MRS. RADIGAN
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
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The First Chapter and the Last 1
II. My First Great Social Adventure--The
Horse-show with the Radigans 21
III. A Week-end at Westbury 33
IV. In the New Box at the Opera 41
V. Mrs. Radigan's First Thursday 48
VI. The Monday Cotillons 57
VII. Mrs. Radigan Captures Miss Bumpschus 65
VIII. The Small Dance at Flurry's 73
IX. Our Talk Over Tea 81
X. Miss Veal's Engagement is Announced 89
XI. An Awfully Good Time 96
XII. We Inspect the New House 103
XIII. We Go Skating at Exudo 114
XIV. Exit Plumstone Smith, Jr. 123
XV. My Dinner to Miss Pearl Veal 130
XVI. Mrs. Radigan's Costume-ball 139
XVII. The Duke of Nocastle Arrives 149
XVIII. A Problem for the Duke 158
XIX. His Grace Still Hesitates 168
XX. Sir Charles Wigge Takes Possession 180
XXI. Pearl Veal's Answer to the Duke
of Nocastle 193
XXII. Tumbleton Tumm, the Minstrel 205
XXIII. The Wedding of the Season 215
XXIV. Mrs. Radigan Being Smart, Becomes
Clever 230
XXV. Pearl Veal and I 244
XXVI. In which Mr. Mudison in His Memoirs Gives Us Some
Insight into Mrs. Radigan's Shattered Romance 257
XXVII. Mr. Mudison Gives a Theatre-Party
for Mrs. Underbunk 270
XXVIII. Mr. Mudison Sees Mrs. Underbunk
at the Opera 283
XXIX. Mr. Mudison Leads the Cotillon
at the Twitters' 297
XXX. At the Races 313
XXXI. Mr. Mudison is Uncomfortable
but Happy 328
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.