CHAPTER XXVI

_In which Mr. Mudison in His Memoirs Gives Us Some Insight into Mrs. Radigan's Shattered Romance_

My own story lies unfolded in my fragmentary record. As I glance back over my pages so leisurely scribbled it seems as though the great events of my life had been squeezed into two years. A man's romance ends when he is married--generally. After that he may be happy, but existence is humdrum. I am floating on placid waters, flowing gently, carrying me easily along, sometimes into the shadow of rugged, threatening shores, but always out again into the delicious calm and sunshine. Some day, weary even of the little paddling, I shall sink. That will complete my history, but others must record it. For myself and of myself I shall write no more.

Into my pages, however, there have come others whose lives I should like to follow. Pearl says that, written, they would make dull reading. Possibly. Still it would seem that were Marian Speechless to disclose the inwardness of her intrigue to capture Williegilt Bumpschus and his millions we should have a narrative full of humor and pathos. We shall never know that story, even if it reaches a happy conclusion, for it will be told to the world in a notice of an engagement and a few newspaper paragraphs concerning the wedding. Gay Cecil Hash is an ideal hero, and his affair with the lovely Sunday-school teacher, his reform, his marriage, and withdrawal from worldly gayety would delight the most romantic reader. That book is closed. So with scores of others. But in one thing I feel that I have been fortunate--Mr. Mudison's memoirs have been rescued from oblivion. Aside from their interest as the story of a famous man and their historical value, I find that they round out my own pages, clearing up many points left obscure by my limited range of observation. His name occurs frequently in the notes made during the summer following my wedding, most conspicuously in August, when Mrs. Radigan, in a letter to Pearl, tells how she has refused him positively for the sixth and last time, for the simple reason that she still loves John devotedly. Then Mr. Mudison for a while disappears from our life, and though through the fall and winter I heard many rumors concerning him, I did not get at the truth until I undertook for him the task of editing his memoirs.

A glance at the _Social Register_ gives at once an idea of the importance of my friend. After his name we find these extremely smart hieroglyphics: T., C., Cm., P., Wh., B., H., Ex., Sr., Sm., H. '90. This, of course, as everyone knows, means that his clubs are the Ticktock, the Cholmondeley, the Cosmopolitan, the Ping-pong, the Westbury Hunt, the Boxing, the Horseback, and the Exudo. Besides, he is a member of the Sons of the Rebellion and the Society of the Mexican War, while the last abbreviation stamps him a man of Harvard education. So Mudison is worth knowing. The greatest figures in the financial world, the political powers of the country, the artistic and literary celebrities, deem it a matter of pride to be seen in his company, for he is what so many millions strive to be and only a few hundred are--he is tremendously smart. I do not use the word in its vulgar sense. Mudison does not know a Greek root from an X-ray, but his family has been prominent in New York for fifty years, and its founder, the sheriff of the name, left a fortune that, though divided and subdivided, suffices to keep my friend in clothes and clubs.

The memoirs of such a man are of immense value, as they give to posterity an intimate picture of the life of his day, which, after all, is vastly more important than accounts of battles and Presidential elections. But I do not for an instant suppose that Mr. Mudison, in those hours between his morning coffee and his breakfast at the Ping-pong Club, when he scribbled his fragmentary accounts of his adventures, had any idea that he was rendering a service to future generations. He was simply killing time. In truth, there is much in his notes that is trivial, even much that might be called worthless. But there is a great deal that will be of immense interest, dealing as it does with some of the most important social events of the day. A part of this it has been my good fortune to gather together in more lasting form than his scattered pages, and with a few corrections in spelling and grammar it has been prepared for future study.

* * * * *

I am just back from a most charming week-end at R. Timpleton Duff's in Westchester, and, upon my word, I do not know whether I am glad or sorry that I went. My appetite this morning was completely satiated with half a roll and a cup of coffee, so I think that instead of going to the club I shall take a stroll in the park and ponder it all over.

Confound women, anyway! A man should never let himself be caught straying from within call of the avenue. There only is he safe. You meet women in town, but you never get to know them. It is on these infernal house-parties that they depend. There it is that they get you off in a corner and talk to you about your hopes and ambitions, discover that they agree with you exactly on the latest plays and novels, reveal to you their own unhappiness and their belief in the hollowness of life as it is at present. It always takes me a week to recover my appetite after a house-party, and I vow that each one will be my last. But Mrs. Duff is artful. She knows me of old. She never writes, lest she give me an opportunity to think up an excuse. She calls me on the 'phone, and asks if I have anything to do to-morrow, and being taken by surprise and fearing to betray myself by a quaver in my voice, I stupidly say no. There I am caught! A few hours later down she comes in a car, and I am whirled away at a forty-mile-an-hour clip to Restabit-- I think that is the name of their place.

As is usual when you go by car and your luggage by rail, my bag did not arrive in time for dinner, and I had to array myself in one of Timpleton's old suits, which fit so abominably that Mrs. Underbunk, evidently thinking me a servant, swept proudly by when we met in the hall. This, of course, made a huge joke when I followed her into the drawing-room and was formally presented.

