MRS. RADIGAN

HER BIOGRAPHY, WITH THAT OF MISS
PEARL VEAL, AND THE MEMOIRS
OF J. MADISON MUDISON

BY

NELSON Lloyd

AUTHOR OF "THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY," ETC.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1905

Copyright, 1905, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published, September, 1905

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

CONTENTS

MRS. RADIGAN

[CHAPTER I]

The First Chapter and the Last

When I was in college, in that brief interval between the foot-ball and the rowing season in which my mind was turned to books, I had dreams, very faint and illusive, but still dreams, that some day, when the four-year eligibility rule barred me from further struggles on the gridiron and the river, I should fall to work and win fame. Even at that time I was famous. My picture was almost a daily feature of the metropolitan journals, and my weight, height, and chest-measure were solemnly recorded at regular intervals for the information and instruction of the hundreds of thousands of students of that greatest of modern educators—the newspaper. It cannot be frankly said that I looked for anything finer than this, but I did want something more lasting. Young as I was, I realized that the great half-back of to-day is the coach of to-morrow, and the day after the clerk in a country store, or the garrulous bore who sits about the club and talks of games long since forgotten. So I cast about for fields where new laurels could be gathered. But how quickly laurels wither! How fine they are to the eye, yet as food how unsatisfying! So I opened a real-estate office.

I went into business after much deliberation. Had I been born rich, secure in the possession of a home with a full larder, a full wardrobe, and a full stable, I should have preferred to take up brain-work and to occupy myself in one of the learned professions, but I simply could not afford it, and lacked that spirit of self-sacrifice and family sacrifice which causes men to give up all for art and science, and to go down to their graves full of honors and degrees, but empty of all else. To use a metaphor, mixed, like all expressive metaphors, the pen called to me, but when I thought of Homer, of Cervantes, of Goldsmith, of Johnson, of Poe, of scores of others, gentlemen all and men of art and learning, but frayed and shabby, the roll-top desk and the revolving chair seemed safer though less glorious. Fame is won easily with the pen, but to win money you must give more than words, however fraught with wisdom and beauty—you must give yards of cotton, boxes of buttons, and tons of pig-iron and pork. Occasionally a learned scientist discovers something that brings him riches, but, if he is a true scientist, that wealth is quickly dissipated in journeys to that murky, unreal bourne where the world's genius wanders, groping, while the rest of mankind is eating grass with the animals. I wanted to wander, but was afraid. The thought of short rations held me back. Two roads were open, and I chose the easier, but the longing for the other way has never left me. Still, there is consolation, as there is consolation for everyone in this world, even to the Christian Scientist with gout. In life it is a comfort to know that when you are gone your name is still to live, that your bust will adorn some hall of fame, and that women's clubs will haggle over the meaning of what you have written. But to live in starvation and in ignorance of your own importance, to have the laurels placed upon a marble brow—that is different. To be in bronze in a public square is well enough, but it is better by far to have yourself in the flesh in one of the broad windows of the Ticktock Club. Fifty years of terrapin and champagne are better than two thousand of honored memory. Real estate offered me the fifty years. I chose it, and the wisdom of that choice becomes more apparent daily. I know now that it profits one more to have his name signed to a thirty-foot front on Fifth Avenue than to an idyllic poem or a masterpiece of prose.

Giving up all hope of fame and setting out to woo fortune, I elected to deal in lots and buildings because of the tremendous social opportunities that offered there. Fortune is better than poverty, but fortune without fashion is little so. Fashion is ephemeral fame, and those thus famous treat the poor more kindly than they do the merely wealthy. So with fortune I demanded fashion, for I was ambitious and not given to half-way measures or rewards.

You see I am frank. When I saw what would be the cost of a life of usefulness, I boldly set out to be smart. Perhaps my friend, Mr. Mudison, puts it more tersely when he places the proposition in the reverse way: If you cannot be smart, be famous. I knew that I could be smart. From my little office with its map-covered wall, from my revolving chair by the roll-top desk, I viewed the charmed circle, still very far off. But I viewed it with calm confidence that some day I should be of it. For me it had no terrors, for its history was written in the history of the country's industry, in the history of its railroads, of its mines, of its patent devices to make life worth living, and its patent medicines to make the living longer. Of illusions I had none. I knew that life in the palace and life in the slum were of equal interest to him who observed, that they showed him the same humor and pathos, the same vices and virtues. Snobbery exists as much in Harlem, in Brooklyn, in Jamaica, on Grand Street or Houston as on Fifth Avenue. But if you are going to climb, it is well to reach that dizzy pinnacle where none can snub you. I climbed. Now I can drive a public coach, give a monkey dinner or a costume dance, and while the town jeers it envies, and those rail loudest on whom my door is tightest closed.

You will notice that this chapter is entitled "The First and the Last." It is the last, because it was written after I had recorded the adventures that follow, for when I had reached the climax of the story of my life and that of my friends, I found that it seemed to have no beginning. And there was a good reason for this slight omission. Setting out on my own career, I believed that there was a story in every man's life, that the Italian digging in the subway had as many hair-raising adventures as the hero of a historical novel; that the clubman who walked the avenue had as much romance in him as the sprightly fellows who step through Balzac's pages. The idea grew. The future might be unfolding my own story. So one day, when wearied of rentals and repairs, of sales and loans, daily duties that seemed dull, commonplace, and futile, I turned to my pen for relief and began to set before me in black and white the history of the week. The result was not satisfactory, but I had not seen my friend Mrs. Radigan for months, and my days had been given to business and my evenings to economy. I persevered. Time passed. My weekly records offered little but dull accounts of real-estate transactions and the cynical reflections of discouraged youth. Then she came again, and with her an adventure. Dinners and dances, week-ends and weddings began to crowd themselves upon the pages that I scribbled off in this desultory fashion. I was right. A story did unfold. And now I am putting first the chapter I have written last, partly to explain the rambling manner of the telling, partly to provide the missing beginning.

The beginning of the story was really that day when Mrs. Radigan entered my office, but I did not know it then, and made no full record of the event. My books tell me that it was in June, and my memory that the day was piping hot, a Friday, I think, for my partner had gone to Easthampton for a Sunday with the Van Rundouns, and I was left alone with the office-boy, cursing the fate that held me in town in such weather. I envied my partner then. Since, I have blessed the day, for it brought me Mrs. Radigan and life. He still visits the Van Rundouns.

She came in a hansom. Standing at the window, smoking a cigarette, I was listlessly watching the almost deserted street, when a two-wheeler bowled up to the curb, and the scene offering nothing better—only a few delivery wagons and antiquated traps full of families parkward bound—I noted every movement of the horse, the vehicle, the cabby, and the fare. The horse went down on one leg, forward, resting easily and drooping his head to dodge the sun. As Mr. Howells or Mr. James would say in describing such an event, his right eyelid closed and his skin shivered as he shook from him an insistent fly. The jehu opened the roof-window and bawled something. A parasol, a white, filmy thing, shot out in front, opened, and came toward me with a woman appended. I could not see her face for the sunshade. I saw only her figure, a large figure clad in summery things, gauzy, fluffy, in colors bright and cheery, yet subdued and blending with the day, a paradox of some Parisian modiste. The clothes, the carriage, the delicate parasol spoke of means, and instinctively I tossed aside my cigarette and, to be frank, posed in my revolving chair, for I knew that this could not be for the tailor overhead or the music-college still a story higher.

The door creaked behind me, but I was absorbed in papers. Then the office-boy spoke, and I wheeled to find her towering over me.

"Scorching, isn't it?" she said, when I had fetched a chair, and she sat fanning herself with a tiny handkerchief.

While she fanned, I observed. She was a large woman, not fat nor merely heavy, but strong and well-knit—masterful, I said at once when I saw her face and could consider all. There was health in that face, color and life, but not beauty as we judge it. The nose was too broad and tilted up, the mouth was too large, the chin inclined to corpulence; the eyes were small, but there was in them a twinkle of good-humor. Altogether I liked her immensely.

"Well," she went on after a minute, "now that I have my breath again, I shall explain. I am Mrs. John Radigan."

Instinctively I glanced across the street to a great plate-glass window bearing in golden letters the legend that within was the uptown office of Radigan & Co., Bankers and Brokers, of New York, London, Paris, and Chicago. The name of Radigan was synonymous with wealth the world over. It had become so with the last bulge in the stock-market, and now hardly a Sunday passed without some paper covering a page with the story of this newest of our great fortunes, of its marvellous growth and its present lucky owner. From this I knew the story well. The elder Radigan went West in the early eighties with a tidy sum which he had accumulated as a book-maker. He had multiplied this a hundredfold by speculating in worthless mining properties, and had quadrupled that in real estate and wrecked railroads. At his death, a few years before, he had left an estate estimated by the popular writers at two hundred million dollars. Dividing this figure by four, as is necessary to get at the truth in such cases, we see that his only son inherited about fifty. But as well be on a desert island with such a sum as in Kansas City. The Radigans were wise as well as wealthy. Charming as was their home, they saw that it was no place for persons with millions.

Now you can come from Kansas City to New York to stay at a hotel or to exist. To come here to live, the way lies by London and Paris, Long Island and Newport. The dust of the plain is swept away by the Riviera breezes; London's gloom reduces the fever of life; Paris beats down the rough edges of the voice and the manner, giving finish and form. The Radigans followed the rule, but they hurried. They toured abroad, did not live there, and the dust still clung.

"You see, we have just got back, from Paris," said my visitor, impressively. "We had a villa at Cannes in April, you know, and met some very recherche people there. Our apartment in Paris was most delightful, and we should have liked to stay on, but we intend to make New York our permanent home, and thought it would be well to come over and get settled."

"So you are looking for a house," said I, pulling a bundle of papers from my desk.

"A temporary house," said Mrs. Radigan. "I don't see anything here that I should care to live in continuously. We will have to build—positively have to—and Mr. Radigan is negotiating now for a block on Fifth Avenue. He managed to rent a little box on the hills near Westbury for the summer, but I am looking for something to exist in next winter while the new house is going up."

"Here is just the thing you want." The plans were unfolded before her. "It is situated on Seventy——"

"I know," she interrupted. "That is why I came to you, seeing your name on the sign. A rather decent house on the north side, three doors from the avenue, with an American basement and——"

"French windows," said I.

"And a Dutch roof—exactly," she cried. "It is stunning."

"One of the best in town," I declared with emphasis. "Thirty feet front, six stories high. It was built last January by Mr. Bull when he had wheat cornered. Subsequently the receiver sold it to my client, who took it on speculation."

"It is stunning, but small," said Mrs. Radigan. "I should not care to live in it right along, but we can all squeeze into it for a few months, till the new one is done."

"You have a large family?" I asked.

"Three," she replied. "My husband, my sister Pearl, and myself. We shall keep our boy Jack in the country."

"Why, you can have a floor apiece," I declared cheerfully. "Just look at the elevation."

Mrs. Radigan raised her lorgnette and looked, but seemed to see nothing, though her gaze was intense and her brow knitted.

"The entire fourth floor, you see, could be used by Miss Radigan," I ventured softly, to arouse her from her mood of abstraction.

"Miss Ve-al," said she, suddenly abandoning the lorgnette and getting down under bare eyes to solve the mystery of the blueprint. "Is that funny white line the design of the wall-paper?"

"It's the stairs," I explained. "As I suggested, Miss Veal——"

"Ve-al," she corrected, looking up sharply. "V-e, ve—a-l, al—Ve-al. It's French."

"Pardon me," said I abjectly. "Your sister, Miss Ve-al, could have——"

"Oh, don't bother about the old plans," she cried, gently pushing the paper from her. "It gives me a headache to try to make them out. I'm sure you had them upside down. But I'll take your word for it that there's plenty of room to live in. But how about entertaining? How can one entertain in a box like that?"

"There's a ballroom, as you see," said I, trying in vain to guide her eye to it. "Then, on the same floor, you see a large dining-room, a fair-size music-room, and a very fine salon."

"Well," she returned musingly, "as we don't know a soul in town as yet, I suppose it will hold all our friends for a while, but when we get in——"

"The new house will be done by the time you get in," I declared with considerable emphasis.

"Certainly," said she pleasantly, not comprehending the hidden meaning. "Tell me, is that old Mrs. Plumstone's house next door?"

"On the right," I replied. "The Hegerton Hummings are across the way, and the Jack Twitters have the French château on the corner."

