CHAPTER XXVII

_Mr. Mudison Gives a Theatre-party for Mrs. Underbunk_

'Twixt love and clubs--oh, dreadful state! A week ago I was boasting that with a few flowers and books, a theatre-party, and a week-end or two all would be over. To-day I know that I have never been in love before; that I have only hovered on the borders of the dismal swamp; that now I am in the mire. My appetite has forsaken me entirely; I find no pleasure in my cigars, and the other day I actually gave up drinking because I believed that it was morally wrong. If this regeneration keeps up I shall become the worst bore in town. The deuce of it is that I find myself in a condition--in an indescribable condition. The nearest approach to a diagnosis of my case is to say that were I again confronted with the possibility of falling in love I should avoid it, but being in love, all the money in the world would not make me change my mood. Curiously, the reverse definition works just as well--I would give everything to be free, but free, would not avoid another capture. Strange! No wonder so many other well-known men have been made fools by women! Why, I find myself doing all kinds of absurd things--then just laugh. Tuesday morning I spent figuring from how many clubs I should have to resign in order to make my income meet the expenses of a wife. It was worse than squaring the circle, for no man is more unfortunate than he who has a fixed income of $20,000 a year, with no business in which to increase it; for sooner or later he will be confronted with a demand that he give up his comfort or his happiness. It is a problem to stagger any well-balanced person. So I am taking long walks, alone, at unheard-of hours, just yesterday appearing on the Avenue at eleven o'clock in the morning. Could I blame Mrs. Timpleton Duff for smiling as she drove by?

When I had typhoid they gave me cold baths to reduce the fever. Well, in the last few days I have had enough chills to bring me back to a normal life. Instead, I grow worse, and I see no end, no peace, except in that matrimonial bourne whence so comparatively few men return. Of that I am convinced. It was impressed on me with double force when I dropped in at the Ticktock Club the other afternoon to have a cup of tea. Whom should I find eying me over a paper but Joshua Underbunk, a man for whom I have never cared, since, though a captain of industry, he has not an idea in his head except on pig-iron and pictures. But as there were some things I wanted to know, I was pleasant, and in return he was most affable, principally, I suspect, because he is up for membership in the Cholmondeley Club, where some objection has been raised to him by the High-Church set. After casual remarks on things in general, I said, rather adroitly, "By the bye, I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Underbunk at a house-party last week."

"Indeed!" said he, looking rather surprised. "Her company was playing in Boston, I thought."

Naturally that was rather a blow to me, but it seemed best to have it over, so I explained boldly, "I mean Mrs. Gladys Underbunk."

"Oh," said he laughing, "not the present Mrs. Underbunk, then. I should like very much to have you meet her. But how is----"

He hesitated, and seeing that he was at loss how to designate delicately his relation to my delightful friend, I promptly interposed: "She is very well. A charming woman."

"A charming woman!" cried Mr. Underbunk, without a trace of insincerity. "I heard that she was in this country. She has been living at San Moritz, but I believe she ran over to see our eldest boy at Harvard."

My mind tumbled back to typhoid time. This was the cold plunge that failed to reduce my fever. The eldest boy at Harvard! Joshua Underbunk's tone indicated a half-dozen more somewhere else, yet I found myself actually making excuses for the woman.

Calmly, with no emotion whatever, I said, "She did not mention the children, that I remember."

"They are a delightful lot," said Mr. Underbunk nonchalantly. "I am sorry I cannot see more of them, but her lawyers send me quarterly reports of their health and financial needs."

His expression "a delightful lot" would more than have justified me in calling off the theatre-party that evening and pleading severe illness, and as I walked homeward I seriously contemplated such a step, but the end of an hour found me despatching my man Jangle to the Holland House with a note reminding Mrs. Underbunk of the engagement. Moreover, "the delightful lot" were entirely forgotten when later I stood before her, before the simple little woman, the woman of that most attractive of all ages, the undefinable; the frank, the demure, the vivacious soul; and, most of all, calling especially for my sympathy, the neglected. That Mrs. Underbunk had suffered, that she had children, that she had been forsaken, made her trebly attractive to me in my highly sensitive state. She is thoroughly conventional without being wooden; pious, but not priggish. I do like to see a regard for the outward forms of life, and that she insisted that her maid chaperon us to the theatre, a few blocks away, served to raise her higher in my estimation. To some it might seem that she was a trifle over-particular, but a once-married woman has to be very careful.

