CHAPTER XXIV

_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.