He arrived at it by a process of elimination. It could not be Evans himself. One saw that the old man was quite hopeless socially; nothing could change his big hairy hands or his lean scrawny neck, or his irresistible impulse to slide down in his chair and cross his long legs in front of him. The face and the talk of Jack Evans brought irresistibly to mind the mountain trail and the prospector’s pack-mule, the smoke of camp-fires and the odour of bacon and beans. Seventeen long years the man had tramped in deserts and mountain wildernesses, and Nature had graven her impress deep into his body and soul.
He was very shy at this dinner; but Montague came to know him well in the course of time. And after he had come to realize that Montague was not one of the grafters, he opened up his heart. Evans had held on to his mine when he had found it, and he had downed the rivals who had tried to take it away from him, and he had bought the railroads who had tried to crush him—and now he had come to Wall Street to fight the men who had tried to ruin his railroads. But through it all, he had kept the heart of a woman, and the sight of real distress was unbearable to him. He was the sort of man to keep a roll of ten-thousand-dollar bills in his pistol pocket, and to give one away if he thought he could do it without offence. And, on the other hand, men told how once when he had seen a porter insult a woman passenger on his line, he jumped up and pulled the bell-cord, and had the man put out on the roadside at midnight, thirty miles from the nearest town!
No, it was the women folks, he said to Montague, with his grim laugh. It didn’t trouble him at all to be called a “noovoo rich”; and when he felt like dancing a shakedown, he could take a run out to God’s country. But the women folks had got the bee in their bonnet. The old man added sadly that one of the disadvantages of striking it rich was that it left the women folks with nothing to do.
Nor was it Mrs. Evans, either. “Sarey,” as she was called by the head of the house, sat next to Montague at dinner; and he discovered that with the very least encouragement, the good lady was willing to become homelike and comfortable. Montague gave the occasion, because he was a stranger, and volunteered the opinion that New York was a shamelessly extravagant place, and hard to get along in; and Mrs. Evans took up the subject and revealed herself as a good-natured and kindly personage, who had wistful yearnings for mush and molasses, and flap-jacks, and bread fried in bacon-grease, and similar sensible things, while her chef was compelling her to eat paté de foie gras in aspic, and milk-fed guinea-chicks, and biscuits glacées Tortoni. Of course she did not say that at dinner,—she made a game effort to play her part,—with the result of at least one diverting experience for Montague.
Mrs. Evans was telling him what a dreadful place she considered the city for young men; and how she feared to bring her boy here. “The men here have no morals at all,” said she, and added earnestly, “I’ve come to the conclusion that Eastern men are naturally amphibious!”
Then, as Montague knitted his brows and looked perplexed, she added, “Don’t you think so?” And he replied, with as little delay as possible, that he had never really thought of it before.
It was not until a couple of hours later that the light dawned upon him, in the course of a conversation with Miss Anne. “We met Lady Stonebridge at luncheon to-day,” said that young person. “Do you know her?”
“No,” said Montague, who had never heard of her.
“I think those aristocratic English women use the most abominable slang,” continued Anne. “Have you noticed it?”
“Yes, I have,” he said.