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The "Genius"
CHAPTER XXXIX
The results of this evening were most pleasant, but in some ways disconcerting. It became perfectly plain that Colfax was anxious to have Eugene desert the Kalvin Company and come over to him.
"You people over there," he said to him at one stage of the conversation, "have an excellent company, but it doesn't compare with this organization which we are revising. Why, what are your two publications to our seven? You have one eminently successful one – the one you're on – and no book business whatsoever! We have seven publications all doing excellently well, and a book business that is second to none in the country. You know that. If it hadn't been that the business had been horribly mismanaged it would never have come into my hands at all. Why, Witla, I want to tell you one little fact in connection with that organization which will illustrate everything else which might be said in connection with it before I came here! They were wasting twenty thousand dollars a year on ink alone. We were publishing a hundred absolutely useless books that did not sell enough to pay for the cost of printing, let alone the paper, plates, typework and cost of distribution. I think it's safe to say we lost over a hundred thousand dollars a year that way. The magazines were running down. They haven't waked up sufficiently yet to suit me. But I'm looking for men. I'm really looking for one man eventually who will take charge of all that editorial and art work and make it into something exceptional. He wants to be a man who can handle men. If I can get the right man I will even include the advertising department, for that really belongs with the literary and art sections. It depends on the man."
He looked significantly at Eugene, who sat there stroking his upper lip with his hand.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "that ought to make a very nice place for someone. Who have you in mind?"
"No one as yet that I'm absolutely sure of. I have one man in mind who I think might come to fill the position after he had had a look about the organization and a chance to study its needs a little. It's a hard position to hold. It requires a man with imagination, tact, judgment. He would have to be a sort of vice-Colfax, for I can't give my attention permanently to that business. I don't want to. I have bigger fish to fry. But I want someone who will eventually be my other self in these departments, who can get along with Florence White and the men under him and hold his own in his own world. I want a sort of bi-partisan commission down there – each man supreme in his own realm."
"It sounds interesting," said Eugene thoughtfully. "Who's your man?"
"As I say, he isn't quite ready yet, in my judgment, but he is near it, and he's the right man! He's in this room now. You're the man I'm thinking about, Witla."
"No," said Eugene quietly.
"Yes; you," replied Colfax.
"You flatter me," he said, with a deprecatory wave of his hand. "I'm not so sure that he is."
"Oh, yes, he is, if he thinks he is!" replied Colfax emphatically. "Opportunity doesn't knock in vain at a real man's door. At least, I don't believe it will knock here and not be admitted. Why the advertising department of this business alone is worth eighteen thousand dollars a year to begin with."
Eugene sat up. He was getting twelve. Could he afford to ignore that offer? Could the Kalvin Company afford to pay him that much? They were paying him pretty well as it was. Could the Kalvin Company offer him the prospects which this company was offering him?
"What is more, I might say," went on Colfax, "the general publishing control of this organization – the position of managing publisher, which I am going to create and which when you are fitted for it you can have, will be worth twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and that oughtn't to be so very far away, either."
Eugene turned that over in his mind without saying anything. This offer coming so emphatically and definitely at this time actually made him nervous and fearsome. It was such a tremendous thing to talk about – the literary, art and advertising control of the United Magazines Corporation. Who was this man White? What was he like? Would he be able to agree with him? This man beside him was so hard, so brilliant, so dynamic! He would expect so much.
And then his work with Townsend Miller and under Mr. Kalvin. How much he had learned of the editorial game by merely talking and planning with those two men! He had got the whole idea of timely topics, of big progressive, national forecasts and features, of odd departments and interesting pieces of fiction and personality studies, from talking with Miller alone. Kalvin had made clear to him what constituted great craftsmen. Of course, long before, he had suspected just how it was, but in Philadelphia he had sat in conference with Miller and Kalvin, and knew. He had practically managed the former's little art department for him without paying much attention to it either. Couldn't he really handle this greater thing if he tried? If he didn't, someone else would. Would the man who would, be so much greater than himself?
