_Mr. Mudison Leads the Cotillon at the Twitters'_
I am feeling worn out to-day--utterly exhausted--and am registering all
kinds of vows that I shall never lead another cotillon--that is, after
I keep my promises to Mrs. Timpleton Duff, Jimmy Doily, and one or two
others. I thought last night that the Twitters' small dance would be
the end of me. In one of those solemn moments when death seemed very
near, when, in an effort to arrange a new figure, I was being trampled
on, and elbowed and hurled to and fro in the maelstrom, there flashed
to my mind the simple epitaph I would have on my tombstone: "He died
for Society." But I survived. What a seasoned veteran of these social
engagements I have become! Teas, dinners, operas, and dances--I seem
to move through them bearing a charmed life. I am a bit like Achilles
or Ulysses, that old Trojan hero, whoever he was, whose heel was his
only vulnerable spot, a fact which seems to have become known among
the younger set, for that was the target at which they all aimed. I
did not mind an elbow or two in the eye; I did not mind a blow over
the nose with a parasol-favor; I did not mind when Winthrop Jumpkin,
7th, who was trying to dance the Boston, struck me violently in the
small of the back with Sally Bilberry; but when Mrs. John Radigan,
who hops dreadfully, landed her two hundred pounds on my heel in some
indescribable fashion, everything seemed to swim before my eyes, and
for a minute I had difficulty in retaining my expression. Of course
there is some balm in seeing in to-day's paper, the one that prints
all the news that is worth reading, that Mr. Mudison led a delightful
cotillon, dancing with Miss Susanna Twitter, a statement which I
believe emanated from Mrs. Twitter's secretary, and was given out for
publication quite early in the afternoon. But, then, all cotillons
are delightful; all dinners delightful; everything that we do is
delightful. It is best to be optimistic. It is best to rave over this
boresome round of festivity when it is one's life.
Curious how Gladys Underbunk has warped my line of vision! More than
once last night I paused to step apart from the scene, to view it
from afar off, to think. It is a good thing to think sometimes. When
you do, you will be surprised at the ideas that will come into your
head. I don't believe I had ever really thought at a dance before, so
never before had there come to me even a suggestion of an element of
absurdity. It was not the people who were there that suggested it, but
the people who were not, and would have given a year of their lives
to be of that blessed company--the Morgan Stynes, who had moved Wall
Street to get a card and had failed; the Lanigans, who had succeeded
and were now whirling around an over-heated room, being bumped and
jostled and trampled on, yet deemed themselves happy. Still, I suppose
it is well to be seen at these very smart affairs. They are life to so
many that to be absent is a sign of a social decline, which, unless
checked by a few invitations, will lead to that graveyard of so many
hopes--the page of the Sunday papers that tells what the clubwomen are
doing.
Mrs. Twitter's dance was certainly very smart. She gives two every
year, and last night's was the first, the one to which she invites the
people she knows. To the next she will ask her list. So last night
there were about four hundred present. At the next I suspect there will
be just about that many absent, including myself. I fear the house will
burst, and I have no mind to run risks, and am more than satisfied that
to Williegilt Bumpschus will fall the task of bringing a cotillon out
of chaos.
What a lot of fuss it takes, anyway, to introduce a plain daughter
with millions! Still, I suppose the same is true everywhere and of all
classes, for as ice-cream and angel-cake are to the Brooklynite, so are
terrapin and champagne to our set. It is no more wasteful extravagance
for the Twitters to spend ten thousand in one night than for some
aspiring Harlemite to spread crash over the parlor floor and ruin the
stair-carpet with lemonade. That is exactly the way I put it to my
rector at the club the other day when he was inclined to complain of
the difficulty in getting subscriptions for new altar-cloths. I don't
suppose that he was at all influenced by my argument, but I noticed him
last night paying devoted attention to Constance Twitter, which caused
me to suspect that he might be contemplating giving up bachelor life
and becoming a benefice--I think that is the term. It would really be a
very sensible match, for Constance is intellectual, and could help him
with his little sermons on the travels of St. Paul and the needs of the
women's guild, and the rest of us might not have such continual calls
to supply new apparatus for the gymnasium. She is interested in him
too. I could see that at once. A collar buttoned behind has a wonderful
fascination for women.
