Oliver was not rooming with them; he had his own quarters at the club,
which he did not wish to leave. But the next morning, about twenty
minutes after the hour he had named, he was at the door, and Montague
went down.
Oliver’s car was an imported French racer. It had only two seats, open
in front, with a rumble behind for the mechanic. It was long and low
and rakish, a most wicked-looking object; whenever it stopped on the
street a crowd gathered to stare at it. Oliver was clad in a black
bearskin coat, covering his feet, and with cap and gloves to match; he
wore goggles, pushed up over his forehead. A similar costume lay ready
in his brother’s seat.
The suits of clothing had come, and were borne in his grips by his
valet. “We can’t carry them with us,” said Oliver. “He’ll have to take
them down by train.” And while his brother was buttoning up the coat,
he gave the address; then Montague clambered in, and after a quick
glance over his shoulder, Oliver pressed a lever and threw over the
steering-wheel, and they whirled about and sped down the street.
Sometimes, at home in Mississippi, one would meet automobiling parties,
generally to the damage of one’s harness and temper. But until the day
before, when he had stepped off the ferry, Montague had never ridden in
a motor-car. Riding in this one was like travelling in a dream—it slid
along without a sound, or the slightest trace of vibration; it shot
forward, it darted to right or to left, it slowed up, it stopped, as if
of its own will—the driver seemed to do nothing. Such things as car
tracks had no effect upon it at all, and serious defects in the
pavement caused only the faintest swelling motion; it was only when it
leaped ahead like a living thing that one felt the power of it, by the
pressure upon his back.
They went at what seemed to Montague a breakneck pace through the city
streets, dodging among trucks and carriages, grazing cars, whirling
round corners, taking the wildest of chances. Oliver seemed always to
know what the other fellow would do; but the thought that he might do
something different kept his companion’s heart pounding in a painful
way. Once the latter cried out as a man leapt for his life; Oliver
laughed, and said, without turning his head, “You’ll get used to it by
and by.”
They went down Fourth Avenue and turned into the Bowery. Elevated
trains pounded overhead, and a maze of gin-shops, dime-museums, cheap
lodging-houses, and clothing-stores sped past them. Once or twice
Oliver’s hawk-like glance detected a blue uniform ahead, and then they
slowed down to a decorous pace, and the other got a chance to observe
the miserable population of the neighbourhood. It was a cold November
day, and an “out of work” time, and wretched outcast men walked with
shoulders drawn forward and hands in their pockets.
“Where in the world are we going?” Montague asked.
“To Long Island,” said the other. “It’s a beastly ride—this part of
it—but it’s the only way. Some day we’ll have an overhead speedway of
our own, and we won’t have to drive through this mess.”
They turned off at the approach to the Williamsburg Bridge, and found
the street closed for repairs. They had to make a détour of a block,
and they turned with a vicious sweep and plunged into the very heart of
the tenement district. Narrow, filthy streets, with huge, cañon-like
blocks of buildings, covered with rusty iron fire-escapes and decorated
with soap-boxes and pails and laundry and babies; narrow stoops,
crowded with playing children; grocery-shops, clothing-shops, saloons;
and a maze of placards and signs in English and German and Yiddish.
Through the throngs Oliver drove, his brows knitted with impatience and
his horn honking angrily. “Take it easy,”—protested Montague; but the
other answered, “Bah!” Children screamed and darted out of the way, and
men and women started back, scowling and muttering; when a blockade of
wagons and push-carts forced them to stop, the children gathered about
and jeered, and a group of hoodlums loafing by a saloon flung ribaldry
at them; but Oliver never turned his eyes from the road ahead.
And at last they were out on the bridge. “Slow vehicles keep to the
right,” ran the sign, and so there was a lane for them to the left.
They sped up the slope, the cold air beating upon them like a
hurricane. Far below lay the river, with tugs and ferry-boats ploughing
the wind-beaten grey water, and a city spread out on either bank—a
wilderness of roofs, with chimneys sticking up and white jets of steam
spouting everywhere. Then they sped down the farther slope, and into
Brooklyn.
There was an asphalted avenue, lined with little residences. There was
block upon block of them, mile after mile of them—Montague had never,
seen so many houses in his life before, and nearly all poured out of
the same mould.
