s name ever prompted you to do an idiotic thing like that?… Oh! I see!” she said coldly. “Painting, eh…”
But now the bell for the curtain sounded, and after a few conventional words of parting they returned to their seats.
LVIII
The Hudson River joins the harbour. And then the harbour joins the sea. Always the rivers run.
The Hudson River drinks from out the inland slowly; it is like vats that well with purple and rich wine. The Hudson River is like purple depths of evening; it is like the flames of colour on the Palisades, elves’echoes and old Dutch and Hallowe’en. It is like the Phantom Horseman, the tossed boughs, and the demented winds, and it is like the headed cider and great fires of the Dutchmen in the winter time.
The Hudson River is like old October and tawny Indians in their camping places long ago; it is like long pipes and old tobacco; it is like cool depths and opulence; it is like the shimmer of liquid green on summer days.
The Hudson River takes the thunder of fast trains and throws a handful of lost echoes at the hills. It is like the calls of lost men in the mountains; and it is like the country boy who is coming to the city with a feeling of glory in him. It is like the green plush smell of the Pullman cars and snowy linen; it is like the kid in upper four and the good-looking woman down below who stirs her legs slowly in starched sheets: it is the magic river. It is like coming to the city to make money, to find glory, fame and love, and a life more fortunate and happy than any we have ever known. It is like the Knickerbockers and early autumn; it is like the Rich Folks, and the River People, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Roosevelts; it is like Robert W. Chambers and the Society Folks; it is like the younger set and Hilary, and Monica, and Garth; it is like The Story Thus Far:
The lovely Monica Delavere the beautiful but spoiled daughter of one of the richest men in the world meets at a party given at her father’s Mount Kisco estate in honour of her approaching marriage to a young architect Hilary Chedester his friend Garth Montgomery a young artist just returned from years of study abroad fascinated yet repelled by his dark passionate face and his slender hands with the longer tapering fingers of the artist and goaded by something enigmatic and mocking in his eyes in a moment of mad recklessness spurred on by a twinge of jealousy at the undue attention which she thinks Hilary is bestowing on Rita Daventry an old flame she accepts a
