Mrs. Radigan Being Smart, Becomes Clever
One week more and I shall be married. It used to be said that there were three great events in a woman's life—birth, marriage, and death—and I take it that the same is true of man. But under our improved social system we are not quite so restricted. As Mrs. Radigan remarked the other afternoon, there are now a number of great events—birth, marriages, and death—but I fear she becomes more cynical as she grows smarter. I will not take such a view, and when she expressed it, I put down my foot hard, and looking fiercely at Pearl Veal, said that I wanted it understood then and there that after next Tuesday she had nothing to look forward to but death. She was very good about it, and smilingly replied that she agreed with me very thoroughly. Pearl is so different from her sister. Mrs. Radigan has become very broad and says that nothing keeps her with John but her affection for him, and his dog-like admiration for her. She has become brilliant and is writing a book, a satire on society, I believe, so has begun to surround herself with what she calls clever people, whom she patronizes. He has not changed. He knows nothing of "atmosphere" or of "color," has no imagination, and cannot rise above stocks, carbureters, and glanders. His wife loves him, but pities him. She says that their tastes are utterly different, that he is dull and worldly, and thinks this beautiful earth of ours nothing more than a mint, and life simply a job. He yawns when she talks to him about the "soul" and the "music of things," so they never have common ground to meet on except when they go over the household-bills.
Now with Captain Lord Algernon Fitznit it is different. It was different, we remember, with Mr. Mudison. He came into our lives as Mrs. Radigan was growing smart, and naturally she found the premiere danseur of the cotillons, the member of seven clubs, the polo player with nine handicap a more congenial companion than John, who hopped when he danced and was just learning to take a fence and handle a mallet. Poor John! At the risk of life and limb, he became a thorough sport to please his wife, and then found that, having established herself as smart, she was looking on life with a cynical eye and becoming clever. Lord Algernon is clever, she says. He has been spending a week with us at the Westbury place, and will be here until after the wedding. Mrs. Radigan laid hands on him at the Bumpschus breakfast and simply would not let him go back to England until he had given us some of his valuable time, so down he came, with all his six feet four, his sad, drooping mustache, his monocle, and his "Aw." He is to sail in a few weeks with the Duke and Duchess of Nocastle, and the bull pups, who are now South on their wedding-trip.
Pearl Veal said that we shall be having the Colossus of Rhodes down next, but I cannot see that Lord Algernon bothers her very much, as her sister hardly lets him out of her sight, though at various times she has had a lot of people to meet him. One of the first was Carrie de Bowler, the actress, who goes everywhere now. Pearl argues that she is really not an actress, but is simply a star, and is received because she is beautiful and has good manners. Mrs. Radigan has been very kind to Miss de Bowler this winter, and when she found out that Lord Algernon had once married a dancer, but that it had been broken off by the family, she immediately concluded that he liked clever people, and asked the lovely Carrie for a week-end, with Hetherington Hopper, who writes nonsense novels. I cannot understand where she conceived the idea that the English giant was intellectual. Of course his predilection for the stage is well known, in London it is a common scandal, but on my fishing expeditions into his brains I have hooked up only a few facts relating to dogs and horses, and two anecdotes from the Sporting Times. But he is as good-natured as he is big. He listens well on any subject. Give him a comfortable chair, a cigar, a Scotch-and-soda, and he seems to enjoy Mrs. Radigan's views on the futility of life and the saving power of art just as well as Radigan's discourses on gasoline cars and stocks. Now when Mrs. Radigan reads scenes from her novel to her husband he dozes off to sleep and dreams of stocks and horses, so that when she pauses at the end of a thrilling climax, to hear him snoring gently, she is rightly indignant. But Lord Algernon seems to sleep with his eyes open, and every now and then he says "Aw" or "Jolly" or "Clever—very clever," and sips his Scotch. So Mrs. Radigan feels that their tastes are the same.
The other afternoon we were in the library having tea, after our return from the Fishing Club. Hetherington and Carrie had left the trap and were walking home, so there were six of us—Pearl Veal and I sitting by the library window watching the sun set, Radigan studying the stock quotations in the afternoon paper, Mignonette Klapper playing a new game of solitaire, and Mrs. Radigan reading to the soldier, the soldier drinking Scotch and smoking.
"You see how I am developing the heroine, my Lord," we heard her say, laying aside her manuscript. "Of course Caroline, being enormously rich, suspects unjustly that the men who flock about her care only for her money. Her money is her curse, which brings us back to the great principle of compensation in life. For instance, John has had to give up raw onions, of which he used to be passionately fond. So Caroline has everything in the world but love, while Alonzo, the poor artist, who goes every morning to the park just to see her walk by, loves her for herself, knows nothing of her wealth, and yet they are divided by a wide gulf. Our silly conventions require that they must not speak, and yet she rides by daily and sees him standing by the reservoir in an attitude of adoration and she yearns for him, but how are they to be introduced? Of course, as I go on, I shall develop Alonzo."
"Clever, very clever," interrupted his Lordship. "But Mrs. Radigan, tell me, what do you do about the spelling?"