CHAPTER V

_Mrs. Radigan's First Thursday_

The other day I received Mrs. Radigan's card for her "every other Thursday in December." A delicate bit of card-board bearing the name of Miss Veal was enclosed with it. As they had sent out some 5,000 of them, it seemed to me that a splendid opportunity for advertising was missed, as they might have included Radigan's, with his downtown and uptown office addresses, and the list of his firm's various exchanges. But as I have said before, my friends are observing. They have learned that when a man goes into society he must leave his business behind him, unless he be an architect, a real-estate man, or a champagne agent. These three classes are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Society tolerates them, realizing that they must live, but makes them lead cotillons and do other foolish things, as a part compensation for the concessions in their case. One of the first observations I ever made to Radigan was on this point, and I must say that he has generally shown rare good sense. He says that they do so well because they have horse sense. With a four-in-hand or two, and a stable of polo ponies, a man can butt down many a closed door. An evidence of this lies in the fact that Mrs. Radigan got a card from one of the Williegilt families, which is presenting a plain daughter with a large fortune. Mrs. Radigan almost died of disappointment that her own "day" interfered with her going, and at one time I thought she would order a recess in the home function to give her an opportunity of showing herself at the other most exclusive house. But she repressed her ambition and went through the ordeal at home most nobly.

I happened to pass the Williegilt house that afternoon and I could not help contrasting the scene there with that I saw later before my friends' mansion. The street was blocked by a tangle of carriages, two or three seeming lunatics were running up and down shouting numbers like mad, a couple of policemen were kept busy regulating traffic at the avenue corner, and the awning from the curb to the door was so bulging with humanity that you could see the elbows working along the canvas as the compressed human beings squirmed in and out. The Radigans could boast no such scene as this, but I feel sure that in two years more they will beat it, and perhaps they will even have a riot when they marry Miss Veal to a title. As it was, their preliminary event was most satisfactory. Of course, they could not ask any of their old friends, and had to depend entirely on the new crop, which, divided between two days, made the attendance light.

I broke through the line of bandy-legged cynics along the curb, and paused to look up the deserted awning. There is something chillsome always about one of these empty canvas passage-ways, with the half-light, the tawdry, muddied carpet under foot, the dark door away off above you, that seems a cavernous entrance to some wonderland. Fortunately for me one of the Rollers Club fellows came out and he stopped long enough to reassure me. Things were not so bad, he said. The real-estate men who had heard that Radigan was looking for half a block on Fifth Avenue were helping wonderfully, and the architects who understood that a million-dollar house was to be built on the half-block were supporting them splendidly. Fortunately, several of Radigan's smartest customers were on the bear side of the bull market, and their wives and daughters had come to meet dear Mrs. Radigan. Moreover, and best of all--the Rollers Club fellow winked--Willie Lite was within, which would cost Radigan the price of ten more cases of champagne, a small enough payment for so great an honor. So I passed on. Of course the man who announced me got my name wrong, and gave it an Irish twist that made Mrs. Radigan start visibly as he shouted it in her ear. She was vastly relieved to see me, and introduced me to Willie Lite, who was in close attendance and talked most volubly.

They were discussing the "simple life," and I heard Mrs. Radigan say that "of the two, she preferred his 'Parsifal,'" which seemed to amuse Lite tremendously, though to me it sounded rather inane. Mrs. Radigan was an earnest believer in the simple life and regretted that she could not lead it. People did not realize the dreadful responsibilities that devolved on one who was born in our set. There was the endless round of calls, always boresome, and callers, often worse, and dinners and operas, and dances that we just had to go to. Sometimes she longed to get away from it all and go to some quiet place where she could study and store up riches in her own mind and do good to others. But there was Radigan; he simply could not live away from his clubs and his horses. He simply had to have excitement and terrapin, while she longed for repose and brown bread. The good woman heaved a sigh. I had never seen her in that mood before. But as I stood aside and surveyed her splendid massiveness, I forgave her, for I saw that, even did she so will it, she could not, like Diogenes, get into a tub. I fled lest I might forgetfully suggest this, and found rest with Miss Veal, in a simple white effect, very pretty, holding a large bunch of roses that I felt sure one of the Rollers Club fellows had sent her. She was talking sweetly about the weather to old Mr. Stuyvesant Mint, one of the bear customers. Mr. Mint, as I gathered from some five minutes' close attention, seemed convinced that it would rain before Sunday, and Miss Veal's views on the subject were summed up in a smile and an "Indeed." But while I was inclined to be bored by Mr. Mint's ideas, I soon found that I had to make them my own, and solemnly repeat them all over again, for when he became aware of my presence he fled to the dining-room, leaving me to bear his cross.

The burden was light enough awhile, for Pearl Veal is so beautiful. She delights my eye. I could sit with her by the hour, as I can lounge beneath a spreading tree on some hill-top, smoking, watching the valley below, thought arrested, in my mind mirrored the rolling fields, the woods, the meadows, the blue sky, the lazy clouds, and cheerful sunlight. To me she always is a lovely view, a prospect restful. But the world can offer few so fair; it seeks to hide its homeliness; it makes its laws to suit the greatest number. Talk it commands--talk, else you stare--talk small, say things inane, chatter, chatter, let the brain run mad, gabble, gabble, and so forget the universal plainness. Pearl Veal, I suspect, would revel in the quiet valley, away from the clatter of mills and the roar of trade. Her mood is peaceful. She knows that Nature keeps the eyes open and the mouth closed, but perverse man reverses the rule. She would speak when she had something worth while saying. At conversation she fails lamentably. But the world says, talk, and that day it interfered with my happiness. Talk we did, or rather I did, for Miss Veal seems not yet to have learned that the art of polite conversation is to settle nothing, to leave everything up in the air, and if by chance you do make a definite statement, to preserve the subject for further use by that saving, "Don't you think so?" When I said that I believed it was going to rain, she agreed with me and that ended it. When I brought up tennis as an absorbingly interesting subject for sustained repartee, she knocked it on the head in like fashion and left me standing first on one foot and then on the other, gazing into space. Some hours later, it seemed, an innocent young man, with an eye to beauty, relieved me, and I bolted for the dining-room, away off in the rear, where Miss Wherry was pouring tea, and took me under her protecting wing. Radigan was there, penned up in a corner between Coppe, the business half of the architectural firm of Coppe & Coppe, and young Crayon, whose sole hold on life is a Beaux Arts education and a drawing-board. Then there were several bear customers' wives, who were standing around the great table sampling things, and talking between bites to one or two of the social representatives of leading real-estate houses. A few persons, strangers to me, wandered in, took a nibble or two, looked absently about as though they were in a dream, and then ambled out. When I had had a cup of tea, a sugar-coated bit of cake with cream inside, a glass of champagne, and a chocolate peppermint, I wandered out, too. Miss Veal gave me a lustrous smile on parting, and Mrs. Radigan said she was so glad I could come. I paused long enough upstairs to exchange hats with the other Rollers Club fellow, as I saw my new one on top of his coat and remembered that after the opera the other night I had been left with a derelict headgear with many bald spots. Then I went softly away, down the gloomy awning, over the muddied red carpet. I had no trouble getting out, but I prophesy that next time I shall have to fight to reach the street.