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.
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 shouldavoid 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, thevivacious 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 hadJack 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 theMayflower. 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 theentrance 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 standwith 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 HogginsonFairfield 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 anyof 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 whichhe 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 asIsolde, which forms the next chapter of his edited memoirs.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Mr. Mudison Sees Mrs. Underbunk at the Opera
I feel very happy to-day for two reasons. Firstly, as my rector says, I have full particulars about the "delightful lot," being informed that they number but three, two small boys besides the Harvard man, for all of whom Joshua provides liberally. Secondly, I have learned that Mrs. Underbunk was the aggrieved party; that Joshua had the bad temper; that the South Dakota courts forbade him to marry again in that State. Immediately on receipt of this information I sent an armful of American Beauties to the Holland House, and yesterday morning one of her characteristic little notes brought her thanks. Then she expressed her regret that she would miss seeing me that evening, as she understood that I was going to the theatre withthe Trimmings, and she had an opera engagement with the Stynes. Where did she get to know those people? They have been long regarded as simply impossible. I understand that they are Episcopalians now, but that they formerly had "berger" at the end of their name, and but recently took to the "y." However, they are enormously rich, having made their money in my favorite breakfast-food, but it will take them a few years to get in. Mrs. Underbunk is entirely too good-natured. She says that they are interesting; but evidently her life abroad has blinded her. She thinks because they hobnobbed with royalty they will be received here at once, and she does not realize that they must first serve a term at Southampton and Bar Harbor, and then have a season of snubbing at Newport. She even went so far as to ask me to do something for them—to call, or drop in at their box at the opera. Of course I had to say that I would, but I had no idea that I should be called on so soon to make a public appearance with these climbers. However, it was my own fault. Her note decided me. I pleaded a headache to the Trimmings, and by nine o'clock had sufficiently recovered to wander over to the opera-house.
In social as well as military operations a reconnaissance is always wise. I dropped in to speak to the Twitters first, and made a few observations. I must admit that to the eye the Styne box was everything that it should be. From the artistic point of view it was without a flaw, for with two lovely women like young Mrs. Morgan Styne and Mrs. Underbunk in the front, and such distinguished-looking men as Styne and Julius Hogginson Fairfield whispering over-shoulder to them, they were really conspicuous. In every way they seemed to have emphasized their good taste and their ignorance of the customs of our society. I saw an oasis. I saw a restful, quiet spot, surrounded by the glare of the desert of jewels. From them my eyes wandered around the horseshoe, wandered along that diamond-fronted row, now and again pausing to rest on some familiarfigure where a pathetic effort had been made to secure with money what Nature had not given. I fear that Gladys Underbunk is warping my view of life. Why, I actually found myself admitting that young Mrs. Harry Garish, with her hair done in Merodish fashion and intertwined with pearls to the value of a king's ransom, was hopelessly plain. She poses as clever as well as smart, and so affects Cleopatra costumes. Her elbow almost touched Mrs. Underbunk's over the railing, and the comparison was such that I was simply astonished that for so many years I had been one of her train. Mrs. Garish was probably wondering where Gladys Underbunk had picked up such friends. She would faint when she saw me joining the party. But I was bold.
Without even waiting for the curtain to go up and the lights down, I made my way between acts to the Styne box, and in the great red glare that beats upon the parterre was presented to the ambitious Morgan and his wife, shook hands effusively with JuliusHogginson Fairfield, and sat down to whisper over the shoulders of Gladys Underbunk. It must have made a great stir. I could see a score of glasses turned on us; I could see great excitement among the Twitter clan over the way; I could see Horatio Gastly direct the gaze of old Mrs. Plumstone to the astounding scene. Evelyn Garish gave me a mechanical nod, and then tried to look at the gallery. It was quite amusing. And as for the Stynes, of course they were delighted and most cordial, and I must say I was surprised to find them so decent. Morgan was dressed perfectly, even to his one shirt-stud, and his wife is simply stunning; but when I know them I shall advise her that even though she looks infinitely better without jewels, at the opera, at least, she should decorate herself if she wants to cut anything of a figure. Smart women make their money sparkle, as old Gastly remarked to me at the club. Mrs. Styne will probably be very smart after a few years. She has the means to do it, but she would hurry things a bit if she gave upher ideas on good taste; if she either looked startling or did something startling. Both she and her husband, I found, spoke excellent English, as well as half a dozen other languages, and seemed to know all about music and art. Indeed, instead of being impossible persons, as I had heard, they proved to be very much like other people; but, after all, it takes only a generation and a half to make gentlefolk in this town. The old families like the Mudisons and the Plumstones, who have been prominent for a half-century, are likely to become very narrow. Still, as I remarked to Mrs. Underbunk, society is made up of people who play, and to have time to play you have to have money. If you have only brains, you would probably rather kill time some other way.
Mrs. Underbunk said that I contradicted myself, for I had remarked some time ago that if a man could not be smart he should be famous, to which I replied that a great astronomer was happy in his observatory because he had nothing else, and occasionallydiscovered a new star and got a paragraph notice in the papers, while with an automobile, and the money to run it properly and to subscribe to a clipping bureau, his vanity would be tickled daily with column-accounts of his breaking records, of his arrests for over-speeding, and his protests against the cruel laws. Yet, I argued on, smartness was an intangible virtue. It was not right to say that only by money could it be won, for there were in society a considerable number of persons who seemed to lack everything, even family, that most easily attained of all social virtues. There, for example, was Horatio Gastly, dancing attendance on old Mrs. Plumstone. He had only a few thousand a year, spent his days stretching ticker-tape, his late afternoons at the Cholmondeley Club, and his evenings in the smartest houses in town. He got into the Cholmondeley simply because nobody had ever heard of him. A counterpart in the fair sex was Sally Bilberry, who almost supported herself playing bridge. She had sailed in on the tail of the Plasters'kite. It seems that they owed her something, as old Mr. Plaster had at one time been her father's gardener, and as she is always ready to make a fourth and knows one or two awfully clever stories, she is quite a favorite.