"But some common people called Gallegher are on the other side," said she.

"My dear Mrs. Radigan," I argued, "some of the smartest people in town live on that block."

"But the Galleghers might call," she ventured after a moment of hesitation.

"Do not worry," was my retort. "This is not Kansas City. New Yorkers never call on their neighbors."

"Wouldn't old Mrs. Plumstone?" she demanded, a touch of disappointment being evident in her tone.

"Hardly."

"Well, that explains it," she said with a sigh.

"Explains what?" I asked.

"Not a soul around Westbury has been to see me," she answered. "Do tell me, how do people get to know you in New York?"

"They don't," said I. "The question is, how do you get to know them?"

"Well, how?"

"It's very simple," I explained. "When you are buying your property, see as many real-estate firms uptown as you can, for they have some very nice young men connected with them. All the cotillon leaders are in real estate or architecture, as dancing is a branch of their business. Then there are the brokers. Some of the smartest men in town are two-dollar brokers, and surely a great house like Radigan & Co. can make it worth their while to be polite. Why, there are dozens of ways you can collect acquaintances in New York. It is easy if you know how."

"But I did not," said Mrs. Radigan rather sadly. "It has worried me dreadfully, too. Sometimes, since we have been at Westbury, it has seemed as though we must be dead. Of course, one or two people there have been very nice, but they were not the kind we care to know. Evidently, you have made a study of society."

"Not at all," I protested. "It just happens that I have had a number of clients from Pittsburg."

"Oh, I see!" she exclaimed, brightening, and, rising, she took my hand effusively. "You are certainly awfully kind, and I consider myself in luck to find you. You can count on us taking the house, and I hope we can count on your being there often."

It seemed as though she was wasting no time about taking my advice, but there was no necessity of my enlightening her as to my own humble place. It would be delightful, charming, splendid, I averred, as we moved toward the door together. Simply social hyperbole, I thought at that moment. Truth, real truth, I vowed to myself at the next, when I happened to glance to the street, and there in the cab, gazing up at the office-window with a frown of impatience, saw a girl's face.

"I will see you to your hansom, Mrs. Radigan," I said gallantly.

"Oh, don't bother," said she.

"I insist."

So I seized my hat, and a moment later we stood together at the curb.

"To Thirty-fourth Street ferry," she called to the cabby.

"The Long Island Railroad," I shouted at the jehu, wanting to be of service of some kind, and give reason for my presence.

The girl leaned out of the cab.

"I thought you were never coming, Sally," she said petulantly.

"This is my sister, Miss Pearl Veal," said Mrs. Radigan, not heeding her, but turning to me.

I took the tips of the proffered fingers in mine, let them drop, and bowed. I stammered something—something inane, I suppose, but the girl gave me a lustrous smile just the same.

"Warmish day," I ventured, more courageously.

"Indeed," said she quietly, but still sweetly smiling.

"Good-by," said Mrs. Radigan, holding out her hand. "You can count on me."

"You can count on me," said I firmly.

And the cab rattled away.

For months I did not see that splendid pair. They were often in my thoughts, but as a clerk from the banking office carried through the rental of the house, I seemed to be forgotten. My summer scribblings were no less dull, but more cynical than ever. A Sunday with the Van Rundouns and a two-days' stay in Morristown made the sum of my social successes. The future seemed to offer little better. But November came. The horse-show bugle called the Radigans to town, and with them brought me adventures, adventures in numbers and often strange. The records of these, made at the time when their impression on my mind was sharp and clear, are set forth in the succeeding chapters.

[CHAPTER II]

My First Great Social Adventure—The Horse-show with the Radigans

I picked up my paper at breakfast this morning to be informed in flaring headlines that "The Horse is King." One day in every year we must face that black-typed legend, just as at certain other times we must be instructed, as though we were ignorant of the fact, that it is a "Noisy Fourth," a "Bright Thanksgiving," or a "Merry Christmas." To further impress upon our sluggish brains the regal position of the horse we must be confronted with an impressionistic picture of a long-legged, bow-legged, knock-kneed animal, with a thin body, a neck arched like a giraffe's and a swelled head, being towed around a ring by a bandy-legged groom. It seems to me that this figure bears about as close a relation to the great Madison Square Garden circus as the lion rampant, the crest of my dear friends the Van Rundouns, has to that ancient and anæmic family. Somebody told me the other day that a certain railroad in this country used as its trademark the identical Egg that the blind woman in Mr. Kipling's "They" traced upon the rug to the confusion of reading-circles and cultured sets all over the English-speaking world. The Egg is the Oriental symbol of Life and has no connection whatever with a dining-car service, which goes to demonstrate that the equine wonder that stares at us from the front page of our morning paper on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of the show is after all only a symbol handed down from the remote ages.

This county fair of ours has always had an element of mystery for me. The horse may be king, but his is a very limited monarchy indeed. I decided that as I sat last night in the Radigan box studying the endless procession of men and women passing in review before me. Why do they come here? I found myself asking. More than eighty per cent. of them do not know a breeching from a fetlock, and is there anything more uninteresting than watching a half-dozen horses circle twice around a ring, line up in the centre, be inspected by three solemn judges, and run around and out with ribbons attached? Of course, if you own or deal in horses, it is different. Likewise if you are a multi-millionaire—inherited—and depend on horses to keep your mind working. But why thousands of well-balanced persons with moderate incomes waste time and money to yawn through an evening in a hard seat or be trampled on and crushed in that procession is a mystery. Yet they will do it. And they generally look bored—all of them.

Of course sitting in a box is different. It is like being on the stage in a thinking part. And we mediocre, humdrum folks, who cannot shine ourselves, do enjoy reflecting a little lime-light. So every minute of that long three hours was a rare pleasure to me. A first night with the Radigans, though they did make their money in pool-rooms and will not get "in" for several years, is vastly superior to a Saturday evening in a cast-off box with old New Yorkers like the Van Rundouns. I went with them last year, and then for the first time realized the chasm that separated the man in the box from the poor crushed creatures who swept around and around the promenade. I know how I felt when the fellows from my old boarding-house came along and stopped square in front of our party and stared up at me. Of course they all had to take off their hats, because that very act gave them a certain distinction in the mob, and of course I had to return their greeting. The box was Bobby Q. Williegilt's own, but they did not know that he had lent it to some poor cousins of his who had sent the tickets to some friends of theirs, who had given them to the Van Rundouns, who asked me to join them, so the boys treated me with marked deference forever after.

Now when it comes to a choice it is a toss-up between the Radigans and the Van Rundouns. I had to make a choice and I ventured all. Radigan met me on Broadway last week and brought me uptown in his new 90 horse-power car. He told me that several well-known men from the Rollers Club had promised to sit in his box, and he invited me to join the party. I recalled what the Van Rundouns said about the Radigans and rather hesitated at first, but then I remembered that after all they would only have that left-over on Saturday night and possibly not at all. Like all else in this world, old families must die. It is the new family, cradled in the 90 horse-power imported French car, that in a few years will reach that maturity which we call "smartness." In that gilded circle, supported on rickety wooden chairs, that is the great feature of the horse-show, mature families are really surprisingly scarce. There are many Radigans, with a goodly sprinkling of Van Rundouns—besides the dealers. The mature do not have to go any more. They can afford to look upon it as an "amusing show," where you can see "all kinds of people" if you drop in for, say, just one evening. The Radigans must go to prove that they are growing, and the Van Rundouns to show that they still live. The Radigan star is ascending, and I decided to grasp one of its points and go up with it.

Evidently the Radigans are willing to carry me along, for I notice that they have lost no time about taking my advice. Those Rollers Club fellows, it seems, are clerks in the office, rather decent chaps and exceedingly well groomed. Besides them, our party consisted of our host and hostess, Miss Pearl Veal, and myself. We had an excellent dinner at the St. Regis before starting, and I know positively that Radigan gave the waiters a ten-dollar tip, so you can see what the original cost must have been. There was no rare old wine on the list that was too expensive, and the club fellows made it disappear with great rapidity and relish. For myself, I kept to champagne, for, though it was cheaper, I felt that I knew just what it would do. Mrs. Radigan's sister—I can never think of her by her name—drank nothing at all, explaining to me that it made her eyes water; but our hostess was not so abstemious, and when we left the table she was beaming. We ran down to the Garden in the new car, as Radigan was scheduled to drive his high-stepping pair, Samson and Delilah, in the opening class. Mrs. Radigan told me, by the way, that she named all their horses, and asked if I did not admire her taste in this case. She had taken the names from an historical novel.

Radigan drove splendidly and won the blue ribbon. He ran up to receive our congratulations, and then hurried away to put on his riding togs and come on again with his fine saddle mare Ulysses, which his wife had named after a play. The jam in the promenade was tremendous by this time and we attracted a great deal of attention. Mrs. Radigan had on a green velvety creation, with a hat that might have been modelled after an elevated railroad station, but she is a handsome woman and looked stunning, though she did at times suggest to me the pin-cushion our Sunday-school gave the minister's wife many years ago. Her sister was playing the simple rôle in plain black, and really was lovely and attracted a vast amount of staring. What element is lacking in blue blood that it leaves most of its possessors so pale and ill-moulded? What a delight are these red-blooded beauties that Kansas and other remote places send us! And generally they have names that should be changed. Both the club fellows seemed to feel as I do and occupied themselves with the sister, and talked stocks to her. One of them had just caught a ten-point rise in two days on a thousand X.Y. & Z. preferred, and so was very interesting, for it is pleasant to hear how quickly and easily other people make money. The girl learned all about the way they did it, and murmured, "Indeed!" and "Really!" and smiled at everything they said about "Chickasaw common" and "Carbonic Acid Gas first preferred." I had hoped to get some points on polite conversation from these club fellows, thinking they had been asked to be entertaining, but I realized soon that they were there for looks. And they did look well. There was a block in front of our box nearly all the evening.

The fellows from my old boarding-house went by eight distinct times, close under me, on each occasion taking off their hats and bowing. The crowd must have soon thought that they knew everybody in the place worth knowing. I had not seen them since I moved into a bachelor apartment, into rooms with red paper, a telephone, and private refrigerator, so I had to lean over the front of the box once anyway to shake hands with them, which pleased them greatly. I should have presented them to Mrs. Radigan, but she had turned around to talk to the club fellows. I could not blame her for being so distant, for my friends were wonderfully dressed. There was young Hawkins, for instance, in a very shiny top hat, a dinner-coat, and a white ready-made-up tie, and Green, who has the fourth floor rear hall-room, in a derby and a tail coat and a turn-down collar so large that he could have drawn in his head like a turtle. Robinson had a top hat and white gloves, but he kept his overcoat buttoned, so I could not see what was underneath. And all the time that these idiots were staring up at me, basking in the reflected social sunlight, a half-dozen women were looking up our box in the programme to find out who we were, and a newspaper artist was drawing me. Then Green got his courage up, seized opportunity by the bit, and began to talk volubly about the horses. Apparently he intended to stay there all evening, and there was nothing for me to do but to exclaim suddenly, "Rather smart-looking cob that!" So when he turned around to look at the animal, I turned, too, and lost myself in conversation with Miss Veal.

It would seem that I had done enough for those three climbers, but they were not satisfied. All the evening they kept circulating around that tan-bark ring—on the outside—and whenever they passed us they all bowed most elaborately. Still, I suppose that is a starter on the upward way. Some year soon they may land in a fourth-hand box on a Saturday evening, but then I feel sure the newspapers will refer to me as that familiar figure So-and-so, "who, though he has no horses entered this year, is to be seen regularly with the Williegilts." They did have my picture in last year, only they got my name wrong. They showed me in a very flat-rimmed topper, with a half acre of white shirt-front, and I was sucking a cane. Why I should carry a cane in the evening I could not make out, but as I looked very Gibsonesque, I forgave them. It was a bit aggravating, though, to be presented as Bobbie Q. He must have been as much surprised as I, and possibly flattered.

I think my boarding-house friends rather annoyed Mrs. Radigan. She asked me who they were, and when I told her she raised her eyebrows. She said with a sigh that we should be just as nice to queer people as to anybody else. Then she gave a beaming bow to one of her husband's customers, and got a beaming salute in return, with a cold glance from the customer's wife. Several other customers spoke to her. Altogether she is getting along swimmingly.

