Mrs. Twitter's dance was certainly very smart. She gives two every year, and last night's was the first, the one to which she invites the people she knows. To the next she will ask her list. So last night there were about four hundred present. At the next I suspect there will be just about that many absent, including myself. I fear the house will burst, and I have no mind to run risks, and am more than satisfied that to Williegilt Bumpschus will fall the task of bringing a cotillon out of chaos.
What a lot of fuss it takes, anyway, to introduce a plain daughter with millions! Still, I suppose the same is true everywhere and of all classes, for as ice-cream and angel-cake are to the Brooklynite, so are terrapin and champagne to our set. It is no more wasteful extravagance for the Twitters to spend ten thousand in one night than for some aspiring Harlemite to spread crash over the parlor floor and ruin the stair-carpet with lemonade. That is exactly the way I put it to my rector at the club the other day when he was inclined to complain of the difficulty in getting subscriptions for new altar-cloths. I don't suppose that he was at all influenced by my argument, but I noticed him last night paying devoted attention to Constance Twitter, which caused me to suspect that he might be contemplating giving up bachelor life and becoming a benefice—I think that is the term. It would really be a very sensible match, for Constance is intellectual, and could help him with his little sermons on the travels of St. Paul and the needs of the women's guild, and the rest of us might not have such continual calls to supply new apparatus for the gymnasium. She is interested in him too. I could see that at once. A collar buttoned behind has a wonderful fascination for women.
I do not think that Susanna Twitter would make so good a clergyman's wife as her sister, as she is rather more attractive and might do better. Constance is one of those girls of whom her friends will say "she is lovely when you get to know her." More than that can be claimed for Susanna. It would even be unjust to class her as good-hearted. She has neither face nor figure, but is just a great big hobble-de-hoy, can play a man's game of tennis, and is studying jiu jitsu. In a few years she will have a double chin and a beam. I like her immensely, though I do wish she would not dance as though she were patting down a tennis-court with her feet.
It is very delightful to read in the paper this morning that Mr. Mudison led, dancing with the beautiful débutante. I suppose at this very moment thousands of unfortunates who were not there are studying the columns and columns that tell about it, and picturing Mr. Mudison gliding airily about a brilliant ballroom, in his arms clasping a slender fair-haired girl, with Grecian features and a marvellous complexion; Mr. Mudison, delicately holding the tips of her slender fingers, leading her gracefully through the intricate mazes of some figure; Mr. Mudison, followed by flunkeys bearing gifts, priceless gifts of paper parasols and pin-wheels; the music stilled at his beck; at his call the dreamy strains again filling the room. A delightful picture!
I do like Susanna Twitter immensely, but the rare times I danced with her I entirely lost control, thanks to her having always been accustomed to leading at boarding-schools, and I felt as though I were clinging to a fly-wheel. It was on one of these mad careers that Winthrop Jumpkin, dancing the Boston in a corner, hurled Sally Bilberry violently against me, and a moment later Evelyn Garish's partner poked his elbow in my eye. Susanna said that she could go on forever, and I think she would have, for I do waltz well, but luckily Horatio Gastly stepped on her bit of flying train, and before we could overcome our momentum she had unravelled down one side of the room. We had to retrace her gown, a dangerous task, as a dozen nimble feet had caught it up, and seemed to resent my wild efforts to disentangle them.
