CHAPTER IX

_Our Talk Over Tea_

Mrs. Radigan untwisted her furs and laid her muff and gloves on the chair at her side, and proceeded to make tea.

"Well," she said, when the water was boiling industriously and the alcohol lamp had ceased its explosions, "I have just leased a cottage for the coming season at Newport. We are going quietly, you know, and it's just a tiny little box on Bellevue Avenue and only costs us $12,000 a year."

"Indeed?" said I. "How sensible!"

"I think it is sensible," said Mrs. Radigan. "Now, John in his usual way wanted to take the Mints' villa at $40,000 for the season, but I said no--people would say we were _nouveaux riches_, and I prefer to live quietly and modestly. It is so much better taste. So many people get in nowadays on their mere money."

Mrs. Radigan heaved a sigh. She made me some brackish-looking tea, more for herself, and over her cup she eyed me archly. Just a week before she had sat there with me over her afternoon tea wondering whether Society would come to her ball, or she would be doomed to move in the Waldorf-Astoria set for the rest of her existence. Now she was so firmly established that she could rail, because in so doing she was acting the dual rôle of the attacker and the attacked. I showed no surprise. She had long since ceased to astonish me.

"So many common people go to Newport thinking they can buy their way in," Mrs. Radigan went on. "They rent great houses and they give balls, they entertain a German baron or a Hindoo prince, and nobody pays any attention to them. They disappear next year. Sometimes they are barred because there is a scandal in the family, like a divorce."

I raised my eyebrows. Mrs. Radigan must have noted it, but I think she could not have understood, for she went right on.

"It is always better form not to seem ostentatious. That's what Mr. Lite told me, but I had a hard time driving it into John's head. John likes show. But I just put my foot down and said that now we were in, we must have a conservative spell, a quiet period, so people would get used to us. I have made up my mind to have one or two little things that will be very, _very_ exclusive. For instance, I have decided on a donkey-dinner, for one."

"Who is to be asked?" said I.

"Only the smartest people," she answered, stirring her tea meditatively. "But it's a splendid idea. I am so afraid it will get in the papers and make a dreadful stir all over the country. I intend to write to the editors particularly and ask them not to print it. The outsiders are always so horrid, anyway. They can do all kinds of foolish things and nobody ever says a word, but the minute _we_ have something a little original, we never hear the end of it. Why, I remember years ago, when we were Baptists, going to church sociables, and nothing could be more absurd than an apron-and-necktie party, but nothing was ever heard of them outside of the church itself. If we were Presbyterians, and lived on Lenox Avenue, no one would print anything about a beach-party we gave in our house on New Year's eve, or something foolish like that. But now, simply because we are Episcopalians and have a donkey-dinner in Newport, I know I shall be mentioned in sermons and prayers all over the country. It is dreadful!"

"But, Mrs. Radigan," said I, "if you will leave the wings and get out in the middle of the stage and stand in the lime-light, you must expect to have some hissing from the audience."

"But we never get any applause," said she, with a touch of resentment in her voice.

"Because," said I, "all those in the body of the house want to be on the stage themselves--a strange condition, but one that really exists. And as they are not in the company, they find comfort in picking flaws in the acting and the actors. Now, for instance, a donkey-party for the benefit of your old Baptist church would not excite any comment at all."

"But at Newport it will make a sensation," she cried, clasping her hands and smiling. "Oh, it will be perfectly dreadful!"

I had to smile too. Mrs. Radigan is a wonderfully clever woman in a social way. She seems instinctively to do the most startling thing at the right time, and to have it all published in just the right place. I expect that within a year she will be known as New York's grandest dame, and that to be admitted to her house will be to be marked socially sterling. But Society is not an aristocracy. It is the purest democracy. The Radigans, for example, could never in the world have got in the smart set at Harvard or Princeton. They do not know enough. But here is Mrs. Radigan, whose father-in-law laid the foundation of a great fortune in pool-rooms, whose father lived a useful life between his home and his distillery; here is Mrs. Radigan, an immigrant from Kansas City, actually planning donkey-dinners. To what heights may she not soar?

I sat sipping tea and silently admiring this remarkable woman. But she never lets you rest with one surprise.

"Have you heard about Pearl?" she asked suddenly.

"Surely, Miss Veal is not ill?" I exclaimed, in some alarm.

"Oh, no--engaged," Mrs. Radigan replied laughing. "Engaged to Plumstone Smith."

I had been expecting this for some days, and believed myself prepared for it, but the announcement was none the less disagreeable. Of course I have never had anything more than admiration for the girl. What man could help that! Perhaps once or twice, in a vague way, there have come to me thoughts more ambitious, but they seemed too absurd. Pearl Veal is rich and beautiful, a rare combination, and it was not to be expected that she would waste herself, all her charm and wealth, on a struggling nobody, a man who could boast nothing. So such silly dreams were laughed at in my sober moments. But when the announcement came, when I realized that, vague and silly though they were, they must be put away forever, I was a bit hard hit--harder hit than I expected.

"Well, it is fine!" I cried, putting the best face possible on the matter. "Of course I knew it all along. But when are they to be married?"

"Never," said Mrs. Radigan, sipping tea. "You see, it's just for a while. It was announced, by mistake, in the papers this morning, but we have denied it. It will make a great deal of talk, you know, and the formal announcement will be made next week."

"I see," said I. "But you say they are not to be married?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Radigan. "You see, Pearl came to me and asked my consent, and I said they could be engaged for a while; he is such a well-known cotillon-leader."

"But doesn't she love him?"

"Possibly, but that makes no difference. She doesn't know what love is, the dear thing, and is flattered because he is so dreadfully devoted to her. I encouraged it, because I don't think it does any harm for a girl to be engaged to one or two men before she really settles down. It improves her greatly. It gives her poise, manner, independence. Pearl is such a simple thing. Why, she thought at first that he wanted her money, but he assured her that it would never have made any difference at all if papa had never left her all those millions. He wanted her for herself alone. It's sweet of him, isn't it? Well, I told her that as long as they were so devoted to each other they might be engaged for a while--until May, anyway. We are going to London then for the season and will bring back a duke."

"For the donkey-dinner?" said I.

"Yes," said Mrs. Radigan. "Won't you have another cup of tea?"