I am just back from the Radigans'. To-night I am going to dine at a dairy restaurant, and for some evenings to come, I fear, the performance must be repeated. But to move in society costs, everybody knows that, and the only reason everybody does not join the mad whirl is that there is a difference of opinion as to whether or not the income compensates for the output. For me it is a necessity, as I am in a business that widens with your circle of rich friends, and, like the champagne agent, I must have social position to be a real success. I do not think I should have gone to Westbury from pure love of adventure, but the Radigans are a good speculation. They are among the outside securities in the polite market and are likely to go away over par and be admitted to the floor or to be quoted at one-eighth.
The very next day after I sat in their box at the horse-show I received a note from Mrs. Radigan. It was written on beautiful note-paper bearing the family crest, a tandem rampant. It struck me that it would be more appropriate to have a pool-room rampant, emblematic of Radigan père, but after all in New York time goes so fast that the performances of the first generation are quickly whirled out of the mind of the second. So under the tandem rampant came the summons to what the good woman termed a "weak-end house-party," a name strangely fitting to my case. The real-estate market has been so active of late that I could not go down on Friday but had to land myself at Westbury on Saturday afternoon, to be met at the station by my hostess with a coach and four and driven home in great state.
Save for the two grooms away off in the stern we were alone, Mrs. Radigan holding the ribbons over four spanking grays and I on the box-seat at her side. It is a dreadful way to drive. I can never understand why people who can afford to be free and independent should subject themselves to the constant scrutiny of these superior servants. Every word I ventured rattled with hollow inanity on my own ears, to be wafted back to those bandy-legged cynics and be laughed over by them in the seclusion of the stable. I heaved a sigh of relief when we pulled up in the porte-cochère at the Hall and I was in the hands of those I knew, with Radigan and the Rollers Club fellows just back from golf, with Miss Veal and—the surprise of all—Miss Angelica Van Rundoun. Her presence was a shock, but she subsequently cleared herself by explaining to me privately that her father had become a customer of Radigan & Co. and had put her up as margins. The last member of the party I met at dinner. She was Miss Constance Mint Wherry, a product of the union of the poor branches of the two fabulously wealthy families whose names she bears. A large woman, weighing well over two hundred pounds, with an extensive area of neck and shoulders, decorated with rusty-looking jewels, she was an imposing figure. I was awed, though she could not have been more gracious. She spoke of Williegilt as "Bobbie" and told us what she said to him at the horse-show and what he said to her, which caused Radigan to burst in with the remark that "Bobbie" was a "lovely fellow—a lovely fel-low," and Mrs. Radigan ventured demurely that she was going to have him down for a week-end—she "liked him so much."
Miss Wherry took to me very rapidly. She said that I was so original, which of course pleased me tremendously, till she spoiled it all by declaring that "society men" bored her—they were so vapid. I could not see but what my tie and collar matched those of the Rollers Club fellows, and the only outward difference I could discern between us was that when they did talk, they talked very loud, and when they did not talk, they drank much more than I.
But I could not get away from Miss Wherry. When we sat down to bridge after dinner she insisted on being my partner, much to the disgust of Radigan, who wanted to talk to her about "Bobbie Williegilt." Then she said that she would let me "carry her," and when the Rollers Club fellow who sat across from Mrs. Radigan cut an ace and remarked calmly, "Of course it's ten cents a point," I replied, "Of course," but my temperature went up to about 120. I would carry Miss Wherry's 200 avoirdupois with a glad heart any day, but her score at bridge is a load I should shudder to assume again. She made it "without" on two aces and a queen, with a short suit of hearts, depending on her partner to have something, and when I laid down a jack high hand she was awfully good-natured about it and said she forgave me. Then she lost one of her three tricks by leading out of the wrong hand. When I made it "without" in my own hand and the Rollers Club fellow on my left, sitting behind eight sure tricks in hearts, doubled, she went back at him, and they made 144 before we got in at all. My shirt-front had collapsed as completely as my little bank-account when at last I was allowed to retire. Miss Wherry held my hand lingeringly and said she hoped that I would go to service with them in the morning.
Mrs. Radigan said that she hoped everybody would attend service; the wagon would be ready at 10:30. But the Rollers Club fellows guessed that they would go to even-song. To this our hostess replied that that would be impossible, as in the afternoon everybody was to run down to the Southshore Club in the bubble to have tea with the Mints, who had invited them especially. This upset the Rollers Club fellows terribly, and they said they would try to get up but not to wait for them.
We did not wait. Radigan was late, too, so I had Mrs. Radigan, Miss Veal, and Miss Wherry on my hands all morning. We went over to the "cathedral" in Garden City, and I was kept so busy finding their places in the prayer-book that I forgot my own troubles for a time. But the rector brought them all to mind again by his text: Proverbs 10:4—"He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand."
He applied it to Life, not Whist, but somehow I could not but twist his words to suit my own troubles. Miss Wherry said that it was a very thoughtful sermon; Miss Veal declared that he was a lovely looking young man, and Mrs. Radigan, that she "liked him so much."
But that text rang in my brain all afternoon, and by the time we got home from the Southshore Club I had such a splitting headache I could not appear for dinner. They sent to my room all kinds of medicine and stimulants to brace me up for bridge, but I grew steadily worse. Even a nice little note from Miss Wherry, declaring that she forgave me for my bad hands of the evening before, and was waiting for me to join her in having revenge, failed to stir me. This morning I felt much better, though poor. I came up to town in the train with one Rollers Club fellow and he was feeling rather blue, as he had to carry Miss Wherry against Radigan and Miss Van Rundoun. He made my check payable to the Radigans.