"I'm not anxious that you should act hastily," said Colfax soothingly, after a little bit, for he saw that Eugene was debating the question solemnly and that it was a severe problem for him. "I know how you feel. You have gone into the Kalvin Company and you've made good. They've been nice to you. It's only natural that they should be. You hate to leave. Well, think it over. I won't tempt you beyond your best judgment. Think it over. There's a splendid chance here. Just the same, I like you, and I think you are the man to get away with it. Come down to my place tomorrow and let me show you what we have. I want to show our resources. I don't think you know how big this thing really is."
"Yes, I do," replied Eugene, smiling. "It certainly is a fascinating proposition. But I can't make up my mind about it now. It's something I want to think about. I'd like to take my time, and I'll let you know."
"Take all the time you want, my boy! Take all the time you want!" exclaimed Colfax. "I'll wait for you a little while. I'm in no life-or-death hurry. This position can't be filled satisfactorily in a minute. When you're ready, let me know what you decide. And now let's go to the theatre – what do you say?"
The automobile was called, Mrs. Colfax and her guest, Miss Genier, appeared. There was an interesting evening in a box, with Eugene talking gaily and entertainingly to all, and then an after-theatre bite at Sherry's. The next morning, for he stayed all night at Colfax's, they visited the United Magazines Corporation building together, and at noon Eugene returned to Philadelphia.
His head was fairly seething and ringing with all he had seen and heard. Colfax was a great man, he thought, greater in some respects than Kalvin. He was more forceful, more enthusiastic, younger – more like himself, than Kalvin. He could never fail, he was too rich. He would make a success of this great corporation – a tremendous success – and if he went he might help make it with him. What a thing that would be! Very different from working for a corporation with whose success he had never had anything to do. Should he ignore this offer? New York, a true art and literary standing; a great executive and social standing; fame; money – all these were calling. Why, on eighteen or twenty-five thousand he could have a splendid studio apartment of his own, say on Riverside Drive; he could entertain magnificently; he could keep an automobile without worrying about it. Angela would cease feeling that they had to be careful. It would be the apex of lieutenantship for him. Beyond that he would take stock in the company, or a business of his own. What a long distance he had come from the days when, here as a boy, he had walked the streets, wondering where he would find a $3 room, and when as an art failure he carried his paintings about and sold them for ten and fifteen dollars. Dear Heaven, what peculiar tricks fortune could play!
The discussion with Angela of this proposition led to some additional uncertainty, for although she was greatly impressed with what Colfax offered, she was afraid Eugene might be making a mistake in leaving Kalvin. The latter had been so nice to Eugene. He had never associated with him in any intimate way, but he and Angela had been invited to his home on several formal occasions, and Eugene had reported that Kalvin was constantly giving him good advice. His attitude in the office was not critical but analytic and considerate.
"He's been mighty nice to me," Eugene said to her one morning at breakfast; "they all have. It's a shame to leave him. And yet, now that I look at it, I can see very plainly that there is never going to be the field here that there will be with the United Company. They have the publications and the book business, and the Kalvin Company hasn't and won't have. Kalvin is too old. They're in New York, too; that's one thing I like about it. I'd like to live in New York again. Wouldn't you?"
"It would be fine," said Angela, who had never really cared for Philadelphia and who saw visions of tremendous superiority in this situation. Philadelphia had always seemed a little out of the way of things after New York and Paris. Only Eugene's good salary and the comforts they had experienced here had made it tolerable. "Why don't you speak to Mr. Kalvin and tell him just what Mr. Colfax says," she asked. "It may be that he'll offer to raise your salary so much that you'll want to stay when he hears of this."
"No danger," replied Eugene. "He may raise it a bit, but he never can pay me twenty-five thousand dollars a year. There isn't any reason for paying it. It takes a corporation like the United to do it. There isn't a man in our place gets that, unless it is Fredericks. Besides, I could never be anything more here, or much more, than advertising manager. Miller has that editorial job sewed up. He ought to have it, too, he's a good man. This thing that Colfax offers lets me out into a new field. I don't want to be an advertising manager all my days if I can help it!"
