_Mrs. Radigan Being Smart, Becomes Clever_
One week more and I shall be married. It used to be said that there
were three great events in a woman's life--birth, marriage, and
death--and I take it that the same is true of man. But under our
improved social system we are not quite so restricted. As Mrs.
Radigan remarked the other afternoon, there are now a number of great
events--birth, marriages, and death--but I fear she becomes more
cynical as she grows smarter. I will not take such a view, and when she
expressed it, I put down my foot hard, and looking fiercely at Pearl
Veal, said that I wanted it understood then and there that after next
Tuesday she had nothing to look forward to but death. She was very
good about it, and smilingly replied that she agreed with me very
thoroughly. Pearl is so different from her sister. Mrs. Radigan has
become very broad and says that nothing keeps her with John but her
affection for him, and his dog-like admiration for her. She has become
brilliant and is writing a book, a satire on society, I believe, so has
begun to surround herself with what she calls clever people, whom she
patronizes. He has not changed. He knows nothing of "atmosphere" or of
"color," has no imagination, and cannot rise above stocks, carbureters,
and glanders. His wife loves him, but pities him. She says that their
tastes are utterly different, that he is dull and worldly, and thinks
this beautiful earth of ours nothing more than a mint, and life simply
a job. He yawns when she talks to him about the "soul" and the "music
of things," so they never have common ground to meet on except when
they go over the household-bills.
Now with Captain Lord Algernon Fitznit it is different. It was
different, we remember, with Mr. Mudison. He came into our lives as
Mrs. Radigan was growing smart, and naturally she found the _premiere
danseur_ of the cotillons, the member of seven clubs, the polo player
with nine handicap a more congenial companion than John, who hopped
when he danced and was just learning to take a fence and handle a
mallet. Poor John! At the risk of life and limb, he became a thorough
sport to please his wife, and then found that, having established
herself as smart, she was looking on life with a cynical eye and
becoming clever. Lord Algernon is clever, she says. He has been
spending a week with us at the Westbury place, and will be here until
after the wedding. Mrs. Radigan laid hands on him at the Bumpschus
breakfast and simply would not let him go back to England until he had
given us some of his valuable time, so down he came, with all his six
feet four, his sad, drooping mustache, his monocle, and his "Aw." He is
to sail in a few weeks with the Duke and Duchess of Nocastle, and the
bull pups, who are now South on their wedding-trip.
Pearl Veal said that we shall be having the Colossus of Rhodes down
next, but I cannot see that Lord Algernon bothers her very much, as
her sister hardly lets him out of her sight, though at various times
she has had a lot of people to meet him. One of the first was Carrie
de Bowler, the actress, who goes everywhere now. Pearl argues that
she is really not an actress, but is simply a star, and is received
because she is beautiful and has good manners. Mrs. Radigan has been
very kind to Miss de Bowler this winter, and when she found out that
Lord Algernon had once married a dancer, but that it had been broken
off by the family, she immediately concluded that he liked clever
people, and asked the lovely Carrie for a week-end, with Hetherington
Hopper, who writes nonsense novels. I cannot understand where she
conceived the idea that the English giant was intellectual. Of course
his predilection for the stage is well known, in London it is a common
scandal, but on my fishing expeditions into his brains I have hooked
up only a few facts relating to dogs and horses, and two anecdotes
from the _Sporting Times_. But he is as good-natured as he is big. He
listens well on any subject. Give him a comfortable chair, a cigar,
a Scotch-and-soda, and he seems to enjoy Mrs. Radigan's views on the
futility of life and the saving power of art just as well as Radigan's
discourses on gasoline cars and stocks. Now when Mrs. Radigan reads
scenes from her novel to her husband he dozes off to sleep and dreams
of stocks and horses, so that when she pauses at the end of a thrilling
climax, to hear him snoring gently, she is rightly indignant. But Lord
Algernon seems to sleep with his eyes open, and every now and then he
says "Aw" or "Jolly" or "Clever--very clever," and sips his Scotch. So
Mrs. Radigan feels that their tastes are the same.
The other afternoon we were in the library having tea, after our return
from the Fishing Club. Hetherington and Carrie had left the trap and
were walking home, so there were six of us--Pearl Veal and I sitting
by the library window watching the sun set, Radigan studying the stock
quotations in the afternoon paper, Mignonette Klapper playing a new
game of solitaire, and Mrs. Radigan reading to the soldier, the soldier
drinking Scotch and smoking.
"You see how I am developing the heroine, my Lord," we heard her say,
laying aside her manuscript. "Of course Caroline, being enormously
rich, suspects unjustly that the men who flock about her care only for
her money. Her money is her curse, which brings us back to the great
principle of compensation in life. For instance, John has had to give
up raw onions, of which he used to be passionately fond. So Caroline
has everything in the world but love, while Alonzo, the poor artist,
who goes every morning to the park just to see her walk by, loves her
for herself, knows nothing of her wealth, and yet they are divided by
a wide gulf. Our silly conventions require that they must not speak,
and yet she rides by daily and sees him standing by the reservoir in an
attitude of adoration and she yearns for him, but how are they to be
introduced? Of course, as I go on, I shall develop Alonzo."
"Clever, very clever," interrupted his Lordship. "But Mrs. Radigan,
tell me, what do you do about the spelling?"
"That, of course," replied Mrs. Radigan sagely, "is the most difficult
part of literary work, for I have tried using a dictionary and know
what it means. Now I let my secretary do it. I just go kind of
sketching along the ideas and she puts them together, and very well,
too, Hethy Hopper says. Hethy says, too, that if I sign my name the
book will be a success, anyway, because I am well known, to start with.