Of all the plays for me to have chosen, "The Smash" was the worst. It was the first night, and the present Mrs. Underbunk, formerly Amy Lightly, of the "Whoop-de-doodle" company, was making her début in the legitimate drama; so, eying us from the dark recesses of the box across the house was Joshua himself. My mind reverted to that Mrs. Topper-Tompkins who last summer invaded Newport from Chicago, and had Jack Tattler to dinner with both Mrs. Bobbie Dingingham and Mrs. Willie Timpleton. These things will happen nowadays, and we must expect them and make the best of them. Mrs. Underbunk carried herself beautifully, and even went so far as to applaud Amy Lightly very generously. The others in our box noticed it, and when she was not looking they would get their heads together and discuss her conduct with enthusiastic admiration. The Tommy Tattlers, of course, knew her, but Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, and Constance Twitter had only heard of her. Jumpkin, by the way, is a new friend of mine, a very decent fellow, though poor; being from Boston, and tracing his ancestry without a break to the Puritan who did not come to this country in the _Mayflower_. I had asked him to match Miss Twitter, but he did not seem to appreciate the opportunity I had given him to meet many millions, and talked incessantly to Mrs. Underbunk, leaving me entirely to Mrs. Tattler. Finally, by getting him nervous about his fur overcoat I engineered myself into his chair, so when he returned to report the precious garment safe, I was too deeply engrossed to notice that I had evicted him.

This was between the acts, of course, during the storm of calls for the author. To my astonishment, who should come on the stage but Julius Hogginson Fairfield, the play being only a dramatization of his great historical novel.

Mrs. Underbunk clapped wildly. "Don't you remember him?" she whispered, as he was making the usual author's speech refusing a laurel-wreath. "He is the clever man we met at the Duffs'."

"Ah," said I, pretending that it had just occurred to me. "The fellow with the queer shoes and the three mother-of-pearl studs."

"Society," said she prettily, "should make allowances for genius."

"Genius," said I, "should make allowances to society. The best nine tailors living cannot fit a genius. Is there any pall on a properly conducted social function like the entrance of a man who wears congress gaiters and mother-of-pearl studs?"

"Ah, Mr. Mudison, you should look at the brain," she protested, shaking her fan at me.

"But the brains should be well served," said I. "Why should we always have to have them garnished with hair, with lay-down collars, with awry coats?"

"It is true," she answered, after a moment of thought. "I should not care to have them around all the time, but occasionally they give variety."

As Julius Hogginson Fairfield was in that part of his speech where he leaves his work to posterity to judge, I could not help continuing for a time this line of speculation, as it gave me an opportunity to explain to Mrs. Underbunk the hollowness of certain kinds of fame which she was evidently inclined to acclaim.

"It must be splendid," she said, "to really do something yourself; to achieve something with your own intellect and hands; to stand with your head just a bit above the common herd."

"Yes--if you are common," said I. "Fame is attractive to the masses. If you cannot be smart, be famous."

"And do you not envy Mr. Fairfield?" said she, looking at me in a puzzled way, "a man whose books are the best sellers of the year, who at this moment is taking his place among the leading playwrights of the time."

"No," I answered, following up my advantage. "To-day he is a celebrity; to-morrow they will give a theatrical benefit for him; the day after, his obituary notice will be cut by the newspapers to make room for a bucket-shop advertisement. But the names of the great cotillon-leaders are on every tongue as long as they can stay on their feet."

I think Mrs. Underbunk is being converted to my ideas. Of course she has been living abroad for a long time and does not altogether understand our New York view of life, but I noticed that when Julius Hogginson Fairfield stepped into the box to speak to us, she did not give him that absorbed look which had so worried me at the Duffs'. There was balm for him, though, in Constance Twitter's admiration. She simply raved over him. She had "The Smash," and considered it one of the greatest books she had ever read.

Just to show my own good-nature and my fearlessness of him, I invited the author to come to Flurry's with us, but he had an engagement with the other Underbunks.

There was a little trouble at supper, as Joshua's party took a table right next to ours, but on a plea of draughts I managed to change to a cozy corner far from this disagreeable company.

Everything passed off most delightfully. I had Mrs. Underbunk on my right and Mrs. Tattler on my left, with Constance Twitter across the table, between Tommy and Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th. Then I was in my best form. Mrs. Underbunk responded splendidly. She seemed to have no end of subjects of conversation, and never allowed any of those embarrassing pauses, but skipped lightly from one topic to another, till we touched life in its every phase.

Her maid was on hand to chaperon her back to the hotel, but it did seem to me that as we parted at the elevator she held my hand longer than convention absolutely required.

"I have learned much from you to-night," she said simply.

So this morning I am in high feather, though my appetite is as poor as ever.

* * * * *

A careful study of Mr. Mudison's pages, covering his life for some weeks following, does not reveal much of vital interest. He deals largely with matters that are purely personal. Here we find that he has changed his breakfast-food; again, that he has discovered that gin and champagne are not wholesome, and is keeping entirely to rye and plain water. Later we learn that, with a handicap of thirty points, he won the annual billiard tournament at the Ping-pong Club. His comments on the houses at which he has dined and on the people he has met there, are sometimes interesting as bits of gossip, but we are dealing only with matters of larger interest in his life. Such is his account of Roardika's début as _Isolde_, which forms the next chapter of his edited memoirs.