Eugene was reaching the point where he had no more money and was
compelled to think by what process he would continue to make a living in
the future. Worry and a hypochondriacal despair had reduced his body to
a comparatively gaunt condition. His eyes had a nervous, apprehensive
look. He would walk about speculating upon the mysteries of nature,
wondering how he was to get out of this, what was to become of him, how
soon, if ever, another picture would be sold, when? Angela, from having
fancied that his illness was a mere temporary indisposition, had come to
feel that he might be seriously affected for some time. He was not sick
physically: he could walk and eat and talk vigorously enough, but he
could not work and he was worrying, worrying, worrying.
Angela was quite as well aware as Eugene that their finances were in a
bad way or threatening to become so, though he said nothing at all about
them. He was ashamed to confess at this day, after their very
conspicuous beginning in New York, that he was in fear of not doing
well. How silly--he with all his ability! Surely he would get over this,
and soon.
Angela's economical upbringing and naturally saving instinct stood her
in good stead now, for she could market with the greatest care, purchase
to the best advantage, make every scrap and penny count. She knew how to
make her own clothes, as Eugene had found out when he first visited
Blackwood, and was good at designing hats. Although she had thought in
New York, when Eugene first began to make money, that now she would
indulge in tailor-made garments and the art of an excellent dressmaker,
she had never done so. With true frugality she had decided to wait a
little while, and then Eugene's health having failed she had not the
chance any more. Fearing the possible long duration of this storm she
had begun to mend and clean and press and make over whatever seemed to
require it. Even when Eugene suggested that she get something new she
would not do it. Her consideration for their future--the difficulty he
might have in making a living, deterred her.
Eugene noted this, though he said nothing. He was not unaware of the
fear that she felt, the patience she exhibited, the sacrifice she made
of her own whims and desires to his, and he was not entirely
unappreciative. It was becoming very apparent to him that she had no
life outside his own--no interests. She was his shadow, his alter ego,
his servant, his anything he wanted her to be. "Little Pigtail" was one
of his jesting pet names for her because in the West as a boy they had
always called anyone who ran errands for others a pigtailer. In playing
"one old cat," if one wanted another to chase the struck balls he would
say: "You pig-tail for me, Willie, will you?" And Angela was his "little
pigtail."
There were no further grounds for jealousy during the time, almost two
years, in which they were wandering around together, for the reason that
she was always with him, almost his sole companion, and that they did
not stay long enough in any one place and under sufficiently free social
conditions to permit him to form those intimacies which might have
resulted disastrously. Some girls did take his eye--the exceptional in
youth and physical perfection were always doing that, but he had no
chance or very little of meeting them socially. They were not living
with people they knew, were not introduced in the local social worlds,
which they visited. Eugene could only look at these maidens whom he
chanced to spy from time to time, and wish that he might know them
better. It was hard to be tied down to a conventional acceptance of
matrimony--to pretend that he was interested in beauty only in a
sociological way. He had to do it before Angela though (and all
conventional people for that matter), for she objected strenuously to
the least interest he might manifest in any particular woman. All his
remarks had to be general and guarded in their character. At the least
show of feeling or admiration Angela would begin to criticize his choice
and to show him wherein his admiration was ill-founded. If he were
especially interested she would attempt to tear his latest ideal to
pieces. She had no mercy, and he could see plainly enough on what her
criticism was based. It made him smile but he said nothing. He even
admired her for her heroic efforts to hold her own, though every victory
she seemed to win served only to strengthen the bars of his own cage.
It was during this time that he could not help learning and appreciating
just how eager, patient and genuine was her regard for his material
welfare. To her he was obviously the greatest man in the world, a great
painter, a great thinker, a great lover, a great personality every way.
It didn't make so much difference to her at this time that he wasn't
making any money. He would sometime, surely, and wasn't she getting it
all in fame anyhow, now? Why, to be Mrs. Eugene Witla, after what she
had seen of him in New York and Paris, what more could she want? Wasn't
it all right for her to rake and scrape now, to make her own clothes and
hats, save, mend, press and patch? He would come out of all this silly
feeling about other women once he became a little older, and then he
would be all right. Anyhow he appeared to love her now; and that was
something. Because he was lonely, fearsome, uncertain of himself,
uncertain of the future, he welcomed these unsparing attentions on her
part, and this deceived her. Who else would give them to him, he
thought; who else would be so faithful in times like these? He almost
came to believe that he could love her again, be faithful to her, if he
could keep out of the range of these other enticing personalities. If
only he could stamp out this eager desire for other women, their praise
and their beauty!
But this was more because he was sick and lonely than anything else. If
he had been restored to health then and there, if prosperity had
descended on him as he so eagerly dreamed, it would have been the same
as ever. He was as subtle as nature itself; as changeable as a
chameleon. But two things were significant and real--two things to which
he was as true and unvarying as the needle to the pole--his love of the
beauty of life which was coupled with his desire to express it in color,
and his love of beauty in the form of the face of a woman, or rather
that of a girl of eighteen. That blossoming of life in womanhood at
eighteen!--there was no other thing under the sun like it to him. It was
like the budding of the trees in spring; the blossoming of flowers in
the early morning; the odor of roses and dew, the color of bright waters
and clear jewels. He could not be faithless to that. He could not get
away from it. It haunted him like a joyous vision, and the fact that the
charms of Stella and Ruby and Angela and Christina and Frieda in whom it
had been partially or wholly shadowed forth at one time or another had
come and gone, made little difference. It remained clear and demanding.
He could not escape it--the thought; he could not deny it. He was
haunted by this, day after day, and hour after hour; and when he said to
himself that he was a fool, and that it would lure him as a
will-o'-the-wisp to his destruction and that he could find no profit in
it ultimately, still it would not down. The beauty of youth; the beauty
of eighteen! To him life without it was a joke, a shabby scramble, a
work-horse job, with only silly material details like furniture and
houses and steel cars and stores all involved in a struggle for what? To
make a habitation for more shabby humanity? Never! To make a habitation
for beauty? Certainly! What beauty? The beauty of old age?--How silly!
The beauty of middle age? Nonsense! The beauty of maturity? No! The
beauty of youth? Yes. The beauty of eighteen. No more and no less. That
was the standard, and the history of the world proved it. Art,
literature, romance, history, poetry--if they did not turn on this and
the lure of this and the wars and sins because of this, what did they
turn on? He was for beauty. The history of the world justified him. Who
could deny it?