Chapter XLI

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.