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 ashe 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 tothe 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 thatsuch joy might not always be, as though beauty were not everywhere and forever present.
When Angela saw the picture whichTruthhad 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 whenhe 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 colored 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 Abélard might have looked at Héloïse.
"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 luredhim—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.
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 onlyfor 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 ofeverybodyas 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 notsure 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 thought. If her mother only knew, or her father. Dear Heaven! And yet Eugene was altogether lovely. She wanted to wait on him, to spoil him. She wished she could be with him every day from now on—that they need not part any more.
"Oh, if he would only marry me," she sighed. It was the one divine event which would complete her life.
Eugene would have liked to linger in this atmosphere indefinitely. Old Jotham, he found, liked to talk to him. He took an interest in national and international affairs, was awareof distinguished and peculiar personalities, seemed to follow world currents everywhere. Eugene began to think of him as a distinguished personality in himself, but old Jotham waved the suggestion blandly aside.
"I'm a farmer," he said. "I've seen my greatest success in raising good children. My boys will do well, I know."
For the first time Eugene caught the sense of fatherhood, of what it means to live again in your children, but only vaguely. He was too young, too eager for a varied life, too lustful. So its true import was lost for the time.
Sunday came and with it the necessity to leave. He had been here nine days, really two days more than he had intended to stay. It was farewell to Angela, who had come so close, so much in his grasp that she was like a child in his hands. It was farewell, moreover, to an ideal scene, a bit of bucolic poetry. When would he see again an old patriarch like Jotham, clean, kindly, intelligent, standing upright amid his rows of corn, proud to be a good father, not ashamed to be poor, not afraid to be old or to die. Eugene had drawn so much from him. It was like sitting at the feet of Isaiah. It was farewell to the lovely fields and the blue hills, the long rows of trees down the lawn walk, the white and red and blue flowers about the dooryard. He had slept so sweetly in his clean room, he had listened so joyously to the voices of birds, the wood dove and the poet thrush; he had heard the water in the Blue's branch rippling over its clean pebbles. The pigs in the barnyard pen, the horses, the cows, all had appealed to him. He thought of Gray's "Elegy"—of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" and "The Traveller." This was something like the things those men had loved.
He walked down the lawn with Angela, when the time came, repeating how sorry he was to go. David had hitched up a little brown mare and was waiting at the extreme end of the lawn.
"Oh, Sweet," he sighed. "I shall never be happy until I have you."
"I will wait," sighed Angela, although she was wishing to exclaim: "Oh, take me, take me!" When he was gone she went about her duties mechanically, for it was as if all the fire and joy had gone out of her life. Without this brilliant imagination of his to illuminate things, life seemed dull.
And he rode, parting in his mind with each lovely thing as he went—the fields of wheat, the little stream, Lake Okoonee, the pretty Blue farmhouse, all.
He said to himself: "Nothing more lovely will ever come again. Angela in my arms in her simple little parlor. Dear God! and there are only seventy years of life—not more than ten or fifteen of true youth, all told."
Eugene carried home with him not only a curiously deepened feeling for Angela, due to their altered and more intimate relationship, but moreover a growing respect for her family. Old Jotham was so impressive a figure of a man; his wife so kindly and earnest. Their attitude toward their children and to each other was so sound, and their whole relationship to society so respectable. Another observer might have been repelled by the narrowness and frugality of their lives. But Eugene had not known enough of luxury to be scornful of the material simplicity of such existence. Here he had found character, poetry of location, poetry of ambition, youth and happy prospects. These boys, so sturdy and independent, were sure to make for themselves such places in the world as they desired. Marietta, so charming a girl, could not but make a good marriage. Samuel was doing well in his position with the railroad company; Benjamin was studying to be a lawyer and David was to be sent to West Point. He liked them for their familiar, sterling worth. And they all treated him as the destined husband of Angela. By the end of his stay he had become as much en rapport with the family as if he had known it all his life.