"Ah, Mr. Mudison," said Mrs. Underbunk, "I fear you are a sad cynic."
"Not a cynic," said I. "On the contrary, I am rising as a defender. Those who attack us most are those who have tried to get in and cannot."
"The bee scorns the butterfly," said she.
"Yet the butterfly's brain is as big as the bee's," said I, as quick as a flash. Sometimes I quite surprise myself.
For a few moments Mrs. Underbunk was silent and seemed to be listening to the music or the whispering in the next box. Roardika was making a great hit in the scene inIsolde'sgarden, and for a time even I was content to listen silently. I have never been a devotee of Wagner, but I must admit that there arespots in "Tristan" where the singing is music, and I can lean back and enjoy it, with eyes closed to shut out the absurd sight of the princess and her clandestine caller awakening with melody the forest in which her husband is hunting. Gladys Underbunk and I thoroughly agree. When Dumple began to make coins disappear in the air to an accompaniment of "michs" and "dichs" and "sichs," she turned to me and whispered, "Do you know, Mr. Mudison, I sometimes wonder why a man of your lovable nature has never married."
"My bachelor vows have been strangely shaken of late," I whispered back.
Thereupon she chastised my knee delicately with her fan.
"Seriously?" she said.
"Seriously," said I. "I have often thought of marriage, but, you know, I am one of those unfortunates who have been born to high place. In me you see the apotheosis of the Mudison ambition for centuries. My brothers all married for love, and havebeen forgotten. To me it was left to uphold the family name, and to do it I have an income sufficient to pay for my apartment in town and my visits to my friends at Newport; to allow me a few luxuries like a horse or two and a car. But I have to economize. Suppose I married? I see the decline of the Mudisons. I see my fortune divided, say into three, and my children compelled by our straitened circumstances to move in the dancing-class set, their children going to the upper West Side, and our name plastered beneath the speaking-tubes of the Ophelia and the Clarissa. We owe something to posterity, so I had vowed that I should be the last of the Mudisons."
By this time,King Mark, aroused by the singing, had reached the garden, andSir Melothad mortally woundedTristanbetween the right side and the arm. The curtain was down. The house was in ecstasies, and Roardika and Dumple were seesawing to and fro across the stage, showing their teeth in thanks.
"You notice that I said I had vowed," I whispered to Mrs. Underbunk.
"Ah," she cried, "fortunate Miss Twitter!" It is very clever the way women have of seeming to try to sidetrack you when they want you to keep on the main line.
But I am an old campaigner myself. The trout is never so beautiful as when he is running away from the hook. "You flatter me," said I. "Miss Twitter may be fortunate, but I know that at present I am the most forlorn of mortals. Don't you notice how interested she seems in Winthrop Jumpkin?"
Mrs. Underbunk raised her glasses and inspected Constance eagerly.
"She has a little color to-night," she said.
"That is one of her charms," said I, refusing her proffered glasses. "It does enhance her beauty. Ordinarily, you know, she is rather of the marble-statuesque style."
"A style men admire very much when it's fixed on a gold pedestal," said Mrs. Underbunk. She had recovered her temper, and was smiling.
My heart was beating outrageously fast, and for my own preservation I had about determined not to punish her further.
"I said that I had vowed," I began. But she suddenly became interested in her glasses.
"Who are those people in the third box from that absurd-looking person in red with a diamond coronet in her hair?" she said. "Everybody is staring at them. You see the sad-looking little man sitting beside a very tall, thin girl? That other, I suppose, is her mother—looks like the old woman who went to market, only her gown has been snipped off from the top."
"It's Mrs. Very," I answered, a bit nettled that Mrs. Underbunk had become interested in others; but women are generally more than a match for us. "The little man is the Earl of Less—the Verys have just bought him. But I said I had vowed——"
She was most exasperating. Of course I knew that she was only playing a game, but it angered me to be wasting these precious minutes between the acts telling her whoeverybody was. By and by, however, she did dismount from her high horse, and inquired sweetly, "You said you had once vowed?"
Then that Julius Hogginson Fairfield had to switch from Mrs. Styne to our side, and break in with a lot of nonsense about motifs, timbre, and orchestration, none of which was of the slightest interest. Mrs. Underbunk did manage to get rid of him by sending him over to tell Constance Twitter that she would take luncheon with her to-day, but from bad, things went to worse, and Horatio Gastly came bobbing in, with Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, at his heels. I seemed to have taken down the yellow flag that had fluttered so long above the Styne box. The intruders, in the confusion following their entrance, secured the chairs by Mrs. Underbunk, and left me talking to Mrs. Styne, who started in to make me commit myself to spend a week-end with them at Westbury. By the time I had filled my Sundays for a month with previous engagements I found myself getting rather entangled, and deemed it wise to abandon thefield to Gastly and Jumpkin. I have heardTristandie so often that there was no inducement to stay longer. But Gladys Underbunk smiled as I made my flight, and whispered that she was terribly jealous of Constance Twitter.
From the opera I went to the Flusters' small dance.