Many other automobiles were speeding out by this avenue, and they raced
with one another. The one which was passed the most frequently got the
dust and smell; and so the universal rule was that when you were behind
you watched for a clear track, and then put on speed, and went to the
front; but then just when you had struck a comfortable pace, there was
a whirring and a puffing at your left, and your rival came stealing
past you. If you were ugly, you put on speed yourself, and forced him
to fall back, or to run the risk of trouble with vehicles coming the
other way. For Oliver there seemed to be but one rule,—pass everything.
They came to the great Ocean Driveway. Here were many automobiles,
nearly all going one way, and nearly all racing. There were two which
stuck to Oliver and would not be left behind—one, two, three—one, two,
three—they passed and repassed. Their dust was blinding, and the
continual odour was sickening; and so Oliver set his lips tight, and
the little dial on the indicator began to creep ahead, and they whirled
away down the drive. “Catch us this time!” he muttered.
A few seconds later Oliver gave a sudden exclamation, as a policeman,
concealed behind a bush at the roadside, sprang out and hailed them.
The policeman had a motor-cycle, and Oliver shouted to the mechanic,
“Pull the cord!” His brother turned, alarmed and perplexed, and saw the
man reach down to the floor of the car. He saw the policeman leap upon
the cycle and start to follow. Then he lost sight of him in the clouds
of dust.
For perhaps five minutes they tore on, tense and silent, at a pace that
Montague had never equalled in an express train. Vehicles coming the
other way would leap into sight, charging straight at them, it seemed,
and shooting past a hand’s breadth away. Montague had just about made
up his mind that one such ride would last him for a lifetime, when he
noticed that they were slacking up. “You can let go the cord,” said
Oliver. “He’ll never catch us now.”
“What _is_ the cord?” asked the other.
“It’s tied to the tag with our number on, in back. It swings it up so
it can’t be seen.”
They were turning off into a country road, and Montague sank back and
laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. “Is that a common trick?”
he asked.
“Quite,” said the other. “Mrs. Robbie has a trough of mud in their
garage, and her driver sprinkles the tag every time before she goes
out. You have to do something, you know, or you’d be taken up all the
time.”
“Have you ever been arrested?”
“I’ve only been in court once,” said Oliver. “I’ve been stopped a dozen
times.”
“What did they do the other times—warn you?”
“Warn me?” laughed Oliver. “What they did was to get in with me and
ride a block or two, out of sight of the crowd; and then I slipped them
a ten-dollar bill and they got out.”
To which Montague responded, “Oh, I see!”
They turned into a broad macadamized road, and here were more autos,
and more dust, and more racing. Now and then they crossed a trolley or
a railroad track, and here was always a warning sign; but Oliver must
have had some occult way of knowing that the track was clear, for he
never seemed to slow up. Now and then they came to villages, and did
reduce speed; but from the pace at which they went through, the
villagers could not have suspected it.
And then came another adventure. The road was in repair, and was very
bad, and they were picking their way, when suddenly a young man who had
been walking on a side path stepped out before them, and drew a red
handkerchief from his pocket, and faced them, waving it. Oliver
muttered an oath.
“What’s the matter?” cried his brother.
“We’re arrested!” he exclaimed.
“What!” gasped the other. “Why, we were not going at all.”
“I know,” said Oliver; “but they’ve got us all the same.”
He must have made up his mind at one glance that the case was hopeless,
for he made no attempt to put on speed, but let the young man step
aboard as they reached him.
“What is it?” Oliver demanded.
“I have been sent out by the Automobile Association,” said the
stranger, “to warn you that they have a trap set in the next town. So
watch out.”
And Oliver gave a gasp, and said, “Oh! Thank you!” The young man
stepped off, and they went ahead, and he lay back in his seat and shook
with laughter.
“Is that common?” his brother asked, between laughs.
“It happened to me once before,” said Oliver. “But I’d forgotten it
completely.”
They proceeded very slowly; and when they came to the outskirts of the
village they went at a funereal pace, while the car throbbed in
protest. In front of a country store they saw a group of loungers
watching them, and Oliver said, “There’s the first part of the trap.
They have a telephone, and somewhere beyond is a man with another
telephone, and beyond that a man to stretch a rope across the road.”
“What would they do with you?” asked the other.
“Haul you up before a justice of the peace, and fine you anywhere from
fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars. It’s regular highway
robbery—there are some places that boast of never levying taxes; they
get all their money out of us!”
