"Good for you, Witla!" exclaimed Summerfield joyously. The idea of a fighting attitude on Eugene's part pleased him. "You're coming to life. You'll get somewhere now. You've got the ideas, but if you let these wolves run over you they'll do it, and they'll eat you. I can't help it. They're all no good. I wouldn't trust a single God-damned man in the place!"
So it went. Eugene smiled. Could he ever get used to such a life? Could he ever learn to live with such cheap, inconsiderate, indecent little pups? Summerfield might like them, but he didn't. This might be a marvellous business policy, but he couldn't see it. Somehow it seemed to reflect the mental attitude and temperament of Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield and nothing more. Human nature ought to be better than that.
It is curious how fortune sometimes binds up the wounds of the past, covers over the broken places as with clinging vines, gives to the miseries and mental wearinesses of life a look of sweetness and comfort. An illusion of perfect joy is sometimes created where still, underneath, are cracks and scars. Here were Angela and Eugene living together now, beginning to be visited by first one and then the other of those they had known in the past, seemingly as happy as though no storm had ever beset the calm of their present sailing. Eugene, despite all his woes, was interested in this work. He liked to think of himself as the captain of a score of men, having a handsome office desk, being hailed as chief by obsequious subordinates and invited here and there by Summerfield, who still liked him. The work was hard, but it was so much more profitable than anything he had ever had before. Angela was happier, too, he thought, than she had been in a long time, for she did not need to worry about money and his prospects were broadening. Friends were coming back to them in a steady stream, and they were creating new ones. It was possible to go to a seaside resort occasionally, winter or summer, or to entertain three or four friends at dinner. Angela had a maid. The meals were served with considerable distinction under her supervision. She was flattered to hear nice things said about her husband in her presence, for it was whispered abroad in art circles with which they were now slightly in touch again that half the effectiveness of the Summerfield ads was due to Eugene's talent. It was no shame for him to come out now and say where he was, for he was getting a good salary and was a department chief. He, or rather the house through him, had made several great hits, issuing series of ads which attracted the attention of the public generally to the products which they advertised. Experts in the advertising world first, and then later the public generally, were beginning to wonder who it was that was primarily responsible for the hits.
The Summerfield company had not had them during the previous six years of its history. There were too many of them coming close together not to make a new era in the history of the house. Summerfield, it was understood about the office, was becoming a little jealous of Eugene, for he could not brook the presence of a man with a reputation; and Eugene, with his five thousand dollars in cash in two savings banks, with practically two thousand five hundred dollars' worth of tasteful furniture in his apartment and with a ten-thousand life-insurance policy in favor of Angela, was carrying himself with quite an air. He was not feeling so anxious about his future.
Angela noted it. Summerfield also. The latter felt that Eugene was beginning to show his artistic superiority in a way which was not entirely pleasant. He was coming to have a direct, insistent, sometimes dictatorial manner. All the driving Summerfield had done had not succeeded in breaking his spirit. Instead, it had developed him. From a lean, pale, artistic soul, wearing a soft hat, he had straightened up and filled out until now he looked more like a business man than an artist, with a derby hat, clothes of the latest cut, a ring of oriental design on his middle finger, and pins and ties which reflected the prevailing modes.
Eugene's attitude had not as yet changed completely, but it was changing. He was not nearly so fearsome as he had been. He was beginning to see that he had talents in more directions than one, and to have the confidence of this fact. Five thousand dollars in cash, with two or three hundred dollars being added monthly, and interest at four per cent, being paid upon it, gave him a reserve of self-confidence. He began to joke Summerfield himself, for he began to realize that other advertising concerns might be glad to have him. Word had been brought to him once that the Alfred Cookman Company, of which Summerfield was a graduate, was considering making him an offer, and the Twine-Campbell Company, the largest in the field, was also interested in what he was doing. His own artists, mostly faithful because he had sought to pay them well and to help them succeed, had spread his fame greatly. According to them, he was the sole cause of all the recent successes which had come to the house, which was not true at all.
A number, perhaps the majority, of things recently had started with him; but they had been amplified by Summerfield, worked over by the ad-writing department, revised by the advertisers themselves, and so on and so forth, until notable changes had been effected and success achieved. There was no doubt that Eugene was directly responsible for a share of this. His presence was inspiring, constructive. He keyed up the whole tone of the Summerfield Company merely by being there; but he was not all there was to it by many a long step. He realized this himself.
He was not at all offensively egotistic—simply surer, calmer, more genial, less easily ruffled; but even this was too much. Summerfield wanted a frightened man, and seeing that Eugene might be getting strong enough to slip away from him, he began to think how he should either circumvent his possible sudden flight, or discredit his fame, so that if he did leave he would gain nothing by it. Neither of them was directly manifesting any ill-will or indicating his true feelings, but such was the situation just the same. The things which Summerfield thought he might do were not easy to do under any circumstances. It was particularly hard in Eugene's case. The man was beginning to have an air. People liked him. Advertisers who met him, the big manufacturers, took note of him. They did not understand him as a trade figure, but thought he must have real force. One man—a great real estate plunger in New York, who saw him once in Summerfield's office—spoke to the latter about him.
"That's a most interesting man you have there, that man Witla," he said, when they were out to lunch together. "Where does he come from?"
"Oh, the West somewhere!" replied Summerfield evasively. "I don't know. I've had so many art directors I don't pay much attention to them."