Mr. Mudison's papers for some days after this are taken up almost entirely with denunciations of Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, whom he considers he has made, only to have him turn, hire a car, and take Mrs. Underbunk for a spin to Exudo. This treachery Mr. Mudison discovered while on one of his own wild rides, and for a week he abjured the world and kept to his club sanctuary. A long-standing promise to lead the cotillon at Mrs. Jack Twitter's small dance for her youngest daughter, Susanna, compelled him to give up a monastic life, and it is with this important event that the next part of his edited memoirs has to do.
CHAPTER XXIX
Mr. Mudison Leads the Cotillon at the Twitters'
I am feeling worn out to-day—utterly exhausted—and am registering all kinds of vows that I shall never lead another cotillon—that is, after I keep my promises to Mrs. Timpleton Duff, Jimmy Doily, and one or two others. I thought last night that the Twitters' small dance would be the end of me. In one of those solemn moments when death seemed very near, when, in an effort to arrange a new figure, I was being trampled on, and elbowed and hurled to and fro in the maelstrom, there flashed to my mind the simple epitaph I would have on my tombstone: "He died for Society." But I survived. What a seasoned veteran of these social engagements I have become! Teas, dinners, operas, and dances—I seem to move through them bearing a charmed life. I am a bitlike Achilles or Ulysses, that old Trojan hero, whoever he was, whose heel was his only vulnerable spot, a fact which seems to have become known among the younger set, for that was the target at which they all aimed. I did not mind an elbow or two in the eye; I did not mind a blow over the nose with a parasol-favor; I did not mind when Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, who was trying to dance the Boston, struck me violently in the small of the back with Sally Bilberry; but when Mrs. John Radigan, who hops dreadfully, landed her two hundred pounds on my heel in some indescribable fashion, everything seemed to swim before my eyes, and for a minute I had difficulty in retaining my expression. Of course there is some balm in seeing in to-day's paper, the one that prints all the news that is worth reading, that Mr. Mudison led a delightful cotillon, dancing with Miss Susanna Twitter, a statement which I believe emanated from Mrs. Twitter's secretary, and was given out for publication quite early in the afternoon. But, then,all cotillons are delightful; all dinners delightful; everything that we do is delightful. It is best to be optimistic. It is best to rave over this boresome round of festivity when it is one's life.
Curious how Gladys Underbunk has warped my line of vision! More than once last night I paused to step apart from the scene, to view it from afar off, to think. It is a good thing to think sometimes. When you do, you will be surprised at the ideas that will come into your head. I don't believe I had ever really thought at a dance before, so never before had there come to me even a suggestion of an element of absurdity. It was not the people who were there that suggested it, but the people who were not, and would have given a year of their lives to be of that blessed company—the Morgan Stynes, who had moved Wall Street to get a card and had failed; the Lanigans, who had succeeded and were now whirling around an over-heated room, being bumped and jostled and trampled on, yet deemed themselveshappy. Still, I suppose it is well to be seen at these very smart affairs. They are life to so many that to be absent is a sign of a social decline, which, unless checked by a few invitations, will lead to that graveyard of so many hopes—the page of the Sunday papers that tells what the clubwomen are doing.
Mrs. Twitter's dance was certainly very smart. She gives two every year, and last night's was the first, the one to which she invites the people she knows. To the next she will ask her list. So last night there were about four hundred present. At the next I suspect there will be just about that many absent, including myself. I fear the house will burst, and I have no mind to run risks, and am more than satisfied that to Williegilt Bumpschus will fall the task of bringing a cotillon out of chaos.
What a lot of fuss it takes, anyway, to introduce a plain daughter with millions! Still, I suppose the same is true everywhere and of all classes, for as ice-cream and angel-cake are to the Brooklynite, so are terrapin andchampagne to our set. It is no more wasteful extravagance for the Twitters to spend ten thousand in one night than for some aspiring Harlemite to spread crash over the parlor floor and ruin the stair-carpet with lemonade. That is exactly the way I put it to my rector at the club the other day when he was inclined to complain of the difficulty in getting subscriptions for new altar-cloths. I don't suppose that he was at all influenced by my argument, but I noticed him last night paying devoted attention to Constance Twitter, which caused me to suspect that he might be contemplating giving up bachelor life and becoming a benefice—I think that is the term. It would really be a very sensible match, for Constance is intellectual, and could help him with his little sermons on the travels of St. Paul and the needs of the women's guild, and the rest of us might not have such continual calls to supply new apparatus for the gymnasium. She is interested in him too. I could see that at once. A collar buttoned behind has a wonderful fascination for women.
I do not think that Susanna Twitter would make so good a clergyman's wife as her sister, as she is rather more attractive and might do better. Constance is one of those girls of whom her friends will say "she is lovely when you get to know her." More than that can be claimed for Susanna. It would even be unjust to class her as good-hearted. She has neither face nor figure, but is just a great big hobble-de-hoy, can play a man's game of tennis, and is studying jiu jitsu. In a few years she will have a double chin and a beam. I like her immensely, though I do wish she would not dance as though she were patting down a tennis-court with her feet.
It is very delightful to read in the paper this morning that Mr. Mudison led, dancing with the beautiful débutante. I suppose at this very moment thousands of unfortunates who were not there are studying the columns and columns that tell about it, and picturing Mr. Mudison gliding airily about a brilliant ballroom, in his arms clasping a slender fair-haired girl, with Grecian features and a marvellous complexion; Mr. Mudison, delicately holding the tips of her slender fingers, leading her gracefully through the intricate mazes of some figure; Mr. Mudison, followed by flunkeys bearing gifts, priceless gifts of paper parasols and pin-wheels; the music stilled at his beck; at his call the dreamy strains again filling the room. A delightful picture!
