Then that Julius Hogginson Fairfield had to switch from Mrs. Styne to our side, and break in with a lot of nonsense about motifs, timbre, and orchestration, none of which was of the slightest interest. Mrs. Underbunk did manage to get rid of him by sending him over to tell Constance Twitter that she would take luncheon with her to-day, but from bad, things went to worse, and Horatio Gastly came bobbing in, with Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, at his heels. I seemed to have taken down the yellow flag that had fluttered so long above the Styne box. The intruders, in the confusion following their entrance, secured the chairs by Mrs. Underbunk, and left me talking to Mrs. Styne, who started in to make me commit myself to spend a week-end with them at Westbury. By the time I had filled my Sundays for a month with previous engagements I found myself getting rather entangled, and deemed it wise to abandon the field to Gastly and Jumpkin. I have heard Tristan die so often that there was no inducement to stay longer. But Gladys Underbunk smiled as I made my flight, and whispered that she was terribly jealous of Constance Twitter.
From the opera I went to the Flusters' small dance.
Mr. Mudison's papers for some days after this are taken up almost entirely with denunciations of Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, whom he considers he has made, only to have him turn, hire a car, and take Mrs. Underbunk for a spin to Exudo. This treachery Mr. Mudison discovered while on one of his own wild rides, and for a week he abjured the world and kept to his club sanctuary. A long-standing promise to lead the cotillon at Mrs. Jack Twitter's small dance for her youngest daughter, Susanna, compelled him to give up a monastic life, and it is with this important event that the next part of his edited memoirs has to do.
Mr. Mudison Leads the Cotillon at the Twitters'
I am feeling worn out to-day—utterly exhausted—and am registering all kinds of vows that I shall never lead another cotillon—that is, after I keep my promises to Mrs. Timpleton Duff, Jimmy Doily, and one or two others. I thought last night that the Twitters' small dance would be the end of me. In one of those solemn moments when death seemed very near, when, in an effort to arrange a new figure, I was being trampled on, and elbowed and hurled to and fro in the maelstrom, there flashed to my mind the simple epitaph I would have on my tombstone: "He died for Society." But I survived. What a seasoned veteran of these social engagements I have become! Teas, dinners, operas, and dances—I seem to move through them bearing a charmed life. I am a bit like Achilles or Ulysses, that old Trojan hero, whoever he was, whose heel was his only vulnerable spot, a fact which seems to have become known among the younger set, for that was the target at which they all aimed. I did not mind an elbow or two in the eye; I did not mind a blow over the nose with a parasol-favor; I did not mind when Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, who was trying to dance the Boston, struck me violently in the small of the back with Sally Bilberry; but when Mrs. John Radigan, who hops dreadfully, landed her two hundred pounds on my heel in some indescribable fashion, everything seemed to swim before my eyes, and for a minute I had difficulty in retaining my expression. Of course there is some balm in seeing in to-day's paper, the one that prints all the news that is worth reading, that Mr. Mudison led a delightful cotillon, dancing with Miss Susanna Twitter, a statement which I believe emanated from Mrs. Twitter's secretary, and was given out for publication quite early in the afternoon. But, then, all cotillons are delightful; all dinners delightful; everything that we do is delightful. It is best to be optimistic. It is best to rave over this boresome round of festivity when it is one's life.
Curious how Gladys Underbunk has warped my line of vision! More than once last night I paused to step apart from the scene, to view it from afar off, to think. It is a good thing to think sometimes. When you do, you will be surprised at the ideas that will come into your head. I don't believe I had ever really thought at a dance before, so never before had there come to me even a suggestion of an element of absurdity. It was not the people who were there that suggested it, but the people who were not, and would have given a year of their lives to be of that blessed company—the Morgan Stynes, who had moved Wall Street to get a card and had failed; the Lanigans, who had succeeded and were now whirling around an over-heated room, being bumped and jostled and trampled on, yet deemed themselves happy. Still, I suppose it is well to be seen at these very smart affairs. They are life to so many that to be absent is a sign of a social decline, which, unless checked by a few invitations, will lead to that graveyard of so many hopes—the page of the Sunday papers that tells what the clubwomen are doing.