But the great event of the evening was after Radigan had won in the class for spike-teams, and he brought up Bobbie Q. Williegilt, and introduced him. You should have seen the stir in the surrounding boxes. It seemed that young Williegilt wanted to buy Samson and Delilah. Mrs. Radigan would not part with them for anything till Mr. Williegilt actually got into the box alongside of her. Then she sparred with him in smiling whispers for a half-hour, and in the end let him have the pair for a song. Meantime the sketch-artists were hovering around in multitudes, and after Williegilt left us, three other club fellows came of their own accord and talked stocks to Mrs. Radigan and her sister.

All our pictures were in the paper this morning.

[CHAPTER III]

A Week-end at Westbury

I am just back from the Radigans'. To-night I am going to dine at a dairy restaurant, and for some evenings to come, I fear, the performance must be repeated. But to move in society costs, everybody knows that, and the only reason everybody does not join the mad whirl is that there is a difference of opinion as to whether or not the income compensates for the output. For me it is a necessity, as I am in a business that widens with your circle of rich friends, and, like the champagne agent, I must have social position to be a real success. I do not think I should have gone to Westbury from pure love of adventure, but the Radigans are a good speculation. They are among the outside securities in the polite market and are likely to go away over par and be admitted to the floor or to be quoted at one-eighth.

The very next day after I sat in their box at the horse-show I received a note from Mrs. Radigan. It was written on beautiful note-paper bearing the family crest, a tandem rampant. It struck me that it would be more appropriate to have a pool-room rampant, emblematic of Radigan père, but after all in New York time goes so fast that the performances of the first generation are quickly whirled out of the mind of the second. So under the tandem rampant came the summons to what the good woman termed a "weak-end house-party," a name strangely fitting to my case. The real-estate market has been so active of late that I could not go down on Friday but had to land myself at Westbury on Saturday afternoon, to be met at the station by my hostess with a coach and four and driven home in great state.

Save for the two grooms away off in the stern we were alone, Mrs. Radigan holding the ribbons over four spanking grays and I on the box-seat at her side. It is a dreadful way to drive. I can never understand why people who can afford to be free and independent should subject themselves to the constant scrutiny of these superior servants. Every word I ventured rattled with hollow inanity on my own ears, to be wafted back to those bandy-legged cynics and be laughed over by them in the seclusion of the stable. I heaved a sigh of relief when we pulled up in the porte-cochère at the Hall and I was in the hands of those I knew, with Radigan and the Rollers Club fellows just back from golf, with Miss Veal and—the surprise of all—Miss Angelica Van Rundoun. Her presence was a shock, but she subsequently cleared herself by explaining to me privately that her father had become a customer of Radigan & Co. and had put her up as margins. The last member of the party I met at dinner. She was Miss Constance Mint Wherry, a product of the union of the poor branches of the two fabulously wealthy families whose names she bears. A large woman, weighing well over two hundred pounds, with an extensive area of neck and shoulders, decorated with rusty-looking jewels, she was an imposing figure. I was awed, though she could not have been more gracious. She spoke of Williegilt as "Bobbie" and told us what she said to him at the horse-show and what he said to her, which caused Radigan to burst in with the remark that "Bobbie" was a "lovely fellow—a lovely fel-low," and Mrs. Radigan ventured demurely that she was going to have him down for a week-end—she "liked him so much."

Miss Wherry took to me very rapidly. She said that I was so original, which of course pleased me tremendously, till she spoiled it all by declaring that "society men" bored her—they were so vapid. I could not see but what my tie and collar matched those of the Rollers Club fellows, and the only outward difference I could discern between us was that when they did talk, they talked very loud, and when they did not talk, they drank much more than I.

But I could not get away from Miss Wherry. When we sat down to bridge after dinner she insisted on being my partner, much to the disgust of Radigan, who wanted to talk to her about "Bobbie Williegilt." Then she said that she would let me "carry her," and when the Rollers Club fellow who sat across from Mrs. Radigan cut an ace and remarked calmly, "Of course it's ten cents a point," I replied, "Of course," but my temperature went up to about 120. I would carry Miss Wherry's 200 avoirdupois with a glad heart any day, but her score at bridge is a load I should shudder to assume again. She made it "without" on two aces and a queen, with a short suit of hearts, depending on her partner to have something, and when I laid down a jack high hand she was awfully good-natured about it and said she forgave me. Then she lost one of her three tricks by leading out of the wrong hand. When I made it "without" in my own hand and the Rollers Club fellow on my left, sitting behind eight sure tricks in hearts, doubled, she went back at him, and they made 144 before we got in at all. My shirt-front had collapsed as completely as my little bank-account when at last I was allowed to retire. Miss Wherry held my hand lingeringly and said she hoped that I would go to service with them in the morning.

Mrs. Radigan said that she hoped everybody would attend service; the wagon would be ready at 10:30. But the Rollers Club fellows guessed that they would go to even-song. To this our hostess replied that that would be impossible, as in the afternoon everybody was to run down to the Southshore Club in the bubble to have tea with the Mints, who had invited them especially. This upset the Rollers Club fellows terribly, and they said they would try to get up but not to wait for them.

We did not wait. Radigan was late, too, so I had Mrs. Radigan, Miss Veal, and Miss Wherry on my hands all morning. We went over to the "cathedral" in Garden City, and I was kept so busy finding their places in the prayer-book that I forgot my own troubles for a time. But the rector brought them all to mind again by his text: Proverbs 10:4—"He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand."

He applied it to Life, not Whist, but somehow I could not but twist his words to suit my own troubles. Miss Wherry said that it was a very thoughtful sermon; Miss Veal declared that he was a lovely looking young man, and Mrs. Radigan, that she "liked him so much."

But that text rang in my brain all afternoon, and by the time we got home from the Southshore Club I had such a splitting headache I could not appear for dinner. They sent to my room all kinds of medicine and stimulants to brace me up for bridge, but I grew steadily worse. Even a nice little note from Miss Wherry, declaring that she forgave me for my bad hands of the evening before, and was waiting for me to join her in having revenge, failed to stir me. This morning I felt much better, though poor. I came up to town in the train with one Rollers Club fellow and he was feeling rather blue, as he had to carry Miss Wherry against Radigan and Miss Van Rundoun. He made my check payable to the Radigans.

[CHAPTER IV]

In the New Box at the Opera

The Radigans have a box at the Metropolitan on even Tuesdays, odd matinées, and every third Thursday. They asked me to support them on their first appearance in grand opera, and as I had just sold Radigan a Harlem apartment-house, the Ophelia, of course I had to accept, and, to be frank, it was a most enjoyable evening. The box is an excellent one. It belongs to a branch of the Plaster family, who are abroad this winter and have sublet it. It was a bit full that night, as Mrs. Radigan seemed to have asked most of her friends, but by the help of two extra chairs we all got in. There were the Radigans, and Miss Veal, of course, with myself and the two Rollers Club fellows, Miss Constance Mint Wherry, and a Miss Mignonette Klapper, a rare beauty, who really had no right to be there as she is only a pupil at a finishing school and is not even out in Milwaukee. I must admit that the girl is charming, not at all breezy as we always picture these Westerners, but very soft and insinuating, with most expressive eyes and teeth. She kept me very much occupied after I succeeded in shutting off one of the Rollers Club men and making him fight with the other over Miss Veal.

The opera, I think, was "Tannhäuser," though I paid so little attention to it that I cannot be sure. In the criticism of it in my paper next day I discovered this enlightening paragraph:

"Box 506—J. John Radigan, Mrs. Radigan, Miss Veal, Miss Wherry, Miss Klapper, Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson."

Again, a little farther down in the criticism: "Mrs. Radigan, cold-cream-colored silk, diamond tiara, diamond collarette, diamonds."

I remember the diamonds very well, but of the rest of our hostess's costume I have no recollection. But she was very imposing. She is really a handsome woman, not sallowed by blue blood, with a large figure and plenty of bust room for the display of jewels. And how she did shine! Whenever the curtain went down and the lights went up, hundreds of those social astronomers down on the common earth of the orchestra circle turned their telescopes our way and studied her. How sublimely indifferent to them she looked! She kept that beautifully rounded arm of hers resting carelessly on the rail, and with her fingers played a silent tattoo, so that her rings flashed heliograph signals all over the house, while with her other hand she made expressive motions with her fan. The Williegilts were in their box across the way, and she managed, after much engineering, to catch Bobbie's eye and smile at him, which he graciously and charitably returned, remembering, perhaps, the low price at which she had let him have her prize-winning pair, Samson and Delilah, after the horse-show. These signals between the Radigan and the Williegilt boxes aroused the astronomers below still further, and pointed a hundred more glasses our way, and brought on a rustle of programmes while those excellent aids to opera astronomy were consulted to find out who we were. It was a triumph indeed. Then Miss Wherry helped out by whispering to some people in the next box; the Rollers Club fellows excused themselves a few minutes to appear on the other side with the Mints, and Willie Lite actually called in our box and showed himself right out in front whispering and laughing with Mrs. Radigan and Miss Veal for some minutes, and talking with Radigan in the back long enough to sell him ten cases of champagne. Altogether we seemed quite in the swim.

But we were too overcrowded. Four to a box is all that looks proper. More than that gives you the appearance of a delegation from some home, as I suggested to Radigan. He agreed with me entirely, and on the next third Thursday there will just be three of us in the opera—Radigan, his wife, and myself. We men are to stand back in the shadow and look as if we were hatching some dark conspiracy, while she stays out in front where the astronomers can study her. To get along in society, people must observe.

Still, we did fairly well for a first appearance. The objection I had was that there was too much music and too little opera. The curtain was up and the lights down much longer than it was down and the lights up, and it is difficult to talk comfortably when the people above and below are hissing at you. Then operatic music is so absurd. Of the actual music, of course, I have no complaint. The price paid for it is a guarantee of its excellence, and certainly many of the stars have beautiful voices. It is a pleasure to hear them sing. It is seeing them sing that destroys all illusions. I can lean back and close my eyes and enjoy it. But how different it is when one's eyes are open, and Juliet, age fifty, weight 200 pounds, has her head back, her eyes on the chandelier, her hands clasping her throat, and tosses high Cs at Romeo, age fifty, weight 195, who stands with bowed head, silent, making all the gestures of a conjurer who is throwing coins into the air, making them disappear. I have seen many operatic Juliets in my time, and absurd they all seem when I compare them with the girl who took the part in our high-school performance of the play at home years ago. Of course she did not sing the part, but she did look it, and I must say I like, first of all, to see a thing; the hearing of it is merely icing on the cake.

I happened to suggest a few of these ideas to Mrs. Radigan that night, and she did not agree with me at all. She said, surely—pointing her fan at me—I liked the "Pilgrim's Progress" in "Tan-howser" and the "quintette" in "Whoop-de-doodle-do." That woman has such a clinching way of saying things, I find it quite useless to argue with her. I believe now that she thinks John Bunyan wrote "Tannhäuser" and that the parlor-car effects in so many of the stage-settings are due entirely to the influence of Wagner. But with all her faults she is a most excellent soul. She gets along amazingly and will soon be varnished over. I know, for example, that she is making rapid progress in her French, for, after the opera, at supper she ordered some Philadelphia "capong" cooked in some remarkable French way. Her nasal twang was perfection, and I had no sympathy with the Rollers Club fellows who began to choke violently. I don't care much for those Rollers Club fellows, anyway, and am more than satisfied that when Mrs. Radigan appears again in grand opera she will have only Radigan and myself as a supporting company.

[CHAPTER V]

Mrs. Radigan's First Thursday

The other day I received Mrs. Radigan's card for her "every other Thursday in December." A delicate bit of card-board bearing the name of Miss Veal was enclosed with it. As they had sent out some 5,000 of them, it seemed to me that a splendid opportunity for advertising was missed, as they might have included Radigan's, with his downtown and uptown office addresses, and the list of his firm's various exchanges. But as I have said before, my friends are observing. They have learned that when a man goes into society he must leave his business behind him, unless he be an architect, a real-estate man, or a champagne agent. These three classes are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Society tolerates them, realizing that they must live, but makes them lead cotillons and do other foolish things, as a part compensation for the concessions in their case. One of the first observations I ever made to Radigan was on this point, and I must say that he has generally shown rare good sense. He says that they do so well because they have horse sense. With a four-in-hand or two, and a stable of polo ponies, a man can butt down many a closed door. An evidence of this lies in the fact that Mrs. Radigan got a card from one of the Williegilt families, which is presenting a plain daughter with a large fortune. Mrs. Radigan almost died of disappointment that her own "day" interfered with her going, and at one time I thought she would order a recess in the home function to give her an opportunity of showing herself at the other most exclusive house. But she repressed her ambition and went through the ordeal at home most nobly.