I do not think that Susanna Twitter would make so good a clergyman's
wife as her sister, as she is rather more attractive and might do
better. Constance is one of those girls of whom her friends will say
"she is lovely when you get to know her." More than that can be claimed
for Susanna. It would even be unjust to class her as good-hearted. She
has neither face nor figure, but is just a great big hobble-de-hoy,
can play a man's game of tennis, and is studying jiu jitsu. In a few
years she will have a double chin and a beam. I like her immensely,
though I do wish she would not dance as though she were patting down a
tennis-court with her feet.
It is very delightful to read in the paper this morning that Mr.
Mudison led, dancing with the beautiful débutante. I suppose at this
very moment thousands of unfortunates who were not there are studying
the columns and columns that tell about it, and picturing Mr. Mudison
gliding airily about a brilliant ballroom, in his arms clasping a
slender fair-haired girl, with Grecian features and a marvellous
complexion; Mr. Mudison, delicately holding the tips of her slender
fingers, leading her gracefully through the intricate mazes of some
figure; Mr. Mudison, followed by flunkeys bearing gifts, priceless
gifts of paper parasols and pin-wheels; the music stilled at his beck;
at his call the dreamy strains again filling the room. A delightful
picture!
I do like Susanna Twitter immensely, but the rare times I danced
with her I entirely lost control, thanks to her having always been
accustomed to leading at boarding-schools, and I felt as though I
were clinging to a fly-wheel. It was on one of these mad careers that
Winthrop Jumpkin, dancing the Boston in a corner, hurled Sally Bilberry
violently against me, and a moment later Evelyn Garish's partner poked
his elbow in my eye. Susanna said that she could go on forever, and I
think she would have, for I do waltz well, but luckily Horatio Gastly
stepped on her bit of flying train, and before we could overcome
our momentum she had unravelled down one side of the room. We had to
retrace her gown, a dangerous task, as a dozen nimble feet had caught
it up, and seemed to resent my wild efforts to disentangle them.
The cotillon as a means of allowing the greatest possible number of
persons to dance in the least possible space is a failure. If we could
only have a few policemen to keep the stags in their proper place,
besides the detectives who see that no suspicious persons get in as
guests; if we could have laws making it petty larceny to "steal,"
and a misdemeanor to dance at a speed exceeding ten miles an hour,
then our germans might partake somewhat of the stately measure of the
olden time. Now we leaders are proud if we can preserve a semblance of
order, for, instead of conducting a chosen few through some graceful
manoeuvres, our chief duty is to shoo the invading hosts back to their
chairs; to dance with the lovely débutante, and manage a penny bazaar.
Still, everyone said that I did very well, considering the crush,
and they particularly praised the new figure which I got up out of
my own head. [We find here in Mr. Mudison's rough draught a diagram
which looks like a map of Port Arthur during the siege, but it is not
necessary to reproduce it, as he makes his terpsichorean invention
clear.] Forming the girls in the outer circle and the men in the
inner, standing in the middle myself, I made the two wheels revolve
rapidly in opposite directions, the men going backward. The result was
simply kaleidoscopic; dazzling, the on-lookers said, and not without
a humorous side, for there were several collisions, in one of which
the Earl of Less had his monocle broken. In the general shuffle-up of
partners, due to dizziness, there fell to me one of the most charming
girls I have met this winter, Wisteria Plumstone, who is just out,
and so has lost none of her good looks. I must confess the older I
get the more I like débutantes. They appreciate it thoroughly when I
dance with them. Wisteria smiled all over when she saw young Cackling
hunting for her at the other end of the room, and me approaching her
with wide-spread arms. She clung to me as if for protection, and,
contrary to my usual rule to go only once around the room with them, I
circled it four times. A sensible child too; she did not try to talk
further than to venture that the floor was too slippery, and that she
was having a lovely dance. Now, most girls of her age in their efforts
to say something, drive you mad with their disjointed comments on the
music and the people, and when they have learned to keep up a continual
chatter it is no small mental strain to hold your mind on their line
of thought, so as to chime in occasionally with something that would
indicate that you have been listening. However, when I was younger I
used to think that talking with these mere infants about the music
and the people, the last dance and the one to come, about that girl
in pink and the other in blue--I used to think that of such stuff a
divine time was made. The pretty débutante, fresh, unsophisticated,
self-conscious, is a delight to the eye of us old social adventurers,
but our minds demand something more. When I would dance with Wisteria
Plumstone I would take Gladys Underbunk in to supper.