Before going back to New York he had stopped in Chicago, where he had seen Howe and Mathews grinding away at their old tasks, and then for a few days in Alexandria, where he found his father busy about his old affairs. Sewing machines were still being delivered by him in person, and the long roads of the country were as briskly traversed by his light machine-carrying buggy as in his earliest days. Eugene saw him now as just a little futile, and yet he admired him, his patience, his industry. The brisk sewing machine agent was considerably impressed by his son's success, and was actually trying to take an interest in art. One evening coming home from the post office he pointed out a street scene in Alexandria as a subject for a painting. Eugene knew that art had only been called to his father's attention by his own efforts. He had noticed these things all his life, no doubt, but attached no significance to them until he had seen his son's work in the magazines. "If you ever paint country things, you ought to paint Cook's Mill, over here by the falls. That's one of the prettiest things Iknow anywhere," he said to him one evening, trying to make his son feel the interest he took. Eugene knew the place. It was attractive, a little branch of bright water running at the base of a forty foot wall of red sandstone and finally tumbling down a fifteen foot declivity of grey mossy stones. It was close to a yellow road which carried a good deal of traffic and was surrounded by a company of trees which ornamented it and sheltered it on all sides. Eugene had admired it in his youth as beautiful and peaceful.
"It is nice," he replied to his father. "I'll take a look at it some day."
Witla senior felt set up. His son was doing him honor. Mrs. Witla, like her husband, was showing the first notable traces of the flight of time. The crow's-feet at the sides of her eyes were deeper, the wrinkles in her forehead longer. At the sight of Eugene the first night she fairly thrilled, for he was so well developed now, so self-reliant. He had come through his experiences to a kind of poise which she realized was manhood. Her boy, requiring her careful guidance, was gone. This was someone who could guide her, tease her as a man would a child.
"You've got so big I hardly know you," she said, as he folded her in his arms.
"No, you're just getting little, ma. I used to think I'd never get to the point where you couldn't shake me, but that's all over, isn't it?"
"You never did need much shaking," she said fondly.
Myrtle, who had married Frank Bangs the preceding year, had gone with her husband to live in Ottumwa, Iowa, where he had taken charge of a mill, so Eugene did not see her, but he spent some little time with Sylvia, now the mother of two children. Her husband was the same quiet, conservative plodder Eugene had first noted him to be. Revisiting the office of theAppealhe found that John Summers had recently died. Otherwise things were as they had been. Jonas Lyle and Caleb Williams were still in charge—quite the same as before. Eugene was glad when his time was up, and took the train back to Chicago with a light heart.
Again as on his entrance to Chicago from the East, and on his return to it from Blackwood, he was touched keenly by the remembrance of Ruby. She had been so sweet to him. His opening art experiences had in a way been centred about her. But in spite of all, he did not want to go out and see her. Or did he? He asked himself this question with a pang of sorrow,for in a way he cared. He cared for her as one might care for a girl in a play or book. She had the quality of a tragedy about her. She—her life, her surroundings, her misfortune in loving him, constituted an artistic composition. He thought he might be able to write a poem about it some time. He was able to write rather charming verse which he kept to himself. He had the knack of saying things in a simple way and with feeling—making you see a picture. The trouble with his verse was that it lacked as yet any real nobility of thought—was not as final in understanding as it might have been.
He did not go to see Ruby. The reason he assigned to himself was that it would not be nice. She might not want him to now. She might be trying to forget. And he had Angela. It really wasn't fair to her. But he looked over toward the region in which she lived, as he travelled out of the city eastward and wished that some of those lovely moments he had spent with her might be lived again.
Back in New York, life seemed to promise a repetition of the preceding year, with some minor modifications. In the fall Eugene went to live with McHugh and Smite, the studio they had consisting of one big working room and three bed-rooms. They agreed that they could get along together, and for a while it was good for them all. The criticism they furnished each other was of real value. And they found it pleasant to dine together, to walk, to see the exhibitions. They stimulated each other with argument, each having a special point of view. It was much as it had been with Howe and Mathews in Chicago.