Oliver pulled out his watch. “We’re going to be late to lunch, thanks
to these delays,” he said. He added that they were to meet at the
“Hawk’s Nest,” which he said was an “automobile joint.”
Outside of the town they “hit it up” again; and half an hour later they
came to a huge sign, “To the Hawk’s Nest,” and turned off. They ran up
a hill, and came suddenly out of a pine-forest into view of a hostelry,
perched upon the edge of a bluff overlooking the Sound. There was a
broad yard in front, in which automobiles wheeled and sputtered, and a
long shed that was lined with them.
Half a dozen attendants ran to meet them as they drew up at the steps.
They all knew Oliver, and two fell to brushing his coat, and one got
his cap, while the mechanic took the car to the shed. Oliver had a tip
for each of them; one of the things that Montague observed was that in
New York you had to carry a pocketful of change, and scatter it about
wherever you went. They tipped the man who carried their coats and the
boy who opened the door. In the washrooms they tipped the boys who
filled the basins for them and those who gave them a second brushing.
The piazzas of the inn were crowded with automobiling parties, in all
sorts of strange costumes. It seemed to Montague that most of them were
flashy people—the men had red faces and the women had loud voices; he
saw one in a sky-blue coat with bright scarlet facing. It occurred to
him that if these women had not worn such large hats, they would not
have needed quite such a supply of the bright-coloured veiling which
they wound over the hats and tied under their chins, or left to float
about in the breeze.
The dining-room seemed to have been built in sections, rambling about
on the summit of the cliff. The side of it facing the water was all
glass, and could be taken down. The ceiling was a maze of streamers and
Japanese lanterns, and here and there were orange-trees and palms and
artificial streams and fountains. Every table was crowded, it seemed;
one was half-deafened by the clatter of plates, the voices and
laughter, and the uproar of a negro orchestra of banjos, mandolins, and
guitars. Negro waiters flew here and there, and a huge, stout
head-waiter, who was pirouetting and strutting, suddenly espied Oliver,
and made for him with smiles of welcome.
“Yes, sir—just come in, sir,” he said, and led the way down the room,
to where, in a corner, a table had been set for sixteen or eighteen
people. There was a shout, “Here’s Ollie!”—and a pounding of glasses
and a chorus of welcome—“Hello, Ollie! You’re late, Ollie! What’s the
matter—car broke down?”
Of the party, about half were men and half women. Montague braced
himself for the painful ordeal of being introduced to sixteen people in
succession, but this was considerately spared him. He shook hands with
Robbie Walling, a tall and rather hollow-chested young man, with slight
yellow moustaches; and with Mrs. Robbie, who bade him welcome, and
presented him with the freedom of the company.
Then he found himself seated between two young ladies, with a waiter
leaning over him to take his order for the drinks. He said, a little
hesitatingly, that he would like some whisky, as he was about frozen,
upon which the girl on his right, remarked, “You’d better try a
champagne cocktail—you’ll get your results quicker.” She added, to the
waiter, “Bring a couple of them, and be quick about it.”
“You had a cold ride, no doubt, in that low car,” she went on, to
Montague. “What made you late?”
“We had some delays,” he answered. “Once we thought we were arrested.”
“Arrested!” she exclaimed; and others took up the word, crying, “Oh,
Ollie! tell us about it!”
Oliver told the tale, and meantime his brother had a chance to look
about him. All of the party were young—he judged that he was the oldest
person there. They were not of the flashily dressed sort, but no one
would have had to look twice to know that there was money in the crowd.
They had had their first round of drinks, and started in to enjoy
themselves. They were all intimates, calling each other by their first
names. Montague noticed that these names always ended in “ie,”—there
was Robbie and Freddie and Auggie and Clarrie and Bertie and Chappie;
if their names could not be made to end properly, they had nicknames
instead.
“Ollie” told how they had distanced the policeman; and Clarrie Mason
(one of the younger sons of the once mighty railroad king) told of a
similar feat which his car had performed. And then the young lady who
sat beside him told how a fat Irish woman had skipped out of their way
as they rounded a corner, and stood and cursed them from the
vantage-point of the sidewalk.
The waiter came with the liquor, and Montague thanked his neighbour,
Miss Price. Anabel Price was her name, and they called her “Billy”; she
was a tall and splendidly formed creature, and he learned in due time
that she was a famous athlete. She must have divined that he would feel
a little lost in this crowd of intimates, and set to work to make him
feel at home—an attempt in which she was not altogether successful.