I happened to pass the Williegilt house that afternoon and I could not help contrasting the scene there with that I saw later before my friends' mansion. The street was blocked by a tangle of carriages, two or three seeming lunatics were running up and down shouting numbers like mad, a couple of policemen were kept busy regulating traffic at the avenue corner, and the awning from the curb to the door was so bulging with humanity that you could see the elbows working along the canvas as the compressed human beings squirmed in and out. The Radigans could boast no such scene as this, but I feel sure that in two years more they will beat it, and perhaps they will even have a riot when they marry Miss Veal to a title. As it was, their preliminary event was most satisfactory. Of course, they could not ask any of their old friends, and had to depend entirely on the new crop, which, divided between two days, made the attendance light.

I broke through the line of bandy-legged cynics along the curb, and paused to look up the deserted awning. There is something chillsome always about one of these empty canvas passage-ways, with the half-light, the tawdry, muddied carpet under foot, the dark door away off above you, that seems a cavernous entrance to some wonderland. Fortunately for me one of the Rollers Club fellows came out and he stopped long enough to reassure me. Things were not so bad, he said. The real-estate men who had heard that Radigan was looking for half a block on Fifth Avenue were helping wonderfully, and the architects who understood that a million-dollar house was to be built on the half-block were supporting them splendidly. Fortunately, several of Radigan's smartest customers were on the bear side of the bull market, and their wives and daughters had come to meet dear Mrs. Radigan. Moreover, and best of all—the Rollers Club fellow winked—Willie Lite was within, which would cost Radigan the price of ten more cases of champagne, a small enough payment for so great an honor. So I passed on. Of course the man who announced me got my name wrong, and gave it an Irish twist that made Mrs. Radigan start visibly as he shouted it in her ear. She was vastly relieved to see me, and introduced me to Willie Lite, who was in close attendance and talked most volubly.

They were discussing the "simple life," and I heard Mrs. Radigan say that "of the two, she preferred his 'Parsifal,'" which seemed to amuse Lite tremendously, though to me it sounded rather inane. Mrs. Radigan was an earnest believer in the simple life and regretted that she could not lead it. People did not realize the dreadful responsibilities that devolved on one who was born in our set. There was the endless round of calls, always boresome, and callers, often worse, and dinners and operas, and dances that we just had to go to. Sometimes she longed to get away from it all and go to some quiet place where she could study and store up riches in her own mind and do good to others. But there was Radigan; he simply could not live away from his clubs and his horses. He simply had to have excitement and terrapin, while she longed for repose and brown bread. The good woman heaved a sigh. I had never seen her in that mood before. But as I stood aside and surveyed her splendid massiveness, I forgave her, for I saw that, even did she so will it, she could not, like Diogenes, get into a tub. I fled lest I might forgetfully suggest this, and found rest with Miss Veal, in a simple white effect, very pretty, holding a large bunch of roses that I felt sure one of the Rollers Club fellows had sent her. She was talking sweetly about the weather to old Mr. Stuyvesant Mint, one of the bear customers. Mr. Mint, as I gathered from some five minutes' close attention, seemed convinced that it would rain before Sunday, and Miss Veal's views on the subject were summed up in a smile and an "Indeed." But while I was inclined to be bored by Mr. Mint's ideas, I soon found that I had to make them my own, and solemnly repeat them all over again, for when he became aware of my presence he fled to the dining-room, leaving me to bear his cross.

The burden was light enough awhile, for Pearl Veal is so beautiful. She delights my eye. I could sit with her by the hour, as I can lounge beneath a spreading tree on some hill-top, smoking, watching the valley below, thought arrested, in my mind mirrored the rolling fields, the woods, the meadows, the blue sky, the lazy clouds, and cheerful sunlight. To me she always is a lovely view, a prospect restful. But the world can offer few so fair; it seeks to hide its homeliness; it makes its laws to suit the greatest number. Talk it commands—talk, else you stare—talk small, say things inane, chatter, chatter, let the brain run mad, gabble, gabble, and so forget the universal plainness. Pearl Veal, I suspect, would revel in the quiet valley, away from the clatter of mills and the roar of trade. Her mood is peaceful. She knows that Nature keeps the eyes open and the mouth closed, but perverse man reverses the rule. She would speak when she had something worth while saying. At conversation she fails lamentably. But the world says, talk, and that day it interfered with my happiness. Talk we did, or rather I did, for Miss Veal seems not yet to have learned that the art of polite conversation is to settle nothing, to leave everything up in the air, and if by chance you do make a definite statement, to preserve the subject for further use by that saving, "Don't you think so?" When I said that I believed it was going to rain, she agreed with me and that ended it. When I brought up tennis as an absorbingly interesting subject for sustained repartee, she knocked it on the head in like fashion and left me standing first on one foot and then on the other, gazing into space. Some hours later, it seemed, an innocent young man, with an eye to beauty, relieved me, and I bolted for the dining-room, away off in the rear, where Miss Wherry was pouring tea, and took me under her protecting wing. Radigan was there, penned up in a corner between Coppe, the business half of the architectural firm of Coppe & Coppe, and young Crayon, whose sole hold on life is a Beaux Arts education and a drawing-board. Then there were several bear customers' wives, who were standing around the great table sampling things, and talking between bites to one or two of the social representatives of leading real-estate houses. A few persons, strangers to me, wandered in, took a nibble or two, looked absently about as though they were in a dream, and then ambled out. When I had had a cup of tea, a sugar-coated bit of cake with cream inside, a glass of champagne, and a chocolate peppermint, I wandered out, too. Miss Veal gave me a lustrous smile on parting, and Mrs. Radigan said she was so glad I could come. I paused long enough upstairs to exchange hats with the other Rollers Club fellow, as I saw my new one on top of his coat and remembered that after the opera the other night I had been left with a derelict headgear with many bald spots. Then I went softly away, down the gloomy awning, over the muddied red carpet. I had no trouble getting out, but I prophesy that next time I shall have to fight to reach the street.

[CHAPTER VI]

The Monday Cotillons

A few days ago I received under the tandem rampant a hurried summons from Mrs. Radigan. She was dying to see me, so I closed up my desk somewhat earlier than usual and turned my toes toward Billionville. I had never before seen her so beaming. She reminded me that Mrs. Tucker Ten Broeck had died some weeks ago. Well, she had been asked to take the vacant place among the patronesses of the Monday Cotillon. Now, I realized that society that is really worth knowing frowns on these subscription things, but considering that the previous generation of Radigans had probably waited at the Mondays, it seemed that the present generation was soaring when it danced there. Moreover, there are many thousands of simple, unassuming women in town who would give their heads to appear in that list of eminently respectable names. The Mondays looked down on the Tuesdays, and the Tuesdays looked blank and never heard of the Fridays, and as Mrs. Radigan had, in one wild leap, gone over the Fridays into the Mondays, there was indeed cause for congratulation. In a year or two, with her money, she can raise her eyebrows when the Mondays are mentioned, just as she does now when we speak of the Tuesdays or Fridays. She has had wonderful luck in skipping intermediate social degrees, and at the present rate she will soon take the thirty-third and become a grand commander. I could not understand how she worked it out so quickly.

Mrs. Radigan is inclined to regard the decease of Mrs. Ten Broeck as an intervention of Providence. It seems that on her demand Radigan—to use her own expression—has become "a patron of the church." He is now a vestryman at St. Edwards, a director of the Hydropathic Hospital, vice-president of the Improvident Pawning Society, and a heavy stockholder in the Underground Café Company. Mrs. Radigan is herself a manageress of the "Home for Aged but Respectable Unmarried Women." With Radigan passing the plate every Sunday with Major Plaster, and Mrs. Radigan constantly telephoning to Mrs. Plumstone Smith about the home, it just had to come.

After all, it is the brains that rise like cream in the social crock. There are plenty of people in this town with just as much money as the Radigans, but, struggle though they may, they will stay down. They swim dog-fashion, then drown. Their palaces rise on Riverside Drive, and even Harlem knows their countenances. But the Radigans have brains. They never seem to be swimming for dear life; they float up on their money. Now floating seemed so easy, so blissful. They were able to dispense with one of the Rollers Club fellows for the dinner before the dance and to put in his place young Plumstone Smith, which was a pleasant change for all, so we sat down at the table, besides the new fellow, the Radigans, Miss Constance Mint Wherry, Miss Veal, Miss Hope Van Rundoun, the other Rollers Club fellow and myself. And such a dinner! The Radigans never do things half-way. For each of the young women there was an enormous bunch of American Beauties, and as the men could not take flowers, Radigan loaded our cases with cigars that the gods might smoke. They did not churn us all up in a Fifth Avenue stage, as is the custom in some circles, but rolled us downtown, swiftly, gently, in their new electric carryall.

Mrs. Radigan had come to her own! You should have seen her as she stood in that august row of patronesses, right between Mrs. Plumstone Smith and Mrs. Stuyvesant Mint. They simply looked like the setting. She seemed to have been born and raised right in that spot, so natural did she appear. Mrs. Plumstone Smith let me tip up one of her gloved hands, and then recognized the existence of her son. Mrs. Radigan made a one-quarter bow at us and smiled vacantly, then turned and whispered to Mrs. Mint. But she thawed out later. I found her sitting behind the favor-counter, a part in a scene that called to my mind a street-bazaar in Cairo, though I did not suggest it to her as I led her forth into the mazes of the dance.

Mrs. Radigan hops. Mrs. Radigan loves dancing. Mrs. Radigan tells you to stop when you are tired—she can keep on forever. What an awful combination! The first time we hopped by that row of immaculately clad statuary known as the "stags" I recognized every face distinctly, and even saw the Rollers Club fellow wink at me. The second time around, young Plumstone Smith winked. At the third circuit two or three of the stags had their heads together and seemed to be looking our way and commenting. On the fourth, Tumbleton Wherry, who was leading the cotillon, stopped running around clapping his hands as if he were shooing chickens, and stood in the centre of the room just gazing our way. The last time I saw the stags they seemed to my distorted vision just a long band of black and white. I am positive that Mrs. Radigan, in the early ages of her existence—ages now remote—danced to the music of a hurdy-gurdy.

When the dizziness had gone, I was called to the business of the hour by Tumbleton Wherry, who dropped in my lap a corn-cob pipe tied with pink ribbon and hurried on. So I gathered my feet together, and by sliding madly across the room, managed to place it in the hands of Miss Veal before the Rollers Club fellow could claim her by the presentation of a gilt paper pin-wheel. Oh, but that girl can glide! Perhaps it was the sudden contrast with the hopping performance of Mrs. Radigan that made my new partner seem immaterial. I seemed to be clasping merely a bust, she moved so easily, and I found myself doubting if she had any feet at all, even going to the extent of kicking, gently, to satisfy myself. There was nothing there, she glided so airily. It is the Chicago way. I cannot say that I like it. It is uncanny. Still, it is, perhaps, preferable to the Boston style, which requires that the young woman stand erect like a soldier and move around as though she had castors on the soles of her shoes. But Miss Veal compensated for her over-gracefulness by not talking, which is a blessing, for nothing is so trying as to have to make remarks about this dance being better than some others when a mesh of pink trimmings is swishing around your feet.

Then she smiled! That smile went to many hearts, and when it was seen that I knew her I was besieged with demands to be presented. Consequently she had what society calls a good time, and when along toward morning the band struck up "Home, Sweet Home," she was hung over with favors till she looked like a Christmas-tree, and, besides I had to carry to the automobile for her a whole grab-bag full of corn-cob pipes and pin-wheels.

I walked home with the other Rollers Club fellow. He was very silent. It seems she danced just once around the room with him and then sailed off and sat in a quiet corner for a whole half-hour with young Plumstone Smith. The future is all clear now. From the Rollers Club fellow to Plumstone Smith, then a Williegilt, who will give place to a title and a real wedding with a riot.