A charming woman! She might be twenty-five; she might be fifty. Yet there is no evidence of art about her. She is a simple little thing, with bright eyes, and a figure that she sets off very well in a black gown all shimmery with spangles, and a snappy little waist with narrow ribbons for sleeves. She let me drape over her shoulders a gauzy network shawl to keep off the cold, and then tucked her arm snugly under mine and was led in to dinner. My hostess was at my left, and she whispered to me that Gladys, as she called her, had been the wife of Joshua Underbunk, who has since married Amy Lightly, the prima donna of the "Whoop-de-doodle" company. Mrs. Duff said it was awfully sad, but, glancing at my companion, I confess I could not see but that she was bearing up well. She was talking gayly to the literary fellow on her right. The Duffs, you see, have a penchant for queer people. The Tommy Tattlers, of course, are nice, as are Harry Pumley and Sally Bilberry, but where they ever raked up that Miss Sapper, the artist, and Julius Hogginson Fairfield, is beyond me. Mrs. Duff told me over oysters that Fairfield was awfully clever, and had written "The Smash," the heaviest-selling novel of the day. He had been taken up by the Twitters, who rather pride themselves on not being exclusive. I have no personal objection to literary people and their kind, but it is so seldom that they know anything. Fairfield, for instance, did not understand that he was to talk half the time to Mrs. Tommy Tattler, and give me a chance with Mrs. Underbunk. Instead, he took up her entire dinner, telling her how he happened to write "The Smash," and what a poor book it really was, and how the public had greatly over-estimated its literary worth. Once I began to give her my famous story of the Irishman in the diving-bell, and he had to break in and engage her eyes, her smile, and all her attention, leaving me to discuss stocks with Harry Pumley, across Mrs. Duff.

My revenge and my chance came later in the evening, when we sat down to bridge, and Fairfield by a strange fate cut Mrs. Underbunk for a partner, against myself and Sally Bilberry, who depends on cards for her clothes. Mrs. Underbunk announced that she never played for money, which I admire immensely in her, for I don't think that women who are living on alimony should gamble. Julius Hogginson Fairfield gallantly said that he would carry her, and asked how she discarded. She did not know. I saw him flush, and his hand trembled as he led. But to me his partner was tremendously pretty and ingenuous in her game. It was delightful the way she protested after she had revoked and Miss Bilberry sternly claimed three tricks. Her apologies were charming after we had doubled Fairfield's no-trump make and she had doubled back, allowing us to run up a score of 288 points. At the end of two rubbers the author looked very warm. His collar and shirt-front had wilted completely. Having shared with Sally Bilberry a considerable part of the royalties from "The Smash," I was lucky enough to cut out with Mrs. Underbunk to let in Mrs. Duff and Pumley.

When, an hour later, they called to us in our secluded corner of the library that it was our turn to take a hand, the dear woman replied that she had a headache and really did not care to play, and I, for my part, vowed that bridge bored me to death. So we talked on. I must say that I was at my best. She was tremendously interested in everything, and seemed to enjoy having me explain how we bought stock on margins, and hearing about the time I was arrested for over-speeding my car, and of the coup I made at the Brooklyn Handicap last year. We got on tremendously. At first we thought it strange that we had not met before, as her former husband and I belong to the same clubs, but then she has been living abroad and has but lately returned. Curiously enough, we found that we had the same tastes in everything. She is devoted to riding and motoring and yachting. She is fond of the theatre, and abhors German opera. She loves literature, and was delighted when I promised to send her a batch of new detective-stories I recently picked up at my bookseller's. Then she is very strict in her religious views, a quality which I greatly admire in her sex, and I must confess that, as I peeped out of the window in the morning and saw her alone climbing into the trap and driving off to church at White Plains, I roundly cursed myself for sleeping so late and promising to ride with Mrs. Tommy Tattler before luncheon.

But we go through fire to victory. In the afternoon a drive down to the Country Club for tea gave me an opportunity on the quiet to propose to her a little theatre-party next week, with supper at Flurry's, and at bridge in the evening I actually insisted on carrying her, thereby in three rubbers losing to Tommy Tattler and Sally Bilberry all I had taken from Julius Hogginson Fairfield, with quite a sum more. But I have a good tip on Kalabash, second preferred, and can afford to be reckless. Love does make us reckless, and I suppose this is love. Of course these attacks never amount to anything as long as a man keeps his head when he loses his heart. I have ever managed to hold on to my head. The trouble with most men is that they think that death or matrimony is the only cure for heart-trouble. They succumb at the first attack.

A little experience would teach them better, but they never gather it. I know how it has always been with me. For example, now as always, there will be a loss of appetite, a few books and flowers, the theatre-party, and perhaps another week-end down on Long Island or at Exudo.

Then I shall, as of old, run over my accounts and see that to marry I should have to resign from half my clubs, for, of course, I could not live on alimony. Then some day I'll smoke it all off. A headache, and love's old dream will have vanished.

Still, I agree with Mrs. Timpleton Duff. Some of us came down to town in her car to-day, and when we had left Mrs. Underbunk at the Holland House and were heading uptown, my hostess said to me, "Isn't Gladys a dear?"

"Thoroughly charming," said I. "Tremendously jolly."

"I wanted you so to meet her," said she. "I knew you would find each other so congenial. Gladys has brains."

So I am off for a stroll alone in the park.