I do like Susanna Twitter immensely, but the rare times I danced with her I entirely lost control, thanks to her having always been accustomed to leading at boarding-schools, and I felt as though I were clinging to a fly-wheel. It was on one of these mad careers that Winthrop Jumpkin, dancing the Boston in a corner, hurled Sally Bilberry violently against me, and a moment later Evelyn Garish's partner poked his elbow in my eye. Susanna said that she could go on forever, and I think she would have, for I do waltz well, but luckily Horatio Gastly stepped on her bit of flying train, and before we could overcomeour momentum she had unravelled down one side of the room. We had to retrace her gown, a dangerous task, as a dozen nimble feet had caught it up, and seemed to resent my wild efforts to disentangle them.
The cotillon as a means of allowing the greatest possible number of persons to dance in the least possible space is a failure. If we could only have a few policemen to keep the stags in their proper place, besides the detectives who see that no suspicious persons get in as guests; if we could have laws making it petty larceny to "steal," and a misdemeanor to dance at a speed exceeding ten miles an hour, then our germans might partake somewhat of the stately measure of the olden time. Now we leaders are proud if we can preserve a semblance of order, for, instead of conducting a chosen few through some graceful man[oe]uvres, our chief duty is to shoo the invading hosts back to their chairs; to dance with the lovely débutante, and manage a penny bazaar. Still, everyone said that I didvery well, considering the crush, and they particularly praised the new figure which I got up out of my own head. [We find here in Mr. Mudison's rough draught a diagram which looks like a map of Port Arthur during the siege, but it is not necessary to reproduce it, as he makes his terpsichorean invention clear.] Forming the girls in the outer circle and the men in the inner, standing in the middle myself, I made the two wheels revolve rapidly in opposite directions, the men going backward. The result was simply kaleidoscopic; dazzling, the on-lookers said, and not without a humorous side, for there were several collisions, in one of which the Earl of Less had his monocle broken. In the general shuffle-up of partners, due to dizziness, there fell to me one of the most charming girls I have met this winter, Wisteria Plumstone, who is just out, and so has lost none of her good looks. I must confess the older I get the more I like débutantes. They appreciate it thoroughly when I dance with them. Wisteria smiled all over whenshe saw young Cackling hunting for her at the other end of the room, and me approaching her with wide-spread arms. She clung to me as if for protection, and, contrary to my usual rule to go only once around the room with them, I circled it four times. A sensible child too; she did not try to talk further than to venture that the floor was too slippery, and that she was having a lovely dance. Now, most girls of her age in their efforts to say something, drive you mad with their disjointed comments on the music and the people, and when they have learned to keep up a continual chatter it is no small mental strain to hold your mind on their line of thought, so as to chime in occasionally with something that would indicate that you have been listening. However, when I was younger I used to think that talking with these mere infants about the music and the people, the last dance and the one to come, about that girl in pink and the other in blue—I used to think that of such stuff a divine time was made. The pretty débutante, fresh, unsophisticated, self-conscious, is a delight to the eye of us old social adventurers, but our minds demand something more. When I would dance with Wisteria Plumstone I would take Gladys Underbunk in to supper.
But Mrs. Underbunk dances too—superbly. I found her in an exhausted condition on her chair, with Horatio Gastly trying to fan her back to life, and when she had recovered her breath and speech, she explained that she had been dancing with the Earl of Less, who had kept her revolving so rapidly in one direction that she had almost lost consciousness. Dancing with Englishmen, she said, always gave her exactly the same sensation as drowning, but never before had she come so near the bottom. She had been about to go down for the third time when Mr. Gastly thoughtfully bumped into Lord Less, throwing him all out of step with the music, and giving her an opportunity to grasp a chair for support and save herself. Horatio, of course, was claiming his reward, but the delightful woman told him that she had promised it tome, so as we glided around together, she every now and then giving me one of those maddening glances out of the corner of her eye, I had an opportunity to tell her how cut up I was when I went down with my car to take her a spin last week and found that Jumpkin had whirled her away in that dreadful old loco-sewing-machine. She did not say a word, but looked down at her whirling feet, which was wonderfully encouraging.
At supper I continued on this line, becoming thoughtless and reckless, as men will sometimes, and, positively, I think I should have made a fool of myself before the bird was served if Evelyn Garish had not burst in and asked Gladys where in the world she met those dreadful Styne people, in whose box she had been at the opera the other night. Mrs. Underbunk replied very quietly that she had just run across them at a house-party at the Duke of Guile's place in Devonshire, last winter. For a moment Mrs. Garish did not seem to have any breath left, and madedough-balls convulsively. Then she said sharply that it was high time the English realized that there were social distinctions in this country, instead of treating those with one generation of American gentlemen behind them with the same consideration as those who had two or three. Mrs. Underbunk said simply that the Stynes were very rich. She has a way of getting right at the heart of everything. But that did not satisfy Evelyn. To get in, something more than mere money should be required, said she, forgetting entirely that the Garishes had been generally snubbed until the old man worked the corner in Western Pacific. I supported Mrs. Underbunk nobly, and declared that I had found the Stynes quite like other people, and would certainly go to the dance they are to give soon at Flurry's. This made Mrs. Garish lose her temper, and she turned abruptly and began to ask Jack Twitter if he had an ace, queen, and seven-spot, which would he lead.
Gladys Underbunk gave me one of hergrateful glances. She said that she would go out in the car with me Saturday if I would promise to talk sense. So I promised.