During this winter Eugene made his first appearance in one of the leading publications of the time—Harper's Magazine. He had gone to the Art Director with some proofs of his previous work, and had been told that it was admirable; if some suitable story turned up he would be considered. Later a letter came asking him to call, and a commission involving three pictures for $125 was given him. He worked them out successfully with models and was complimented on the result. His associates cheered him on also, for they really admired what he was doing. He set out definitely tomake Scribner'sand theCentury, as getting into those publications was called, and after a time he succeeded in making an impression on their respective Art Directors, though no notable commissions were given him. From one he secured a poem, rather out of his mood to decorate, and from the other a short story; but somehow he could not feelthat either was a real opportunity. He wanted an appropriate subject or to sell them some of his scenes.
Building up a paying reputation was slow work. Although he was being mentioned here and there among artists, his name was anything but a significant factor with the public or with the Art Directors. He was still a promising beginner—growing, but not yet arrived by a long distance.
There was one editor who was inclined to see him at his real worth, but had no money to offer. This was Richard Wheeler, editor ofCraft, a rather hopeless magazine in a commercial sense, but devoted sincerely enough to art. Wheeler was a blond young man of poetic temperament, whose enthusiasm for Eugene's work made it easy for them to become friends.
It was through Wheeler that he met that winter Miriam Finch and Christina Channing, two women of radically different temperaments and professions, who opened for Eugene two entirely new worlds.
Miriam Finch was a sculptor by profession—a critic by temperament, with no great capacity for emotion in herself but an intense appreciation of its significance in others. To see her was to be immediately impressed with a vital force in womanhood. She was a woman who had never had a real youth or a real love affair, but clung to her ideal of both with a passionate, almost fatuous, faith that they could still be brought to pass. Wheeler had invited him to go round to her studio with him one evening. He was interested to know what Eugene would think of her. Miriam, already thirty-two when Eugene met her—a tiny, brown haired, brown eyed girl, with a slender, rather cat-like figure and a suavity of address and manner which was artistic to the finger tips. She had none of that budding beauty that is the glory of eighteen, but she was altogether artistic and delightful. Her hair encircled her head in a fluffy cloudy mass; her eyes moved quickly, with intense intelligence, feeling, humor, sympathy. Her lips were sweetly modelled after the pattern of a Cupid's bow and her smile was subtly ingratiating. Her sallow complexion matched her brown hair and the drab velvet or corduroy of her dress. There was a striking simplicity about the things she wore which gave her a distinctive air. Her clothes were seldom fashionable but always exceedingly becoming, for she saw herself as a whole and arrayed herself as a decorative composition from head to foot, with a sense of fitness in regard to self and life.
To such a nature as Eugene's, an intelligent, artistic, self-regulating and self-poised human being was always intenselymagnetic and gratifying. He turned to the capable person as naturally as a flower turns toward the light, finding a joy in contemplating the completeness and sufficiency of such a being. To have ideas of your own seemed to him a marvellous thing. To be able definitely to formulate your thoughts and reach positive and satisfying conclusions was a great and beautiful thing. From such personalities Eugene drank admiringly until his thirst was satiated—then he would turn away. If his thirst for what they had to give returned, he might come back—not otherwise.
Hitherto all his relationships with personages of this quality had been confined to the male sex, for he had not known any women of distinction. Beginning with Temple Boyle, instructor in the life class in Chicago, and Vincent Beers, instructor in the illustration class, he had encountered successively Jerry Mathews, Mitchell Goldfarb, Peter McHugh, David Smite and Jotham Blue, all men of intense personal feeling and convictions and men who had impressed him greatly. Now he was to encounter for the first time some forceful, really exceptional women of the same calibre. Stella Appleton, Margaret Duff, Ruby Kenny and Angela Blue were charming girls in their way, but they did not think for themselves. They were not organized, self-directed, self-controlled personalities in the way that Miriam Finch was. She would have recognized herself at once as being infinitely superior intellectually and artistically to any or all of them, while entertaining at the same time a sympathetic, appreciative understanding of their beauty, fitness, equality of value in the social scheme. She was a student of life, a critic of emotions and understanding, with keen appreciative intelligence, and yet longing intensely for just what Stella and Margaret and Ruby and even Angela had—youth, beauty, interest for men, the power or magnetism or charm of face and form to compel the impetuous passion of a lover. She wanted to be loved by someone who could love madly and beautifully, and this had never come to her.