They were bound for a shooting-lodge, and so she asked him if he were
fond of shooting. He replied that he was; in answer to a further
question he said that he had hunted chiefly deer and wild turkey. “Ah,
then you are a real hunter!” said Miss Price. “I’m afraid you’ll scorn
our way.”
“What do you do?” he inquired.
“Wait and you’ll see,” replied she; and added, casually, “When you get
to be pally with us, you’ll conclude we don’t furnish.”
Montague’s jaw dropped just a little. He recovered himself, however,
and said that he presumed so, or that he trusted not; afterward, when
he had made inquiries and found out what he should have said, he had
completely forgotten what he _had_ said.—Down in a hotel in Natchez
there was an old head-waiter, to whom Montague had once appealed to
seat him next to a friend. At the next meal, learning that the request
had been granted, he said to the old man, “I’m afraid you have shown me
partiality”; to which the reply came, “I always tries to show it as
much as I kin.” Montague always thought of this whenever he recalled
his first encounter with “Billy” Price.
The young lady on the other side of him now remarked that Robbie was
ordering another “topsy-turvy lunch.” He inquired what sort of a lunch
that was; she told him that Robbie called it a “digestion exercise.”
That was the only remark that Miss de Millo addressed to him during the
meal (Miss Gladys de Mille, the banker’s daughter, known as “Baby” to
her intimates). She was a stout and round-faced girl, who devoted
herself strictly to the business of lunching; and Montague noticed at
the end that she was breathing rather hard, and that her big round eyes
seemed bigger than ever.
Conversation was general about the table, but it was not easy
conversation to follow. It consisted mostly of what is known as
“joshing,” and involved acquaintance with intimate details of
personalities and past events. Also, there was a great deal of slang
used, which kept a stranger’s wits on the jump. However, Montague
concluded that all his deficiencies were made up for by his brother,
whose sallies were the cause of the loudest laughter. Just now he
seemed to the other more like the Oliver he had known of old—for
Montague had already noted a change in him. At home there had never
been any end to his gaiety and fun, and it was hard to get him to take
anything seriously; but now he kept all his jokes for company, and when
he was alone he was in deadly earnest. Apparently he was working hard
over his pleasures.
Montague could understand how this was possible. Some one, for
instance, had worked hard over the ordering of the lunch—to secure the
maximum of explosive effect. It began with ice-cream, moulded in fancy
shapes and then buried in white of egg and baked brown. Then there was
a turtle soup, thick and green and greasy; and then—horror of horrors—a
great steaming plum-pudding. It was served in a strange phenomenon of a
platter, with six long, silver legs; and the waiter set it in front of
Robbie Walling and lifted the cover with a sweeping gesture—and then
removed it and served it himself. Montague had about made up his mind
that this was the end, and begun to fill up on bread-and-butter, when
there appeared cold asparagus, served in individual silver holders
resembling andirons. Then—appetite now being sufficiently whetted—there
came quail, in piping hot little casseroles—; and then half a
grape-fruit set in a block of ice and filled with wine; and then little
squab ducklings, bursting fat, and an artichoke; and then a _café
parfait_; and then—as if to crown the audacity—huge thick slices of
roast beef! Montague had given up long ago—he could keep no track of
the deluge of food which poured forth. And between all the courses
there were wines of precious brands, tumbled helter-skelter,—sherry and
port, champagne and claret and liqueur. Montague watched poor “Baby” de
Mille out of the corner of his eye, and pitied her; for it was evident
that she could not resist the impulse to eat whatever was put before
her, and she was visibly suffering. He wondered whether he might not
manage to divert her by conversation, but he lacked the courage to make
the attempt.
The meal was over at four o’clock. By that time most of the other
parties were far on their way to New York, and the inn was deserted.
They possessed themselves of their belongings, and one by one their
cars whirled away toward “Black Forest.”
Montague had been told that it was a “shooting-lodge.” He had a vision
of some kind of a rustic shack, and wondered dimly how so many people
would be stowed away. When they turned off the main road, and his
brother remarked, “Here we are,” he was surprised to see a rather large
building of granite, with an archway spanning the road. He was still
more surprised when they whizzed through and went on.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To ‘Black Forest,’” said Oliver.
“And what was that we passed?”
“That was the gate-keeper’s lodge,” was Oliver’s reply.