As we read Mr. Mudison's fragmentary diary for some weeks we see how evidently the old campaigner is being enmeshed by the simple little Mrs. Underbunk. He frankly admits that he is in love, but he has been in love a hundred times before. He frankly admits that never before has his heart been so deeply affected. Curiously, he makes no mention of Mrs. Radigan. He is happy in his unhappiness. He is not dreaming of matrimony. It is evident that he has given it no thought, as he regards it out of the question for a man of his small income and many clubs. He does not want to win Mrs. Underbunk, for several times when the things she says make it clear that he has only to ask, we find him hurriedly turning the conversation to more serious matters; we see him abandoning her for days while he whirls madly around the country in his car, or sits for hours at the Ping-pong Club gazing despairingly into the depths of his Scotch.
Mr. Mudison's conduct reminds one of the practice man[oe]uvres in the army, where one division is pitted against another, each striving to win a technical victory. He seeks by a series of masterly advances to surround the charming Mrs. Underbunk, and to have her declared his captive in theory. Then he would beat a hasty retreat. Poor Mudison! There is something in his reference to her grateful glances, her quiet smiles, her caustic retorts, that convinces us that the warfare is real, and that it is he who is being enmeshed. The story unconsciously unfolded by him is the same old one of love, and not worth consideration where there is so much that is valuable, giving, as it does, a picture of this well-known man and his time.
Mr. Mudison repeats himself a great deal. We find very much the same reflections concerning Mrs. Radigan's small dance and Mrs. Duff's ball at Flurry's as are scattered through his notes on the affair at the Twitters'. Sothese are omitted from his edited papers to allow fuller space for his account of his afternoon at the races with Mrs. Underbunk and several other smart people.
CHAPTER XXX
At the Races
"Horse-racing is undoubtedly the sport of kings," I observed to Mrs. Underbunk, as we sat on the club-house balcony at Morris Park, yesterday.
"Undoubtedly," she said sweetly. "But kings, you know, are a pretty bad lot."
Of course she did not really mean it, but she has a way of railing at things just to be clever, yet it struck me that there might possibly be some underlying sense in her remark. It was rather unfair of her, however, as she had just cashed in on Morgan Styne's Sassafras at 10 to 1. When I suggested that she was a bit inconsistent, she retorted that she had only a woman's passion for gambling.
"Last year I went to Nice for Lent, thinking it would be quiet down there," she said."As a result I lost six months' allowance at Monte Carlo."
"You are safe here," said I laughing. "There are no wheels running in New York. We do not allow gambling in this State."
She opened her blue eyes so wide that to escape their baneful influence I ran away to the ring, ostensibly to put up a hundred for her at 7 to 1 on the Garish stable's Umbrella.
Now horse-racing may be the sport of kings, but I maintain that it is still very respectable, and I have no sympathy with the bigots who are constantly attacking the tracks. These tracks are owned and supported by our very best people, and it is quite the smartest thing you can do to run a stable. Take, for instance, our little party yesterday—the Morgan Stynes, Evelyn Garish with Harry, the Plumstones, and Timpleton Duff—all with horses running, besides dozens of others we know. Would they support anything that was not eminently proper? The charge is made that it is gambling. Harry Garish or Timpey Duff would no more havetheir names connected with the ownership of a gambling-establishment than they would die, but they support racing because it is a noble sport; it takes people out-of-doors, out in the fresh air and sunshine, among the green lawns and trees; and is there anything more exciting, more exhilarating, than to see the thorough-breds struggling for the mastery, when you stand to win or lose a few thousands? Fortunate, indeed, is the public to have such men as Garish and Duff working in the interest of clean sport, and putting it on a thoroughly business-like and paying basis, men whose fathers' names were symbols of integrity in the business world, whose own names head the subscription lists of every charity in the city. As I told Mrs. Underbunk, Garish is the moving spirit in the Anti-pool-room League, and has done a great deal for the community in ridding it of those gambling-holes, which are so demoralizing to the wage-earners. She immediately inquired whether the thousands of men and women we saw all about us consulting their information sheets were not wage-earners, thinking of course that she had me cornered, but I was able to reply like a flash that they were not—most of them got their money in other ways.
Womanlike, she was not satisfied, but went on to inquire if Garish had tried to root out gambling at the tracks.
An absurd question! But patiently, as simply as I could, I explained to her that while a few persons might watch horses race just to see which was the fastest, the great majority of the public demanded the additional interest given by an opportunity to make ten dollars by risking one. It cost a great deal to support the tracks and stables, and no company of philanthropists living would dare to go into such a venture without being sure of enough gate-receipts to pay expenses, and twenty per cent. on the money invested. The betting-ring was, therefore, a necessity if we were to have the glorious sport at all.
Mrs. Underbunk was only about half satisfied, but she is a very strict little soul in her theories, and I saw that it was useless to argue with her. That she had come at all was a surprise to me, but Evelyn Garish asked her up to their Westchester house to spend a few days, and help her with the bazaar they are to have at Lazydays, to secure money for the work of St. Simon's parish. She suggested that we all meet at the track yesterday, as her filly Umbrella was to run in the May Handicap and would be a sure thing at long odds, so I agreed to take Gladys up in my car. We were to have had luncheon at the club-house with the Garishes and their party, which included the Stynes, the Duffs, and the Plumstones, but as luck would have it a policeman held me up for over-speeding on Seventh Avenue, and took us to the police-station. What a nuisance those fellows are! He said we were running at twenty-five miles an hour, though my chauffeur and I both swore that our machine could not do better than eight, under any circumstances. Fortunately, the police-court was still insession nearby, and I was able to get away after giving cash bail to appear next Wednesday. The judge was a very decent fellow and apologized for holding me. He said it was the law, to which I retorted emphatically that the law should be changed, as I was getting thoroughly tired of being arrested every time I took out my car. For fear of another interruption by the police I had to proceed very slowly, and after we reached the track we had hardly more than enough time to swallow a bite of luncheon before the call for the first race.