"I don't want you to be, either, Eugene," sighed Angela. "It's a shame you can't quit entirely and take up your art work. I've always thought that if you were to stop now and go to painting you would make a success of it. There's nothing the matter with your nerves now. It's just a question of whether we want to live more simply for a while and let you work at that. I'm sure you'd make a big success of it."
"Art doesn't appeal to me so much as it did once," replied Eugene. "I've lived too well and I know a lot more about living than I once did. Where could I make twelve thousand a year painting? If I had a hundred thousand or a couple of hundred thousand laid aside, it would be a different thing, but I haven't. All we have is that Pennsylvania Railroad stock and those lots in Montclair eating their merry little heads off in taxes, and that Steel common stock. If we go back to New York we ought to build on that Montclair property, and rent it if we don't want to live in it. If I quit now we wouldn't have more than two thousand dollars a year outside of what I could earn, and what sort of a life can you live on that?"
Angela saw, disappearing under those circumstances, the rather pleasant world of entertainment in which they were disporting themselves. Art distinction might be delightful, but would it furnish such a table as they were sitting at this morning? Would they have as nice a home and as many friends? Art was glorious, but would they have as many rides and auto trips as they had now? Would she be able to dress as nicely? It took money to produce a variety of clothing – house, street, evening, morning and other wear. Hats at thirty-five and forty dollars were not in the range of artists' wives, as a rule. Did she want to go back to a simpler life for his art's sake? Wouldn't it be better to have him go with Mr. Colfax and make $25,000 a year for a while and then have him retire?
"You'd better talk to Mr. Kalvin," she counseled. "You'll have to do that, anyhow. See what he says. After that you can decide what you must do."
Eugene hesitated, but after thinking it all over he decided that he would.
One morning not long after, when he met Mr. Kalvin in the main hall on the editorial floor, he said, "I'd like to talk to you for a few moments some time today alone, Mr. Kalvin, if you can spare me the time."
"Certainly. I'm not busy now," returned the president. "Come right down. What is it you want to see me about?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said Eugene, when they had reached the former's office and he had closed the door. "I've had an offer that I feel that I ought to talk to you about. It's a pretty fascinating proposition and it's troubling me. I owe it to you as well as to myself to speak about it."
"Yes; what is it?" said Kalvin considerately.
"Mr. Colfax of the United Magazines Corporation came to me not long ago and wanted to know if I would not come with him. He offers me eighteen thousand dollars a year as advertising manager to begin with, and a chance to take charge of all the art and editorial ends as well a little later at twenty-five thousand dollars. He calls it the managing-publishing end of the business. I've been thinking of it seriously, for I've handled the art and advertising ends here and at the Summerfield Company, and I have always imagined that I knew something of the book and magazine business. I know it's a rather large proposition, but I'm not at all sure that I couldn't handle it.".
Mr. Kalvin listened quietly. He saw what Colfax's scheme was and liked it as a proposition. It was a good idea, but needed an exceptional man for the position. Was Eugene the man? He wasn't sure of that, and yet perchance he might be. Colfax, he thought, was a man of excellent financial if not publishing judgment. He might, if he could get the proper person, make an excellent success of his business. Eugene interested him, perhaps more at first flash than he would later. This man before him had a most promising appearance. He was clean, quick, with an alert mind and eye. He could see how, because of Eugene's success here, Colfax was thinking of him being even more exceptional than he was. He was a good man, a fine man, under direction. Would Colfax have the patience, the interest, the sympathy, to work with and understand him?
"Now, let's think about that a little, Witla," he said quietly. "It's a flattering offer. You'd be foolish if you didn't give it careful consideration. Do you know anything about the organization of that place over there?"
"No," replied Eugene, "nothing except what I learned by casually going over it with Mr. Colfax."
"Do you know much about Colfax as a man?"
