Part 5 (1/2)

”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 th.o.r.n.y 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 role 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 n.o.body 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!”

From the hall there came loud laughter, with sounds of scuffling, and cries, ”Let me have it!”--”That's Baby de Mille,” said Miss Wyman.

”She's always wanting to rough-house it. Robbie was mad the last time she was down here; she got to throwing sofa-cus.h.i.+ons, and upset a vase.”

”Isn't that supposed to be good form?” asked Montague.

”Not at Robbie's,” said she. ”Have you had a chance to talk with Robbie yet? You'll like him--he's serious, like you.”

”What's he serious about?”

”About spending his money,” said Betty. ”That's the only thing he has to be serious about.”

”Has he got so very much?”

”Thirty or forty millions,” she replied; ”but then, you see, a lot of it's in the inner companies of his railroad system, and it pays him fabulously. And his wife has money, too--she was a Miss Mason, you know, her father's one of the steel crowd. We've a saying that there are millionaires, and then multi-millionaires, and then Pittsburg millionaires. Anyhow, the two of them spend all their income in entertaining. It's Robbie's fad to play the perfect host--he likes to have lots of people round him. He does put up good times--only he's so very important about it, and he has so many ideas of what is proper! I guess most of his set would rather go to Mrs. Jack Warden's any day; I'd be there to-night, if it hadn't been for Ollie.”