The opening days of this their second return to New York were a period
of great joy to Angela. Unlike that first time when she was returning
after seven months of loneliness and unhappiness to a sick husband and a
gloomy outlook, she was now looking forward to what, in spite of her
previous doubts, was a glorious career of dignity, prosperity and
abundance. Eugene was such an important man now. His career was so well
marked and in a way almost certified. They had a good bit of money in
the bank. Their investments in stocks, on which they obtained a uniform
rate of interest of about seven per cent., aggregated $30,000. They had
two lots, two hundred by two hundred, in Montclair, which were said to
be slowly increasing in value and which Eugene now estimated to be worth
about six thousand. He was talking about investing what additional money
he might save in stocks bearing better interest or some sound commercial
venture. When the proper time came, a little later, he might even
abandon the publishing field entirely and renew his interest in art. He
was certainly getting near the possibility of this.
The place which they selected for their residence in New York was in a
new and very sumptuous studio apartment building on Riverside Drive near
Seventy-ninth Street, where Eugene had long fancied he would like to
live. This famous thoroughfare and show place with its restricted park
atmosphere, its magnificent and commanding view of the lordly Hudson,
its wondrous woods of color and magnificent sunsets had long taken his
eye. When he had first come to New York it had been his delight to
stroll here watching the stream of fashionable equipages pour out
towards Grant's Tomb and return. He had sat on a park bench many an
afternoon at this very spot or farther up, and watched the gay company
of horsemen and horsewomen riding cheerfully by, nodding to their social
acquaintances, speaking to the park keepers and road scavengers in a
condescending and superior way, taking their leisure in a comfortable
fashion and looking idly at the river. It seemed a wonderful world to
him at that time. Only millionaires could afford to live there, he
thought--so ignorant was he of the financial tricks of the world. These
handsomely garbed men in riding coats and breeches; the chic looking
girls in stiff black hats, trailing black riding skirts, yellow gloved,
and sporting short whips which looked more like dainty canes than
anything else, took his fancy greatly. It was his idea at that time that
this was almost the apex of social glory--to be permitted to ride here
of an afternoon.
Since then he had come a long way and learned a great deal, but he still
fancied this street as one of the few perfect expressions of the
elegance and luxury of metropolitan life, and he wanted to live on it.
Angela was given authority, after discussion, to see what she could find
in the way of an apartment of say nine or eleven rooms with two baths or
more, which should not cost more than three thousand or three thousand
five hundred. As a matter of fact, a very handsome apartment of nine
rooms and two baths including a studio room eighteen feet high, forty
feet long and twenty-two feet wide was found at the now, to them,
comparatively moderate sum of three thousand two hundred. The chambers
were beautifully finished in old English oak carved and stained after a
very pleasing fifteenth century model, and the walls were left to the
discretion of the incoming tenant. Whatever was desired in the way of
tapestries, silks or other wall furnishing would be supplied.
Eugene chose green-brown tapestries representing old Rhine Castles for
his studio, and blue and brown silks for his wall furnishings elsewhere.
He now realized a long cherished dream of having the great wooden cross
of brown stained oak, ornamented with a figure of the bleeding Christ,
which he set in a dark shaded corner behind two immense wax candles set
in tall heavy bronze candlesticks, the size of small bed posts. These
when lighted in an otherwise darkened room and flickering ruefully, cast
a peculiar spell of beauty over the gay throngs which sometimes
assembled here. A grand piano in old English oak occupied one corner, a
magnificent music cabinet in French burnt woodwork, stood near by. There
were a number of carved and fluted high back chairs, a carved easel with
one of his best pictures displayed, a black marble pedestal bearing a
yellow stained marble bust of Nero, with his lascivious, degenerate
face, scowling grimly at the world, and two gold plated candelabra of
eleven branches each hung upon the north wall.
Two wide, tall windows with storm sashes, which reached from the floor
to the ceiling, commanded the West view of the Hudson. Outside one was a
small stone balcony wide enough to accommodate four chairs, which gave a
beautiful, cool view of the drive. It was shielded by an awning in
summer and was nine storeys above the ground. Over the water of the more
or less peaceful stream were the stacks and outlines of a great factory,
and in the roadstead lay boats always, war vessels, tramp freighters,
sail boats, and up and down passed the endless traffic of small craft
always so pleasant to look upon in fair or foul weather. It was a
beautiful apartment, beautifully finished in which most of their
furniture, brought from Philadelphia, fitted admirably. It was here that
at last they settled down to enjoy the fruit of that long struggle and
comparative victory which brought them so near their much desired
goal--an indestructible and unchangeable competence which no winds of
ill fortune could readily destroy.
Eugene was quite beside himself with joy and satisfaction at thus
finding himself and Angela eventually surrounded by those tokens of
luxury, comfort and distinction which had so long haunted his brain.
Most of us go through life with the furniture of our prospective castle
well outlined in mind, but with never the privilege of seeing it
realized. We have our pictures, our hangings, our servitors well and
ably selected. Eugene's were real at last.