The worst hitch of the evening was the ruin of the bottle of cocktails I had had mixed by William at the Ticktock Club. He makes the only cocktail in New York that is fit to drink. And after I had explained to everybody how good it was, Stalk went to the patent ammonia refrigerator in the bathroom, to find that the temperature there had suddenly dropped about 100 below zero, and the precious beverage was frozen solid. As it would have taken an hour to thaw that amber ice, we had to send downstairs for aid. Such cocktails as they sent up! There was entirely too much bitters in them, and Mrs. Williegilt got a bad olive in hers. As it went down she looked as if she were my enemy for life. I don't know what the other stuff in them was, but the effect was immediate. All the steam in the building seemed to be pouring into the radiator and to defy all efforts to keep it out. We had to open the windows wide to reduce our temperature, and the contest between Mrs. Williegilt and the olive waxed fierce for a time, but we hurried the champagne and she won.
Gray care was soon cast aside. The dinner was excellent in spite of the distance to the apartment-house kitchen. Madison Mudison was inclined to think that the champagne, though fair, was a trifle too sweet, but he always makes it a point to find some slight fault with the wine, and I did not mind it. Pearl smiled delightfully from soup to coffee. Mudison and Slaughterblock-Jones vied with each other in telling stories. Even Mrs. Radigan asked what was the difference between a cab horse and a bunch of roses, but when we all gave it up she had forgotten. Bobbie Williegilt made two rolls into dough balls, and I interpreted to the Countess all that was said, resorting to French, German, and gestures as a mode of communication.
It was about coffee that a lull in the conversation gave me an opportunity to say that I had gathered my few nearest friends together in my bachelor quarters; it would be my last dinner of the kind in my rooms, as I was about to give up the delightful freedom of bachelorhood for the still more delightful captivity of a home with a wife for a jailer. Miss Veal and I—I got no further than that, there was such an outburst of congratulations. Everybody pretended to be so surprised, though, of course, they had read all about it in Town Twaddle.
The Countess made a little trouble in the lull that followed the applause, for, not being able to understand me very well, she conceived the idea that the demonstration had something to do with Pearl's former engagement to Plumstone Smith, and, smiling at my fiancée, she raised her glass and proposed, "Monsieur Smees." They had a terrible time explaining it all to her, and Pearl and I had to look as if we were not in the room, though we could have heard Mrs. Radigan a block away as she made her French plain by shouting.
Madison Mudison was charming. He saved the day. He choked the Countess off, and, pushing his chair back from the table and eying his glass meditatively, he made a delightful little informal speech, forgetting entirely that but a few weeks before at the Radigan dinner he had welcomed Pearl Veal into the family of Smith. As Mrs. Radigan's sister, he said, he regarded Miss Veal as near and dear to him. Were he a younger man, a richer man, a handsomer and a wiser man, he might perhaps be here in a different rôle—with apologies to his host—he might aspire to a relationship still nearer and dearer. Too late in life he had come to realize that love in a cottage was better than bachelorhood in a dozen clubs. His part was to bless the mating of others. He wanted now, speaking for his dear friends, to welcome into the house of Radigan his young host. Money was not all of life; family was not all; brains were not all. He gloried in his young host, who, having none of these things, had come to New York, had made an honored name for himself in the real-estate world, had won the beautiful daughter of one of the city's best families. Miss Veal was lucky to win such a man. His young host was lucky to win such a girl. The Radigans were lucky. We all were lucky.
I was just remarking that I believed I was the luckiest man in all the world when the telephone-bell interrupted, and Mrs. Bobbie Williegilt, being nearest it, playfully took up the receiver. She dropped it in a jiffy and sternly called to me.
"I was sayin'," came a voice from the office, "that our rules requires that all ladies leaves the buildin' at eleven o'clock."
"But—" I began to protest.
"We can't make no exceptions," said the idiot in the office.
"See here," I began, getting desperate, for I heard Mrs. Williegilt calling for her wraps.