CHAPTER XXII
The chief trouble with his present situation, and with the entrance of these two women into his life, and it had begun to be a serious one to him, was that he was not making money. He had been able to earn about $1200 the first year; the second he made a little over two thousand, and this third year he was possibly doing a little better. But in view of what he saw around him and what he now knew of life, it was nothing. New York presented a spectacle of material display such as he had never known existed. The carriages on Fifth Avenue, the dinners at the great hotels, the constant talk of society functions in the newspapers, made his brain dizzy. He was inclined to idle about the streets, to watch the handsomely dressed crowds, to consider the evidences of show and refinement everywhere, and he came to the conclusion that he was not living at all, but existing. Art as he had first dreamed of it, art had seemed not only a road to distinction but also to affluence. Now, as he studied those about him, he found that it was not so. Artists were never tremendously rich, he learned. He remembered reading in Balzac's story "Cousin Betty," of a certain artist of great distinction who had been allowed condescendingly by one of the rich families of Paris to marry a daughter, but it was considered a great come down for her. He had hardly been able to credit the idea at the time, so exalted was his notion of the artist. But now he was beginning to see that it represented the world's treatment of artists. There were in America a few who were very popular – meretriciously so he thought in certain cases – who were said to be earning from ten to fifteen thousand a year. How high would that place them, he asked himself, in that world of real luxury which was made up of the so-called four hundred– the people of immense wealth and social position. He had read in the papers that it took from fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars a year to clothe a débutante. It was nothing uncommon, he heard, for a man to spend from fifteen to twenty dollars on his dinner at the restaurant. The prices he heard that tailors demanded – that dressmakers commanded, the display of jewels and expensive garments at the opera, made the poor little income of an artist look like nothing at all. Miss Finch was constantly telling him of the show and swagger she met with in her circle of acquaintances, for her tact and adaptability had gained her the friendship of a number of society people. Miss Channing, when he came to know her better, made constant references to things she came in contact with – great singers or violinists paid $1000 a night, or the tremendous salaries commanded by the successful opera stars. He began, as he looked at his own meagre little income, to feel shabby again, and run down, much as he had during those first days in Chicago. Why, art, outside the fame, was nothing. It did not make for real living. It made for a kind of mental blooming, which everybody recognized, but you could be a poor, sick, hungry, shabby genius – you actually could. Look at Verlaine, who had recently died in Paris.
A part of this feeling was due to the opening of a golden age of luxury in New York, and the effect the reiterated sight of it was having on Eugene. Huge fortunes had been amassed in the preceding fifty years and now there were thousands of residents in the great new city who were worth anything from one to fifty and in some instances a hundred million dollars. The metropolitan area, particularly Manhattan Island above Fifty-ninth Street, was growing like a weed. Great hotels were being erected in various parts of the so-called "white light" district. There was beginning, just then, the first organized attempt of capital to supply a new need – the modern sumptuous, eight, ten and twelve story apartment house, which was to house the world of newly rich middle class folk who were pouring into New York from every direction. Money was being made in the West, the South and the North, and as soon as those who were making it had sufficient to permit them to live in luxury for the rest of their days they were moving East, occupying these expensive apartments, crowding the great hotels, patronizing the sumptuous restaurants, giving the city its air of spendthrift luxury. All the things which catered to showy material living were beginning to flourish tremendously, art and curio shops, rug shops, decorative companies dealing with the old and the new in hangings, furniture, objects of art; dealers in paintings, jewelry stores, china and glassware houses – anything and everything which goes to make life comfortable and brilliant. Eugene, as he strolled about the city, saw this, felt the change, realized that the drift was toward greater population, greater luxury, greater beauty. His mind was full of the necessity of living now. He was young now; he was vigorous now; he was keen now; in a few years he might not be – seventy years was the allotted span and twenty-five of his had already gone. How would it be if he never came into this luxury, was never allowed to enter society, was never permitted to live as wealth was now living! The thought hurt him. He felt an eager desire to tear wealth and fame from the bosom of the world. Life must give him his share. If it did not he would curse it to his dying day. So he felt when he was approaching twenty-six.
The effect of Christina Channing's friendship for him was particularly to emphasize this. She was not so much older than he, was possessed of very much the same temperament, the same hopes and aspirations, and she discerned almost as clearly as he did the current of events. New York was to witness a golden age of luxury. It was already passing into it. Those who rose to distinction in any field, particularly music or the stage, were likely to share in a most notable spectacle of luxury. Christina hoped to. She was sure she would. After a few conversations with Eugene she was inclined to feel that he would. He was so brilliant, so incisive.
"You have such a way with you," she said the second time he came. "You are so commanding. You make me think you can do almost anything you want to."
"Oh, no," he deprecated. "Not as bad as that. I have just as much trouble as anyone getting what I want."
"Oh, but you will though. You have ideas."
It did not take these two long to reach an understanding. They confided to each other their individual histories, with reservations, of course, at first. Christina told him of her musical history, beginning at Hagerstown, Maryland, and he went back to his earliest days in Alexandria. They discussed the differences in parental control to which they had been subject. He learned of her father's business, which was that of oyster farming, and confessed on his part to being the son of a sewing machine agent. They talked of small town influences, early illusions, the different things they had tried to do. She had sung in the local Methodist church, had once thought she would like to be a milliner, had fallen in the hands of a teacher who tried to get her to marry him and she had been on the verge of consenting. Something happened – she went away for the summer, or something of that sort, and changed her mind.
After an evening at the theatre with her, a late supper one night and a third call, to spend a quiet evening in her room, he took her by the hand. She was standing by the piano and he was looking at her cheeks, her large inquiring eyes, her smooth rounded neck and chin.
"You like me," he said suddenly à propos of nothing save the mutual attraction that was always running strong between them.
Without hesitation she nodded her head, though the bright blood mounted to her neck and cheeks.
"You are so lovely to me," he went on, "that words are of no value. I can paint you. Or you can sing me what you are, but mere words won't show it. I have been in love before, but never with anyone like you."
"Are you in love?" she asked naïvely.
"What is this?" he asked and slipped his arms about her, drawing her close.
She turned her head away, leaving her rosy cheek near his lips. He kissed that, then her mouth and her neck. He held her chin and looked into her eyes.
"Be careful," she said, "mamma may come in."
"Hang mamma!" he laughed.
"She'll hang you if she sees you. Mamma would never suspect me of anything like this."
"That shows how little mamma knows of her Christina," he answered.
"She knows enough at that," she confessed gaily. "Oh, if we were only up in the mountains now," she added.
"What mountains," he inquired curiously.
"The Blue Ridge. We have a bungalow up at Florizel. You must come up when we go there next summer."
"Will mamma be there?" he asked.
"And papa," she laughed.
"And I suppose Cousin Annie."
"No, brother George will be."
"Nix for the bungalow," he replied, using a slang word that had become immensely popular.
"Oh, but I know all the country round there. There are some lovely walks and drives." She said this archly, naïvely, suggestively, her bright face lit with an intelligence that seemed perfection.
"Well – such being the case!" he smiled, "and meanwhile – "
"Oh, meanwhile you just have to wait. You see how things are." She nodded her head towards an inside room where Mrs. Channing was lying down with a slight headache. "Mamma doesn't leave me very often."
Eugene did not know exactly how to take Christina. He had never encountered this attitude before. Her directness, in connection with so much talent, such real ability, rather took him by surprise. He did not expect it – did not think she would confess affection for him; did not know just what she meant by speaking in the way she did of the bungalow and Florizel. He was flattered, raised in his own self-esteem. If such a beautiful, talented creature as this could confess her love for him, what a personage he must be. And she was thinking of freer conditions – just what?
He did not want to press the matter too closely then and she was not anxious to have him do so – she preferred to be enigmatic. But there was a light of affection and admiration in her eye which made him very proud and happy with things just as they were.
As she said, there was little chance for love-making under conditions then existing. Her mother was with her most of the time. Christina invited Eugene to come and hear her sing at the Philharmonic Concerts; so once in a great ball-room at the Waldorf-Astoria and again in the imposing auditorium of Carnegie Hall and a third time in the splendid auditorium of the Arion Society, he had the pleasure of seeing her walk briskly to the footlights, the great orchestra waiting, the audience expectant, herself arch, assured – almost defiant, he thought, and so beautiful. When the great house thundered its applause he was basking in one delicious memory of her.
"Last night she had her arms about my neck. Tonight when I call and we are alone she will kiss me. That beautiful, distinguished creature standing there bowing and smiling loves me and no one else. If I were to ask her she would marry me – if I were in a position and had the means."
"If I were in a position – " that thought cut him, for he knew that he was not. He could not marry her. In reality she would not have him knowing how little he made – or would she? He wondered.
CHAPTER XXIII
Towards the end of spring Eugene concluded he would rather go up in the mountains near Christina's bungalow this summer, than back to see Angela. The memory of that precious creature was, under the stress and excitement of metropolitan life, becoming a little tarnished. His recollections of her were as delightful as ever, as redolent of beauty, but he was beginning to wonder. The smart crowd in New York was composed of a different type. Angela was sweet and lovely, but would she fit in?
Meanwhile Miriam Finch with her subtle eclecticism continued her education of Eugene. She was as good as a school. He would sit and listen to her descriptions of plays, her appreciation of books, her summing up of current philosophies, and he would almost feel himself growing. She knew so many people, could tell him where to go to see just such and such an important thing. All the startling personalities, the worth while preachers, the new actors, somehow she knew all about them.
"Now, Eugene," she would exclaim on seeing him, "you positively must go and see Haydon Boyd in 'The Signet,'" or – "see Elmina Deming in her new dances," or – "look at the pictures of Winslow Homer that are being shown at Knoedler's."
She would explain with exactness why she wanted him to see them, what she thought they would do for him. She frankly confessed to him that she considered him a genius and always insisted on knowing what new thing he was doing. When any work of his appeared and she liked it she was swift to tell him. He almost felt as if he owned her room and herself, as if all that she was – her ideas, her friends, her experiences – belonged to him. He could go and draw on them by sitting at her feet or going with her somewhere. When spring came she liked to walk with him, to listen to his comments on nature and life.
"That's splendid!" she would exclaim. "Now, why don't you write that?" or "why don't you paint that?"
He showed her some of his poems once and she had made copies of them and pasted them in a book of what she called exceptional things. So he was coddled by her.
In another way Christina was equally nice. She was fond of telling Eugene how much she thought of him, how nice she thought he was. "You're so big and smarty," she said to him once, affectionately, pinioning his arms and looking into his eyes. "I like the way you part your hair, too! You're kind o' like an artist ought to be!"
"That's the way to spoil me," he replied. "Let me tell you how nice you are. Want to know how nice you are?"
"Uh-uh," she smiled, shaking her head to mean "no."
"Wait till we get to the mountains. I'll tell you." He sealed her lips with his, holding her until her breath was almost gone.
"Oh," she exclaimed; "you're terrible. You're like steel."
"And you're like a big red rose. Kiss me!"
From Christina he learned all about the musical world and musical personalities. He gained an insight into the different forms of music, operatic, symphonic, instrumental. He learned of the different forms of composition, the terminology, the mystery of the vocal cords, the methods of training. He learned of the jealousies within the profession, and what the best musical authorities thought of such and such composers, or singers. He learned how difficult it was to gain a place in the operatic world, how bitterly singers fought each other, how quick the public was to desert a fading star. Christina took it all so unconcernedly that he almost loved her for her courage. She was so wise and so good natured.
"You have to give up a lot of things to be a good artist," she said to Eugene one day. "You can't have the ordinary life, and art too."
"Just what do you mean, Chrissy?" he asked, petting her hand, for they were alone together.
"Why, you can't get married very well and have children, and you can't do much in a social way. Oh, I know they do get married, but sometimes I think it is a mistake. Most of the singers I know don't do so very well tied down by marriage."
"Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curiously.
"I don't know," she replied, realizing what he was driving at. "I'd want to think about that. A woman artist is in a d – of a position anyway," using the letter d only to indicate the word "devil." "She has so many things to think about."
"For instance?"
"Oh, what people think and her family think, and I don't know what all. They ought to get a new sex for artists – like they have for worker bees."
Eugene smiled. He knew what she was driving at. But he did not know how long she had been debating the problem of her virginity as conflicting with her love of distinction in art. She was nearly sure she did not want to complicate her art life with marriage. She was almost positive that success on the operatic stage – particularly the great opportunity for the beginner abroad – was complicated with some liaison. Some escaped, but it was not many. She was wondering in her own mind whether she owed it to current morality to remain absolutely pure. It was assumed generally that girls should remain virtuous and marry, but this did not necessarily apply to her – should it apply to the artistic temperament? Her mother and her family troubled her. She was virtuous, but youth and desire had given her some bitter moments. And here was Eugene to emphasize it.
"It is a difficult problem," he said sympathetically, wondering what she would eventually do. He felt keenly that her attitude in regard to marriage affected his relationship to her. Was she wedded to her art at the expense of love?
"It's a big problem," she said and went to the piano to sing.
He half suspected for a little while after this that she might be contemplating some radical step – what, he did not care to say to himself, but he was intensely interested in her problem. This peculiar freedom of thought astonished him – broadened his horizon. He wondered what his sister Myrtle would think of a girl discussing marriage in this way – the to be or not to be of it – what Sylvia? He wondered if many girls did that. Most of the women he had known seemed to think more logically along these lines than he did. He remembered asking Ruby once whether she didn't think illicit love was wrong and hearing her reply, "No. Some people thought it was wrong, but that didn't make it so to her." Here was another girl with another theory.
They talked more of love, and he wondered why she wanted him to come up to Florizel in the summer. She could not be thinking – no, she was too conservative. He began to suspect, though, that she would not marry him – would not marry anyone at present. She merely wanted to be loved for awhile, no doubt.
May came and with it the end of Christina's concert work and voice study so far as New York was concerned. She had been in and out of the city all the winter – to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Paul and now after a winter's hard work retired to Hagerstown with her mother for a few weeks prior to leaving for Florizel.
"You ought to come down here," she wrote to Eugene early in June. "There is a sickle moon that shines in my garden and the roses are in bloom. Oh, the odors are so sweet, and the dew! Some of our windows open out level with the grass and I sing! I sing!! I sing!!!"
He had a notion to run down but restrained himself, for she told him that they were leaving in two weeks for the mountains. He had a set of drawings to complete for a magazine for which they were in a hurry. So he decided to wait till that was done.
In late June he went up to the Blue Ridge, in Southern Pennsylvania, where Florizel was situated. He thought at first he would be invited to stay at the Channing bungalow, but Christina warned him that it would be safer and better for him to stay at one of the adjoining hotels. There were several on the slope of adjacent hills at prices ranging from five to ten dollars a day. Though this was high for Eugene he decided to go. He wanted to be with this marvellous creature – to see just what she did mean by wishing they were in the mountains together.
He had saved some eight hundred dollars, which was in a savings bank and he withdrew three hundred for his little outing. He took Christina a very handsomely bound copy of Villon, of whom she was fond, and several volumes of new verse. Most of these, chosen according to his most recent mood, were sad in their poetic texture; they all preached the nothingness of life, its sadness, albeit the perfection of its beauty.
At this time Eugene had quite reached the conclusion that there was no hereafter – there was nothing save blind, dark force moving aimlessly – where formerly he had believed vaguely in a heaven and had speculated as to a possible hell. His reading had led him through some main roads and some odd by-paths of logic and philosophy. He was an omnivorous reader now and a fairly logical thinker. He had already tackled Spencer's "First Principles," which had literally torn him up by the roots and set him adrift and from that had gone back to Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Spinoza and Schopenhauer – men who ripped out all his private theories and made him wonder what life really was. He had walked the streets for a long time after reading some of these things, speculating on the play of forces, the decay of matter, the fact that thought-forms had no more stability than cloud-forms. Philosophies came and went, governments came and went, races arose and disappeared. He walked into the great natural history museum of New York once to discover enormous skeletons of prehistoric animals – things said to have lived two, three, five millions of years before his day and he marvelled at the forces which produced them, the indifference, apparently, with which they had been allowed to die. Nature seemed lavish of its types and utterly indifferent to the persistence of anything. He came to the conclusion that he was nothing, a mere shell, a sound, a leaf which had no general significance, and for the time being it almost broke his heart. It tended to smash his egotism, to tear away his intellectual pride. He wandered about dazed, hurt, moody, like a lost child. But he was thinking persistently.
Then came Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lubbock – a whole string of British thinkers who fortified the original conclusions of the others, but showed him a beauty, a formality, a lavishness of form and idea in nature's methods which fairly transfixed him. He was still reading – poets, naturalists, essayists, but he was still gloomy. Life was nothing save dark forces moving aimlessly.
The manner in which he applied this thinking to his life was characteristic and individual. To think that beauty should blossom for a little while and disappear for ever seemed sad. To think that his life should endure but for seventy years and then be no more was terrible. He and Angela were chance acquaintances – chemical affinities – never to meet again in all time. He and Christina, he and Ruby – he and anyone – a few bright hours were all they could have together, and then would come the great silence, dissolution, and he would never be anymore. It hurt him to think of this, but it made him all the more eager to live, to be loved while he was here. If he could only have a lovely girl's arms to shut him in safely always!
It was while he was in this mood that he reached Florizel after a long night's ride, and Christina who was a good deal of a philosopher and thinker herself at times was quick to notice it. She was waiting at the depot with a dainty little trap of her own to take him for a drive.
The trap rolled out along the soft, yellow, dusty roads. The mountain dew was still in the earth though and the dust was heavy with damp and not flying. Green branches of trees hung low over them, charming vistas came into view at every turn. Eugene kissed her, for there was no one to see, twisting her head to kiss her lips at leisure.
"It's a blessed thing this horse is tame or we'd be in for some accident. What makes you so moody?" she said.
"I'm not moody – or am I? I've been thinking a lot of things of late – of you principally."
"Do I make you sad?"
"From one point of view, yes."
"And what is that, sir?" she asked with an assumption of severity.
"You are so beautiful, so wonderful, and life is so short."
"You have only fifty years to love me in," she laughed, calculating his age. "Oh, Eugene, what a boy you are! – Wait a minute," she added after a pause, drawing the horse to a stop under some trees. "Hold these," she said, offering him the reins. He took them and she put her arms about his neck. "Now, you silly," she exclaimed, "I love you, love you, love you! There was never anyone quite like you. Will that help you?" she smiled into his eyes.
"Yes," he answered, "but it isn't enough. Seventy years isn't enough. Eternity isn't enough of life as it is now."
"As it is now," she echoed and then took the reins, for she felt what he felt, the need of persistent youth and persistent beauty to keep it as it should be, and these things would not stay.