There was quite a gathering of the clans, and I must say it was very jolly to see everybody again, fresh and rested after their Lenten seclusion. Long Island and Westchester seemed to have emptied themselves into the club-house. Jack Twitters was there with his two daughters, and Julius Hogginson Fairfield in close attendance on Constance. Charley Bullington, who was in on the recent bulge in Potash common, brought up the Verys and Lord Less on his new coach, andmade a mess of it, after he passed the gates, as his leaders got beyond his control, when Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, came up behind in that infernal car he hires. It sounds like a rolling-mill in busy times. The Earl of Less jumped and landed in a bush, scratching himself severely, though he would have been perfectly safe on top as a half-dozen policemen and a couple of grooms were hanging to the fractious pair. Then there were the Plumstones, Gastly, with some men from the Cholmondeley Club, and a number of the professional horsey set who seem to stable themselves somewhere for the winter, and come forth in the spring with red faces and waistcoats.
Gladys Underbunk is a thorough-going sport in a quiet way, for when Morgan Styne had tipped me on his Sassafras and I had told her what a good thing it was, she got a small roll out of the recesses of her automobile-coat, and asked me to put up twenty-five for her to win. As Sassafras was understood to be a cripple, and the tipsters hadUncle Bill as a sure thing, I got 10 to 1 on the Styne colt, and he won in a romp. It was a splendid race. This was sport at its best, as I pointed out to Gladys. The air, clear and soft; the sunshine glimmering over the rolling greensward; the gay, happy thousands keyed to the highest pitch of excitement, while the clean-limbed horses, the brightly clad boys crouching tight in the saddles, struggled nose-and-nose for the mastery, then flashed under the wire with the gallant little Sassafras full two lengths in the lead—this was glorious. Mrs. Underbunk asked why there was not more enthusiasm over the winner, and I, of course, had to explain that Uncle Bill at 2 to 1 carried the money of the crowd, and as he had broken down at the entrance to the stretch, there was naturally some disappointment among the masses. Simple creature! When I handed her a roll of $275 she was loath to take it, said that it seemed wrong to make money so easily, and wanted to know whose it was. When she heard that it came from the bookiesshe was concerned lest they could not afford it, but I explained that they had got it from the crowd who had mostly backed Uncle Bill. Then she wanted to know if I knew of any other good things.
Julius Hogginson Fairfield came strutting up, all smiles, and told us in an offhand way that he had put up five hundred on Sassafras, making quite a killing. It sounded very well, only I had happened to be right in line behind him when he placed a ten-dollar bill on the Styne colt. But people do like to give the impression of being real sports. I was tempted to remark that men who had to depend on their brains for a living, like writers, had no business risking even ten on the result of a race, but I decided to leave him happy in the profound impression he had created as a wise one. Though we did not ask him, he followed us down to the paddock with Evelyn Garish when we went to look over their Umbrella, and he declared positively that he was going to bet his imaginary five thousand straight and place on the blackfilly. But when I heard that Pebble, the darky, was to be up in place of Tomlinson, the boy who rides regularly for the Garish stable but was under suspension, I got my friend Cantle, the trainer, behind a tree and consulted him. Evelyn Garish said she would never forgive herself if we did not back Umbrella, for she believed it was like finding money, and I had to assure her that I would, but when Mrs. Underbunk handed me $100 I whispered to her for permission to use my own judgment. It came so straight from that trainer that 4 to 1 on Doctor B. to win seemed too good a thing to miss. In all my life I have never seen such a poor race. Doctor B., undoubtedly the best of the lot, was practically left at the post, thanks to the starter, and the Garish filly led all the way and finished in a walk. Mrs. Underbunk was so wildly excited over the result that she forgot all about there ever having been any other horse in the race at all, and I just had not the courage to enlighten her. So when she told me to hurrydown to those dear bookies and get her money, I returned to a quiet spot and found solace in a Scotch and soda. Then I counted eight hundred out of my own pocket and went back to the balcony and paid up, and effusively thanked Mrs. Garish for having let me know about Umbrella. It was pretty hard to have to look pleased to death, after Doctor B. had taken a large part of my money, in addition to my settling with Gladys. Then to make matters worse, that infernal Fairfield had to come bowling up and intimate that he had hit the ring for close to twenty thousand, though I had seen him pass a small roll of tens into the hands of the shirt-sleeved gentleman who takes in the money for J. Cohen.
Still Mrs. Underbunk's gratitude was worth paying for. She had got thoroughly into the spirit of the sport, and wanted to know if I had any more good things. I asked her playfully if she did not think betting was wrong.
"It is delightfully wrong," said she seriously. "But I understand those book-makers are a horrid lot of men, and why shouldn't I take their money?"
So she made a sentimental bet on Harry Garish to win the steeple-chase at two miles and a half, on Fencerail, heavily weighted. Garish did not seem to have a ghost of a chance on his ancient jumper, and was quoted at times as long as 20 to 1. I got her 15 to 1 for a hundred, but was wise myself. I always was afraid of steeple-chases, particularly with gentlemen riders up. Fencerail was never in the running till the last two jumps, one of which Blue Fox, the favorite, refused absolutely, while the second sent Tommy Tattler off his Rockaway into the water. It was a positive sin the way Fencerail came home lengths in front of the surviving bunch.
