CHAPTER IV

_In the New Box at the Opera_

The Radigans have a box at the Metropolitan on even Tuesdays, odd matinées, and every third Thursday. They asked me to support them on their first appearance in grand opera, and as I had just sold Radigan a Harlem apartment-house, the Ophelia, of course I had to accept, and, to be frank, it was a most enjoyable evening. The box is an excellent one. It belongs to a branch of the Plaster family, who are abroad this winter and have sublet it. It was a bit full that night, as Mrs. Radigan seemed to have asked most of her friends, but by the help of two extra chairs we all got in. There were the Radigans, and Miss Veal, of course, with myself and the two Rollers Club fellows, Miss Constance Mint Wherry, and a Miss Mignonette Klapper, a rare beauty, who really had no right to be there as she is only a pupil at a finishing school and is not even out in Milwaukee. I must admit that the girl is charming, not at all breezy as we always picture these Westerners, but very soft and insinuating, with most expressive eyes and teeth. She kept me very much occupied after I succeeded in shutting off one of the Rollers Club men and making him fight with the other over Miss Veal.

The opera, I think, was "Tannhäuser," though I paid so little attention to it that I cannot be sure. In the criticism of it in my paper next day I discovered this enlightening paragraph:

"Box 506--J. John Radigan, Mrs. Radigan, Miss Veal, Miss Wherry, Miss Klapper, Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson."

Again, a little farther down in the criticism: "Mrs. Radigan, cold-cream-colored silk, diamond tiara, diamond collarette, diamonds."

I remember the diamonds very well, but of the rest of our hostess's costume I have no recollection. But she was very imposing. She is really a handsome woman, not sallowed by blue blood, with a large figure and plenty of bust room for the display of jewels. And how she did shine! Whenever the curtain went down and the lights went up, hundreds of those social astronomers down on the common earth of the orchestra circle turned their telescopes our way and studied her. How sublimely indifferent to them she looked! She kept that beautifully rounded arm of hers resting carelessly on the rail, and with her fingers played a silent tattoo, so that her rings flashed heliograph signals all over the house, while with her other hand she made expressive motions with her fan. The Williegilts were in their box across the way, and she managed, after much engineering, to catch Bobbie's eye and smile at him, which he graciously and charitably returned, remembering, perhaps, the low price at which she had let him have her prize-winning pair, Samson and Delilah, after the horse-show. These signals between the Radigan and the Williegilt boxes aroused the astronomers below still further, and pointed a hundred more glasses our way, and brought on a rustle of programmes while those excellent aids to opera astronomy were consulted to find out who we were. It was a triumph indeed. Then Miss Wherry helped out by whispering to some people in the next box; the Rollers Club fellows excused themselves a few minutes to appear on the other side with the Mints, and Willie Lite actually called in our box and showed himself right out in front whispering and laughing with Mrs. Radigan and Miss Veal for some minutes, and talking with Radigan in the back long enough to sell him ten cases of champagne. Altogether we seemed quite in the swim.

But we were too overcrowded. Four to a box is all that looks proper. More than that gives you the appearance of a delegation from some home, as I suggested to Radigan. He agreed with me entirely, and on the next third Thursday there will just be three of us in the opera--Radigan, his wife, and myself. We men are to stand back in the shadow and look as if we were hatching some dark conspiracy, while she stays out in front where the astronomers can study her. To get along in society, people must observe.

Still, we did fairly well for a first appearance. The objection I had was that there was too much music and too little opera. The curtain was up and the lights down much longer than it was down and the lights up, and it is difficult to talk comfortably when the people above and below are hissing at you. Then operatic music is so absurd. Of the actual music, of course, I have no complaint. The price paid for it is a guarantee of its excellence, and certainly many of the stars have beautiful voices. It is a pleasure to hear them sing. It is _seeing_ them sing that destroys all illusions. I can lean back and close my eyes and enjoy it. But how different it is when one's eyes are open, and Juliet, age fifty, weight 200 pounds, has her head back, her eyes on the chandelier, her hands clasping her throat, and tosses high Cs at Romeo, age fifty, weight 195, who stands with bowed head, silent, making all the gestures of a conjurer who is throwing coins into the air, making them disappear. I have seen many operatic Juliets in my time, and absurd they all seem when I compare them with the girl who took the part in our high-school performance of the play at home years ago. Of course she did not sing the part, but she _did_ look it, and I must say I like, first of all, to see a thing; the hearing of it is merely icing on the cake.

I happened to suggest a few of these ideas to Mrs. Radigan that night, and she did not agree with me at all. She said, surely--pointing her fan at me--I liked the "Pilgrim's Progress" in "Tan-howser" and the "quintette" in "Whoop-de-doodle-do." That woman has such a clinching way of saying things, I find it quite useless to argue with her. I believe now that she thinks John Bunyan wrote "Tannhäuser" and that the parlor-car effects in so many of the stage-settings are due entirely to the influence of Wagner. But with all her faults she is a most excellent soul. She gets along amazingly and will soon be varnished over. I know, for example, that she is making rapid progress in her French, for, after the opera, at supper she ordered some Philadelphia "capong" cooked in some remarkable French way. Her nasal twang was perfection, and I had no sympathy with the Rollers Club fellows who began to choke violently. I don't care much for those Rollers Club fellows, anyway, and am more than satisfied that when Mrs. Radigan appears again in grand opera she will have only Radigan and myself as a supporting company.