"You never did need much shaking," she said fondly.
Myrtle, who had married Frank Bangs the preceding year, had gone with her husband to live in Ottumwa, Iowa, where he had taken charge of a mill, so Eugene did not see her, but he spent some little time with Sylvia, now the mother of two children. Her husband was the same quiet, conservative plodder Eugene had first noted him to be. Revisiting the office of the Appeal he found that John Summers had recently died. Otherwise things were as they had been. Jonas Lyle and Caleb Williams were still in charge—quite the same as before. Eugene was glad when his time was up, and took the train back to Chicago with a light heart.
Again as on his entrance to Chicago from the East, and on his return to it from Blackwood, he was touched keenly by the remembrance of Ruby. She had been so sweet to him. His opening art experiences had in a way been centred about her. But in spite of all, he did not want to go out and see her. Or did he? He asked himself this question with a pang of sorrow, for in a way he cared. He cared for her as one might care for a girl in a play or book. She had the quality of a tragedy about her. She—her life, her surroundings, her misfortune in loving him, constituted an artistic composition. He thought he might be able to write a poem about it some time. He was able to write rather charming verse which he kept to himself. He had the knack of saying things in a simple way and with feeling—making you see a picture. The trouble with his verse was that it lacked as yet any real nobility of thought—was not as final in understanding as it might have been.
He did not go to see Ruby. The reason he assigned to himself was that it would not be nice. She might not want him to now. She might be trying to forget. And he had Angela. It really wasn't fair to her. But he looked over toward the region in which she lived, as he travelled out of the city eastward and wished that some of those lovely moments he had spent with her might be lived again.
Back in New York, life seemed to promise a repetition of the preceding year, with some minor modifications. In the fall Eugene went to live with McHugh and Smite, the studio they had consisting of one big working room and three bed-rooms. They agreed that they could get along together, and for a while it was good for them all. The criticism they furnished each other was of real value. And they found it pleasant to dine together, to walk, to see the exhibitions. They stimulated each other with argument, each having a special point of view. It was much as it had been with Howe and Mathews in Chicago.
During this winter Eugene made his first appearance in one of the leading publications of the time—Harper's Magazine. He had gone to the Art Director with some proofs of his previous work, and had been told that it was admirable; if some suitable story turned up he would be considered. Later a letter came asking him to call, and a commission involving three pictures for $125 was given him. He worked them out successfully with models and was complimented on the result. His associates cheered him on also, for they really admired what he was doing. He set out definitely to make Scribner's and the Century, as getting into those publications was called, and after a time he succeeded in making an impression on their respective Art Directors, though no notable commissions were given him. From one he secured a poem, rather out of his mood to decorate, and from the other a short story; but somehow he could not feel that either was a real opportunity. He wanted an appropriate subject or to sell them some of his scenes.
Building up a paying reputation was slow work. Although he was being mentioned here and there among artists, his name was anything but a significant factor with the public or with the Art Directors. He was still a promising beginner—growing, but not yet arrived by a long distance.
There was one editor who was inclined to see him at his real worth, but had no money to offer. This was Richard Wheeler, editor of Craft, a rather hopeless magazine in a commercial sense, but devoted sincerely enough to art. Wheeler was a blond young man of poetic temperament, whose enthusiasm for Eugene's work made it easy for them to become friends.
It was through Wheeler that he met that winter Miriam Finch and Christina Channing, two women of radically different temperaments and professions, who opened for Eugene two entirely new worlds.
Miriam Finch was a sculptor by profession—a critic by temperament, with no great capacity for emotion in herself but an intense appreciation of its significance in others. To see her was to be immediately impressed with a vital force in womanhood. She was a woman who had never had a real youth or a real love affair, but clung to her ideal of both with a passionate, almost fatuous, faith that they could still be brought to pass. Wheeler had invited him to go round to her studio with him one evening. He was interested to know what Eugene would think of her. Miriam, already thirty-two when Eugene met her—a tiny, brown haired, brown eyed girl, with a slender, rather cat-like figure and a suavity of address and manner which was artistic to the finger tips. She had none of that budding beauty that is the glory of eighteen, but she was altogether artistic and delightful. Her hair encircled her head in a fluffy cloudy mass; her eyes moved quickly, with intense intelligence, feeling, humor, sympathy. Her lips were sweetly modelled after the pattern of a Cupid's bow and her smile was subtly ingratiating. Her sallow complexion matched her brown hair and the drab velvet or corduroy of her dress. There was a striking simplicity about the things she wore which gave her a distinctive air. Her clothes were seldom fashionable but always exceedingly becoming, for she saw herself as a whole and arrayed herself as a decorative composition from head to foot, with a sense of fitness in regard to self and life.