A part of this feeling was due to the opening of a golden age of luxury in New York, and the effect the reiterated sight of it was having on Eugene. Huge fortunes had been amassed in the preceding fifty years and now there were thousands of residents in the great new city who were worth anything from one to fifty and in some instances a hundred million dollars. The metropolitan area, particularly Manhattan Island above Fifty-ninth Street, was growing like a weed. Great hotels were being erected in various parts of the so-called “white light” district. There was beginning, just then, the first organized attempt of capital to supply a new need—the modern sumptuous, eight, ten and twelve story apartment house, which was to house the world of newly rich middle class folk who were pouring into New York from every direction. Money was being made in the West, the South and the North, and as soon as those who were making it had sufficient to permit them to live in luxury for the rest of their days they were moving East, occupying these expensive apartments, crowding the great hotels, patronizing the sumptuous restaurants, giving the city its air of spendthrift luxury. All the things which catered to showy material living were beginning to flourish tremendously, art and curio shops, rug shops, decorative companies dealing with the old and the new in hangings, furniture, objects of art; dealers in paintings, jewelry stores, china and glassware houses—anything and everything which goes to make life comfortable and brilliant. Eugene, as he strolled about the city, saw this, felt the change, realized that the drift was toward greater population, greater luxury, greater beauty. His mind was full of the necessity of living now. He was young now; he was vigorous now; he was keen now; in a few years he might not be—seventy years was the allotted span and twenty-five of his had already gone. How would it be if he never came into this luxury, was never allowed to enter society, was never permitted to live as wealth was now living! The thought hurt him. He felt an eager desire to tear wealth and fame from the bosom of the world. Life must give him his share. If it did not he would curse it to his dying day. So he felt when he was approaching twenty-six.
The effect of Christina Channing’s friendship for him was particularly to emphasize this. She was not so much older than he, was possessed of very much the same temperament, the same hopes and aspirations, and she discerned almost as clearly as he did the current of events. New York was to witness a golden age of luxury. It was already passing into it. Those who rose to distinction in any field, particularly music or the stage, were likely to share in a most notable spectacle of luxury. Christina hoped to. She was sure she would. After a few conversations with Eugene she was inclined to feel that he would. He was so brilliant, so incisive.
“You have such a way with you,” she said the second time he came. “You are so commanding. You make me think you can do almost anything you want to.”
“Oh, no,” he deprecated. “Not as bad as that. I have just as much trouble as anyone getting what I want.”
“Oh, but you will though. You have ideas.”
It did not take these two long to reach an understanding. They confided to each other their individual histories, with reservations, of course, at first. Christina told him of her musical history, beginning at Hagerstown, Maryland, and he went back to his earliest days in Alexandria. They discussed the differences in parental control to which they had been subject. He learned of her father’s business, which was that of oyster farming, and confessed on his part to being the son of a sewing machine agent. They talked of small town influences, early illusions, the different things they had tried to do. She had sung in the local Methodist church, had once thought she would like to be a milliner, had fallen in the hands of a teacher who tried to get her to marry him and she had been on the verge of consenting. Something happened—she went away for the summer, or something of that sort, and changed her mind.
After an evening at the theatre with her, a late supper one night and a third call, to spend a quiet evening in her room, he took her by the hand. She was standing by the piano and he was looking at her cheeks, her large inquiring eyes, her smooth rounded neck and chin.
“You like me,” he said suddenly à propos of nothing save the mutual attraction that was always running strong between them.
Without hesitation she nodded her head, though the bright blood mounted to her neck and cheeks.
“You are so lovely to me,” he went on, “that words are of no value. I can paint you. Or you can sing me what you are, but mere words won’t show it. I have been in love before, but never with anyone like you.”
“Are you in love?” she asked naïvely.
“What is this?” he asked and slipped his arms about her, drawing her close.
She turned her head away, leaving her rosy cheek near his lips. He kissed that, then her mouth and her neck. He held her chin and looked into her eyes.
“Be careful,” she said, “mamma may come in.”
“Hang mamma!” he laughed.
“She’ll hang you if she sees you. Mamma would never suspect me of anything like this.”
“That shows how little mamma knows of her Christina,” he answered.
“She knows enough at that,” she confessed gaily. “Oh, if we were only up in the mountains now,” she added.
“What mountains,” he inquired curiously.
“The Blue Ridge. We have a bungalow up at Florizel. You must come up when we go there next summer.”
“Will mamma be there?” he asked.
“And papa,” she laughed.
“And I suppose Cousin Annie.”
“No, brother George will be.”
“Nix for the bungalow,” he replied, using a slang word that had become immensely popular.
“Oh, but I know all the country round there. There are some lovely walks and drives.” She said this archly, naïvely, suggestively, her bright face lit with an intelligence that seemed perfection.
“Well—such being the case!” he smiled, “and meanwhile—”
“Oh, meanwhile you just have to wait. You see how things are.” She nodded her head towards an inside room where Mrs. Channing was lying down with a slight headache. “Mamma doesn’t leave me very often.”
Eugene did not know exactly how to take Christina. He had never encountered this attitude before. Her directness, in connection with so much talent, such real ability, rather took him by surprise. He did not expect it—did not think she would confess affection for him; did not know just what she meant by speaking in the way she did of the bungalow and Florizel. He was flattered, raised in his own self-esteem. If such a beautiful, talented creature as this could confess her love for him, what a personage he must be. And she was thinking of freer conditions—just what?
He did not want to press the matter too closely then and she was not anxious to have him do so—she preferred to be enigmatic. But there was a light of affection and admiration in her eye which made him very proud and happy with things just as they were.
As she said, there was little chance for love-making under conditions then existing. Her mother was with her most of the time. Christina invited Eugene to come and hear her sing at the Philharmonic Concerts; so once in a great ball-room at the Waldorf-Astoria and again in the imposing auditorium of Carnegie Hall and a third time in the splendid auditorium of the Arion Society, he had the pleasure of seeing her walk briskly to the footlights, the great orchestra waiting, the audience expectant, herself arch, assured—almost defiant, he thought, and so beautiful. When the great house thundered its applause he was basking in one delicious memory of her.
“Last night she had her arms about my neck. Tonight when I call and we are alone she will kiss me. That beautiful, distinguished creature standing there bowing and smiling loves me and no one else. If I were to ask her she would marry me—if I were in a position and had the means.”
“If I were in a position—” that thought cut him, for he knew that he was not. He could not marry her. In reality she would not have him knowing how little he made—or would she? He wondered.
Chapter 23
Towards the end of spring Eugene concluded he would rather go up in the mountains near Christina’s bungalow this summer, than back to see Angela. The memory of that precious creature was, under the stress and excitement of metropolitan life, becoming a little tarnished. His recollections of her were as delightful as ever, as redolent of beauty, but he was beginning to wonder. The smart crowd in New York was composed of a different type. Angela was sweet and lovely, but would she fit in?