[CHAPTER VII]

Mrs. Radigan Captures Miss Bumpschus

If Solomon had been living in these days he would have classed the doings of society folk with the ship on the sea, the snake on a rock, and the way of a man with a maid, the things that pass understanding. Why, for instance, should people who have a comfortable home of their own and money to buy their seats in a theatre, or, indeed, the theatre itself, like the Williegilts, wittingly accept an invitation from the Radigans for dinner and the play, and supper at Flurry's afterward? It meant six hours with that remarkable family, or one-quarter of a day, and when we consider that even the Williegilts' days are numbered, we begin to wonder if it can be true that of all the animals, man is the most intelligent. Stranger still, now that the Williegilts have placed on the broad brow of Mrs. Radigan the laurel wreath of social victory, there are in the town a thousand simple, unambitious souls who would give a year of their lives for six hours with a woman so conspicuous as my friend. The Radigans are in. The Radigans are smart. And by smartness we mean that highly intellectual state which requires yachts, horses, automobiles, dancing, and bridge to keep the mind occupied.

I was walking up the avenue the other afternoon when a brougham swerved into the curb, and a familiar voice hailed me and bade me get in, as she wanted to see me. There is no mistaking a Radigan carriage. They are always perfectly turned out, though I have suspected that the mistress would have three men on the box were there room. She makes up for this misfortune, however, by adopting the London wrinkle of having her footman sit with hands clasped and uplifted in an attitude of prayer; and as I had recognized one of my bandy-legged cynics of the Westbury days at his devotions as the equipage approached, I was prepared to be gathered in. Mrs. Radigan simply had to have me to dinner. Young Plumstone Smith had accepted and then backed out, pleading grippe, though she had seen him going to the Grand Central in a hansom. She must have me to fill in, and though I am accustomed to filling in, I doubt that even the astonishing fact that the Williegilts were coming would have enticed me, but then Miss Ethel Bumpschus was to be there, and I surrendered. I had seen the young woman's picture covering the half-page over the society notes in the Sunday paper, showing her with lustrous eyes and a furry thing around her neck, an Oriental beauty reduced to New York; and on the promise that I should take her in, I accepted. When I heard what was on the programme, dinner, the play, and supper, I asked Mrs. Radigan if we should bring trunks, and she said of course not.

But there were times that evening when it seemed to me that we were of one family, the Radigans, the Williegilts, all of us; that we had lived together all our lives and were to spend eternity in company. It began at seven o'clock, very informally, and when I entered the drawing-room the very last, prepared to besiege Miss Bumpschus, I had suddenly impressed on me a profound respect for the art of photography. She seemed to have aged since Sunday, and though she slipped her arm through mine and worked her way with me through a maze of chairs and tables to the dining-room, I felt that, after all, Mrs. Radigan had taken me in.

Miss Bumpschus is very smart. Besides, she is intellectual. The Bumpschuses have been prominent in New York society for fifty years; one of her cousins married the Duke of Nothingham, and she is herself rated at some ten millions. So, really, Mrs. Radigan was doing me a favor and giving me what she called an opportunity. Then if I wanted to rest my eyes I could gaze on the lovely Miss Veal across the table, smiling at Willie Lite, and saying, "Indeed." Miss Bumpschus, I found, was religious. To her the world was peopled with only two sets of people worth knowing—the very rich and the very poor. She would cut one of the Rollers Club fellows dead in the street, but she would, with her own hands, bake a cake for one of those dear old friends of hers at the Home for Aged Elevated Ticket-choppers. If she had not been born just what she was, the heiress to the great Bumpschus fortune, she would far rather have been a nurse than a person merely well-to-do. But she was an accomplished talker, and though I cannot remember a thing she said, she left none of those dreadful pauses. For this I was grateful, anyway, as I could not break in on Mrs. Williegilt's engrossing discussion of glanders and carbureters with Radigan, nor on Mrs. Radigan's sermon on carbureters and glanders to Bobbie Williegilt; nor could I turn from Willie Lite the smile of Miss Veal. Anyway, whatever I said and whatever she said, Mrs. Radigan whispered in my ear as we were going down the steps to the wagon that I had won Miss Bumpschus's heart, and that if I would complete the conquest I must send my old dress-clothes and top hats to the aged ticket-choppers.

Mrs. Radigan has not yet learned that when you give theatre-parties in New York you must spend a week visiting the plays quietly if you are going to have young girls in the party. Miss Bumpschus is not young, but she is still classed as a girl, and, moreover, as I have said, she is puritanical. Of Miss Veal there was no real cause for fear. She smokes. But Mrs. Radigan informed us that she had chosen this particular play because she knew by the name that it was something Miss Bumpschus and her little sister could see. Poor Mrs. Radigan! Poor Miss Bumpschus! Really it was all harmless enough, but the underlying theme was not a burned will nor a stolen necklace. The play was more for bald heads and switches, like most of our up-to-date dramatic exhibitions, so Miss Bumpschus quickly lapsed into unconsciousness behind her programme, and Miss Veal looked as though it was all a mystery to her.

"It's just my luck," Mrs. Radigan groaned to me. "Now had she been Constance Wherry I should not have cared, but Ethel Bumpschus will not speak to me again. A woman is foolish nowadays who takes a party to see anything but Shakespeare, Ibsen, or the wax-works."

Rare sense is Mrs. Radigan beginning to show! Gleams of high intelligence break through occasionally. But I fear she exaggerated the effect on her younger guests. We did have to arouse Miss Bumpschus from behind her programme when the curtain went down, and when Willie Lite asked her if she did not think it was awfully clever, she turned to me and asked me not to forget the old clothes for the ticket-choppers. But she braced up at supper, and under the protection of Radigan, he being a married man, and the enlivening influences of a few glasses of champagne, she lost all her color again and became very chipper. I, for the moment, took on the character of a horse-doctor, and entertained Mrs. Williegilt with my opinions of glanders, while Williegilt basked in the light of Miss Veal's smiles, and Willie Lite laid the wires to sell a heavy line of champagne to our hostess. Altogether the evening was a success, particularly as I read in my paper the next morning that "Mr. and Mrs. J. John Radigan entertained Mr. and Mrs. Bobbie Q. Williegilt and several other smart people at dinner, the play, and supper last evening."

[CHAPTER VIII]

The Small Dance at Flurry's

By one bold leap Mrs. Radigan has landed herself among the smartest of the smart and has fixed herself there so firmly that heaven and earth cannot move her as long as she holds on to her money. She staked all and won. If she failed to become a smart woman, there was that dreadful alternative of being a club woman, but she risked it. She is safe now. Her husband can abscond or can sue for divorce, she can sue for divorce or can become totally demented, they can abandon each other and their son can abandon them, but as long as the great Radigan fortune hangs together they will be smart. And after all that adjective is not misused, for it is money that makes people interesting in this world. We will listen with bated breath to the twaddle of a multi-millionaire, while we would yawn in the face of a college professor. Everybody says the Radigans are interesting. Those who knew them in their poorer days must have thought them dull.

I said that Mrs. Radigan risked all. That is not exaggeration. When I heard how she had rented Flurry's entire establishment for an evening, and calmly sent out invitations to a dance, I shuddered.

"Why, that great ballroom will look like Asbury Park in December," said I, "unless you have made some foolish blunder like asking your old friends."

"Never," she answered firmly. "I have made a list of just 600 names. My annual ball is to be a great gathering of all the clans, you see. Then I want to give it a cosmopolitan tinge, so I have asked representatives of each of the trades: one actress, one author, one artist, one clergyman, and a college professor. You see it will look as though I were able to ask just whom I chose, in spite of their social position."

With that she handed me a press copy of her list, and as my eye ran from name to name, I groaned. There was hardly a perfumery, a brokerage house, a breakfast-food, a real-estate firm, a bank, or a business combination of any kind in the city that was not represented.

"Why, these are the smartest people in town!" I cried. "And I am sure you don't know one-tenth of the lot, and that only half that number know you. How many do you think will come?"

"I cannot guess," she said calmly. "The cards went out only yesterday. It is a gamble, of course. If nobody comes, we shall move to Riverside Drive. If everybody comes, we go on with our new house on the avenue."

It was a pity, indeed, that that new house could not be finished in time. If money could have completed it, there would have been no question, but Coppe & Coppe, the architects, said they had to have at least three months to build such a palace. The designs alone took them ten days, so there was nothing to do but to have the affair at Flurry's. It is difficult at a public place like that to take from a private affair the air of one of these subscription things, for there is no change of scene, no change of actors, and were you not versed in socialology you could not tell Mrs. Plumstone's dance from one of those Wednesdays or Thursdays. So Mrs. Radigan was handicapped from the start; but she made a masterly stroke by giving the champagne contract to Willie Lite, making it his interest to gather in as many of his friends as possible. It was there that she won the battle, I suspect, and her calm demeanor in those awful minutes preceding the arrival of the first guests came, I believe, from her absolute faith in him. Radigan was terribly nervous. He said it would break his heart if all his polo in the fall, all his countless knocks and bruises and tumbles were to go for nothing, and the first of their annual balls be the last.

They had a dinner at home to a few of their "close friends," which included about one dozen, and nearly everybody they knew. The Williegilts and Miss Bumpschus had declined, which looked ominous, and the outlook was still darker when we arrived on the field of battle on the minute of ten, and for an hour had the great rooms to ourselves. There is nothing more depressing than the ballroom where, to the music of a big orchestra, a half-dozen men and women are cavorting around in lonely state. Dancing made easy is dancing made uninteresting, for take away the jam of whirling figures, the sweep of bedraggled trains beneath the feet, the stab of elbows, and the wild plunges of the nimbler footed, and you take away the dangers that make the sport.

So that was a deadly hour. But through it all, in the hush before the battle, Mrs. Radigan stood undaunted in the big reception-room, firm and masterful, while Radigan wandered aimlessly about adjusting his cuffs. Then the noble lord who stands in the entrance and announces the events, fired the first big gun. There was a swish of skirts and the name of Miss Bumpschus, $10,000,000 plus, resounding almost to the ballroom, indicated to the watchers there that the conflict was on and that victory was in the air. Miss Bumpschus was an hour late, apologized for being early, and came on to the dance with the much flustered Radigan. A pause. A hush. The noble lord was in action again, and Mr. Pomade, $1,000,000 down and five more sure to come, made his appearance. Mrs. Radigan was beaming and she had a right. At the heels of the exquisite Pomade came Count Popperwhistle, $1,500,000 minus and open to propositions. After him, a mob. The opera was over. From the street below sounded the shouts of a hundred coachmen, and elevator after elevator dumped into the hall all the flowers that bloom to-day in society. There were no last roses, no century-plants; I don't think the Van Rundouns were even asked, and I know the Rollers Club fellows were left out. Even the Monday Cotillons were almost forgotten, except for a few like the Mints and the Plumstone Smiths, who are in one set on account of their poverty, but have a hold on the other because of their family. Willie Lite had made good. While a great number had sent regrets, they all came, anyway, and where had been a weary waste of polished floor, there now was a whirling struggle for a foothold and breathing-space. All the Bumpschuses, the Wherry-Mints, the Mint-Wherrys, the Jack Twitters, the Willies and Bobbies, the Tommies and Harrys were there. Willie Lite dancing with Miss Veal, simple white and pearls, led at one end, while Plumstone Smith dancing with Miss Marie Antoinette Williegilt, led at the other. The favors were the finest that New York has ever seen, and our smart matrons will have to make inroads into their bank-accounts to beat them. The silver-bound whiskey-flasks for the men, I know, cost $25 apiece, and the carved ivory cigarette-cases for the girls were still more expensive. Then there were riding-crops and parasols and useful things like that, which really made dancing profitable.

The supper was as excellent as it was unpronounceable and indigestible, and Willie Lite must have made a good thing in commissions. But he deserved it. More, too, I thought, when I clipped this morning, from the journal that gives all the news that is worth printing, a list of those who were at Mrs. Radigan's first annual ball last night and are pledged to those to come. Here are a few of the names:

Mrs. E. Williegilt,
The Misses Williegilt,
Mrs. Robert Q. Williegilt,
Miss E. Bumpschus,
Mrs. Plumstone,
Miss Constance Wherry,
Miss Wherry-Mint,
The Misses Speechless,
Mrs. John Twitter,
Miss Clarissa Mudison,
Miss Tumbleton,
Mrs. Timpleton Duff,
Mrs. Hegerton Humming,
Mrs. Thomas Tattler,
Mr. E. Williegilt,
Mr. Williegilt Bumpschus,
Mr. J. Madison Mudison,
Mr. Plumstone Smith,
Mr. Cecil Hash,
Mr. Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th,
Mr. Humming,
Mr. J. Twitter,
Mr. Duff,
Mr. Tattler.

