Exit Plumstone Smith, Jr.
It has come at last, and much sooner than I had dared to expect. Of course I am speaking of Miss Pearl Veal's engagement to Plumstone Smith, Jr. Poor Plumstone! He is heart-broken. I saw him at the Ping-pong Club the other afternoon, smoking a cigarette and gazing abstractedly into the depths of a Scotch highball. He did not speak to me, and even though he might not have intended to cut me dead, such action would surely be in his right. And the cruel stories in Town Twaddle are at the bottom of it all. Last week that paper in its leader, in a guarded statement giving no names, announced that the engagement of a certain rich and beautiful girl, a new-comer from the West in Society, to a well-known clubman and cotillon-leader, a son of an old and impoverished family, had been broken. It said that the young man's mother was in bed with nervous prostration, as she had had her house elaborately decorated and had bought some stock on margins on the strength of the improvement in the family prospects; that the youth himself was spending his days in one of his clubs, pounding a bell and crying, "The same!" But still more cruel, it laid the wreck of this home to a young real-estate agent, name not given, who had been insinuating himself into the graces of the innocent beauty. Now, did you ever hear the beat of that? In a separate paragraph it most politely intimated that Miss Pearl Veal's engagement to me would soon be announced.
Where Town Twaddle got the story is a mystery, for it is true to the part where it accuses me of insinuating myself into the affections of another man's fiancée. Though I have known Pearl Veal many months, I do not think we had spoken a dozen words to each other up to the day when we all went skating at Exudo. Then I must admit, as we sat on the bank smoking cigarettes and watching Plumstone cavorting around the ice with Marian Speechless, she revealed her heart to me. No one was more astounded than I.
Love steals upon us strangely in these days. Time was when men won women with the sword, when gallant deeds and pretty speeches, when a noble bearing and a nimble wit were the snare we set for beauty. How different now! Little did I dream as I sat at the Radigan table, covertly admiring Miss Veal across the board, that I was awakening a divine flame as I consumed terrapin and champagne; that I was fanning that flame when I said "Ah!" and "You don't say!" when I discoursed on the weather or the beauty of the opera. These were the snares I set—these, with a few well-cut clothes, some immaculate shirt-fronts and rather snappy ties. My conscience is clear. She would never have been happy with Plumstone had she allowed the affair to proceed to a church terminus, for it was evident that he was after her millions, and her only reason for accepting him was to gain social position. But this reason exists no longer. To-day the Radigans are smarter than the Smiths. There are those who will bemoan the fact that such a condition can exist in Society. Croakers all! Possibly they are the sons of some war, who, boasting the deeds of ancestors, are doing nothing themselves, and so are being pressed back by those who are doing to-day what the others' forebears did yesterday. For myself, I like new things; fresh people as well as fresh vegetables; new families as well as new clothes. Old families new painted are pleasant to know, but spare us the heirlooms. After all, the Plumstone Smiths are the Radigans of yesterday.
So Pearl Veal is in a position to choose. She has chosen and I bow to her will. There was a time when I suspected that she would take nothing less than a duke and would have a wedding-riot, but she says that love in a cottage is all she asks. So she has bought a forty-foot front lot on Seventy-ninth Street, and Coppe & Coppe are making plans for it. So far I have had nothing to say in the whole affair. I seem to have done my part when I ate terrapin and drank my wine, and caught the occasional lustrous glance of the blue eyes over the board; when I said "Ah!" and "You don't say!" Then Pearl took a hand and now Mrs. Radigan is running the whole affair.
Mrs. Radigan has been wonderful. Of course she never intended that her sister should marry Plumstone Smith, but after him she looked to a duke. That she consented to a real-estate agent I owe to J. Madison Mudison. She loves Mudison devotedly, I know, and it has softened her wonderfully. Her view of life has changed. She is less selfish. She sighs more and says less, and when Pearl and I asked her blessing, she just stirred her tea and said, "Oh, well, if you will."
Pearl and I were too surprised to speak for a moment.
Mrs. Radigan looked up from her tea and asked, "Who are your ushers to be?"
I said I did not care, but that I would like to have Green, who had lived in the same boarding-house with me in my lean years. At that she put her cup down and said fiercely: "I think I will have Mr. Lite act as best man. The ushers will be Harry Mint, Mr. Mudison, Bobbie Williegilt, and Dewberry Duff. John will give an ushers' dinner for you at the Ticktock Club."