Miss Finch's home, or rather studio, was with her family in East Twenty-sixth Street, where she occupied a north room on the third floor, but her presence in the bosom of that family did not prevent her from attaining an individuality and an exclusiveness which was most illuminating to Eugene. Her room was done in silver, brown and grey, with a great wax-festooned candlestick fully five feet high standing in one corner and a magnificent carved chest of early Flemish workmanship standing in another. There was a brown combination writing desk andbook-shelf which was arrayed with some of the most curious volumes—Pater's "Marius the Epicurean," Daudet's "Wives of Men of Genius," Richard Jefferies' "Story of My Heart," Stevenson's "Aes Triplex," "The Kasidah" of Richard Burton, "The House of Life" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche. The fact that they were here, after he had taken one look at the woman and the room, was to Eugene sufficient proof that they were important. He handled them curiously, reading odd paragraphs, nosing about, looking at pictures, and making rapid notes in his mental notebook. This was someone worth knowing, he felt that. He wanted to make a sufficiently favorable impression to be permitted to know her better.
Miriam Finch was at once taken with Eugene. There was such an air of vigor, inquiry, appreciation and understanding about him that she could not help being impressed. He seemed somewhat like a lighted lamp casting a soft, shaded, velvety glow. He went about her room, after his introduction, looking at her pictures, her bronzes and clays, asking after the creator of this, the painter of that, where a third thing came from.
"I never heard of one of these books," he said frankly, when he looked over the small, specially selected collection.
"There are some very interesting things here," she volunteered, coming to his side. His simple confession appealed to her. He was like a breath of fresh air. Richard Wheeler, who had brought him in, made no objection to being neglected. He wanted her to enjoy his find.
"You know," said Eugene, looking up from Burton's "Kasidah" and into her brown eyes, "New York gets me dizzy. It's so wonderful!"
"Just how?" she asked.
"It's so compact of wonderful things. I saw a shop the other day full of old jewelry and ornaments and quaint stones and clothes, and O Heaven! I don't know what all—more things than I had ever seen in my whole life before; and here in this quiet side street and this unpretentious house I find this room. Nothing seems to show on the outside; everything seems crowded to suffocation with luxury or art value on the inside."
"Are you talking about this room?" she ventured.
"Why, yes," he replied.
"Take note, Mr. Wheeler," she called, over her shoulder to her young editor friend. "This is the first time in my life that I have been accused of possessing luxury. When you write meup again I want you to give me credit for luxury. I like it."
"I'll certainly do it," said Wheeler.
"Yes. 'Art values' too."
"Yes. 'Art values.' I have it," said Wheeler.
Eugene smiled. He liked her vivacity. "I know what you mean," she added. "I've felt the same thing about Paris. You go into little unpretentious places there and come across such wonderful things—heaps and heaps of fine clothes, antiques, jewels. Where was it I read such an interesting article about that?"
"Not inCraftI hope?" ventured Wheeler.
"No, I don't think so.Harper's Bazaar, I believe."
"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Wheeler. "Harper's Bazaar!What rot!"
"But that's just what you ought to have. Why don't you do it—right?"
"I will," he said.
Eugene went to the piano and turned over a pile of music. Again he came across the unfamiliar, the strange, the obviously distinguished—Grieg's "Arabian Dance"; "Es war ein Traum" by Lassen; "Elegie" by Massenet; "Otidi" by Davydoff; "Nymphs and Shepherds" by Purcell—things whose very titles smacked of color and beauty. Gluck, Sgambati, Rossini, Tschaikowsky—the Italian Scarlatti—Eugene marvelled at what he did not know about music.
"Play something," he pleaded, and with a smile Miriam stepped to the piano.
"Do you know 'Es war ein Traum'?" she inquired.
"No," said he.
"That's lovely," put in Wheeler. "Sing it!"
Eugene had thought that possibly she sang, but he was not prepared for the burst of color that came with her voice. It was not a great voice, but sweet and sympathetic, equal to the tasks she set herself. She selected her music as she selected her clothes—to suit her capacity. The poetic, sympathetic reminiscence of the song struck home. Eugene was delighted.
