MRS. RADIGAN HER BIOGRAPHY, WITH THAT OF MISS BY NELSON Lloyd AUTHOR OF "THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY," ETC. NEW YORK Copyright, 1905, by TROW DIRECTORY CONTENTS MRS. RADIGAN 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. |
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