"A charming woman!" cried Mr. Underbunk, without a trace of insincerity. "I heard that she was in this country. She has been living at San Moritz, but I believe she ran over to see our eldest boy at Harvard."
My mind tumbled back to typhoid time. This was the cold plunge that failed to reduce my fever. The eldest boy at Harvard! Joshua Underbunk's tone indicated a half-dozen more somewhere else, yet I found myself actually making excuses for the woman.
Calmly, with no emotion whatever, I said, "She did not mention the children, that I remember."
"They are a delightful lot," said Mr. Underbunk nonchalantly. "I am sorry I cannot see more of them, but her lawyers send me quarterly reports of their health and financial needs."
His expression "a delightful lot" would more than have justified me in calling off the theatre-party that evening and pleading severe illness, and as I walked homeward I seriously contemplated such a step, but the end of an hour found me despatching my man Jangle to the Holland House with a note reminding Mrs. Underbunk of the engagement. Moreover, "the delightful lot" were entirely forgotten when later I stood before her, before the simple little woman, the woman of that most attractive of all ages, the undefinable; the frank, the demure, the vivacious soul; and, most of all, calling especially for my sympathy, the neglected. That Mrs. Underbunk had suffered, that she had children, that she had been forsaken, made her trebly attractive to me in my highly sensitive state. She is thoroughly conventional without being wooden; pious, but not priggish. I do like to see a regard for the outward forms of life, and that she insisted that her maid chaperon us to the theatre, a few blocks away, served to raise her higher in my estimation. To some it might seem that she was a trifle over-particular, but a once-married woman has to be very careful.
Of all the plays for me to have chosen, "The Smash" was the worst. It was the first night, and the present Mrs. Underbunk, formerly Amy Lightly, of the "Whoop-de-doodle" company, was making her début in the legitimate drama; so, eying us from the dark recesses of the box across the house was Joshua himself. My mind reverted to that Mrs. Topper-Tompkins who last summer invaded Newport from Chicago, and had Jack Tattler to dinner with both Mrs. Bobbie Dingingham and Mrs. Willie Timpleton. These things will happen nowadays, and we must expect them and make the best of them. Mrs. Underbunk carried herself beautifully, and even went so far as to applaud Amy Lightly very generously. The others in our box noticed it, and when she was not looking they would get their heads together and discuss her conduct with enthusiastic admiration. The Tommy Tattlers, of course, knew her, but Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, and Constance Twitter had only heard of her. Jumpkin, by the way, is a new friend of mine, a very decent fellow, though poor; being from Boston, and tracing his ancestry without a break to the Puritan who did not come to this country in the Mayflower. I had asked him to match Miss Twitter, but he did not seem to appreciate the opportunity I had given him to meet many millions, and talked incessantly to Mrs. Underbunk, leaving me entirely to Mrs. Tattler. Finally, by getting him nervous about his fur overcoat I engineered myself into his chair, so when he returned to report the precious garment safe, I was too deeply engrossed to notice that I had evicted him.
This was between the acts, of course, during the storm of calls for the author. To my astonishment, who should come on the stage but Julius Hogginson Fairfield, the play being only a dramatization of his great historical novel.
Mrs. Underbunk clapped wildly. "Don't you remember him?" she whispered, as he was making the usual author's speech refusing a laurel-wreath. "He is the clever man we met at the Duffs'."
"Ah," said I, pretending that it had just occurred to me. "The fellow with the queer shoes and the three mother-of-pearl studs."
"Society," said she prettily, "should make allowances for genius."