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The Rich Boy
by
Dolly was the daughter of a notorious “publicist” who had married into society. She herself grew up into the Junior League, came out at the Plaza, and went to the Assembly; and only a few old families like the Hunters could question whether or not she “belonged,” for her picture was often in the papers, and she had more enviable attention than many girls who undoubtedly did. She was dark-haired, with carmine lips and a high, lovely color, which she concealed under pinkish-gray powder all through the first year out, because high color was unfashionable–Victorian-pale was the thing to be. She wore black, severe suits and stood with her hands in her pockets leaning a little forward, with a humorous restraint on her face. She danced exquisitely–better than anything she liked to dance–better than anything except making love. Since she was ten she had always been in love, and, usually, with some boy who didn’t respond to her. Those who did–and there were many–bored her after a brief encounter, but for her failures she reserved the warmest spot in her heart. When she met them she would al
ways try once more–sometimes she succeeded, more often she failed.
It never occurred to this gypsy of the unattainable that there was a certain resemblance in those who refused to love her–they shared a hard intuition that saw through to her weakness, not a weakness of emotion but a weakness of rudder. Anson perceived this when he first met her, less than a month after Paula’s marriage. He was drinking rather heavily, and he pretended for a week that he was falling in love with her. Then he dropped her abruptly and forgot–immediately he took up the commanding position in her heart.
Like so many girls of that day Dolly was slackly and indiscreetly wild. The unconventionality of a slightly older generation had been simply one facet of a post-war movement to discredit obsolete manners–Dolly’s was both older and shabbier, and she saw in Anson the two extremes which the emotionally shiftless woman seeks, an abandon to indulgence alternating with a protective strength. In his character she felt both the sybarite and the solid rock, and these two satisfied every need of her nature.
She felt that it was going to be difficult, but she mistook the reason–she thought that Anson and his family expected a more spectacular marriage, but she guessed immediately that her advantage lay in his tendency to drink.
They met at the large débutante dances, but as her infatuation increased they managed to be more and more together. Like most mothers, Mrs. Karger believed that Anson was exceptionally reliable, so she allowed Dolly to go with him to distant country clubs and suburban houses without inquiring closely into their activities or questioning her explanations when they came in late. At first these explanations might have been accurate, but Dolly’s worldly ideas of capturing Anson were soon engulfed in the rising sweep of her emotion. Kisses in the back of taxis and motor-cars were no longer enough; they did a curious thing:
They dropped out of their world for a while and made another world just beneath it where Anson’s tippling and Dolly’s irregular hours would be less noticed and commented on. It was composed, this world, of varying elements–several of Anson’s Yale friends and their wives, two or three young brokers and bond salesmen and a handful of unattached men, fresh from college, with money and a propensity to dissipation. What this world lacked in spaciousness and scale it made up for by allowing them a liberty that it scarcely permitted itself. Moreover, it centered around them and permitted Dolly the pleasure of a faint condescension–a pleasure which Anson, whose whole life was a condescension from the certitudes of his childhood, was unable to share.
He was not in love with her, and in the long feverish winter of their affair he frequently told her so. In the spring he was weary–he wanted to renew his life at some other source–moreover, he saw that either he must break with her now or accept the responsibility of a definite seduction. Her family’s encouraging attitude precipitated his decision–one evening when Mr. Karger knocked discreetly at the library door to announce that he had left a bottle of old brandy in the dining-room, Anson felt that life was hemming him in. That night he wrote her a short letter in which he told her that he was going on his vacation, and that in view of all the circumstances they had better meet no more.