"Oh," he exclaimed, bringing his chair close to the piano and looking into her face, "you sing beautifully."
She gave him a glittering smile.
"Now I'll sing anything you want for you if you go on like that."
"I'm crazy about music," he said; "I don't know anything about it, but I like this sort of thing."
"You like the really good things. I know. So do I."
He felt flattered and grateful. They went through "Otidi," "The Nightingale," "Elegie," "The Last Spring"—music Eugene had never heard before. But he knew at once that he was listening to playing which represented a better intelligence, a keener selective judgment, a finer artistic impulse than anyone he had ever known had possessed. Ruby played and Angela, the latter rather well, but neither had ever heard of these things he was sure. Ruby had only liked popular things; Angela the standard melodies—beautiful but familiar. Here was someone who ignored popular taste—was in advance of it. In all her music he had found nothing he knew. It grew on him as a significant fact. He wanted to be nice to her, to have her like him. So he drew close and smiled and she always smiled back. Like the others she liked his face, his mouth, his eyes, his hair.
"He's charming," she thought, when he eventually left; and his impression of her was of a woman who was notably and significantly distinguished.
But Miriam Finch's family, of which she seemed so independent, had not been without its influence on her. This family was of Middle West origin, and did not understand or sympathize very much with the artistic temperament. Since her sixteenth year, when Miriam had first begun to exhibit a definite striving toward the artistic, her parents had guarded her jealously against what they considered the corrupting atmosphere of the art world. Her mother had accompanied her from Ohio to New York, and lived with her while she studied art in the art school, chaperoning her everywhere. When it became advisable, as she thought, for Miriam to go abroad, she went with her. Miriam's artistic career was to be properly supervised. When she lived in the Latin Quarter in Paris her mother was with her; when she loitered in the atmosphere of the galleries and palaces in Rome it was with her mother at her side. At Pompeii and Herculaneum—in London and in Berlin—her mother, an iron-willed little woman at forty-five at that time, was with her. She was convinced that she knew exactly what was good for her daughter and had more or less made the girl accept her theories. Later, Miriam's personal judgment began to diverge slightly from that of her mother and then trouble began.
It was vague at first, hardly a definite, tangible thing in the daughter's mind, but later it grew to be a definite feeling that her life was being cramped. She had been warned off from association with this person and that; had been shown the pitfalls that surround the free, untrammelled life of the art studio. Marriage with the average artist was not to be considered. Modelling from the nude, particularly the nude of a man, was to her mother at first most distressing. She insisted on being present and for a long time her daughter thought that was all right. Finally the presence, the viewpoint, the intellectual insistence of her mother, became too irksome, and an open break followed. It was one of those family tragedies which almost kill conservative parents. Mrs. Finch's heart was practically broken.
The trouble with this break was that it came a little too late for Miriam's happiness. In the stress of this insistent chaperonage she had lost her youth—the period during which she felt she should have had her natural freedom. She hadlost the interest of several men who in her nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years had approached her longingly, but who could not stand the criticism of her mother. At twenty-eight when the break came the most delightful love period was over and she felt grieved and resentful.
At that time she had insisted on a complete and radical change for herself. She had managed to get, through one art dealer and another, orders for some of her spirited clay figurines. There was a dancing girl, a visualization of one of the moods of Carmencita, a celebrated dancer of the period, which had caught the public fancy—at least the particular art dealer who was handling her work for her had managed to sell some eighteen replicas of it at $175 each. Miss Finch's share of this was $100, each. There was another little thing, a six-inch bronze called "Sleep," which had sold some twenty replicas at $150 each, and was still selling. "The Wind," a figure crouching and huddling as if from cold, was also selling. It looked as though she might be able to make from three to four thousand dollars a year steadily.
She demanded of her mother at this time the right to a private studio, to go and come when she pleased, to go about alone wherever she wished, to have men and women come to her private apartment, and be entertained by her in her own manner. She objected to supervision in any form, cast aside criticism and declared roundly that she would lead her own life. She realized sadly while she was doing it, however, that the best was gone—that she had not had the wit or the stamina to do as she pleased at the time she most wanted to do so. Now she would be almost automatically conservative. She could not help it.
