But as she paused, a white-jacketed man with a fierce black beard thrust his hand into the gray-green liquid that filled the barrel and came up with a long green pickle in his red and chapped hand. He presented it to Hannah with a flourish, as though it were a rose. She accepted it as graciously, after removing her glove. And then took a big bite of it before sighing, and saying with every evidence of rapture, “Superb. Just delicious.”
“Ah. You’ve a nose for pickles. It must be a vat of the ‘89, I hear the year was perfect. We’ll have a jar of them, my good man,” Gray said imperiously. As the man proceeded to stuff pickles into a jar. Gray studied Hannah’s pickle longingly and added, “At least that way I’ll get a taste.”
She grinned and held out the pickle, and he managed to take a bite without the juice running down his chin and onto his scarf, his woolen Chesterfield coat, or the cupped hand she held beneath his chin. “Ah,’ he breathed, as he chewed. “You’re right. An impudent little vintage, with just a hint of brine and enough garlic to give it body.”
They took their jar of pickles and strolled the raucous market streets behind Peggy and Royal. While the newlyweds bought linens and pots, Hannah and Gray delighted in daring each other to taste every sample of every food that was offered them. And as they were offered bits and pieces of every edible thing being vended, they ate bites of potato and onion patties and pieces of herring; slices of salamis and bolognas and wedges of cheese; hunks of bread bearing coatings of fats orjellies, and mouthfuls of all sorts of pastries filled with indescribable compounds of meats and fish.
“That,” Hannah said smugly, as Gray swallowed a bite of something in baked parchment, “was liver. As I live and breathe, you’ve just ingested what you said you detested the most, as I recall.”
“Indeed?” Gray said with admirable calm, successfully stifling a grimace, for the onions, garlic, and chicken fat had disguised the horrible fact brilliantly, until she’d spoken.
“That,” he informed her in turn, three pushcarts down the street later, as she daintily nibbled a tidbit, “is a mixture of sweetbreads and crumbs, as well as onion and garlic. I thought you shared my detestation of any internal organs but your own at dinner.”
“Oh,” she said, and forced herself to continue chewing as she said brightly, “but it is very good. Exceptions can be made.”
“And,” he added sweetly, “it is all rolled up and cooked in a length of the unfortunate cow’s intestine. That’s the crackly coating,” he said helpfully, adding, “it’s quite true,” as he saw her stop chewing.
“Beast,” she said, coughing, because she’d swallowed it in her dismay. And then saw his eyes and began laughing so loudly several onlookers joined in because it was such a lovely sound to hear.
They ate their way down the street, buying samples of what they’d liked the best, and then of what they’d seen each other dislike the most, and all for the sheer fun of it.
“Now,” Royal said at last, as they turned to make their way back to the Callahan house, “home again. Miz Callahan is waiting on us for dinner.”
Peggy and Royal had expected every sort of argument from their friends, but not absolute silence, and then after a glance at each other, absolute and unrestrained mirth.
There was champagne with hothouse fruits floating in it, and pâtés and oysters, canapés and lobster patties, sliced and garnished tongues and hams, sides of beefand galantines of veal, dishes of cut-up fowl, meat rolls, and lobster salad. All of it was presented in golden bowls or on silver trays, and that was only on the side of the supper table where Gray was standing. The other end, somewhere down the room, beyond the vases of fresh flowers, had the blancmanges, jellies, creams and custards, fruits and jams, and the biscuits, cakes, and pastries to accompany them. But Gray didn’t take a sip or bite of any of it.
He held his champagne glass in his hand and watched the other supper guests at the Fifth Avenue mansion as they filled their plates. Or rather, his brother thought as he made his way through the crowd to get to him, he didn’t watch them, because he seemed to be paying attention to some interior scene that interested him more.
By the time Josh Dylan got to his brother’s side, someone else had jolted him from his reverie, but not to ask why he wasn’t eating.
“I say,” the stout, bewhiskered gentleman was complaining as Josh came up to them, “I’m at sea. Are you telling me silver is a good investment, or a bad one? You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth, my boy.”
The quickly shuttered look that sprang to Gray’s eyes told his brother that the only reason the old gentleman didn’t have a fist in his mouth was because of his age, notwithstanding the fact that he was an old family friend, but Gray replied calmly enough.
“I said that silver’s very big now, sir. As you know. Because if I’m not mistaken, you’ve got controlling interest in two good mines and a minor interest in one with Horace Tabor himself. All I’m saying aside from that, and that only because you’ve been fair with us Dylans for a long spell,” Gray went on, his drawl becoming more pronounced, which should have alerted the old fellow. Josh thought, to pay close heed to the next seemingly careless words, “is that it looks to me like too many folks is riding the silver train to glory. That always means trouble. Money’s not misery, it don’t like company. And there’s a whole lot of silver pouring into a whole lot of pockets. Now, there’s some talk of devaluing it in the future, and sticking to pure gold. Which would bring silver stocks tumbling, which may be why they’re talking about it. But, hell, what do I know? It’s only trash talk, and I’m only a boy from the West. You own half the East, or so m’ brother says…why, hello. Josh. I was just speculating on things with William here, but I guess I should stick to things I know, like cattle.”
“The things you know,” the old gentleman said, putting a finger to the side of his nose, “are things a clever man should listen to. Point taken, young Gray. That’s why Josh steered me to you earlier this evening. I’ll be thinking about it. Thank you. Or rather, ‘thank you kindly,’ as you would say—when you’re trying to devil me,” he said on a guffaw, and bowing, left the two men. But not alone, because they were in a press of people eyeing the supper table, even though their plates were full to overflowing.
“Come on, let’s find someplace as empty as your dinner plate,” