The Genius (9 page)

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-colored 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.

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.