Eugene smiled at the thought of Summerfield.
“An able man,” he said simply. “He did a great deal for me.”
Winfield liked that. He thought Eugene would criticize him. He liked Eugene’s genial manner and intelligent, expressive face. It occurred to him that when next he wanted to advertise one of his big development projects, he would go to Eugene or the man who had done the sugar plantation series of pictures and get him to give him the right idea for advertising.
Affinity is such a peculiar thing. It draws people so easily, apart from volition or consciousness. In a few moments Eugene and Winfield, sitting side by side on the veranda, looking at the greenwood before them, the long stretch of open sound, dotted with white sails and the dim, distant shore of Connecticut, were talking of real estate ventures in general, what land was worth, how speculations of this kind turned out, as a rule. Winfield was anxious to take Eugene seriously, for he felt drawn to him and Eugene studied Winfield’s pale face, his thin, immaculate hands, his suit of soft, gray cloth. He looked as able as his public reputation made him out to be—in fact, he looked better than anything he had ever done. Eugene had seen Ruritania and The Beeches. They did not impress him vastly as territorial improvements, but they were pretty, nevertheless. For middle-class people, they were quite the thing he thought.
“I should think it would be a pleasure to you to scheme out a new section,” he said to him once. “The idea of a virgin piece of land to be converted into streets and houses or a village appeals to me immensely. The idea of laying it out and sketching houses to fit certain positions, suits my temperament exactly. I wish sometimes I had been born an architect.”
“It is pleasant and if that were all it would be ideal,” returned Winfield. “The thing is more a matter of financing than anything else. You have to raise money for land and improvements. If you make exceptional improvements they are expensive. You really can’t expect to get much, if any, of your money back, until all your work is done. Then you have to wait. If you put up houses you can’t rent them, for the moment you rent them, you can’t sell them as new. When you make your improvements your taxes go up immediately. If you sell a piece of property to a man or woman who isn’t exactly in accord with your scheme, he or she may put up a house which destroys the value of a whole neighborhood for you. You can’t fix the details of a design in a contract too closely. You can only specify the minimum price the house is to cost and the nature of the materials to be used. Some people’s idea of beauty will vary vastly from others. Taste in sections may change. A whole city like New York may suddenly decide that it wants to build west when you are figuring on its building east. So—well, all these things have to be taken into consideration.”
“That sounds logical enough,” said Eugene, “but wouldn’t the right sort of a scheme just naturally draw to itself the right sort of people, if it were presented in the right way? Don’t you fix the conditions by your own attitude?”
“You do, you do,” replied Winfield, easily. “If you give the matter sufficient care and attention it can be done. The pity is you can be too fine at times. I have seen attempts at perfection come to nothing. People with taste and tradition and money behind them are not moving into new additions and suburbs, as a rule. You are dealing with the new rich and financial beginners. Most people strain their resources to the breaking point to better their living conditions and they don’t always know. If they have the money, it doesn’t always follow that they have the taste to grasp what you are striving for, and if they have the taste they haven’t the money. They would do better if they could, but they can’t. A man in my position is like an artist and a teacher and a father confessor and financier and everything all rolled into one. When you start to be a real estate developer on a big scale you must be these things. I have had some successes and some notable failures. Winfield is one of the worst. It’s disgusting to me now.”
“I have always wished I could lay out a seaside resort or a suburb,” said Eugene dreamily. “I’ve never been to but one or two of the resorts abroad, but it strikes me that none of the resorts here—certainly none near New York—are right. The opportunities are so wonderful. The things that have been done are horrible. There is no plan, no detail anywhere.”
“My views exactly,” said Winfield. “I’ve been thinking of it for years. Some such place could be built, and I suppose if it were done right it would be successful. It would be expensive, though, very, and those who come in would have a long wait for their money.”
“It would be a great opportunity to do something really worth while, though,” said Eugene. “No one seems to realize how beautiful a thing like that could be made.”
Winfield said nothing, but the thought stuck in his mind. He was dreaming a seaside improvement which should be the most perfect place of its kind in the world—a monument to himself if he did it. If Eugene had this idea of beauty he might help. At least he might talk to him about it when the time came. Perhaps Eugene might have a little money to invest. It would take millions to put such a scheme through, but every little would help. Besides Eugene might have ideas which should make money both for himself and for Winfield. It was worth thinking about. So they parted, not to meet again for weeks and months, but they did not forget each other.
Part 3
THE REVOLT
Chapter 1
It was when Eugene was at the height of his success that a meeting took place between himself and a certain Mrs. Emily Dale.
Mrs. Dale was a strikingly beautiful and intelligent widow of thirty-eight, the daughter of a well-to-do and somewhat famous New York family of Dutch extraction—the widow of an eminent banker of considerable wealth who had been killed in an automobile accident near Paris some years before. She was the mother of four children, Suzanne, eighteen; Kinroy, fifteen; Adele, twelve, and Ninette, nine, but the size of her family had in no way affected the subtlety of her social personality and the delicacy of her charm and manner. She was tall, graceful, willowy, with a wealth of dark hair, which was used in the most subtle manner to enhance the beauty of her face. She was calm, placid apparently, while really running deep with emotion and fancies, with manners which were the perfection of kindly courtesy and good breeding and with those airs of superiority which come so naturally to those who are raised in a fortunate and exclusive atmosphere.
She did not consider herself passionate in a marked degree, but freely admitted to herself that she was vain and coquettish. She was keen and observing, with a single eye to the main chance socially, but with a genuine love for literature and art and a propensity to write. Eugene met her through Colfax, who introduced him to her. He learned from the latter that she was rather unfortunate in her marriage except from a money point of view, and that her husband’s death was no irreparable loss. He also learned from the same source that she was a good mother, trying to bring up her children in the manner most suitable to their station and opportunities. Her husband had been of a much poorer social origin than herself, but her own standing was of the very best. She was a gay social figure, being invited much, entertaining freely, preferring the company of younger men to those of her own age or older and being followed ardently by one fortune hunter and another, who saw in her beauty, wealth and station, an easy door to the heaven of social supremacy.
The Dale home, or homes rather, were in several different places—one at Morristown, New Jersey, another on fashionable Grimes Hill on Staten Island, a third—a city residence, which at the time Eugene met them, was leased for a term of years—was in Sixty-seventh Street, near Fifth Avenue in New York City, and a fourth, a small lodge, at Lenox, Massachusetts, which was also rented. Shortly after he met her the house at Morristown was closed and the lodge at Lenox re-occupied.
For the most part Mrs. Dale preferred to dwell in her ancestral home on Staten Island, which, because of its commanding position on what was known as Grimes Hill, controlled a magnificent view of the bay and harbor of New York. Manhattan, its lower wall of buildings, lay like a cloud at the north. The rocking floor of the sea, blue and gray and slate black by turn, spread to the east. In the west were visible the Kill von Kull with its mass of shipping and the Orange Hills. In a boat club at Tompkinsville she had her motor boat, used mostly by her boy; in her garage at Grimes Hill, several automobiles. She owned several riding horses, retained four family servants permanently and in other ways possessed all those niceties of appointment which make up the comfortable life of wealth and ease.