The two youngest of her girls were in a fashionable boarding school at Tarrytown; the boy, Kinroy, was preparing for Harvard; Suzanne, the eldest, was at home, fresh from boarding school experiences, beginning to go out socially. Her début had already been made. Suzanne was a peculiar girl, plump, beautiful, moody, with, at times, a dreamy air of indifference and a smile that ran like a breath of air over water. Her eyes were large, of a vague blue-gray, her lips rosy and arched; her cheeks full and pink. She had a crown of light chestnut hair, a body at once innocent and voluptuous in its outlines. When she laughed it was a rippling gurgle, and her sense of humor was perfect, if not exaggerated. One of those naturally wise but as yet vague and formless artistic types, which suspect without education, nearly all the subtleties of the world, and burst forth full winged and beautiful, but oh, so fragile, like a butterfly from its chrysalis, the radiance of morning upon its body. Eugene did not see her for a long time after he met Mrs. Dale, but when he did, he was greatly impressed with her beauty.
Life sometimes builds an enigma out of common clay, and with a look from a twelve-year-old girl, sets a Dante singing. It can make a god of a bull, a divinity of an ibis, or a beetle, set up a golden calf to be worshipped of the multitude. Paradox! Paradox! In this case an immature and yet nearly perfect body held a seemingly poetic and yet utterly nebulous appreciation of life—a body so youthful, a soul so fumbling that one would ask, How should tragedy lurk in form like this?
A fool?
Not quite, yet so nebulous, so much a dreamer that difficulty might readily follow in the wake of any thoughtless deed.
As a matter of fact, favored as she was by nature and fortune, her very presence was dangerous—provocative, without thought of being so. If a true artist had painted her, synthesizing her spirit with her body, he might have done so showing her standing erect on a mountain top, her limbs outlined amidst fluttering draperies against the wind, her eyes fixed on distant heights, or a falling star. Out of mystery into mystery again, so she came and went. Her mind was not unlike a cloud of mist through which the morning sun is endeavoring to break, irradiating all with its flushes of pink and gold. Again it was like those impearled shells of the South Sea, without design yet suggestive of all perfections and all beauties. Dreams! dreams!—of clouds, sunsets, colors, sounds which a too articulate world would do its best later to corrupt. What Dante saw in Beatrice, what Abélard saw in Héloïse, Romeo in Juliet, so some wondering swain could have seen in her—and suffered a like fate.
Eugene encountered Mrs. Dale at a house party on Long Island one Saturday afternoon, and their friendship began at once. She was introduced to him by Colfax, and because of the latter’s brusque, jesting spirit was under no illusions as to his social state.
“You needn’t look at him closely,” he observed gaily, “he’s married.”
“That simply makes him all the more interesting,” she rippled, and extended her hand.
Eugene took it. “I’m glad a poor married man can find shelter somewhere,” he said, smartly.
“You should rejoice,” she replied. “It’s at once your liberty and your protection. Think how safe you are!”
“I know, I know,” he said. “All the slings and arrows of Miss Fortune hurtling by.”
“And you in no danger of being hurt.”
He offered her his arm, and they strolled through a window onto a veranda.
The day was just the least bit dull for Mrs. Dale. Bridge was in progress in the card room, a company of women and girls gambling feverishly. Eugene was not good at bridge, not quick enough mentally, and Mrs. Dale did not care much for it.
“I have been trying to stir up enough interest to bring to pass a motor ride, but it doesn’t work,” she said. “They all have the gambling fever today. Are you as greedy as the others?”
“I’m greedy I assure you, but I can’t play. The greediest thing I can do is to stay away from the tables. I save most. That sharp Faraday has cleaned me and two others out of four hundred dollars. It’s astonishing the way some people can play. They just look at the cards or make mystic signs and the wretched things range themselves in serried ranks to suit them. It’s a crime. It ought to be a penitentiary offense, particularly to beat me. I’m such an inoffensive specimen of the non-bridge playing family.”
“A burnt child, you know. Stay away. Let’s sit here. They can’t come out here and rob you.”
They sat down in green willow chairs, and after a time a servant offered them coffee. Mrs. Dale accepted. They drifted conversationally from bridge to characters in society—a certain climber by the name of Bristow, a man who had made a fortune in trunks—and from him to travel and from travel to Mrs. Dale’s experiences with fortune hunters. The automobile materialized through the intervention of others, but Eugene found great satisfaction in this woman’s company and sat beside her. They talked books, art, magazines, the making of fortunes and reputations. Because he was or seemed to be in a position to assist her in a literary way she was particularly nice to him. When he was leaving she asked, “Where are you in New York?”
“Riverside Drive is our present abode,” he said.
“Why don’t you bring Mrs. Witla and come down to see us some week-end? I usually have a few people there, and the house is roomy. I’ll name you a special day if you wish.”
“Do. We’ll be delighted. Mrs. Witla will enjoy it, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Dale wrote to Angela ten days later as to a particular date, and in this way the social intimacy began.
It was never of a very definite character, though. When Mrs. Dale met Angela she liked her quite well as an individual, whatever she may have thought of her as a social figure. Neither Eugene nor Angela saw Suzanne nor any of the other children on this occasion, all of them being away. Eugene admired the view tremendously and hinted at being invited again. Mrs. Dale was delighted. She liked him as a man entirely apart from his position but particularly because of his publishing station. She was ambitious to write. Others had told her that he was the most conspicuous of the rising figures in the publishing world. Being friendly with him would give her exceptional standing with all his editors. She was only too pleased to be gracious to him. He was invited again and a third time, with Angela, and it seemed as though they were reaching, or might at least reach, something much more definite than a mere social acquaintance.
It was about six months after Eugene had first met Mrs. Dale that Angela gave a tea, and Eugene, in assisting her to prepare the list of invitations, had suggested that those who were to serve the tea and cakes should be two exceptionally pretty girls who were accustomed to come to the Witla apartment, Florence Reel, the daughter of a well-known author of that name and Marjorie Mac Tennan, the daughter of a well-known editor, both beautiful and talented, one with singing and the other with art ambitions. Angela had seen a picture of Suzanne Dale in her mother’s room at Daleview on Grimes Hill, and had been particularly taken with her girlish charm and beauty.
“I wonder,” she said, “if Mrs. Dale would object to having Suzanne come and help serve that day. She would like it, I’m sure, there are going to be so many clever people here. We haven’t seen her, but that doesn’t matter. It would be a nice way to introduce herself.”
“That’s a good idea, I should say,” observed Eugene judicially. He had seen the photo of Suzanne and liked it, though he was not over-impressed. Photos to him were usually gross deceivers. He accepted them always with reservations. Angela forthwith wrote to Mrs. Dale, who agreed. She would be glad to come herself. She had seen the Witla apartment, and had been very much pleased with it. The reception day came and Angela begged Eugene to come home early.
“I know you don’t like to be alone with a whole roomful of people, but Mr. Goodrich is coming, and Frederick Allen (one of their friends who had taken a fancy to Eugene), Arturo Scalchero is going to sing and Bonavita to play.” Scalchero was none other than Arthur Skalger, of Port Jervis, New Jersey, but he assumed this corruption of his name in Italy to help him to success. Bonavita was truly a Spanish pianist of some repute who was flattered to be invited to Eugene’s home.