The lady is, however, likely to appear. She will be wearing one of the seventy hats which, we have learned by the papers, she brought with her, and a pint or so of her lesser pearls. Her dog—which is sometimes served beside her at table at the Beach Club, and whose diet is the same as her own, even to strawberries and cream followed by a demi tasse—will be in attendance; and her husband, whose diet is even richer, may also appear if he has recovered from his matutinal headache. Here she will sit through the hour, gossiping with her friends, watching the antics of several beautiful, dubious women, camp followers of the rich, who add undoubted interest to the place; calling languidly to her dog: "Viens, Tou-tou! Viens vite!" above all waiting patiently, with crossed knees, for news-service photographers to come and take her picture—a picture which, when we see it presently in "Vogue," "Vanity Fair," or a Sunday newspaper, will present indisputable proof that Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones and the ladies sitting near her (also with legs crossed) refrained from wearing bathing suits neither through excessive modesty nor for fear of revealing deformity of limb.
Many a Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones has beaten her way to glory by the Palm Beach route. Many of the names which sound vaguely familiar when you read them in connection with the story of a jewel robbery, in lists of "those present," or in an insinuating paragraph in the tattered copy of "Town Topics" which you pick up, in lieu of reading matter, from the table in your dentist's waiting room, first broke into the paradise of the society column by way of this resort. For a woman with money and the press-agent type of mind it is not a difficult thing to accomplish. One must think of sensational things to do—invent a new fad in dress, or send one's dog riding each day in a special wheel chair, or bring down one's own private dancing instructor or golf instructor at $5,000 for the season. Above all, one must be nice to the correspondents of newspapers. Never must one forget to do that. Never must one imagine oneself so securely placed in society columns that one may forget the reporters who gave one that place.
One lady who, for several seasons, figured extensively in the news from Palm Beach, fell into this error. She thought herself safe, and altered her manner toward newspaper folk. But, alas! thereupon they altered their manner toward her. The press clippings sent by the bureau to which she subscribed became fewer and fewer. Her sensational feats went unnoticed. At last came a ball—one of the three big balls of the season; a New York paper printed a list of names of persons who went to the ball; a column of names in very small type. Lying in bed a few mornings later she read through the names and came to the end without finding her own. Thinking that she must have skipped it, she read the names over again with great care. Then she sent for her husband, and he read them. When it was clear to them both that her name was actually not there, it is said she went into hysterics. At all events, her husband came down in a rage and complained to the hotel management. But what could the management do? What can they do? The woman is doomed. The Palm Beach correspondents who "made" her have been snubbed by her and have unanimously declared "thumbs down." It is theirs to give, but let no climber be unmindful of the fact that it is also theirs to take away!
As Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones looks over the top of her harem veil she may see a great glistening steam yacht, with rakish masts and funnel, lying off the pier-head; and down on the sand she may see the young master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts to snap like flags in a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane; and in that hydroplane she knows there is another multimillionaire.
Near by, sitting disconsolately upon the sand, are the one-horse Middle-Western millionaire with his wife and daughter—the three who were ousted from her seats by the beach-chair man. Mrs. H. S. Jumpkinson-Jones, like every one who has spent a season, let alone half a dozen seasons, at Palm Beach, immediately recognizes the type.
Father is the leading merchant of his town; mother the social arbiter; daughter the regnant belle. Father definitely didn't wish to come here, nor was mother anxious to, but daughter made them. Often she has read the lists of prominent arrivals at Palm Beach and seen alluring pictures of them taken on the sand. She has dreamed of the place, and in her dreams has seemed to hear the call of Destiny. Who knows? may it not be at Palm Beach that she will meet him?—the beautiful and wealthy scion of a noble house who (so the fortune teller at the Elks' Club bazaar told her) will rescue her from the narrow life at home, and transport her, as his bride, into a world of wonder and delight, and footmen in knee-breeches. Daughter insisted on Palm Beach. So mother got a lot of pretty clothes for daughter, and father purchased several yards of green and yellow railroad tickets, and off they went. They arrived at Palm Beach. They walked the miles of green carpeted corridor. They were dazed—as every one must be who sees them for the first time—at the stunning size of the hotels. They looked upon the endless promenade of other visitors. They went to the beach at bathing hour, to the cocoanut grove at the time for tea and dancing, in wheel chairs through the jungle trail and Reve d'Eté, to the waiters' cake walk in the Poinciana dining room, to the concert at the Breakers, to the palm room, and to the sea by moonlight; everywhere they went they saw people, people, people: richly dressed people, gay people, people who knew quantities of other people; yet among them all was not one single being that they had ever seen before. After several days of this, father met a man he knew—a business friend from Akron. A precious lot of good that did! Why didn't father know the two young men who sat last night at the next table in the dining room? Even those two would have done just now. Clearly they had been mad to know her too, for they were likewise feeling desolate. Perhaps mother can get father to scrape up an acquaintance with them. But alas, before this plan can be set in motion, the two young men have formed their own conclusions as to what Palm Beach is like when you do not know anybody in the place. They have departed. Next day, when mother enters daughter's room to say good night, she finds her weeping; and next day, to father's infinite relief, they start for home. So it has gone with many a bush-league belle.
Even the Mrs. Jumpkinson-Joneses, satiated though they be with private cars, press notices, and Palm Beach, can hardly fail to be sensible to the almost delirious beauty of the scene at bathing hour.
Nowhere is the sand more like a deep, warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant color: sweaters, parasols, bathing suits, canvas shelters—blue, green, purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet—vibrating together in the sharp sunlight like brush marks on a high-keyed canvas by Sorolla; nowhere has flesh such living, glittering beauty as the flesh of long, white, lovely arms which flash out, cold and dripping, from the sea; nowhere does water appear less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires, held perpetually in cool solution and edged with a thousand gleaming, flouncing strings of pearls.