Eugene when he first met her felt something of this. He felt the subtlety of her temperament, her philosophic conclusions, what might be called her emotional disappointment. She was eager for life, which seemed to him odd, for she appeared to have so much. By degrees he got it out of her, for they came to be quite friendly and then he understood clearly just how things were.
By the end of three months and before Christina Channing appeared, Eugene had come to the sanest, cleanest understanding with Miss Finch that he had yet reached with any woman. He had dropped into the habit of calling there once and sometimes twice a week. He had learned to understand her point of view, which was detachedly æsthetic and rather removed from the world of the sensuous. Her ideal of a lover had been fixedto a certain extent by statues and poems of Greek youth—Hylas, Adonis, Perseus, and by those men of the Middle Ages painted by Millais, Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown. She had hoped for a youth with a classic outline of face, distinction of form, graciousness of demeanor and an appreciative intellect. He must be manly but artistic. It was a rather high ideal, not readily capable of attainment by a woman already turned thirty, but nevertheless worth dreaming about.
Although she had surrounded herself with talented youth as much as possible—both young men and young women—she had not come acrossthe one. There had been a number of times when, for a very little while, she had imagined she had found him, but had been compelled to see her fancies fail. All the youths she knew had been inclined to fall in love with girls younger than themselves—some to the interesting maidens she had introduced them to. It is hard to witness an ideal turning from yourself, its spiritual counterpart, and fixing itself upon some mere fleshly vision of beauty which a few years will cause to fade. Such had been her fate, however, and she was at times inclined to despair. When Eugene appeared she had almost concluded that love was not for her, and she did not flatter herself that he would fall in love with her. Nevertheless she could not help but be interested in him and look at times with a longing eye at his interesting face and figure. It was so obvious that if he loved at all it would be dramatically, in all probability, beautifully.
As time went on she took pains to be agreeable to him. He had, as it were, the freedom of her room. She knew of exhibitions, personalities, movements—in religion, art, science, government, literature. She was inclined to take an interest in socialism, and believed in righting the wrongs of the people. Eugene thought he did, but he was so keenly interested in life as a spectacle that he hadn't as much time to sympathize as he thought he ought to have. She took him to see exhibitions, and to meet people, being rather proud of a boy with so much talent; and she was pleased to find that he was so generally acceptable. People, particularly writers, poets, musicians—beginners in every field, were inclined to remember him. He was an easy talker, witty, quick to make himself at home and perfectly natural. He tried to be accurate in his judgments of things, and fair, but he was young and subject to strong prejudices. He appreciated her friendship, and did not seek to make their relationship more intimate. He knew that only a sincere proposal of marriagecould have won her, and he did not care enough for her for that. He felt himself bound to Angela and, curiously, he felt Miriam's age as a bar between them. He admired her tremendously and was learning in part through her what his ideal ought to be, but he was not drawn sufficiently to want to make love to her.
But in Christina Channing, whom he met shortly afterward, he found a woman of a more sensuous and lovable type, though hardly less artistic. Christina Channing was a singer by profession, living also in New York with her mother, but not, as Miss Finch had been, dominated by her so thoroughly, although she was still at the age when her mother could and did have considerable influence with her. She was twenty-seven years of age and so far, had not yet attained the eminence which subsequently was hers, though she was full of that buoyant self-confidence which makes for eventual triumph. So far she had studied ardently under various teachers, had had several love affairs, none serious enough to win her away from her chosen profession, and had gone through the various experiences of those who begin ignorantly to do something in art and eventually reach experience and understanding of how the world is organized and what they will have to do to succeed.
Although Miss Channing's artistic sense did not rise to that definite artistic expression in her material surroundings which characterized Miss Finch's studio atmosphere, it went much farther in its expression of her joy in life. Her voice, a rich contralto, deep, full, colorful, had a note of pathos and poignancy which gave a touch of emotion to her gayest songs. She could play well enough to accompany herself with delicacy and emphasis. She was at present one of the soloists with the New York Symphony Orchestra, with the privilege of accepting occasional outside engagements. The following Fall she was preparing to make a final dash to Germany to see if she could not get an engagement with a notable court opera company and so pave the way for a New York success. She was already quite well known in musical circles as a promising operatic candidate and her eventual arrival would be not so much a question of talent as of luck.