But Mrs. Underbunk dances too--superbly. I found her in an exhausted
condition on her chair, with Horatio Gastly trying to fan her back
to life, and when she had recovered her breath and speech, she
explained that she had been dancing with the Earl of Less, who had
kept her revolving so rapidly in one direction that she had almost
lost consciousness. Dancing with Englishmen, she said, always gave her
exactly the same sensation as drowning, but never before had she come
so near the bottom. She had been about to go down for the third time
when Mr. Gastly thoughtfully bumped into Lord Less, throwing him all
out of step with the music, and giving her an opportunity to grasp a
chair for support and save herself. Horatio, of course, was claiming
his reward, but the delightful woman told him that she had promised it
to me, so as we glided around together, she every now and then giving
me one of those maddening glances out of the corner of her eye, I had
an opportunity to tell her how cut up I was when I went down with my
car to take her a spin last week and found that Jumpkin had whirled her
away in that dreadful old loco-sewing-machine. She did not say a word,
but looked down at her whirling feet, which was wonderfully encouraging.
At supper I continued on this line, becoming thoughtless and reckless,
as men will sometimes, and, positively, I think I should have made a
fool of myself before the bird was served if Evelyn Garish had not
burst in and asked Gladys where in the world she met those dreadful
Styne people, in whose box she had been at the opera the other night.
Mrs. Underbunk replied very quietly that she had just run across them
at a house-party at the Duke of Guile's place in Devonshire, last
winter. For a moment Mrs. Garish did not seem to have any breath left,
and made dough-balls convulsively. Then she said sharply that it was
high time the English realized that there were social distinctions in
this country, instead of treating those with one generation of American
gentlemen behind them with the same consideration as those who had
two or three. Mrs. Underbunk said simply that the Stynes were very
rich. She has a way of getting right at the heart of everything. But
that did not satisfy Evelyn. To get in, something more than mere money
should be required, said she, forgetting entirely that the Garishes had
been generally snubbed until the old man worked the corner in Western
Pacific. I supported Mrs. Underbunk nobly, and declared that I had
found the Stynes quite like other people, and would certainly go to the
dance they are to give soon at Flurry's. This made Mrs. Garish lose her
temper, and she turned abruptly and began to ask Jack Twitter if he had
an ace, queen, and seven-spot, which would he lead.
Gladys Underbunk gave me one of her grateful glances. She said that
she would go out in the car with me Saturday if I would promise to talk
sense. So I promised.
* * * * *
As we read Mr. Mudison's fragmentary diary for some weeks we see how
evidently the old campaigner is being enmeshed by the simple little
Mrs. Underbunk. He frankly admits that he is in love, but he has been
in love a hundred times before. He frankly admits that never before
has his heart been so deeply affected. Curiously, he makes no mention
of Mrs. Radigan. He is happy in his unhappiness. He is not dreaming of
matrimony. It is evident that he has given it no thought, as he regards
it out of the question for a man of his small income and many clubs. He
does not want to win Mrs. Underbunk, for several times when the things
she says make it clear that he has only to ask, we find him hurriedly
turning the conversation to more serious matters; we see him abandoning
her for days while he whirls madly around the country in his car, or
sits for hours at the Ping-pong Club gazing despairingly into the
depths of his Scotch.
Mr. Mudison's conduct reminds one of the practice manoeuvres in the
army, where one division is pitted against another, each striving to
win a technical victory. He seeks by a series of masterly advances
to surround the charming Mrs. Underbunk, and to have her declared
his captive in theory. Then he would beat a hasty retreat. Poor
Mudison! There is something in his reference to her grateful glances,
her quiet smiles, her caustic retorts, that convinces us that the
warfare is real, and that it is he who is being enmeshed. The story
unconsciously unfolded by him is the same old one of love, and not
worth consideration where there is so much that is valuable, giving, as
it does, a picture of this well-known man and his time.
Mr. Mudison repeats himself a great deal. We find very much the same
reflections concerning Mrs. Radigan's small dance and Mrs. Duff's ball
at Flurry's as are scattered through his notes on the affair at the
Twitters'. So these are omitted from his edited papers to allow fuller
space for his account of his afternoon at the races with Mrs. Underbunk
and several other smart people.