"Very little. I've only met him twice. He's forceful, dramatic, a man with lots of ideas. I understand he's very rich, three or four millions, someone told me."
Kalvin's hand moved indifferently. "Do you like him?"
"Well, I can't say yet absolutely whether I do or don't. He interests me a lot. He's wonderfully dynamic. I'm sure I'm favorably impressed with him."
"And he wants to give you charge eventually of all the magazines and books, the publishing end?"
"So he says," said Eugene.
"I'd go a little slow if I were saddling myself with that responsibility. I'd want to be sure that I knew all about it. You want to remember, Witla, that running one department under the direction and with the sympathetic assistance and consideration of someone over you is very different from running four or five departments on your own responsibility and with no one over you except someone who wants intelligent guidance from you. Colfax, as I understand him, isn't a publisher, either by tendency or training or education. He's a financier. He'll want you, if you take that position, to tell him how it shall be done. Now, unless you know a great deal about the publishing business, you have a difficult task in that. I don't want to appear to be throwing cold water on your natural ambition to get up in the world. You're entitled to go higher if you can. No one in your circle of acquaintances would wish you more luck than I will if you decide to go. I want you to think carefully of what you are doing. Where you are here you are perfectly safe, or as nearly safe as any man is who behaves himself and maintains his natural force and energy can be. It's only natural that you should expect more money in the face of this offer, and I shall be perfectly willing to give it to you. I intended, as you possibly expected, to do somewhat better for you by January. I'll say now that if you want to stay here you can have fourteen thousand now and possibly sixteen thousand in a year or a year and a half from now. I don't want to overload this department with what I consider an undue salary. I think sixteen thousand dollars, when it is paid, will be high for the work that is done here, but you're a good man and I'm perfectly willing to pay it to you.
The thing for you to do is to make up your mind whether this proposition which I now make you is safer and more in accord with your desires than the one Mr. Colfax makes you. With him your eighteen thousand begins at once. With me sixteen thousand is a year away, anyhow. With him you have promise of an outlook which is much more glittering than any you can reasonably hope for here, but you want to remember that the difficulties will be, of course, proportionately greater. You know something about me by now. You still – and don't think I want to do him any injustice; I don't – have to learn about Mr. Colfax. Now, I'd advise you to think carefully before you act. Study the situation over there before you accept it. The United Magazines Corporation is a great concern. I have no doubt that under Mr. Colfax's management it has a brilliant future in store for it. He is an able man. If you finally decide to go, come and tell me and there will be no hard feelings one way or the other. If you decide to stay, the new salary arrangement goes into effect at once. As a matter of fact, I might as well have Mr. Fredericks credit that up to you so that you can say that you have drawn that sum here. It won't do you any harm. Then we can run along as before. I know it isn't good business as a rule to try and keep a man who has been poisoned by a bigger offer, and because I know that is the reason why I am only offering you fourteen thousand dollars this year. I want to be sure that you are sure that you want to stay. See?"
He smiled.
Eugene arose. "I see," he said. "You are one of the best men I have ever known, Mr. Kalvin. You have constantly treated me with more consideration than I ever expected to receive anywhere. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work for you. If I stay, it will be because I want to because I value your friendship."
"Well," said Kalvin quietly, "that's very nice, I'm sure, and I appreciate it. But don't let your friendship for me or your sense of gratitude stop you from doing something you think you ought to do. Go ahead if you feel like it. I won't feel the least bit angry with you. I'll feel sorry, but that's neither here nor there. Life is a constant condition of readjustment, and every good business man knows it."
He took Eugene's extended hand.
"Good luck," he said, "whatever you do" – his favorite expression.
