Upton Sinclair - The Metropolis

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 OUie 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 disap-

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pointed. 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 diflference, 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 humihating 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!

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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 mil-Uons 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'U 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-cushions, 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.

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"That's the only thing he has to be serious about."

" Has he got so very much ? "

"Thirty or forty milHons," 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 multimillionaires, 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."

"Who's Mrs. Jack Warden.?" asked Montague.

' Haven't you ever heard of her ? " said Betty. "She used to be Mrs. van Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber man. She used to give 'boy and girl' parties, in the English fashion; and when we went there we'd do as we please — play tag all over the house, and have pillow-fights, and ransack the closets and get up masquerades ! Mrs-Warden's as good-natured as an old cow. You'll meet her sometime — only don't you let her fool you with those soft eyes of hers. You'll find she doesn't mean it; it's just that she likes to have handsome men hanging round her."

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At one o'clock a few of Robbie's guests went to bed, Montague among them. He left two tables of bridge fiends sitting immobile, the women with flushed faces and feverish hands, and the men with cigarettes dangling from their lips. There were trays and decanters beside each card-table; and in the hall he passed three youths staggering about in each other's arms and feebly singing snatches of "coon songs." OUie and Betty had strolled away together to parts unknown.

Montague had entered his name in the order-book to be called at nine o'clock. The man who awakened him brought him coffee and cream upon a silver tray, and asked him if he would have anything stronger. He was privileged to have his breakfast in his room, if he wished; but he went downstairs, trying his best to feel natural in his elaborate hunting costume. No one else had appeared yet, but he found the traces of last night cleared away, and breakfast ready — served in English fashion, with urns of tea and coflfee upon the buffet. The grave butler and his satellites were in attendance, ready to take his order for anything else under the sun that he fancied.

Montague preferred to go for a stroll upon the terrace, and to watch the sunlight sparkling upon the sea. The morning was beautiful — everything about the place was so beautiful that he wondered how men and women could live here and not feel the spell of it.

Billy Price came down shortly afterward, clad in a khaki hunting suit, with knee kilts and but-

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ton-pockets and gun-pads and Cossack cartridge-loops. She joined him in a stroll down the beach, and talked to him about the coming winter season, with its leading personalities and events, — the Horse Show, which opened next week, and the prospects for the opera, and Mrs. de Graffenried's opening entertainment When they came back it was eleven o'clock, and they found most of the guests assembled, nearly all of them looking a little pale and uncomfortable in the merciless morning light. As the two came in they observed Bertie Stuyvesant standing by the buffet, in the act of gulping down a tumbler of brandy. " Bertie has taken up the ' no breakfast fad,'" said Billy with an ironical smile.

Then began the hunt. The equipment of "Black Forest" included a granite building, steam-heated and elaborately fitted, in which an English expert and his assistants raised im-