[CHAPTER IX]

Our Talk Over Tea

Mrs. Radigan untwisted her furs and laid her muff and gloves on the chair at her side, and proceeded to make tea.

"Well," she said, when the water was boiling industriously and the alcohol lamp had ceased its explosions, "I have just leased a cottage for the coming season at Newport. We are going quietly, you know, and it's just a tiny little box on Bellevue Avenue and only costs us $12,000 a year."

"Indeed?" said I. "How sensible!"

"I think it is sensible," said Mrs. Radigan. "Now, John in his usual way wanted to take the Mints' villa at $40,000 for the season, but I said no—people would say we were nouveaux riches, and I prefer to live quietly and modestly. It is so much better taste. So many people get in nowadays on their mere money."

Mrs. Radigan heaved a sigh. She made me some brackish-looking tea, more for herself, and over her cup she eyed me archly. Just a week before she had sat there with me over her afternoon tea wondering whether Society would come to her ball, or she would be doomed to move in the Waldorf-Astoria set for the rest of her existence. Now she was so firmly established that she could rail, because in so doing she was acting the dual rôle of the attacker and the attacked. I showed no surprise. She had long since ceased to astonish me.

"So many common people go to Newport thinking they can buy their way in," Mrs. Radigan went on. "They rent great houses and they give balls, they entertain a German baron or a Hindoo prince, and nobody pays any attention to them. They disappear next year. Sometimes they are barred because there is a scandal in the family, like a divorce."

I raised my eyebrows. Mrs. Radigan must have noted it, but I think she could not have understood, for she went right on.

"It is always better form not to seem ostentatious. That's what Mr. Lite told me, but I had a hard time driving it into John's head. John likes show. But I just put my foot down and said that now we were in, we must have a conservative spell, a quiet period, so people would get used to us. I have made up my mind to have one or two little things that will be very, very exclusive. For instance, I have decided on a donkey-dinner, for one."

"Who is to be asked?" said I.

"Only the smartest people," she answered, stirring her tea meditatively. "But it's a splendid idea. I am so afraid it will get in the papers and make a dreadful stir all over the country. I intend to write to the editors particularly and ask them not to print it. The outsiders are always so horrid, anyway. They can do all kinds of foolish things and nobody ever says a word, but the minute we have something a little original, we never hear the end of it. Why, I remember years ago, when we were Baptists, going to church sociables, and nothing could be more absurd than an apron-and-necktie party, but nothing was ever heard of them outside of the church itself. If we were Presbyterians, and lived on Lenox Avenue, no one would print anything about a beach-party we gave in our house on New Year's eve, or something foolish like that. But now, simply because we are Episcopalians and have a donkey-dinner in Newport, I know I shall be mentioned in sermons and prayers all over the country. It is dreadful!"

"But, Mrs. Radigan," said I, "if you will leave the wings and get out in the middle of the stage and stand in the lime-light, you must expect to have some hissing from the audience."

"But we never get any applause," said she, with a touch of resentment in her voice.

"Because," said I, "all those in the body of the house want to be on the stage themselves—a strange condition, but one that really exists. And as they are not in the company, they find comfort in picking flaws in the acting and the actors. Now, for instance, a donkey-party for the benefit of your old Baptist church would not excite any comment at all."

"But at Newport it will make a sensation," she cried, clasping her hands and smiling. "Oh, it will be perfectly dreadful!"

I had to smile too. Mrs. Radigan is a wonderfully clever woman in a social way. She seems instinctively to do the most startling thing at the right time, and to have it all published in just the right place. I expect that within a year she will be known as New York's grandest dame, and that to be admitted to her house will be to be marked socially sterling. But Society is not an aristocracy. It is the purest democracy. The Radigans, for example, could never in the world have got in the smart set at Harvard or Princeton. They do not know enough. But here is Mrs. Radigan, whose father-in-law laid the foundation of a great fortune in pool-rooms, whose father lived a useful life between his home and his distillery; here is Mrs. Radigan, an immigrant from Kansas City, actually planning donkey-dinners. To what heights may she not soar?

I sat sipping tea and silently admiring this remarkable woman. But she never lets you rest with one surprise.

"Have you heard about Pearl?" she asked suddenly.

"Surely, Miss Veal is not ill?" I exclaimed, in some alarm.

"Oh, no—engaged," Mrs. Radigan replied laughing. "Engaged to Plumstone Smith."

I had been expecting this for some days, and believed myself prepared for it, but the announcement was none the less disagreeable. Of course I have never had anything more than admiration for the girl. What man could help that! Perhaps once or twice, in a vague way, there have come to me thoughts more ambitious, but they seemed too absurd. Pearl Veal is rich and beautiful, a rare combination, and it was not to be expected that she would waste herself, all her charm and wealth, on a struggling nobody, a man who could boast nothing. So such silly dreams were laughed at in my sober moments. But when the announcement came, when I realized that, vague and silly though they were, they must be put away forever, I was a bit hard hit—harder hit than I expected.

"Well, it is fine!" I cried, putting the best face possible on the matter. "Of course I knew it all along. But when are they to be married?"

"Never," said Mrs. Radigan, sipping tea. "You see, it's just for a while. It was announced, by mistake, in the papers this morning, but we have denied it. It will make a great deal of talk, you know, and the formal announcement will be made next week."

"I see," said I. "But you say they are not to be married?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Radigan. "You see, Pearl came to me and asked my consent, and I said they could be engaged for a while; he is such a well-known cotillon-leader."

"But doesn't she love him?"

"Possibly, but that makes no difference. She doesn't know what love is, the dear thing, and is flattered because he is so dreadfully devoted to her. I encouraged it, because I don't think it does any harm for a girl to be engaged to one or two men before she really settles down. It improves her greatly. It gives her poise, manner, independence. Pearl is such a simple thing. Why, she thought at first that he wanted her money, but he assured her that it would never have made any difference at all if papa had never left her all those millions. He wanted her for herself alone. It's sweet of him, isn't it? Well, I told her that as long as they were so devoted to each other they might be engaged for a while—until May, anyway. We are going to London then for the season and will bring back a duke."

"For the donkey-dinner?" said I.

"Yes," said Mrs. Radigan. "Won't you have another cup of tea?"

[CHAPTER X]

Miss Veal's Engagement is Announced

Mrs. Radigan has now announced the engagement of her sister to Plumstone Smith, Jr. She let it leak out a few weeks ago, and then kept the matter well before the public by daily denials. But it was finally announced the other day, and on Sunday pictures of the happy pair, with cupids hovering around them, and views of the new Radigan mansion, where, it was said, they were to be married in the fall, filled a page in several papers. Miss Veal's fortune was placed by the social historians at $20,000,000, though I know positively it is only a fifth of that sum. However, the Plumstone Smiths are secretly quite satisfied, for I notice that they are having their old-fashioned brown-stone-front house redecorated, and Junior seems to have purchased himself an entire new wardrobe. Deluded youth! He does not know Mrs. Radigan. He thinks that he has fixed himself for life, when, really, he is simply the isle of safety on which my good friends will rest secure for a few months in the smart whirl. After him, a London season and a duke. And he needs the money so! Besides, Miss Veal is really a great catch. Miss Bumpschus, of course, is a greater prize financially, but, on her mother's side, her family is very old. She traces her line back to the eighteenth century without a break, so she might safely be called plain.

Miss Veal, it always seemed to me, would make an ideal wife. She is rich and beautiful, she can read and write, she is ineligible to be a Daughter of anything, and I have never heard her give forth an idea of any kind; she is stunning in an opera-box, and even her motoring garb cannot smother her loveliness. But, of course, Mrs. Plumstone Smith had to intimate to a few close friends that her son was making a mésalliance in wedding this upstart from Kansas City. The Plumstone Smiths are as old as the Bumpschuses, but they have always been cultivated, and so are poor. But Plumstone Junior is a rising cotillon leader, and has a brilliant career before him in any event. His mother felt that more wealth and family, and less looks would be desirable. Echoes of this came to Mrs. Radigan's ears, and with that rare strategy of hers she announced that she had bitterly opposed the match from the start, as she felt that Plumstone had nothing to recommend him but his pedigree. Family would not make the automobile go. This country was bursting with old families. Philadelphia alone could supply the rightful heir to every title in Europe. If Plumstone had some brains she would hail him as a brother, but as he was only a glorified dancing-master, she would receive him on sufferance.

Forthwith came Mrs. Plumstone Smith, in a Williegilt carriage, to call on Mrs. Radigan and kiss her and call her "Sally." After her came the whole family, some vastly rich, some vastly poor, to rave over Mrs. Radigan and her beautiful sister. And Mrs. Radigan took them all in.

Last night my friend gave a dinner in honor of her sister, and followed it with a marvellous musicale. The parade to the dining-room was led by Radigan with Mrs. Plumstone Smith on his wrong arm, while Mrs. Radigan, with the happy young man's father, acted as rear-guard, thus signifying the union of two great families. J. Madison Mudison, the smartest and clubiest member of the opposing faction, took in Miss Veal, while, as an artfully arranged contrast, Miss Bumpschus fell to Plumstone Smith, who was allowed, however, to sit next his fiancée. I am learning. By shuffling up the cards in the dressing-room I secured for myself the beautiful Marian Speechless, throwing Bertie Bumpschus between Constance Wherry and the Countess Poglioso Spinnigini, who cannot speak English. To avoid confusion, Bertie had to take my place at the table, for I was in his chair first, delightfully fixed with Mrs. Bobbie Q. Williegilt on my left. He glared at me in silence through the four courses, and then the champagne came to his aid and he began to engage the Countess in a voluble conversation.

Miss Speechless was a delightful change from Miss Wherry, with her ideas, and Miss Bumpschus, with her charities. She rattled on and on at me without any regard for what I was saying to her, which always makes conversation easy. I have not the remotest idea what she said. She laughed a good deal, and threw in lots of color occasionally for no reason at all, and as she is very pretty, I set her down as charming. She is a human phonograph and seems to talk out what at some other time another has talked into her. But she must change the records often, else she would never be such a great belle. When she turned to Count Poglioso Spinnigini, I found on my other hand Mrs. Williegilt, as interested as ever in carbureters, bridge, and glanders.

The dinner was a huge success. The twenty-four at the table, with the possible exception of Bertie Bumpschus, were in fine fettle, and as I glanced at the illustrious company, picking lackadaisically at course after course of the Radigan bounty, I felt that my friend had no need to give a donkey-dinner at Newport to make herself secure. Madison Mudison toasted Miss Veal in a few charming words. He envied his young cousin. Too late in life he was coming to the realization that love in a cottage was better than bachelorhood in a dozen clubs. Were he young again, he would search the world to find another like Pearl Veal, were that possible. Radigan expressed his delight in having Plumstone Smith as a brother-in-law. If anyone had asked him a month ago what man in all the world he would choose for his dear little sister he would have said "Plumstone Smith." This caused Plumstone to declare that he considered himself a devilish lucky fellow; Miss Veal was a devilish lucky girl; they were all devilish lucky. Miss Veal smiled radiantly. I caught Mrs. Radigan's eye and thought of the duke to come.

The musicale that followed was a fitting finish. The hosts arrived about ten o'clock, and half an hour later began to enjoy $25,000 worth of music. The house was comfortably filled with the smartest of the smart. The Skimphony Orchestra silenced them, and then Furioso's splendid voice rang out from the smoking-room. After he had sung several thousand dollars' worth, Herr String, the eminent 'cellist, supported by the full Skimphony, played beautifully. Roardika, Hemstop, and several other high-priced artists followed him. Furioso closed the programme with "Ah mio, mi mio." After Furioso, supper. And such a supper! The Radigans' chef is an artist.

When the duke comes for Miss Veal and the new house is done, they will show the town how to do things.

[CHAPTER XI]

An Awfully Good Time

Since her engagement to Plumstone Smith, Jr., was announced, Miss Pearl Veal is having what in Society is called an awfully good time. This means that her day ends in the early morning and she awakens about noon; stands around other people's drawing-rooms at teas for some hours; hurries home to change her costume for dinner; sits smiling through a half-dozen courses; is whirled away for a few acts of opera; hustled off to dance till close to dawn. Society has taken her up. People are doing things for her. Consequently, I am beginning to fear that she will lose the color she brought from Kansas City; that the lines of her face, once so round and soft, will straighten and harden; that she will give up smiling and take to talking, or become phonographic, like Miss Marion Speechless.