The cotillon as a means of allowing the greatest possible number of persons to dance in the least possible space is a failure. If we could only have a few policemen to keep the stags in their proper place, besides the detectives who see that no suspicious persons get in as guests; if we could have laws making it petty larceny to "steal," and a misdemeanor to dance at a speed exceeding ten miles an hour, then our germans might partake somewhat of the stately measure of the olden time. Now we leaders are proud if we can preserve a semblance of order, for, instead of conducting a chosen few through some graceful man[oe]uvres, our chief duty is to shoo the invading hosts back to their chairs; to dance with the lovely débutante, and manage a penny bazaar. Still, everyone said that I did very well, considering the crush, and they particularly praised the new figure which I got up out of my own head. [We find here in Mr. Mudison's rough draught a diagram which looks like a map of Port Arthur during the siege, but it is not necessary to reproduce it, as he makes his terpsichorean invention clear.] Forming the girls in the outer circle and the men in the inner, standing in the middle myself, I made the two wheels revolve rapidly in opposite directions, the men going backward. The result was simply kaleidoscopic; dazzling, the on-lookers said, and not without a humorous side, for there were several collisions, in one of which the Earl of Less had his monocle broken. In the general shuffle-up of partners, due to dizziness, there fell to me one of the most charming girls I have met this winter, Wisteria Plumstone, who is just out, and so has lost none of her good looks. I must confess the older I get the more I like débutantes. They appreciate it thoroughly when I dance with them. Wisteria smiled all over when she saw young Cackling hunting for her at the other end of the room, and me approaching her with wide-spread arms. She clung to me as if for protection, and, contrary to my usual rule to go only once around the room with them, I circled it four times. A sensible child too; she did not try to talk further than to venture that the floor was too slippery, and that she was having a lovely dance. Now, most girls of her age in their efforts to say something, drive you mad with their disjointed comments on the music and the people, and when they have learned to keep up a continual chatter it is no small mental strain to hold your mind on their line of thought, so as to chime in occasionally with something that would indicate that you have been listening. However, when I was younger I used to think that talking with these mere infants about the music and the people, the last dance and the one to come, about that girl in pink and the other in blue—I used to think that of such stuff a divine time was made. The pretty débutante, fresh, unsophisticated, self-conscious, is a delight to the eye of us old social adventurers, but our minds demand something more. When I would dance with Wisteria Plumstone I would take Gladys Underbunk in to supper.
But Mrs. Underbunk dances too—superbly. I found her in an exhausted condition on her chair, with Horatio Gastly trying to fan her back to life, and when she had recovered her breath and speech, she explained that she had been dancing with the Earl of Less, who had kept her revolving so rapidly in one direction that she had almost lost consciousness. Dancing with Englishmen, she said, always gave her exactly the same sensation as drowning, but never before had she come so near the bottom. She had been about to go down for the third time when Mr. Gastly thoughtfully bumped into Lord Less, throwing him all out of step with the music, and giving her an opportunity to grasp a chair for support and save herself. Horatio, of course, was claiming his reward, but the delightful woman told him that she had promised it to me, so as we glided around together, she every now and then giving me one of those maddening glances out of the corner of her eye, I had an opportunity to tell her how cut up I was when I went down with my car to take her a spin last week and found that Jumpkin had whirled her away in that dreadful old loco-sewing-machine. She did not say a word, but looked down at her whirling feet, which was wonderfully encouraging.
At supper I continued on this line, becoming thoughtless and reckless, as men will sometimes, and, positively, I think I should have made a fool of myself before the bird was served if Evelyn Garish had not burst in and asked Gladys where in the world she met those dreadful Styne people, in whose box she had been at the opera the other night. Mrs. Underbunk replied very quietly that she had just run across them at a house-party at the Duke of Guile's place in Devonshire, last winter. For a moment Mrs. Garish did not seem to have any breath left, and made dough-balls convulsively. Then she said sharply that it was high time the English realized that there were social distinctions in this country, instead of treating those with one generation of American gentlemen behind them with the same consideration as those who had two or three. Mrs. Underbunk said simply that the Stynes were very rich. She has a way of getting right at the heart of everything. But that did not satisfy Evelyn. To get in, something more than mere money should be required, said she, forgetting entirely that the Garishes had been generally snubbed until the old man worked the corner in Western Pacific. I supported Mrs. Underbunk nobly, and declared that I had found the Stynes quite like other people, and would certainly go to the dance they are to give soon at Flurry's. This made Mrs. Garish lose her temper, and she turned abruptly and began to ask Jack Twitter if he had an ace, queen, and seven-spot, which would he lead.
Gladys Underbunk gave me one of her grateful glances. She said that she would go out in the car with me Saturday if I would promise to talk sense. So I promised.