CHAPTER XL
The upshot of Eugene's final speculation was that he accepted the offer of the United Magazines Corporation and left Mr. Kalvin. Colfax had written one day to his house asking him what he thought he would do about it. The more he had turned it over in his mind, the more it had grown in attraction. The Colfax company was erecting a tremendous building, eighteen stories high, in the heart of the middle business district in New York near Union Square, to house all their departments. Colfax had said at the time Eugene took dinner with him that the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth floors would be devoted to the editorial, publication, circulation, art, and advertising departments. He had asked Eugene what he had thought would be a good floor arrangement, and the latter, with his usual facility for scheming such things, had scratched on a piece of paper a tentative layout for the various departments. He had put the editorial and art departments on the topmost floor, giving the publisher, whoever he might eventually prove to be, a commanding position in a central room on the western side of the building which overlooked all the city between the Square and Hudson River, and showed that magnificent body of water as a panorama for the eye to feast upon. He had put the advertising and some overflow editorial rooms on the seventeenth floor, and the circulation with its attendant mailing and cabinet record rooms on the sixteenth. The publisher's and editor's rooms he laid out after an old Flemish scheme he had long had in mind, in which green, dark blue, blood-red and black walnut shades contrasted richly with the flood of light which would be available.
"You might as well do this thing right if you do it at all," he had said to Colfax. "Nearly all the editorial offices I have ever seen have been the flimsiest makeshifts. A rich-looking editorial, art and advertising department would help your company a great deal. It has advertising value."
He recalled as he spoke Summerfield's theory that a look of prosperity was about the most valuable asset a house could have.
Colfax agreed with him, and said when the time came that he wished Eugene would do him the favor to come and look the thing over. "I have two good architects on the job," he explained, "but I would rather trust your ideas as to how those rooms should be laid out."
When he was considering this final call for a decision he was thinking how this floor would look – how rich it would be. Eventually, if he succeeded, his office would be the most sumptuous thing in it. He would be the most conspicuous figure in the great, new building, apart from Colfax himself.
Thoughts of this kind, which ought to have had but very little share in any commercial speculation, were nevertheless uppermost in Eugene's mind; for he was not a business man – he was primarily an artist, and for all his floundering round in the commercial world he remained an artist still. His sense of his coming dignity and standing before the world was almost greater than his sense of the terrifying responsibility which it involved. Colfax was a hard man, he knew, harder even than Summerfield, for he talked less and acted more; but this did not sink into Eugene's consciousness sufficiently to worry him. He fancied he was a strong man, able to hold his own anywhere.
Angela was really not very much opposed to the change, though her natural conservatism made her worry and hesitate to approve. It was a great step forward if Eugene succeeded, but if he failed it would be such a loss.
"Colfax has so much faith in me," he told her. "He's convinced that I can do it, and faith like that is a great help. I'd like to try it, anyhow. It can't do me any harm. If I think I can't handle the publishing proposition I'll stick to the advertising end."
"All right," said Angela, "but I scarcely know what to advise. They've been so nice to you over here."
"I'll try it," said Eugene determinedly. "Nothing venture, nothing have," and he informed Kalvin the same day.
The latter looked at him solemnly, his keen gray eyes contemplating the situation from all points of view. "Well, Eugene," he said, "you're shouldering a great responsibility. It's difficult. Think carefully of everything that you do. I'm sorry to see you go. Good-bye."
He had the feeling that Eugene was making a mistake – that he would do better to rest a while where he was; but persuasion was useless. It would only give Eugene the notion that he was more important than he was – make matters more difficult in the future.
Kalvin had heard a number of things concerning Colfax recently, and he fancied that Eugene might find it hard to deal with him later. The general impression was that he was subject to sudden likes and dislikes which did not bear the test of time. He was said to be scarcely human enough to be the effective head of a great working corporation.
The truth was that this general opinion was quite correct. Colfax was as hard as steel but of a smiling and delightful presence to those he fancied. Vanity was really his other name, and ambition with him knew no bounds. He hoped to make a tremendous success of his life, to be looked up to as an imposing financier, and he wanted men– only strong men about him. Eugene seemed to Colfax to be a strong man, and the day he finally communicated with him saying that he thought that he would accept his offer but that he wished to talk to him further, Colfax threw his hat up in the air, slapped his side partner White on the back, and exclaimed: "Whee! Florrie! There's a trick I've scored for this corporation. There's a man, unless I am greatly mistaken, will do something here. He's young but he's all right. He's got the looks on you and me, Florrie, but we can stand that, can't we?"
