“My dear lady,” Eugene once said solemnly, “I can’t live by painting pictures as I am living by directing magazines. Art is very lovely. I am satisfied to believe that I am a great painter. Nevertheless, I made little out of it, and since then I have learned to live. It’s sad, but it’s true. If I could see my way to live in half the comfort I am living in now and not run the risk of plodding the streets with a picture under my arm, I would gladly return to art. The trouble is the world is always so delightfully ready to see the other fellow make the sacrifice for art or literature’s sake. Selah! I won’t do it. So there!”
“It’s a pity! It’s a pity!” said this observer, but Eugene was not vastly distressed. Similarly Mrs. Dale had reproached him, for she had seen and heard of his work.
“Some time. Some time,” he said grandly; “wait.”
Now at length this land proposition seemed to clear the way for everything. If Eugene embarked upon it, he might gradually come to the point at which he could take some official position in connection with it. Anyhow, think of a rising income from $250,000! Think of the independence, the freedom! Surely then he could paint or travel, or do as he pleased.
As a matter of fact, after two automobile rides to the nearest available position on the site of the future resort and a careful study of the islands and the beach, Eugene devised a scheme which included four hotels of varying sizes, one dining and dancing casino, one gambling resort after the pattern of Monte Carlo, a summer theatre, a music pavilion, three lovely piers, motor and yacht club houses, a park with radiating streets, and other streets arranged in concentric rings to cross them. There was a grand plaza about which the four hotels were ranged, a noble promenade, three miles in length, to begin with, a handsome railway station, plots for five thousand summer homes, ranging from five to fifteen thousand in price. There were islands for residences, islands for clubs, islands for parks. One of the hotels sat close to an inlet over which a dining veranda was to be built—stairs were to be laid down to the water so that one could step into gondolas or launches and be carried quickly to one of the music pavilions on one of the islands. Everything that money wanted was to be eventually available here, and all was to be gone about slowly but beautifully, so that each step would only make more sure each additional step.
Eugene did not enter on this grand scheme until ten men, himself included, had pledged themselves to take stock up to $50,000 each. Included in these were Mr. Wiltsie, President of the Long Island; Mr. Kenyon C. Winfield, and Milton Willebrand, the very wealthy society man at whose home he had originally met Winfield. The Sea Island Company was then incorporated, and on a series of dates agreed upon between them and which were dependent upon a certain amount of work being accomplished by each date, the stock was issued to them in ten-thousand-dollar lots and then cash taken and deposited in the treasury. By the end of two years after Eugene had first been approached by Winfield he had a choice collection of gold-colored certificates in the Sea Island Realty and Construction Company, which was building the now widely heralded seaside resort—”Blue Sea”—which, according to those interested, was to be the most perfect resort of its kind in the world. His certificates stated that they were worth $250,000, and potentially they were. Eugene and Angela looking at them, thinking of the initiative and foresight of Mr. Kenyon C. Winfield and the men he was associated with, felt sure that some day, and that not so very far distant, they would yield their face value and much more.
Chapter 4
It had been while he was first perfecting his undertaking with Winfield as to what his relationship to the new Sea Island Construction Company was to be that Eugene had been dwelling more and more fondly upon the impression which Suzanne Dale had originally made upon him. It was six weeks before they met again, and then it was on the occasion of a dance that Mrs. Dale was giving in honor of Suzanne that Eugene and Angela were invited. Mrs. Dale admired Angela’s sterling qualities as a wife, and while there might be temperamental and social differences, she did not think they were sufficient to warrant any discrimination between them, at least not on her part. Angela was a good woman—not a social figure at all—but interesting in her way. Mrs. Dale was much more interested in Eugene, because in the first place they were very much alike temperamentally, and in the next place because Eugene was a successful and brilliant person. She liked to see the easy manner in which he took life, the air with which he assumed that talent should naturally open all doors to him. He was not conscious apparently of any inferiority in anything but rather of a splendid superiority. She heard it from so many that he was rapidly rising in his publishing world and that he was interested in many things, the latest this project to create a magnificent summer resort. Winfield was a personal friend of hers. He had never attempted to sell her any property, but he had once said that he might some day take her Staten Island holdings and divide them up into town lots. This was one possibility which tended to make her pleasant to him.
The evening in question Eugene and Angela went down to Daleview in their automobile. Eugene always admired this district, for it gave him a sense of height and scope which was not easily attainable elsewhere about New York. It was still late winter and the night was cold but clear. The great house with its verandas encased in glass was brightly lit. There were a number of people—men and women, whom Eugene had met at various places, and quite a number of young people whom he did not know. Angela had to be introduced to a great many, and Eugene felt that peculiar sensation which he so often experienced of a certain incongruity in his matrimonial state. Angela was nice, but to him she was not like these other women who carried themselves with such an air. There was a statuesqueness and a sufficiency about many of them, to say nothing of their superb beauty and sophistication which made him feel, when the contrast was forced upon him closely, that he had made a terrible mistake. Why had he been so silly as to marry? He could have told Angela frankly that he would not at the time, and all would have been well. He forgot how badly, emotionally, he had entangled himself. But scenes like these made him dreadfully unhappy. Why, his life if he were single would now be but beginning!
As he walked round tonight he was glad to be free socially even for a few minutes. He was glad that first this person and that took the trouble to talk to Angela. It relieved him of the necessity of staying near her, for if he neglected her or she felt neglected by others she was apt to reproach him. If he did not show her attention, she would complain that he was conspicuous in his indifference. If others refused to talk to her, it was his place. He should. Eugene objected to this necessity with all his soul, but he did not see what he was to do about it. As she often said, even if he had made a mistake in marrying her, it was his place to stick by her now that he had. A real man would.
One of the things that interested him was the number of beautiful young women. He was interested to see how full and complete mentally and physically so many girls appeared to be at eighteen. Why, in their taste, shrewdness, completeness, they were fit mates for a man of almost any age up to forty! Some of them looked so wonderful to him—so fresh and ruddy with the fires of ambition and desire burning briskly in their veins. Beautiful girls—real flowers, like roses, light and dark. And to think the love period was all over for him—completely over!
Suzanne came down with others after a while from some room upstairs, and once more Eugene was impressed with her simple, natural, frank, good-natured attitude. Her light chestnut-colored hair was tied with a wide band of light blue ribbon which matched her eyes and contrasted well with her complexion. Again, her dress was some light flimsy thing, the color of peach blossoms, girdled with ribbon and edged with flowers like a wreath. Soft white sandals held her feet.
“Oh, Mr. Witla!” she said gaily, holding out her smooth white arm on a level with her eyes and dropping her hand gracefully. Her red lips were parted, showing even white teeth, arching into a radiant smile. Her eyes were quite wide as he remembered, with an innocent, surprised look in them, which was wholly unconscious with her. If wet roses could outrival a maiden in all her freshness, he thought he would like to see it. Nothing could equal the beauty of a young woman in her eighteenth or nineteenth year.