Front matter (continued 4)

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 Julius Hogginson 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 up her 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 occasionally discovered 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 in Isolde's garden, 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 are spots 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 have been 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, and Sir Melot had mortally wounded Tristan between 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 who everybody 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 the field to Gastly and Jumpkin. I have heard Tristan die 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 bit like 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 themselves happy. 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 and champagne 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 overcome our 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 did very 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 when she 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 to me, 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 made dough-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 her grateful 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'. So these 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 have their 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 in session 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, and made 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 had Uncle 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 bookies she 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 black filly. 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 hurry down 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 proceeded to 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 quite a 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 again the 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 recent Social 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 suddenly acquired 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 the grass, 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 simply extra 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 piebald pony 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 certain peculiar 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. It seemed they would both roll out of their saddles.

So I am getting accustomed to being regarded as one dead. But there is one consoling thing in this unfortunately fortunate situation. Gladys seems confoundedly satisfied. When I see her happy I feel that I should not growl because I have had to give up comfort and pleasure for her sake. She says she was thoroughly tired of being the late Mrs. Underbunk, and having people, who did not know, condole with her as though she were a widow; as long as she can have two comfortable houses, her carriage, plenty of clothes, and a husband who does not drink too much, she thinks she should consider herself a lucky woman. I suppose I should consider myself a lucky man, if all my old friends did not treat me as though I were a bore.

For instance, we dined at the Garishes last night, a formal affair of twenty-four covers, and instead of my taking in Evelyn, as of old, she had Cecil Hash on one side, and on the other, Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, whom I made. Gladys was at the other end with a jolly crowd—Gastly, Garish, and the Countess of Less, who was Evangeline Very, and has just returned alone to this country from England for a prolonged stay. As for me, I took in old Mrs. Handy, somebody's poor relative, and had on my left Timpey Duff's deaf-and-dumb sister—I think she was deaf and dumb, for she only spoke once all evening. It was positively the only night in my life that I have eaten anything at a formal dinner, and the single time I attracted the slightest attention was when I almost choked to death on a lot of terrapin bone that got crosswise in my throat. Afterward, in the smoking-room, Garish, Gastly, Hash, and Jumpkin, the only interesting men there, got off in a corner and talked nothing but stocks. Since my last flyer, that has been a delicate subject with me, and I sought peace basking in the benign smile of old Bishop Bumble, who, over his cognac, discoursed, at great length, on his new scheme for a church race-track. He argued that as long as people had to have racing, it would be best to place the control of the sport in proper hands. The present odds were manifestly unfair, he declared, and with upright bookies in the ring, the public could have an honest run for its money, which would make the track immensely popular and insure its success as a business proposition. He would allow only ten-per-cent. dividends on the stock of the operating company, and all over that would be set aside as a fund with which to start new church tracks in different parts of the country. An interesting idea, indeed. There were one or two points about which I wanted to take issue with the distinguished divine, but Garish began to lead the way to the drawing-room.

So I was mighty glad, after I had stood around for ten minutes, looking at the women, to feel Gladys tugging at my sleeve; to be able to tell our hostess what a charming evening I had had; to be able to go home.

As Shakespeare or Milton, or whoever it was, said, "There is no place like home."

From this period of his life on, Mr. Mudison seems to devote much less of his time than formerly to writing down his experiences, impressions, and thoughts. His diary, if such it could be called, becomes more fragmentary than ever. Particularly is he silent regarding the summer at Wheatley Hills. There is one mention of his having purchased an incubator, and a few thoughts on the annual nuisance of moving from town to country. When he picks up his life-narrative again, he is back on Lexington Avenue, and beyond a hint that he is looking forward to breeding Irish terriers next year, there is no clew to the events of his rural life.

latest papers are rather disjointed. Mr. Mudison seems to have settled down to the placid existence of a well-to-do married man with no vocation. He has ceased either to act or to think. We do learn in one place, however, that Julius Hogginson Fairfield wed an actress, settled in Sioux City, and is writing two historical novels, yearly. We read in another place that Winthrop Jumpkin, 7th, has married the youngest Twitter girl, and become president of one of the Twitter railroads. There is a touch of romance in the disappearance of Cecil Hash, who in an evil moment fell in love with a poor beauty, married, and moved to Morristown, so is known no more in the world. Again, there is pathos in this note, almost lost in a page of argument with Gladys on the foreign-mission question: "I see by the morning paper that Horatio Gastly led the cotillon at Mrs. Twitter's small dance last night—a spirited cotillon—dancing with the beautiful Miss Constance Twitter." It calls to mind the poor rector, but our momentary sympathy for him disappears when we learn later that he has gone to a broader field, and is comfortably settled in the Garish chair of moral philosophy at Hale University. With these facts we have taken the grain from a considerable mass of chaff, so it is hardly worth while to continue working over Mr. Mudison's papers unless some upheaval occurs to shake him out of the groove down which he seems to be comfortably sliding to actual as well as social oblivion. Some day we shall see the flag of the Cholmondeley Club flying at half-mast; some day we shall miss the familiar figure, the dingy old man with a rusty silk hat, asleep in his window, the third window from the corner. Then perhaps we shall agree with him that, after all, it is just as well to be smart as it is to be famous.

By Nelson Lloyd

THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY

ILLUSTRATED BY A.B. FROST

12mo, $1.50

"A story full of artistic quality, a story of genuine feeling and quiet humor, pervaded by that repose which is so painfully lacking in current fiction, and written in a style the ease and charm of which tempts one, when he has finished the tale, to-read it for sheer pleasure in its form."—Hamilton W. Mabie.

"A wholly delightful book that leaves one full of pleasant thoughts and that everyone must feel the better for having read. The characters are full of genuine charm and humor. A book not only to read, but to keep."—London Literary World.

"It would be difficult to find anywhere in recent fiction a novel that is so vivid and graphic a picture of life. It is vital and vigorous, a human picture, where men and women of flesh and blood and not manikins move and have their being."—Brooklyn Eagle.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York

By Nelson Lloyd

THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY

12mo, $1.50

"Abounding in humor and pathos."—Pittsburg Chronicle.

"It is safe to say that 'The Soldier of the Valley' will find a host of admirers. Some will like it as a story. The more critical will be glad to make the acquaintance in its pages of a lot of very live people with very marked characteristics."—New York Evening Sun.

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"A story of unusual power and charm."—New York Times Review.

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