Mrs. Radigan, of course, is delighted. Mrs. Radigan has cause to be pleased. She has become a personage. She is being gossiped about in the most outlandish fashion, much to her own amusement and the indignation of J. John, who always was slow-witted and not ready to appraise things at their real value. For instance, Radigan was in a towering rage when a weekly journal that chronicles the doings of the smart set hinted broadly that Mrs. Radigan was engaged to marry J. Madison Mudison as soon as she had cleared away the present matrimonial barriers by visiting South Dakota. Moreover, it was said that the husband had already found consolation and was acquiescing in the arrangement, as it was long known that he had been making eyes at Miss Ethel Bumpschus. The purest fiction! Radigan and his wife are the most devoted pair imaginable, and even if it were the smart thing to do, I cannot conceive their separating, particularly if Radigan's winnings in such an arrangement were to be Miss Bumpschus. The story was, of course, promptly denied and put to sleep, but it serves to show the high place my friends at present fill in the public eye. Radigan was brought to this view and cooled down, but it required some diplomacy to soothe the ruffled feelings of Miss Bumpschus. A check for $5,000 for her pet charity, the Home for Aged Elevated Ticket-choppers, acted as a balm, and to show that she bore no ill-will against her fellow-sufferers she gave a dinner-dance in honor of Miss Veal.

And this was but one of about fifteen "things" given for the girl in the past week. Mrs. Plumstone Smith, Miss Bobbie Williegilt, and Mrs. Lenox Mint all gave her luncheons; Miss Wherry and J. Madison Mudison gave her theatre-parties; the Dewberry Lambs a dance. Besides, she has been kept jumping from house to house every afternoon to meet people who have been asked to meet her. Then she has been asked to act as bridesmaid at eleven weddings in the near future, and it will take no small part of her income for the year, large though it is, to buy gowns and hats for these joyous affairs, which will vary in shade from pink to saffron. Poor Miss Veal! My heart goes out to her.

I was favored with an invitation to the dinner preceding the Bumpschus dance, and had the honor of sitting between Miss Ethel and the Countess Poglioso Spinnigini, an arrangement which I suspected was effected by Bertie Bumpschus in revenge for my taking his place at the Radigan table last week. I talked to the Countess in English, French, German, and Italian till my head ached, then turned her over to the guileless J. Madison Mudison at her other side. But Mudison is an old campaigner. He did not try to entertain the fair Italian at all, but let her talk to him, occasionally breaking into her flow of jargon with the French expressions he had picked up at the bridge-table. How I admired him! He is a man of tact.

Meantime I was in the hands of Miss Bumpschus discussing the needs of the aged ticket-choppers, and covertly watching Miss Veal down the table having an awfully good time. She was seated between old Mr. Bumpschus and Dewberry Lamb, talking out to them a few thoughts that I had talked into her the day before concerning the great novel of the week. Mr. Bumpschus showed his deep interest by eying her over the top of his upraised glass and exclaiming, "Ah! Indeed!" at proper intervals, and when she had exhausted him she turned to Dewberry Lamb and said, "I was just telling Mr. Bumpschus," etc. "How intensely interesting!" exclaimed Mr. Lamb. "Indeed!"

Blessed is the tobacco habit at times like this! When the women had gone, I had an opportunity to soothe my nerves with a strong cigar and relieve the pressure of thought upon my brain by discussing stocks and real-estate with Madison Mudison. He also talked entertainingly about the invasion of upper Fifth Avenue by tradesmen. It was with regret that I left him to get down to the business of dancing.

Dancing is the strangest of diversions. It is a curious relic of barbarity. To glide over a glassy floor, a beautiful girl on your arm, to the strains of some dreamy waltz, sweeping around and around, free and fearless, that is one thing, but not the real. To go bumping and thumping through a maze of a hundred hopping and skipping and kicking men and women, to have your feet tramped on, to tangle them up in meshy trains, to have elbows poked into your eye, to strain your sight hunting for vacant places—is that pleasure? I waited in line a half-hour for the opportunity to take Miss Veal twice around the room. My collar was gone, my shirt front caved in, but waiting had given me rest. When she came staggering up she was on the point of collapse, her hair was awry, she was panting for air, and seemed to be wobbling on her legs, but when I handed her a paper parasol she said "Whew!" long drawn, and away we went. Miss Bumpschus stepped on my heel, Bobbie Williegilt's toe caught in the lace trimming of Miss Veal's gown and we had to stop in the most dangerous spot while I gathered up the trailing yards of it, at the peril of being bowled over at any minute. Miss Speechless rammed a paper parasol into my ear, and a near-sighted stag rushing onto the floor for the hand of Miss Mint jumped heavily on my partner's foot, crushing her diamond buckle. But we got twice around. She said it was lovely.

"I am almost dead," she gasped. "I've been having such an awfully good time."

With that she passed into the hands of the next man in that devoted row awaiting her, and was whirled from sight in the dancing maelstrom.

Yet man prides himself on being a reasoning creature.

[CHAPTER XII]

We Inspect the New House

I went through the new Radigan house on Fifth Avenue the other day, and I must say that not in years have I had so delightful an adventure as that trip through my friends' fairy-palace. The phrase fairy-palace is used not to imply beauty, but the marvel of its building, for it might be said to have arisen in a night. But Coppe & Coppe are masterful architects. They hold the time record for a twenty-seven-story office building, and with artists like these, Radigan's money, and a cousin who is a walking delegate, wonders can be accomplished. The mansion to-day is practically finished, except for the lightning-rods on the tower, which rises from the western front, an exact copy of those truncated ones of Notre Dame.

We strolled up in the afternoon, the Radigans, Miss Veal, and myself, and on the way picked up J. Madison Mudison, who was walking off a little stag dinner of the night before, and seemed rather depressed. As we passed Seventieth Street we got the first view of the new house and crossed the street to get the best effects. Mrs. Radigan, with much pride, pointed out the exterior beauties of the structure. With the gardens, it occupies an entire block, save for a row of apartment houses on the Madison Avenue end, and I must confess that the bare backs of these plebeian structures, with their laundry work floating in the breeze, do not make an agreeable setting; but Mrs. Radigan said that that objection would soon be done away with, as the upward trend of trade would eventually replace the flats with fine office buildings. So we tried to rub them from our eyes and see only the splendid edifice that was glistening in the afternoon sun.

Mrs. Radigan was beaming. As mistress of such a home she had a good right.

"Mr. Coppe assures me that it is perfect," she said, when we had stood for some minutes in mute admiration. "He declares that it is his firm's she-dove."

"Mr. Coppe tells me," she went on, "that the front is just like Ver-sales, the palace of the Lewises, Lewis cattorze, Lewis cans, and Lewis seeze. The tower is like that of Notre Dayme exactly, only red to match the front." Mrs. Radigan had assumed something of the air of a sight-seeing automobile lecturer, and fearing that her strident tones would collect a crowd I began to move ahead with Miss Veal. Then I caught a few words more and loath to lose so lucid a treatise on architecture, paused to catch this: "Mr. Coppe says a building must always express something. You observe how he has carried out the idea. Look along the north end of the second story and you will see a window with six classic columns outside. That is John's study."

Meaning, of course, I pondered, that the Greeks always had columns outside their study windows. The tower, then, was meant to indicate that John was a vestryman in St. Edward's, and the French front below that his wife was a leader of the fashion. I was curious to know what the back of the house expressed and was graciously informed that Mr. Coppe said that it was not a reproduction, but had been inspired by the Villa Medici in Rome.

So we went on. A loud banging at a brass knocker, taken from one of Washington's head-quarters, set electric bells going inside and brought a workman, who summoned Mr. Coppe, he having been prepared for our coming. Coppe is a charming fellow. He has danced his way to the very front of his profession, and as a cotillon-leader and artist has no rival in the city. Of late he has been giving his entire time to the Radigans, and his commissions on the interior decorations alone would allow him to retire for life. I could see that at a glance. In every room there was a goodly company of workmen—working, for the walking delegate was there looking after the interests of his relatives.

The entrance-floor did not interest me much. A few small reception and dressing rooms were surrounded by servants' quarters and kitchens, and Mrs. Radigan refused to look at the kitchen. Cooking odors, she said, always nauseated her, a condition for which she had to thank her surfeited maternal ancestors, I suspect. So we went up the wide staircase, part of which was brought from an old French château. At the first landing Mr. Coppe drew our attention to a niche in the wall.

"Here," he said, "we shall hang the famous Velasquez which I recently discovered on the East Side and purchased for Mr. Radigan for $40,000—a bargain."

This was the first Radigan had heard of his prize, and it pleased him greatly.

"Is it an ancient or a modern?" he inquired gravely.

Hearing its age and that it was so old that the central figure hardly showed at all, he expressed his delight. Radigan has been developing wonderfully of late as a patron of the arts.

At the second landing we came to the well-known portrait of J. John Radigan, Esq., in hunting costume, and at the head of the stairs, in the foyer, the first thing to catch the eye was the picture of Mrs. Radigan, which made such a furore at the recent Academy. It is by the great Fatuous, who did the Kaiser, the Duke of Lummix, and Lady Angelica Mumm, and so has had a great vogue here this winter. In securing him to paint her into society last fall, Mrs. Radigan executed a master-stroke. She sat day and night that it might be done in time for the exhibition, but nothing ever daunts her. She declared that poor Radigan was risking life and limb playing polo and hunting foxes for her sake, and she just had to do something. Between sitting and polo I should say that the latter was the easier, but surely she was repaid for her suffering.

Fatuous is an artist, indeed! The woman of his canvas is lovely. She is about six inches taller than Mrs. Radigan, and perhaps fifty pounds lighter in weight. Leaning back gracefully in her chair, her eyes are turned down, as she gazes tenderly and pensively at the child at her side. Spirituelle she looks, high-born and high-strung as becomes the daughter of a hundred Americans and the mistress of the largest house that fronts the park.

"It's charming," said Mr. Mudison. "But who is the boy?"

"Jack," Mrs. Radigan answered.

"Jack?" exclaimed the clubman, puzzled.

"Not my husband—my son," she returned.

"Ah," cried Mr. Mudison. "I see, I see. The child I met at Westbury, walking with a governess."

One of the greatest triumphs of this democratic country of ours is the ease with which the plain Johns of one generation are succeeded by Jacks. I have never seen this Radigan hopeful but once, and have hardly heard mention of him much oftener, but our modern system of keeping the children in storage until they are full-grown often leads us to the erroneous idea that somebody's millions are just lying in wait for a library to found.

"Mr. Fatuous said I must have a child to balance the composition," explained Mrs. Radigan. "So I had Jack brought up from Westbury, where we had been keeping him for the winter. He just hated sitting and it generally took me and the governess and a nurse to hold him. Sometimes he kicked dreadfully, but Mr. Fatuous made him look like a perfect dear. Thank goodness, though, that's over. I just couldn't stand the kicks any longer, so we got a child from an asylum I am interested in. He did splendidly."

I wondered why Mrs. Radigan troubled sitting herself, and was on the point of making the suggestion when she went on:

"So here I am, sitting looking pensively at Jack, one of my hands resting on the arm of the chair and the other holding Jack's, who is looking up affectionately at me. A bit of light comes through the window, shining on my face and on the diamond buckle on my slipper, which rests on a silk cushion. I am awfully angular and lovely and thin. Mr. Fatuous says he considers the woman in the picture one of the handsomest he has ever done. It really looks something like me."

"A perfect likeness," cried Mr. Mudison.

Mrs. Radigan was splendid when she felt the slippery floors of her real home beneath her feet. Her mien became majestic as we went from room to room—first through the portrait-gallery, where already a few of the gems Mr. Coppe had bought on commission were being hung; then into the ballroom, all white and gold, and so artfully arranged with mirrors as to make a small dance appear like a charity ball; on into the conservatory, where the artificial palms were already in place, and everything was being prepared for the rest of the plants. We retraced our steps to the other side, where the suite begins with a small salon, finished, as Mrs. Radigan explained, in light blue and gold, in the style of "Lewis cans." Beyond this is a large drawing-room in dark red, with several cosy-corners, making it the only homelike apartment in the house. It opens into the dining-room, done in light oak and very smart tapestries, showing a series of hunting scenes on Hempstead Plain. After this, a good idea, all Radigan's own and very original, is the little café, which opens off one corner and joins the smoking and billiard-rooms. It gives him all the comforts of his club in his own home, he says, for he can either sit down and punch a brass bell on the Flemish oak table, or have his choice passed to him through a small hole which communicates with the butler's pantry.