But I've a better idea than that--have it look as though John and I
collaborated--is that the word? There is something so delightful in
the picture of a husband and wife writing a book together, and think
of the interest that would be aroused by the announcement of 'The Calf
Worshippers,' by John and Sally Radigan."
Radigan's paper rattled to the floor and he sat bolt upright in his
chair, staring at his wife.
"Clever--very clever," cried Lord Algernon, pulling at his long, blond
mustache.
Radigan's voice trembled a little. "My dear," he said, "it is kind of
you to want to share your glory with me, but I would not think of it.
A man can have a clever wife, but the minute he becomes clever himself
he is lost. Remember, my name is up for membership in the Cholmondeley
Club."
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Radigan firmly. "It would silence all those silly
stories in _Town Twaddle_ if people thought we had written a novel
together."
"But think of my having to go on the Stock Exchange after the book was
published," pleaded Radigan.
"You are afraid of yourself, John," replied his wife kindly. "You do
not realize that now you are smart enough and rich enough to be a fool
without hurting your position in the world. Hethy Hopper thinks the
book will be very clever, and by getting it out under both our names
we will demonstrate to the world how versified, I mean volatile, we
are."
"Clever--awfully clever," said Lord Algernon rising and wandering,
apparently aimlessly, to the table, where Mignonette Klapper was
knitting her brow over a puzzle of cards.
"Sally is clever," said Pearl Veal quietly to me. "What a woman she is!
She has been poor and rich. She was common and became a Knickerbocker
and then smart. Now she is clever, and when she wearies of that she
will settle down and be good. She thinks she has never been good, and
it would hurt her dreadfully to be disillusioned."
A spindly French chair creaked as the Guardsman sat down beside
Mignonette.
"Captain, you have not heard all of the chapter," cried Mrs. Radigan
sweetly from the divan, where she sat enthroned amid cushions.
The Guardsman was strangely deaf. He seemed to become strangely
talkative, too, for we heard Mignonette laugh and say, "Oh, your
Lordship is too flattering." He did say "Aw," but he added something
to it, very much to it, indeed, and when he had finished I noticed
that she was blushing delightfully and smiling. Poor Mrs. Radigan! The
soldier's broad back was toward her, but she could see the two heads
together and hear Miss Klapper's musical laugh and the Englishman's
joyous "Aw." For a moment she stared at them in amazement; then
gathered up the scattered pages of "The Calf Worshippers," arose and
exclaimed, "Come girls, it's high time to dress for dinner. I see
Carrie and Hethy just coming in."
"Jolly girl, Miss Klapper?" said Lord Algernon to me as we were going
upstairs together toward the bachelor quarter of the house.
"From the West," said I.
"Are all your Western girls beautiful?" inquired he gravely.
"All that are asked to visit in the East are," I answered. "Or else
rich. The others marry at home."
"Miss Klapper is, of course, rich?" said his Lordship in an offhand way
as he polished his monocle.
"Milwaukee," said I. "Klapper's Extra Pale."
"Aw," said he cheerfully.
"But she has no family." I thought it best just to tell him that.
"Family?" said he in a puzzled way. "Do you have them in America?"
"One or two," said I. "But they are nearly all buried now."
The Guardsman paused at his own door.
"She is certainly stunning," he mused. "Lovely face; charming figure;
eyes fairly crackle; and clever, very clever. You say she comes from
Klapper's Extra Pale? Aw."
He softly closed the door.
I saw then that Mrs. Radigan was right. Captain Lord Algernon Fitznit
is clever, but in the English way. All those hours when he seemed to
be listening attentively to ideas on life and art he was really taking
stock of Miss Klapper and making an eye at her through his monocle. And
all those hours when she was sitting alone with her cards, demurely,
as became a girl just out of school, knitting her pretty brow over
the puzzle they presented, she had been conscious of it, charmingly
conscious, and had kept her dark eyes intent on the knaves in the
pack--except now and then.
Mignonette has just been finished. They finish them well, nowadays,
in our schools; polish them up so not a rough spot shows. She had
"gentlemen friends" a few years ago. Now she is somewhat wiser. But
in New York she can boast only a few acquaintances, and those on
Riverside Drive, in Harlem, and in Brooklyn. Therefore, says Mrs.
Radigan, she is a person you ought not to know; in herself she may not
be objectionable, but when we take people up we should not look at them
so critically as at their friends, who number more, and may try to
come into our lives in hordes. But Pearl Veal has stood by Mignonette.
They went to school together, and though she has a trained laugh and a
finished smile, and all those other accomplishments that girls learn
at school to unfit them for good society, she is Pearl's oldest friend
and will attend her at her wedding, attend her alone. Announcing that,
Pearl's foot went down and Mrs. Radigan gasped, for she had already
intimated to Marie Antoinette Williegilt, Marian Speechless, and one
or two other young women one should know, that they would be called
on to be bridesmaids. Beaten there, Mrs. Radigan sought consolation
in Lord Algernon. And as now that gallant Guardsman is making an eye
through his monocle at the person one ought not to know, it looks as
though Mrs. Radigan will have to console herself with Green of my old
boarding-house, who comes down to-morrow and is to be my best man.
Green is my oldest friend, but I must confess I am nervous about him.
In all probability this is the first week-end he ever spent, and he
is likely to appear at Westbury in a topper and frock-coat, and it is
two to one that he will talk about the latest "show," and festoon a
watch-chain across his dress waistcoat. But I have known him for years,
while with Williegilt Bumpschus, who was pressed on me by Mrs. Radigan,
I have only a passing acquaintance.