She’d worked old Win for a wide, low, long shack of stone with plenty of plate glass and colored decoration; stunning probably was the word for it. The expense was patent. I didn’t know then that title to land and building was in Fred and Ken; they were simply letting Win live in the house on an allowance which certainly must have been liberal.
The house had one front on the lake and another on the boulevard; and at one end was a two-car garage. I parked my car below the house, went by on foot and, looking into the garage, saw both cars within.
It was easy to see, under the half-raised shades and between the curtains of the house, that the mistress of the mansion was at home.
Shirley was at her piano near a window facing the boulevard walk. As the night was cool and therefore the window was down, I could not hear what she played but her fingers moved over the keys and her red lips parted and closed and her red head tossed with animation as she sang her song.
She sang to no one; at least, no one but she was visible from the walk. Surely it was a light, happy song which she sang as she tossed her head and smiled. Her hair was bobbed and it flung like fine spun bronze about her pretty ears. I thought that if I could paint, I’d take a try at her just now with the soft pink light of her piano lamp upon her. I’d paint her as Youth--Youth and something else. Youth Enchained!
No; that wouldn’t do. There should be something submissive, or at least something pathetic about a young person enchained; and there was nothing submissive about Shirley Fendon Scofield; and not the slightest touch of pathos. Not at this moment, at least. Quite the contrary.
I am not a fanciful or figurative man; I can watch symbolic dancing from Pavlova and Ukrainsky up and down and, unless I hold my programme in a good light, the performance never brings to me any pervading sense of “Dawn” or “Death,” of “The Swan” or “Wild Pansies.” But that dance of Shirley Scofield’s gave me a thrill.
It was a dance, almost, as she tossed and flung herself to the lilt of the song I could not hear. Perhaps you say I took my thrill from the programme which Jerry had furnished to me. Let it go at that; anyway, I got it. Youth was set on snapping her chains to-night; and it was not to be nice snapping. Not at all! Youth was wild, orgiastic, reckless and bent on being free.