Altogether the house is very complete. An elevator took us to the next floor. We saw Radigan's study, with a gymnasium adjoining it, and stairs leading to a swimming-tank below; the sleeping apartments, all exact copies of the royal suite in the Hotel St. Regis; the library, where room is provided for 10,000 volumes, for which Mr. Coppe has already placed a lump order.

Everybody was delighted. For myself, I have never seen a more perfect house, one which so shows in every crack and cranny the wealth and taste that have been lavished on it. Even J. Madison Mudison, who had been wandering around rather dazed and mute, as we turned to leave, said that it was "awfully jolly." It is. If Mr. Coppe had worked for years instead of two weeks over his plans he could not have conceived a dwelling that would better express its occupants.

Mrs. Radigan was more than satisfied. I thought she would embrace the architect when we parted, so effusive was she. But instead she gave him her royal command.

"You must positively be out of the house in three weeks," she said. "I am going to give an Indian ball and want the rooms fixed up like woods and wigwams and things. I simply must have the affair before Lent."

[CHAPTER XIII]

We Go Skating at Exudo

I am beginning to suspect that the unwarranted report that Mrs. Radigan is to marry J. Madison Mudison and Radigan to marry Miss Bumpschus may prove true, after all. At the time when it was printed there was absolutely no ground for the story, but the publication seems to have turned the thoughts of all concerned in a new direction and the suggestion is pleasing. In their efforts to prove that such a report is cruel Miss Bumpschus is having the Radigans to something two or three times a week, and Mudison calls daily on Mrs. Radigan to express his regret. Radigan is supporting the Home for Aged Ticket-choppers, and has discovered many bonds of sympathy between Miss Ethel and himself. For instance, she loves church-work and abominates polo and bridge. J. John, in his efforts to further his wife's ambitions, has been twice hit on the head by a mallet and has been rolled on by his ponies a score of times. Poker and passing the plate at St. Edward's are much more to his taste. His wife has sporting proclivities. She likes to have a bishop to dinner. It delights her to see her husband being beaten on the head by the mallets of the smartest men in town, and to watch him in his automobile tearing off one hundred miles of beach an hour. She was in ecstasy when the story got out that he had lost $100,000 in one night's play at Potlots, and he had to spend a few weeks at Newport to avoid the subpœna servers and reporters. As he had really lost the money, Radigan did not appreciate the additional prestige the incident had won for him. So you see there is a great incompatibility in temperament. In Mudison, on the other hand, Mrs. Radigan has found her ideal man. He belongs to seven clubs; his polo handicap is nine; he is arrested monthly for overspeeding; he is literary and talks delightfully on the works of Winston Churchill and Anna K. Green; his family has been known in New York for nearly half a century, its founder being Sheriff Mudison, who left a large fortune. Of course there is the question of young Radigan, but he could easily be given to a third party, so I am not altogether sure that the change would not be a good one if Miss Bumpschus could be made to overcome her old-fashioned prejudices.

There is at present, however, no sign of a movement toward South Dakota; but I suppose if it comes to that, Mrs. Radigan would prefer to go in Lent, so as not to miss any of the winter season, and then she could be back for Newport in August. That would, of course, necessitate her giving up her plans to spend May and June in London and capture a duke for Miss Pearl Veal, but I fear she is occupying herself more with her own heart now than with her sister's hand. But the clouds are gathering for the storm—if storm it can be called. Then, are not storms always followed by fair weather? We all went to Exudo skating the other day—one of the clouds—as the guests of J. Madison, who was endeavoring to show the world that there was nothing in the cruel gossip. Besides the Radigans and Miss Bumpschus, Plumstone Smith and his fiancée, Miss Veal, he kindly asked Miss Marian Speechless and myself. By a special effort Mrs. Radigan got up very early and we were able to catch the eleven-o'clock train, so we reached the club by one. Who should we see there but Willie Lite, the Dewberry Lambs with the Count and Countess Poglioso Spinnigini, the Harry Stumbles and a lot of other nice people we know! I had a glimpse of the Van Rundouns, with some queer-looking friends from Boston, but I had no chance to speak to them. The Dewberry Lamb party joined us at luncheon and we had a very jolly time at the big round table.

Madison Mudison knows how to order—a rare accomplishment. When we got through I felt as if I never wanted to move again, but would rather stretch my legs toward the blazing fire and smoke, smoke, smoke; but when you accept an invitation your host becomes your keeper, so we were all corralled and trotted away to the lake.

Miss Speechless had brought her sister's skates, so I had to freeze my fingers adjusting the clamps to fit. Then, as I kneeled on the ice before her in a devoted attitude, while I fixed them on her feet and complained of their being too large, I froze my knees. By the time I had prepared myself to go gliding over the ice, I was all a-shiver and eager for a spurt that would start the blood going. But there, waiting for me, was Miss Speechless, standing with her feet together, balancing as though she were on a tight rope, pleading to me to hurry. She was afraid to strike out, and when I reached her, was fluttering helplessly in the wind. So there was nothing for me to do but to tow her—a difficult and dangerous task, as I am not an adept at going backward. It was work, more than I had counted on, and I was soon in a condition bordering on exhaustion. At last I was allowed a moment's rest, and as I stood there panting, Miss Speechless, fluttering in the wind, told me how jolly it was; but I paid no attention to her, my eyes being fixed on the others. At one end of the lake J. Madison Mudison and Mrs. Radigan, hand in hand, were gliding gracefully around. It was beautiful to see them. I am sure Mrs. Radigan learned the art on the canal at home, though she says she spent her winters in Canada as a child. And as for Mudison, I forgave him his legs—he should never wear knickerbockers—when I saw the way he soared around on one skate. Out would go the right feet, left feet waving gently in the air; a swerve, and they were off in the other direction. They swept around in a graceful curve and came rolling down toward us, as lightly and airily, as unconscious of all but themselves, as though there were no laws of gravitation. It was beautiful to see them!

But at the other end of the lake, what a picture! Radigan and Miss Bumpschus, hand in hand, fluttering aimlessly about. They went in little jiggety steps, and every now and then she would stop suddenly, without warning, while he would go on to destruction. He was earnestly good-natured about it, though, and would clamber up to his feet and go on with her, undaunted. I worried about them once when I saw them coasting toward a weak spot in the ice, but Radigan, with rare good judgment and self-sacrifice, sat down and averted a disaster. And Miss Bumpschus seemed to enjoy it all tremendously.

I could not stand forever in that freezing wind watching the progress of these two romances. Miss Speechless on skates was on my hands, and I had to resume my towing. A blessed moment came when Plumstone Smith rolled up and addressed some graceful nothings to her, upon which she seized his hands and asked him to take her around just once. That just once was lengthened into numberless times, for I slipped noiselessly away to the secluded spot where Miss Veal was airily cutting eights and double eights and other figures. Together we sat on the bank, she in the shelter of her automobile coat smoking a cigarette with me, while we watched the others. Plumstone went by backward, puffing, dragging Miss Speechless after him. A smile crossed my companion's face—you should see Pearl Veal smile!—as she gazed at the spire of smoke that went heavenward from her lips. She looked at me when they had gone by, and somehow we laughed.

Mudison and Mrs. Radigan came rolling past us. They swept about and glided back to the secluded corners of the lake. Radigan and Miss Bumpschus came clattering up. They parted while they turned about, and then half-trotted, half-skated toward their end of the ice.

"Isn't it a shame that Sally should be tied down to such a poor skater as John," said Miss Veal.

But I was not thinking of John and Sally, I was covertly watching Pearl Veal, her rounded cheeks richly colored by the wind, her soft reddish hair fluttering over the top of the upturned collar of fur, her glorious eyes on mine. I was wishing I were a duke or a member of the Stock Exchange or a champagne agent, or something like that.

[CHAPTER XIV]

Exit Plumstone Smith, Jr.

It has come at last, and much sooner than I had dared to expect. Of course I am speaking of Miss Pearl Veal's engagement to Plumstone Smith, Jr. Poor Plumstone! He is heart-broken. I saw him at the Ping-pong Club the other afternoon, smoking a cigarette and gazing abstractedly into the depths of a Scotch highball. He did not speak to me, and even though he might not have intended to cut me dead, such action would surely be in his right. And the cruel stories in Town Twaddle are at the bottom of it all. Last week that paper in its leader, in a guarded statement giving no names, announced that the engagement of a certain rich and beautiful girl, a new-comer from the West in Society, to a well-known clubman and cotillon-leader, a son of an old and impoverished family, had been broken. It said that the young man's mother was in bed with nervous prostration, as she had had her house elaborately decorated and had bought some stock on margins on the strength of the improvement in the family prospects; that the youth himself was spending his days in one of his clubs, pounding a bell and crying, "The same!" But still more cruel, it laid the wreck of this home to a young real-estate agent, name not given, who had been insinuating himself into the graces of the innocent beauty. Now, did you ever hear the beat of that? In a separate paragraph it most politely intimated that Miss Pearl Veal's engagement to me would soon be announced.

Where Town Twaddle got the story is a mystery, for it is true to the part where it accuses me of insinuating myself into the affections of another man's fiancée. Though I have known Pearl Veal many months, I do not think we had spoken a dozen words to each other up to the day when we all went skating at Exudo. Then I must admit, as we sat on the bank smoking cigarettes and watching Plumstone cavorting around the ice with Marian Speechless, she revealed her heart to me. No one was more astounded than I.

Love steals upon us strangely in these days. Time was when men won women with the sword, when gallant deeds and pretty speeches, when a noble bearing and a nimble wit were the snare we set for beauty. How different now! Little did I dream as I sat at the Radigan table, covertly admiring Miss Veal across the board, that I was awakening a divine flame as I consumed terrapin and champagne; that I was fanning that flame when I said "Ah!" and "You don't say!" when I discoursed on the weather or the beauty of the opera. These were the snares I set—these, with a few well-cut clothes, some immaculate shirt-fronts and rather snappy ties. My conscience is clear. She would never have been happy with Plumstone had she allowed the affair to proceed to a church terminus, for it was evident that he was after her millions, and her only reason for accepting him was to gain social position. But this reason exists no longer. To-day the Radigans are smarter than the Smiths. There are those who will bemoan the fact that such a condition can exist in Society. Croakers all! Possibly they are the sons of some war, who, boasting the deeds of ancestors, are doing nothing themselves, and so are being pressed back by those who are doing to-day what the others' forebears did yesterday. For myself, I like new things; fresh people as well as fresh vegetables; new families as well as new clothes. Old families new painted are pleasant to know, but spare us the heirlooms. After all, the Plumstone Smiths are the Radigans of yesterday.

So Pearl Veal is in a position to choose. She has chosen and I bow to her will. There was a time when I suspected that she would take nothing less than a duke and would have a wedding-riot, but she says that love in a cottage is all she asks. So she has bought a forty-foot front lot on Seventy-ninth Street, and Coppe & Coppe are making plans for it. So far I have had nothing to say in the whole affair. I seem to have done my part when I ate terrapin and drank my wine, and caught the occasional lustrous glance of the blue eyes over the board; when I said "Ah!" and "You don't say!" Then Pearl took a hand and now Mrs. Radigan is running the whole affair.

Mrs. Radigan has been wonderful. Of course she never intended that her sister should marry Plumstone Smith, but after him she looked to a duke. That she consented to a real-estate agent I owe to J. Madison Mudison. She loves Mudison devotedly, I know, and it has softened her wonderfully. Her view of life has changed. She is less selfish. She sighs more and says less, and when Pearl and I asked her blessing, she just stirred her tea and said, "Oh, well, if you will."

Pearl and I were too surprised to speak for a moment.

Mrs. Radigan looked up from her tea and asked, "Who are your ushers to be?"

I said I did not care, but that I would like to have Green, who had lived in the same boarding-house with me in my lean years. At that she put her cup down and said fiercely: "I think I will have Mr. Lite act as best man. The ushers will be Harry Mint, Mr. Mudison, Bobbie Williegilt, and Dewberry Duff. John will give an ushers' dinner for you at the Ticktock Club."