THE GENIUS. Theodore Dreiser
and the room, was to Eugene sufficient proof that they were important. He handled them curiously, reading odd paragraphs, nosing about, looking at pictures, and making rapid notes in his mental notebook. This was someone worth knowing, he felt that. He wanted to make a sufficiently favorable impression to be permitted to know her better.
Miriam Finch was at once taken with Eugene. There was such an air of vigor, inquiry, appreciation and understanding about him that she could not help being impressed. He seemed somewhat like a lighted lamp casting a soft, shaded, velvety glow. He went about her room, after his introduction, looking at her pictures, her bronzes and clays, asking after the creator of this, the painter of that, where a third thing came from.
"I never heard of one of these books," he said frankly, when he looked over the small, specially selected collection.
"There are some very interesting things here," she volunteered, coming to his side. His simple confession appealed to her. He was like a breath of fresh air. Richard Wheeler, who had brought him in, made no objection to being neglected. He wanted her to enjoy his find.
"You know," said Eugene, looking up from Burton's "Kasidah" and into her brown eyes, "New York gets me dizzy. It's so wonderful!"
"Just how?" she asked.
"It's so compact of wonderful things. I saw a shop the other day full of old jewelry and ornaments and quaint stones and clothes, and O Heaven! I don't know what all—more things than I had ever seen in my whole life before; and here in this quiet side street and this unpretentious house I find this room. Nothing seems to show on the outside; everything seems crowded to suffocation with luxury or art value on the inside."
"Are you talking about this room?" she ventured.
"Why, yes," he replied.
"Take note, Mr. Wheeler," she called, over her shoulder to her young editor friend. "This is the first time in my life that I have been accused of possessing luxury. When you write me up again I want you to give me credit for luxury. I like it."
"I'll certainly do it," said Wheeler.
"Yes. 'Art values' too."
"Yes. 'Art values.' I have it," said Wheeler.
Eugene smiled. He liked her vivacity. "I know what you mean," she added. "I've felt the same thing about Paris. You go into little unpretentious places there and come across such wonderful things—heaps and heaps of fine clothes, antiques, jewels. Where was it I read such an interesting article about that?"
"Not in Craft I hope?" ventured Wheeler.
"No, I don't think so. Harper's Bazaar, I believe."
"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Wheeler. "Harper's Bazaar! What rot!"
"But that's just what you ought to have. Why don't you do it—right?"
"I will," he said.
Eugene went to the piano and turned over a pile of music. Again he came across the unfamiliar, the strange, the obviously distinguished—Grieg's "Arabian Dance"; "Es war ein Traum" by Lassen; "Elegie" by Massenet; "Otidi" by Davydoff; "Nymphs and Shepherds" by Purcell—things whose very titles smacked of color and beauty. Gluck, Sgambati, Rossini, Tschaikowsky—the Italian Scarlatti—Eugene marvelled at what he did not know about music.
"Play something," he pleaded, and with a smile Miriam stepped to the piano.
"Do you know 'Es war ein Traum'?" she inquired.
"No," said he.
"That's lovely," put in Wheeler. "Sing it!"
Eugene had thought that possibly she sang, but he was not prepared for the burst of color that came with her voice. It was not a great voice, but sweet and sympathetic, equal to the tasks she set herself. She selected her music as she selected her clothes—to suit her capacity. The poetic, sympathetic reminiscence of the song struck home. Eugene was delighted.
"Oh," he exclaimed, bringing his chair close to the piano and looking into her face, "you sing beautifully."
She gave him a glittering smile.
"Now I'll sing anything you want for you if you go on like that."
"I'm crazy about music," he said; "I don't know anything about it, but I like this sort of thing."
"You like the really good things. I know. So do I."
He felt flattered and grateful. They went through "Otidi," "The Nightingale," "Elegie," "The Last Spring"—music Eugene had never heard before. But he knew at once that he was listening to playing which represented a better intelligence, a keener selective judgment, a finer artistic impulse than anyone he had ever known had possessed. Ruby played and Angela, the latter rather well, but neither had ever heard of these things he was sure. Ruby had only liked popular things; Angela the standard melodies—beautiful but familiar. Here was someone who ignored popular taste—was in advance of it. In all her music he had found nothing he knew. It grew on him as a significant fact. He wanted to be nice to her, to have her like him. So he drew close and smiled and she always smiled back. Like the others she liked his face, his mouth, his eyes, his hair.
"He's charming," she thought, when he eventually left; and his impression of her was of a woman who was notably and significantly distinguished.
CHAPTER XXI
But Miriam Finch's family, of which she seemed so independent, had not been without its influence on her. This family was of Middle West origin, and did not understand or sympathize very much with the artistic temperament. Since her sixteenth year, when Miriam had first begun to exhibit a definite striving toward the artistic, her parents had guarded her jealously against what they considered the corrupting atmosphere of the art world. Her mother had accompanied her from Ohio to New York, and lived with her while she studied art in the art school, chaperoning her everywhere. When it became advisable, as she thought, for Miriam to go abroad, she went with her. Miriam's artistic career was to be properly supervised. When she lived in the Latin Quarter in Paris her mother was with her; when she loitered in the atmosphere of the galleries and palaces in Rome it was with her mother at her side. At Pompeii and Herculaneum—in London and in Berlin—her mother, an iron-willed little woman at forty-five at that time, was with her. She was convinced that she knew exactly what was good for her daughter and had more or less made the girl accept her theories. Later, Miriam's personal judgment began to diverge slightly from that of her mother and then trouble began.
It was vague at first, hardly a definite, tangible thing in the daughter's mind, but later it grew to be a definite feeling that her life was being cramped. She had been warned off from association with this person and that; had been shown the pitfalls that surround the free, untrammelled life of the art studio. Marriage with the average artist was not to be considered. Modelling from the nude, particularly the nude of a man, was to her mother at first most distressing. She insisted on being present and for a long time her daughter thought that was all right. Finally the presence, the viewpoint, the intellectual insistence of her mother, became too irksome, and an open break followed. It was one of those family tragedies which almost kill conservative parents. Mrs. Finch's heart was practically broken.
The trouble with this break was that it came a little too late for Miriam's happiness. In the stress of this insistent chaperonage she had lost her youth—the period during which she felt she should have had her natural freedom. She had lost the interest of several men who in her nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years had approached her longingly, but who could not stand the criticism of her mother. At twenty-eight when the break came the most delightful love period was over and she felt grieved and resentful.
At that time she had insisted on a complete and radical change for herself. She had managed to get, through one art dealer and another, orders for some of her spirited clay figurines. There was a dancing girl, a visualization of one of the moods of Carmencita, a celebrated dancer of the period, which had