not that alone. Everybody thinks it's wrong. The Bible teaches that
it is. Everybody turns his back on you when he finds out."

"Wait a minute," pleaded Eugene argumentatively. He was trying to solve
this puzzle for himself. "Let's leave the Bible out of it, for I don't
believe in the Bible--not as a law of action anyhow. The fact that
everybody thinks it's wrong wouldn't necessarily make it so, would it?"
He was ignoring completely the significance of _everybody_ as a
reflection of those principles which govern the universe.

"No-o-o," ventured Angela doubtfully.

"Listen," went on Eugene. "Everybody in Constantinople believes that
Mahomet is the Prophet of God. That doesn't make him so, does it?"

"No."

"Well, then, everyone here might believe that what we did last night was
wrong without making it so. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," replied Angela confusedly. She really did not know. She could not
argue with him. He was too subtle, but her innate principles and
instincts were speaking plainly enough, nevertheless.

"Now what you're really thinking about is what people will do. They'll
turn their backs on you, you say. That is a practical matter. Your
father might turn you out of doors--"

"I think he would," replied Angela, little understanding the bigness of
the heart of her father.

"I think he wouldn't," said Eugene, "but that's neither here nor there.
Men might refuse to marry you. Those are material considerations. You
wouldn't say they had anything to do with real right or wrong, would
you?"

Eugene had no convincing end to his argument. He did not know any more
than anyone else what was right or wrong in this matter. He was merely
talking to convince himself, but he had enough logic to confuse Angela.

"I don't know," she said vaguely.

"Right," he went on loftily, "is something which is supposed to be in
accordance with a standard of truth. Now no one in all the world knows
what truth is, no one. There is no way of telling. You can only act
wisely or unwisely as regards your personal welfare. If that's what
you're worrying about, and it is, I can tell you that you're no worse
off. There's nothing the matter with your welfare. I think you're better
off, for I like you better."

Angela wondered at the subtlety of his brain. She was not sure but that
what he said might be true. Could her fears be baseless? She felt sure
she had lost some of the bloom of her youth anyhow.

"How can you?" she asked, referring to his saying that he liked her
better.

"Easily enough," he replied. "I know more about you. I admire your
frankness. You're lovely--altogether so. You are sweet beyond compare."
He started to particularize.

"Don't, Eugene," she pleaded, putting her finger over her lips. The
color was leaving her cheeks. "Please don't, I can't stand it."

"All right," he said, "I won't. But you're altogether lovely. Let's go
and sit in the hammock."

"No. I'm going to get you your breakfast. It's time you had something."

He took comfort in his privileges, for the others had all gone. Jotham,
Samuel, Benjamin and David were in the fields. Mrs. Blue was sewing and
Marietta had gone to see a girl friend up the road. Angela, as Ruby
before her, bestirred herself about the youth's meal, mixing biscuit,
broiling him some bacon, cleaning a basket of fresh dewberries for him.

"I like your man," said her mother, coming out where she was working.
"He looks to be good-natured. But don't spoil him. If you begin wrong
you'll be sorry."

"You spoiled papa, didn't you?" asked Angela sagely, recalling all the
little humorings her father had received.

"Your father has a keen sense of duty," retorted her mother. "It didn't
hurt him to be spoiled a little."

"Maybe Eugene has," replied her daughter, turning her slices of bacon.

Her mother smiled. All her daughters had married well. Perhaps Angela
was doing the best of all. Certainly her lover was the most
distinguished. Yet, "well to be careful," she suggested.

Angela

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.