Vernabelle greeted me with many contortions like she was taking an exercise and said she had heard so much about me and how interesting it was to meet one who did things. I said I was merely in the cattle business. She said "How perfect!" and clasped her hands in ecstasy over the very idea. She said I was by way of being the ideal type for it. And did I employ real cowboys; and they, too, must be fascinating, because they did things. I said they did if watched; otherwise not. And did I acquire an ascendancy over their rough natures. I said we quickly parted forever if I didn't do that. Then she clanked across to the couch, where she set down on her feet. I give her credit for that much judgment. That girl never did just plain set down. It was either on one foot or on both feet, or she draped herself along the furniture to show how willowy she could be without its hurting.
She now lighted a new cigarette from her old one and went on telling the fish-faces about her how little colour she had found here. She said we was by way of being a mere flat expanse in dull tints. But what could be expected of a crude commercialism where the arts was by way of being starved. Ah, it was so different from dear old Washington Square, where one was by way of being at the heart of life. It took me some time to get this by-way-of-being stuff, but the others was eating it up. Metta Bigler hovered round proud as Lucifer and trying to smoke for the first time in her life, though making poor work of it, like she was eating the cigarette and every now and then finding bits she couldn't swallow, and holding it off at arm's length in between bites. Mrs. Henrietta Templeton Price was making better work of the cigarettes, and Beryl Mae Macomber, a wealthy young society heiress and debutante, aged seventeen, was saying that she had always felt this lack in Red Gap and would of been in the movies long since if her aunt had listened to reason. The only man present was Edgar Tomlinson, who is Red Gap's most prominent first-nighter and does the Lounger-in-the-Lobby column for the Recorder, reviewing all the new films in an able and fearless manner. Edgar was looking like he had come into his own at last. He was wearing a flowing tie and a collar that hardly come higher than his chest and big wind shields on a black cord, and had his hair mussed up like a regular Bohemian in a Sunday paper. Vernabelle was soon telling him how refreshing it was to meet away out here one who was by way of doing things, and she had read that very morning his review of the film entitled A Sister of Sin, and had found it masterly in its clear-cut analysis, but why did he waste himself here when the great world lay open. Edgar thrust back his falling hair with a weary hand and tried to look modest, but it was useless. Vernabelle devoted most of her chat to Edgar. She was an incessant person but it seemed to take a man to bring out all that was best in her.
Pretty soon Metta went over to a table and brought back some glasses of wine on a tray, of which all partook with more or less relish. I recognized it from the bottle. It was elderberry wine that Metta's mother had put up. You have to be resourceful in a dry state.
"I'm afraid you'll all think me frightfully Bohemian," said Metta proudly.
Beryl Mae held her glass up to the light and said, "After all, does anything in life really matter?" She appeared very blase in all her desperate young beauty. She and Edgar Tomlinson looked as near right as anything you'd see in Washington Square. Vernabelle said the true spirit of Bohemia knew neither time nor place; it was wherever those gathered who were doing things, and wasn't it splendid that even here in this crude Western town a few of the real sort could meet and make their own little quarter and talk about the big things, the lasting things! Everyone said yes, quite so; and they all tried to handle their wine like it was a rare old vintage. But you can't hold much wassail on the juice of the elderberry; it ain't the most jocund stuff the world as fermented by Metta's mother.
However, it livened things up a bit and Vernabelle set down her glass and chattered some more. She said after all life was anything but selective, but didn't we think that all the arts rounded out one's appreciation of the beautiful. Several said "How true—how true indeed!" and sighed importantly. Then Metta said Vernabelle must show us some of her work and Vernabelle said she could hardly bring herself to do that; but yet she could and did, getting up promptly. She had designs for magazine covers and designs for war posters and designs for mural decorations and designs for oil paintings and so forth—"studies; crude, unfinished bits" she called 'em, but in a tone that didn't urge any one else to call 'em that.
It was mostly clouds and figures of females, some with ladies' wearing apparel and many not, engaged in dancing or plucking fruit or doing up their hair. Quite different stuff from Metta's innocent pictures of kittens and grapes and daffodils. After everyone was put on the easel Henrietta Templeton Price would stick her thumb up in the air and sight across it with one eye shut and say "A stunning bit, that!" and the others would gasp with delight and mutter to each other about its being simply wonderful.
Vernabelle listened in an all-too-negligent manner, putting in a tired word or two now and then. She admitted that one or two was by way of being precious bits. "Rather precious in an elemental way," she would say. "Of course I am trying to develop the psychology of the line." Everyone said "Oh, of course!"
While she had one up showing part of a mottled nude lady who was smiling and reaching one hand up over to about where her shoulder blades would meet in the back, who should be let in on the scene but Lon Price and Cousin Egbert Floud. Lon had called for Henrietta, and Cousin Egbert had trailed along, I suppose, with glass blowing in mind. Vernabelle forgot her picture and fluttered about the two new men. I guess Lon Price is a natural-born Bohemian. He took to her at once.
"Sit here and tell me all about yourself," says Vernabelle, and Lon did so while the girl hung breathless on his words. In no time at all he was telling her about Price's Addition to Red Gap, how you walk ten blocks and save ten dollars a block and your rent money buys a home in this, the choicest villa site on God's green earth. Vernabelle had sort of kept hold of Cousin Egbert's sleeve with an absent hand—that girl was a man hound if ever there was one—and pretty soon she turned from Lon to Egbert and told him also to tell her all about himself.