The Relentless City

by E. F. Benson

Now, to the frivolous and lightminded this does not seem a world-curdling event, but that very enlightened paper, the New York Gutter Snipe, was not frivolous, and with extreme rapidity it set the red flame of war ablaze when it announced in huge headlines: 'ARRIVAL OF HIS ROYAL TRANSPARENCY THE PRINCE OF SAXE-HOCHLABEN. MRS. LEWIS S. PALMER'S REVELS DOOMED TO DIRE FAILURE. FRITZ (that was his name) PROMISES TO FAVOUR MRS. JOHN Z. ADELBODEN AT NEWPORT.'

The editor of the Gutter Snipe, it may be remarked, had once been a man of enormous wealth, and had honoured Mr. Palmer by singling him out as an adversary in a certain financial campaign. Mr. Palmer had dropped quite a number of little notes on to the floor over him, and he was now poor but spiteful.

The effect of his announcement was magical, for there was already war to the knife between Mrs. John Z. Adelboden and Mrs. Palmer, the latter of whom had planted her standard at Long Island in direct defiance of Newport; and those headlines brought things to a crisis. The news of his arrival was of course telegraphed to Newport by the Gutter Snipe, which did not telegraph it to Mon Repos. Consequently Mrs. John Z. Adelboden knew it by mid-day (the Germanic having come in at 11.49), whereas it went down to Long Island in the ordinary issue of the paper. Thus, Mrs. John Z. Adelboden had seven hours' start.

That remarkable woman grasped the event in every aspect in about three minutes and a quarter. She knew—everyone in America knows everything—that Timothy Vandercrup, the editor of the Gutter Snipe, was her ally against Mrs. Palmer; she guessed also that the news would not reach Mrs. Palmer for some hours. So, within five minutes of the arrival of the telegram, she had called on Newport to rally round her, and sent out six hundred and fifty invitations for a ball two nights later—that is to say, on the evening of the first day of Mrs. Palmer's Revels. To each invitation she added on the bottom left-hand corner, 'Arrival of Prince of Saxe-Hochlaben.' That was rather clever; she did not actually commit herself to anything. The notes were sent out by a perfect army of special messengers, and the same evening all the answers arrived. There were no refusals. Simultaneously she wrote a rather familiar little note to H. R. T., whom she had met and flirted with in England the year before, saying: 'Pray come up to our little cottage here. We have a ball on Monday night. All Newport will be there.'

At Mon Repos the same evening the papers arrived as usual, and Mrs. Palmer (as usual) picked up the Gutter Snipe, since it always contained the manoeuvres of the enemy. And, though at that moment her guests were in the middle of arriving, she left Amelie to do the honours, instantly left the room, went to her boudoir, and read the paragraph through twice. She also, it may be remarked, had met the Prince before; he had tried to flirt with Amelie, who had given him no encouragement whatever. But he had tried to flirt with so many people who had given him a great deal that she thought he might easily have forgotten that.

She sat with the paper in her hands for some five minutes, after she had read it through for the second time, her nimble brain leaping like a squirrel from bough to bough of possible policies, and she paused on each for a moment. The New York Evening Startler, for instance, would put in whatever she chose to send it, and she went so far as to seize a pen and write in capital letters: 'Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer refuses to receive Prince Fritz.'

Then she sat still again and thought. That would not do; Newport would only laugh at her—the one thing she dreaded; for to be laughed at drives the nails into the coffin of social failure. Then suddenly all the tension and activity of her leaping brain relaxed, and she smiled to herself at the extreme simplicity of The Plan. She took one of her ordinary Revel invitation-cards out of her desk, on which the word 'Revels' was printed at the bottom left-hand corner. Before this she inserted one word, so that it read 'Indiscriminate Revels.' That was all; she directed it to the Prince's address at the Waldorf, and went back to her guests.

Now, a matter so momentous is best described in the simplest possible manner, and the emotions that for the next day or two swayed two factions—that of Newport and that of Long Island—more bitterly and poignantly than the War of Independence swayed the North and the South cannot be too simply treated.

The plain upshot, then, was as follows:

Mrs. John Z. Adelboden's familiar little note to the Prince arrived the same evening as Mrs. Palmer wrote hers. H. R. T. accepted it in his own hand with some effusion. Mrs. Palmer's card arrived next morning. H. R. T. read it in bed, thought to himself—the 'Indiscriminate' did it-' That will be more amusing.' He had forgotten altogether about his acceptance of the Newport invitation, and if he had remembered it he would not have done differently. So, after a light and wholesome breakfast of a peach, washed down with some hock and soda, he accepted Mrs. Palmer's invitation.