By this time I inwardly vowed that I should follow Mrs. Underbunk, and at least quit the game even. Gastly came up and said that he liked Primrose in the fourth, and she declared sweetly that she would back anything Mr. Gastly liked. So I proceededto send my money along with hers, and Primrose came down the stretch when the bugle was calling, the fifth to the post. Gastly was not seen about the club-house again. With a like result in the last two with horses chosen for their pretty names, I had not enough money left to give cash bail, so the run over to Lazydays was made at a very sedate speed. However, I did not mind going slowly. The Garishes in their brake, with the Stynes, Cecil Hash, and Sally Bilberry passed us on the road, and when I explained that the machine was out of order, they wanted Gladys Underbunk to go on with them. Delightful woman! She refused. She was in the highest of spirits with a couple of thousand in winnings tucked away in her automobile-coat, and I was quite consoled for my own losses. When I railed at her for the sudden change in her views on betting, she replied that she thought racing was fairer than roulette, because you could get inside information, like our tip on Umbrella.
Luck changed a bit last night. I won quitea little at bridge from Cecil Hash and Evelyn Garish. This morning I am feeling brighter, but I am staying in my room, as the rector at St. Simon's always bores me to death. This afternoon I am to try a little golf, though I have not played it in years. I feel that I need some violent exercise.
Mr. Mudison married Mrs. Underbunk at St. Simon's in June. The wedding was a quiet one, but so important, because of the character of the contracting parties, that full details of it were given at the time in the newspaper accounts. The ceremony was the simplest possible, there being no bridesmaids, though the bride had as pages her two small sons, Devereux and Maltravers Underbunk. Mr. Gastly was best man, and there was a small breakfast later at Mrs. Garish's country house. Many pages of Mr. Mudison's manuscripts are devoted to the days preceding this important event in his life, but when it is considered that after all he chronicles only an everyday romance, that he is telling againthe story that has been told thousands and thousands of times before, it is readily understood why this part of his memoirs is not deemed of great value. Of far more interest it is to see him settled down happily with his wife and step-children in a modest house; and it is with this epoch that the next part of his edited papers has to do. But to some persons there may be a tragedy in this line in the recentSocial Register: Mudison, Mr. & Mrs. Madison (Gladys Tinkle—Underbunk), C., H. '90—Lexington Avenue.
CHAPTER XXXI
Mr. Mudison is Uncomfortable but Happy
Curious! If anybody had told me a year ago that to-day I should be living at Lexington Avenue and Seventy-ninth Street, I would have laughed at them. Now I am laughing at myself, for while I am terribly uncomfortable all the time—or ought to be so—I am ridiculously happy. Gladys says things will look up with us financially after a while, as she has a rich old aunt somewhere, and we may be able to move west a block or two. But I don't indulge much in dreams. I try to take things as they come, and find solace in the fact that the only time in my life that I was ever stirred by ambition I lost a quarter of my capital. Yet I can hardly call it ambition, but rather necessity, for, confronted with the problem of supporting my suddenlyacquired family, I bought stocks heavily on a rising market, with the inevitable result; so now we have only $15,000 a year. Of course Joshua pays ten thousand annually for the children's board, but Gladys has nobly refused her allowance from him.
There must be lots of people who get along on less than we do; but if they are anybody, it requires scrimping. Surely, I had to give up enough. Gastly has my car, as he sold stocks on the bulge; Duff has my saddle-horses, and Jangle has been turned into a general man about the house—a combination butler, footman, and furnace-tender. Doing without Jangle is not so hard, as I have to economize on clothes, and they are learning to take care of themselves, but I do feel the need of more clubs than the Cholmondeley, alone. Of course no man could live without the Cholmondeley. When I walk by the Ticktock and the Ping-pong, all those favorite old haunts of mine, I think of Enoch Arden or Rip Van Winkle, whoever the fellow was that stayed away from home so long.When I see the men in the windows looking bored, how I long to join them!
Belonging to one club is like having a port to clear from, but no destination. There is little pleasure in strolling down the avenue when there is no place for you to drop in, so I have been keeping close to home, though my reading had given me the idea that it was the last place anyone would want to be. Yet it is quite endurable. I suppose this is because Mrs. Mudison understands me so well. There are discomforts. I have to take breakfast much earlier, but you don't really mind getting up at nine o'clock when you have not been out late the night before. There are long hours when there is nothing to do, hours when in the old days I could ride, but which now must be filled in with pictorial papers. I do miss that daily canter, but Gladys had to have a pair for her brougham, so I take my exercise by walking in the park with the children. Rather amusing they are too.
The other morning I was watching Devereux and Maltravers racing around on thegrass, when along the bridle-path came Cecil Hash on his smart piebald pony. Pulling up in front of me he shouted, "Lord! Mudison, you are not going to throw yourself in the reservoir?"
Really, I was feeling very cheerful, but my meditative attitude misled him.
"I am just taking the children for a walk," said I, pointing to the small pair.
Cecil kind of stared at the boys. His expression nettled me.
"They are Mrs. Mudison's," said I, rather sharply. "Perhaps you remember that she was Mrs. Joshua Underbunk."
"Oh, yes," cried Hash, his face clearing, "I do remember, now. Come to think of it, I ran across Underbunk in the Ticktock Club, just yesterday."
Up ran that confounded little Maltravers and shouted, "Come along, dad."