White eyed him, with a show of joy and satisfaction which was purely simulated. He had seen many editors and many advertising men in his time. To his judgment they were nearly all lightweights, men who were easily satisfied with the little toy wherewith he or anyone might decide to gratify their vanity. This was probably another case in point, but if a real publisher were coming in here it would not be so well with him. He might attempt to crowd in on his authority or at least divide it with him. That did not appeal to his personal vanity. It really put a stumbling block in his path, for he hoped to rule here some day alone. Why was it that Colfax was so eager to have the authority in this house divided? Was it because he was somewhat afraid of him? He thought so, and he was exceedingly close to the truth when he thought so.
"Florrie's a good lieutenant," Colfax said to himself, "but he needs to be counterbalanced here by someone who will represent the refinements and that intellectual superiority which the world respects."
He wanted this refinement and intellectual superiority to be popular with the public, and to produce results in the shape of increased circulation for his magazines and books. These two would then act as checks each to the other, thus preventing the house from becoming overweighted in either direction. Then he could drive this team as a grand master – the man who had selected both, whose ideas they represented, and whose judgment they respected. The world of finance and trade would know they were nothing without him.
What Eugene thought and what White thought of this prospective situation was that the other would naturally be the minor figure, and that he under Colfax would be the shining light. Eugene was convinced that the house without proper artistic and intellectual dominance was nothing. White was convinced that without sane commercial management it was a failure and that this was the thing to look to. Money could buy brains.
Colfax introduced Eugene to White on the morning he arrived to take charge, for on the previous occasions when he had been there White was absent. The two looked at each other and immediately suspended judgment, for both were able men. Eugene saw White as an interesting type – tall, leathery, swaggering, a back-street bully evolved into the semblance of a gentleman. White saw in Eugene a nervous, refined, semi-emotional literary and artistic type who had, however, a curious versatility and virility not common among those whom he had previously encountered. He was exceedingly forceful but not poised. That he could eventually undermine him if he could not dominate him he did not doubt. Still he was coming in with the backing of Colfax and a great reputation, and it might not be easy. Eugene made him feel nervous. He wondered as he looked at him whether Colfax would really make him general literary, artistic and advertising administrator, or whether he would remain simply advertising manager as he now entered. Colfax had not accepted Eugene for more than that.
"Here he is, Florrie," Colfax had said of Eugene, in introducing him to White. "This is the man I've been talking about. Witla – Mr. White. White – Mr. Witla. You two want to get together for the good of this house in the future. What do you think of each other?"
Eugene had previously noted the peculiarity of this rowdy, rah! rah! attitude on the part of Colfax. He seemed to have no sense of the conventions of social address and conference at any time.
"Now, by God," Colfax exclaimed, striking his right fist against his left palm, "unless I am greatly mistaken, this house is going to begin to move! I'm not positive that I have the man I want, but I think I have. White, let's stroll around and introduce him."
White swaggered to the office door.
"Sure," he said quietly. "An exceptional man," he said to himself.
Colfax was almost beside himself with satisfaction, for he was subject to emotional flushes which, however, related to self-aggrandizement only. He walked with a great stride (little as he was), which was his wont when he was feeling particularly satisfied. He talked in a loud voice, for he wanted everyone to know that he, Hiram Colfax, was about and as forceful as the lord of so great an institution should be. He could yell and scream something like a woman in a paroxysm of rage when he was thwarted or irritated. Eugene did not know that as yet.
"Here's one of the printing floors," he said to Eugene, throwing open a door which revealed a room full of thundering presses of giant size. "Where's Dodson, boy? Where's Dodson? Tell him to come here. He's foreman of our printing department," he added, turning to Eugene, as the printer's devil, who had been working at a press, scurried away to find his master. "I told you, I guess, that we have thirty of these presses. There are four more floors just like this."
