The cards were played in the vaulted “gun-room.” Montague strolled through it, and his eye ran down the wall, lined with glass cases and filled with every sort of firearm known to the hunter. He recalled, with a twinge of self-abasement, that he had suggested bringing his shotgun along!
He joined a group in one corner, and lounged in the shadows, and studied “Billy” Price, whose conversation had so mystified him. “Billy,” whose father was a banker, proved to be a devotee of horses; she was a veritable Amazon, the one passion of whose life was glory. Seeing her sitting in this group, smoking cigarettes, and drinking highballs, and listening impassively to risqué stories, one might easily draw base conclusions about Billy Price. But as a matter of fact she was made of marble; and the men, instead of falling in love with her, made her their confidante, and told her their troubles, and sought her sympathy and advice.
Some of this was explained to Montague by a young lady, who, as the evening wore on, came in and placed herself beside him. “My name is Betty Wyman,” she said, “and you and I will have to be friends, because Ollie’s my side partner.”
Montague had to meet her advances; so had not much time to speculate as to what the term “side partner” might be supposed to convey. Betty was a radiant little creature, dressed in a robe of deep crimson, made of some soft and filmy and complicated material; there was a crimson rose in her hair, and a living glow of crimson in her cheeks. She was bright and quick, like a butterfly, full of strange whims and impulses; mischievous lights gleamed in her eyes and mischievous smiles played about her adorable little cherry lips. Some strange perfume haunted the filmy dress, and completed the bewilderment of the intended victim.
“I have a letter of introduction to a Mr. Wyman in New York,” said Montague. “Perhaps he is a relative of yours.”
“Is he a railroad president?” asked she; and when he answered in the affirmative, “Is he a railroad king?” she whispered, in a mocking, awe-stricken voice, “Is he rich—oh, rich as Solomon—and is he a terrible man, who eats people alive all the time?”
“Yes,” said Montague—“that must be the one.”
“Well,” said Betty, “he has done me the honour to be my granddaddy; but don’t you take any letter of introduction to him.”
“Why not?” asked he, perplexed.
“Because he’ll eat YOU,” said the girl. “He hates Ollie.”
“Dear me,” said the other; and the girl asked, “Do you mean that the boy hasn’t said a word about me?”
“No,” said Montague—“I suppose he left it for you to do.”
“Well,” said Betty, “it’s like a fairy story. Do you ever read fairy stories? In this story there was a princess—oh, the most beautiful princess! Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Montague. “She wore a red rose in her hair.”
“And then,” said the girl, “there was a young courtier—very handsome and gay; and they fell in love with each other. But the terrible old king—he wanted his daughter to wait a while, until he got through conquering his enemies, so that he might have time to pick out some prince or other, or maybe some ogre who was wasting his lands—do you follow me?”
“Perfectly,” said he. “And then did the beautiful princess pine away?”
“Um—no,” said Betty, pursing her lips. “But she had to dance terribly hard to keep from thinking about herself.” Then she laughed, and exclaimed, “Dear me, we are getting poetical!” And next, looking sober again, “Do you know, I was half afraid to talk to you. Ollie tells me you’re terribly serious. Are you?”
“I don’t know,” said Montague—but she broke in with a laugh, “We were talking about you at dinner last night. They had some whipped cream done up in funny little curliques, and Ollie said, ‘Now, if my brother Allan were here, he’d be thinking about the man who fixed this cream, and how long it took him, and how he might have been reading „The Simple Life.“’ Is that true?”
“It involves a question of literary criticism”—said Montague.
“I don’t want to talk about literature,” exclaimed the other. In truth, she wanted nothing save to feel of his armour and find out if there were any weak spots through which he could be teased. Montague was to find in time that the adorable Miss Elizabeth was a very thorny species of rose—she was more like a gay-coloured wasp, of predatory temperament.
“Ollie says you want to go down town and work,” she went on. “I think you’re awfully foolish. Isn’t it much nicer to spend your time in an imitation castle like this?”
“Perhaps,” said he, “but I haven’t any castle.”
“You might get one,” answered Betty. “Stay around awhile and let us marry you to a nice girl. They will all throw themselves at your feet, you know, for you have such a delicious melting voice, and you look romantic and exciting.” (Montague made a note to inquire whether it was customary in New York to talk about you so frankly to your face.)
Miss Betty was surveying him quizzically meantime. “I don’t know,” she said. “On second thoughts, maybe you’ll frighten the girls. Then it’ll be the married women who’ll fall in love with you. You’ll have to watch out.”
“I’ve already been told that by my tailor,” said Montague, with a laugh.
“That would be a still quicker way of making your fortune,” said she. “But I don’t think you’d fit in the rôle of a tame cat.”
“A what?” he exclaimed; and Miss Betty laughed.
“Don’t you know what that is? Dear me—how charmingly naive! But perhaps you’d better get Ollie to explain for you.”
That brought the conversation to the subject of slang; and Montague, in a sudden burst of confidence, asked for an interpretation of Miss Price’s cryptic utterance. “She said”—he repeated slowly—“that when I got to be pally with her, I’d conclude she didn’t furnish.”
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Wyman. “She just meant that when you knew her, you’d be disappointed. You see, she picks up all the race-track slang—one can’t help it, you know. And last year she took her coach over to England, and so she’s got all the English slang. That makes it hard, even for us.”
And then Betty sailed in to entertain him with little sketches of other members of the party. A phenomenon that had struck Montague immediately was the extraordinary freedom with which everybody in New York discussed everybody else. As a matter of fact, one seldom discussed anything else; and it made not the least difference, though the person were one of your set,—though he ate your bread and salt, and you ate his,—still you would amuse yourself by pouring forth the most painful and humiliating and terrifying things about him.
There was poor Clarrie Mason: Clarrie, sitting in at bridge, with an expression of feverish eagerness upon his pale face. Clarrie always lost, and it positively broke his heart, though he had ten millions laid by on ice. Clarrie went about all day, bemoaning his brother, who had been kidnapped. Had Montague not heard about it? Well, the newspapers called it a marriage, but it was really a kidnapping. Poor Larry Mason was good-natured and weak in the knees, and he had been carried off by a terrible creature, three times as big as himself, and with a temper like—oh, there were no words for it! She had been an actress; and now she had carried Larry away in her talons, and was building a big castle to keep him in—for he had ten millions too, alas!
And then there was Bertie Stuyvesant, beautiful and winning—the boy who had sat opposite Montague at dinner. Bertie’s father had been a coal man, and nobody knew how many millions he had left. Bertie was gay; last week he had invited them to a brook-trout breakfast—in November—and that had been a lark! Somebody had told him that trout never really tasted good unless you caught them yourself, and Bertie had suddenly resolved to catch them for that breakfast. “They have a big preserve up in the Adirondacks,” said Betty; “and Bertie ordered his private train, and he and Chappie de Peyster and some others started that night; they drove I don’t know how many miles the next day, and caught a pile of trout—and we had them for breakfast the next morning! The best joke of all is that Chappie vows they were so full they couldn’t fish, and that the trout were caught with nets! Poor Bertie—somebody’ll have to separate him from that decanter now!”