Now I do not object to that appellation in the privacy of our home, for the lad is very fond of me, but I do wish he would not be so demonstrative in public. Still, it is simplyextra pay for the amusement I have had taking him on tours of exploration through the toy-stores. It is well for Cecil Hash that he never saw me in a toy-store, judging from the effect of our present meeting, for he had to push his crop down his throat to save himself from choking to death. I wanted to wipe up the bridle-path with him, but controlled myself, and said, in a dignified way, "Come along, children."
As I began to move away, with one in each hand, Cecil asked me to join him at the Ping-pong Club at three, for billiards. It was hard to have to own up that I had resigned, but there was nothing else to do. He was astonished, tremendously astonished, but was too well-bred to show it other than by staring at me with wide-open eyes.
"Well?" said I.
That aroused him. "We'll miss you, old man; miss you terribly," said he, as if he meant it. "Thank Heaven, we can still meet at the Cholmondeley and cut each other's throats at bridge."
He quite touched me. "We can meet," said I, "but not at bridge, unless you care to play a penny a point. I only play for a penny a point now."
Even the pony jumped, but I suppose that was because his rider gave such a long whistle.
"Mudison," said Cecil, "you don't mean to tell me that you have stopped playing for money?"
"Yes, Cecil," I answered frankly. "You must remember that to only a few people in this world is it given to be happy and also have pleasure."
With that I marched away. I heard the wild clatter of the pony's hoofs as he galloped off, so I turned for a covert look at him, not in envy, but thinking perhaps of the days we used to canter along together. Suddenly he drew rein and turned in the saddle. I saw him smile.
For that moment, that smile put me all out of gear, and I sat down on a bench to think things over. In a little while the piebaldpony flashed by again, and I summed up the situation thus:
There goes Cecil Hash, bachelor. He has everything to make a single life worth living. He thinks he is happy because he has an airy, roomy apartment, an ammonia refrigerator, a full sideboard, and a man; because he belongs to a half-dozen clubs, keeps a car, and a few hunters and polo ponies; because he need not worry about money-matters so long as he adheres to his simple life and limits his wants; because he does not have to learn anything, as he is already smart. He thinks he is happy. He pities me. Let him smile. Really, he is only comfortable, thoroughly comfortable.
"Come boys!" said I, rising. "Mamma says we must be home in time for luncheon to-day."
"What are you laughing at, dad?" Devereux inquired.
And, hang it! I could not have told him whether it was Cecil Hash or J. Madison Mudison.
Somehow my meeting with Cecil made me a little discontented for the time being. It did seem that so long as I had not enough millions to be a really smart married man, I should do something to save the name of Mudison from social oblivion in the next generation, become a captain of industry and buy back what I had lost when I ceased to be a well-known bachelor and became just a well-to-do husband. My suggestion almost killed Gladys at luncheon that day.
"But, my dear Muddy," she said kindly, when she had recovered her breath, "you are absolutely unqualified to earn a living in any way."
"Are you sure?" I returned, a trifle put out.
"Of course you are a Harvard man," she went on, "but I should not say that you were very well educated."
"Simply because I had to play in the team," I snapped.
"And Muddy," said she, as sweetly as only Gladys can, "while you have a certainpeculiar kind of intelligence, I should hardly say that you had brains."
"I know all that," said I. "And for that very reason I am thinking of becoming a stock broker."
"Oh, you might do that," said she pensively.
My wife was quite taken with the idea until she heard that I should have to be downtown at ten o'clock every morning and stand around on my feet till three, yelling continually. Down went her little foot, as only Gladys Mudison's can, and she declared that it was not a dignified business at all.
"You would only be a respectable auctioneer," she declared.
"But I should make a lot of money," I pleaded.
"I would rather have you do without a few things," she retorted, "than send you down to that bear-garden every day."
So my dreams of great wealth have fled me, and I cannot say that I am wholly sorry. I did suggest becoming a corporation lawyer,but Gladys has the European idea of being satisfied with what you have, and she does not realize that in this city you must keep on piling up more and more or you will become a Knickerbocker. She told me she would think it over a while, and she has been thinking ever since, very quietly.
Meantime I am finding consolation in chickens, and am looking forward to good sport next summer at the little box we have just bought down on the Wheatley Hills. The study of incubators alone is a life-task, and my mind is not quite made up as to what kind we shall get, but all my other plans have been secretly laid. Only Devereux, the eldest boy, knows about it, and we slipped down to the country day before yesterday on a prospecting tour. We were standing at the stable with the local carpenter, making estimates on the lumber needed for the hennery, when in rode Gastly and Timpey Duff, the latter on my old roan hunter, the homeliest and fastest brute that ever followed a big pack of hounds and a diminutive fox over Hempstead Plain.The sight of a red coat did stir my blood, and though I cannot say that I looked at them with envy, yet it occurred to me that it would be mighty pleasant to be astride old Christopher again, bound for the meet, as they were. Surely there is no sight so inspiring as a company of daring fellows, with the pack in full cry, running a ferocious animal from Dan to Beersheba. A noble sport!
"Saw you in here," said Gastly, in that jerky way of his. "Thought you might be coming over for the fun."
Now, of course, I did not intend to tell them my real business, that my fun in the future would be found in the humble and ignoble occupation of incubating Plymouth Rocks, but Devereux had to speak up and give it all away.
"Huh!" said Gastly.
"Ye gods!" said Timpey Duff.
So they rode away, and as they turned through the gate Horatio leaned over and slapped his companion on the back. Itseemed they would both roll out of their saddles.