While these two women fascinated Eugene for the time being, his feeling for Angela continued unchanged; for though she suffered in an intellectual or artistic comparison, he felt that she was richer emotionally. There was a poignancy in her love letters, an intensity about her personal feelings when in his presence which moved him in spite of himself—an ache went with her which brought a memory of the tales of Sappho andMarguerite Gautier. It occurred to him now that if he flung her aside it might go seriously with her. He did not actually think of doing anything of the sort, but he was realizing that there was a difference between her and intellectual women like Miriam Finch. Besides that, there was a whole constellation of society women swimming into his ken—women whom he only knew, as yet, through the newspapers and the smart weeklies like Town Topics and Vogue, who were presenting still a third order of perfection. Vaguely he was beginning to see that the world was immense and subtle, and that there were many things to learn about women that he had never dreamed of.
Christina Channing was a rival of Angela's in one sense, that of bodily beauty. She had a tall perfectly rounded form, a lovely oval face, a nut brown complexion with the rosy glow of health showing in cheeks and lips, and a mass of blue black hair. Her great brown eyes were lustrous and sympathetic.
Eugene met her through the good offices of Shotmeyer, who had been given by some common friend in Boston a letter of introduction to her. He had spoken of Eugene as being a very brilliant young artist and his friend, and remarked that he would like to bring him up some evening to hear her sing. Miss Channing acquiesced, for she had seen some of his drawings and was struck by the poetic note in them. Shotmeyer, vain of his notable acquaintances—who in fact tolerated him for his amusing gossip—described Miss Channing's voice to Eugene and asked him if he did not want to call on her some evening. "Delighted," said Eugene.
The appointment was made and together they went to Miss Channing's suite in a superior Nineteenth Street boarding house. Miss Channing received them, arrayed in a smooth, close fitting dress of black velvet, touched with red. Eugene was reminded of the first costume in which he had seen Ruby. He was dazzled. As for her, as she told him afterward, she was conscious of a peculiar illogical perturbation.
"When I put on my ribbon that night," she told him, "I was going to put on a dark blue silk one I had just bought and then I thought 'No, he'll like me better in a red one.' Isn't that curious? I just felt as though you were going to like me—as though we might know each other better. That young man—what's his name—described you so accurately." It was months afterward when she confessed that.
When Eugene entered it was with the grand air he had acquired since his life had begun to broaden in the East. He took his relationship with talent, particularly female talent, seriously.He stood up very straight, walked with a noticeable stride, drove an examining glance into the very soul of the person he was looking at. He was quick to get impressions, especially of talent. He could feel ability in another. When he looked at Miss Channing he felt it like a strong wave—the vibrating wave of an intense consciousness.
She greeted him, extending a soft white hand. They spoke of how they had heard of each other. Eugene somehow made her feel his enthusiasm for her art. "Music is the finer thing," he said, when she spoke of his own gift.
Christina's dark brown eyes swept him from head to foot. He was like his pictures, she thought—and as good to look at.
He was introduced to her mother. They sat down, talking, and presently Miss Channing sang—"Che faro senza Euridice." Eugene felt as if she were singing to him. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips red.
Her mother remarked after she had finished, "You're in splendid voice this evening, Christina."
"I feel particularly fit," she replied.
"A wonderful voice—it's like a big red poppy or a great yellow orchid!" cried Eugene.
Christina thrilled. The description caught her fancy. It seemed true. She felt something of that in the sounds to which she gave utterance.
"Please sing 'Who is Sylvia,'" he begged a little later. She complied gladly.
"That was written for you," he said softly as she ceased, for he had come close to the piano. "You image Sylvia for me." Her cheeks colored warmly.
"Thanks," she nodded, and her eyes spoke too. She welcomed his daring and she was glad to let him know it.