CHAPTER XXVIII
The studio of Messrs. Smite, MacHugh and Witla in Waverley Place was concerned the following October with a rather picturesque event. Even in the city the time when the leaves begin to yellow and fall brings a sense of melancholy, augmented by those preliminaries of winter, gray, lowery days, with scraps of paper, straws, bits of wood blown about by gusty currents of air through the streets, making it almost disagreeable to be abroad. The fear of cold and storm and suffering among those who have little was already apparent. Apparent too was the air of renewed vitality common to those who have spent an idle summer and are anxious to work again. Shopping and marketing and barter and sale were at high key. The art world, the social world, the manufacturing world, the professional worlds of law, medicine, finance, literature, were bubbling with a feeling of the necessity to do and achieve. The whole city, stung by the apprehension of winter, had an atmosphere of emprise and energy.
In this atmosphere, with a fairly clear comprehension of the elements which were at work making the colour of the life about him, was Eugene, digging away at the task he had set himself. Since leaving Angela he had come to the conclusion that he must complete the jointings for the exhibition which had been running in his mind during the last two years. There was no other way for him to make a notable impression—he saw that. Since he had returned he had gone through various experiences: the experience of having Angela tell him that she was sure there was something wrong with her; an impression sincere enough, but based on an excited and overwrought imagination of evil to follow, and having no foundation in fact. Eugene was as yet, despite his several experiences, not sufficiently informed in such affairs to know. His lack of courage would have delayed him from asking if he had known. In the next place, facing this crisis, he had declared that he would marry her, and because of her distressed condition he thought he might as well do it now. He had wanted time to do some of the pictures he was working on, to take in a little money for drawing, to find a suitable place to live in. He had looked at various studios in various sections of the city and had found nothing, as yet, which answered to his taste or his purse. Anything with a proper light, a bath, a suitable sleeping room, and an inconspicuous chamber which might be turned into a kitchen, was difficult to find. Prices were high, ranging from fifty to one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty a month. There were some new studios being erected for the rich loungers and idlers which commanded, so he understood, three or four thousand dollars a year. He wondered if he should ever attain to any such magnificence through his art.
Again, in taking a studio for Angela and himself there was the matter of furniture. The studio he had with Smite and MacHugh was more or less of a camp. The work room was bare of carpets or rugs. The two folding beds and the cot which graced their individual chambers were heirlooms from ancient predecessors—substantial but shabby. Beyond various drawings, three easels, and a chest of drawers for each, there was no suitable household equipment. A woman came twice a week to clean, send out the linen, and make up the beds.
To live with Angela required, in his judgment, many and much more significant things. His idea of a studio was some such one as that now occupied by Miriam Finch or Norma Whitmore. There ought to be furniture of a period—old Flemish or Colonial, Heppelwhite or Chippendale or Sheraton, such as he saw occasionally knocking about in curio shops and second hand stores. It could be picked up if he had time. He was satisfied that Angela knew nothing of these things. There ought to be rugs, hangings of tapestry, bits of brass, pewter, copper, old silver, if he could afford it. He had an idea of some day obtaining a figure of the Christ in brass or plaster, hung upon a rough cross of walnut or teak, which he could hang or stand in some corner as one might a shrine and place before it two great candlesticks with immense candles smoked and dripping with wax. These lighted in a dark studio, with the outlines of the Christ flickering in the shadows behind would give the desired atmosphere to his studio. Such an equipment as he dreamed of would have cost in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars.
Of course this was not to be thought of at this period. He had no more than that in ready cash. He was writing to Angela about his difficulties in finding a suitable place, when he heard of a studio in Washington Square South, which its literary possessor was going to quit for the winter. It was, so he understood, handsomely furnished, and was to be let for the rent of the studio. The owner wanted someone who would take care of it by occupying it for him until he should return the following fall. Eugene hurried round to look at it and, taken with the location, the appearance of the square from the windows, the beauty of the furnishings, felt that he would like to live here. This would be the way to introduce Angela to New York. This would be the first and proper impression to give her. Here, as in every well arranged studio he had yet seen were books, pictures, bits of statuary, implements of copper and some few of silver. There was a great fish net dyed green and spangled with small bits of mirror to look like scales which hung as a veil between the studio proper and an alcove. There was a piano done in black walnut, and odd pieces of furniture, Mission, Flemish, Venetian of the sixteenth century and English of the seventeenth, which, despite that diversity offered a unity of appearance and a harmony of usefulness. There was one bed room, a bath, and a small partitioned section which could be used as a kitchen. With a few of his pictures judiciously substituted he could see a perfect abode here for himself and his wife. The rent was fifty dollars. He decided that he would risk it.
Having gone so far as to indicate that he would take it—he was made to feel partially resigned to marriage by the very appearance of this place—he decided that he would marry in October. Angela could come to New York or Buffalo—she had never seen Niagara Falls—and they could be married there. She had spoken recently of visiting her brother at West Point. Then they could come here and settle down. He decided that this must be so, wrote to her to that effect, and vaguely hinted to Smite and MacHugh that he might get married shortly.
This was a great blow to his partners in art, for Eugene was very popular with them. He had the habit, with those he liked, of jesting constantly. "Look at the look of noble determination on Smite's brow this morning," he would comment cheerfully on getting up; or "MacHugh, you lazy lout, crawl out and earn your living."
MacHugh's nose, eyes and ears would be comfortably buried in the folds of a blanket.
"These hack artists," Eugene would sigh disconsolately. "There's not much to be made out of them. A pile of straw and a couple of boiled potatoes a day is all they need."