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.
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.
"Well, I don't care much about it," replied Eugene. "But I will
come."
He frequently felt that afternoon teas and receptions were
ridiculous affairs, and that he had far better be in his office
attending to his multitudinous duties. Still he did leave early,
and at five-thirty was ushered into a great roomful of chattering,
gesticulating, laughing people. A song by Florence Reel had just
been concluded. Like all girls of ambition, vivacity and
imagination, she took an interest in Eugene, for in his smiling
face she found a responsive gleam.
"Oh, Mr. Witla!" she exclaimed. "Now here you are and you just
missed my song. And I wanted you to hear it, too."
"Don't grieve, Florrie," he said familiarly, holding her hand
and looking momentarily in her eyes. "You're going to sing it again
for me. I heard part of it as I came up on the elevator." He
relinquished her hand. "Why, Mrs. Dale! Delighted, I'm sure. So
nice of you. And Arturo Scalchero—hullo, Skalger, you old frost!
Where'd you get the Italian name? Bonavita! Fine! Am I going to
hear you play? All over? Alas! Marjorie Mac Tennan! Gee, but you
look sweet! If Mrs. Witla weren't watching me, I'd kiss you. Oh,
the pretty bonnet! And Frederick Allen! My word! What are you
trying to grab off, Allen? I'm on to you. No bluffs! Nix! Nix! Why,
Mrs. Schenck—delighted! Angela, why didn't you tell me Mrs. Schenck
was coming? I'd have been home at three."
By this time he had reached the east end of the great studio
room, farthest from the river. Here a tea table was spread with a
silver tea service, and behind it a girl, oval-faced, radiantly
healthy, her full lips parted in a ripe smile, her blue-gray eyes
talking pleasure and satisfaction, her forehead laid about by a
silver filigree band, beneath which her brown chestnut curls
protruded. Her hands, Eugene noted, were plump and fair. She stood
erect, assured, with the least touch of quizzical light in her eye.
A white, pink-bordered dress draped her girlish figure.