Poor Helen! Or—is it happy Helen? I think the former adjective is to be chosen. For the game she plays can end only in ultimate loss to herself. And that game's true winners, in the long run, are the very women who, fearing her spell over their loved ones, harry her forth to new wanderings. This thought should comfort them in the inevitable hour when golden Helen's shadow shall fall momentarily athwart their placid lives.
The prim path must inevitably triumph over the primrose path.
CHAPTER FIVE
MADAME JUMEL
NEW YORK'S FIRST OFFICIAL HEART BREAKER
Far to the north, on New York City's westerly side—on One Hundred and Sixtieth Street, near St. Nicholas Avenue—stands almost the sole American memorial to a super-woman. It takes the shape of a colonial dwelling, two and a half stories high, white, crowned by a railed gazebo, and with rear extensions and columns and the rest of the architectural fantasies wherein our new-world ancestors rejoiced.
It is called the Jumel mansion, after Madame Jumel, although it originally belonged to Mary Morris, an earlier and more beautiful man-slayer, at whose dainty feet George Washington, with solemn, but futile, protestations, deposited his heart; and although the woman whose name it bears ended her days there, not as Madame Jumel, but as Mrs. Burr.
The house once stood far in the silent country. But the thin, throbbing island's life crawled northward inch by inch, until to-day the mansion crouches, miscast and bewildered, amid a forest of new and top-heavy flat houses—happy hunting ground for none-too-rich homeseekers—and is shaken by the jar of "L" and New York Central trains.
Poor old house! Bewigged and small-clothed Great-gran'ther Peregrine, from Pompton, caught in the screaming eddy of a subway rush-hour crowd at the Grand Central!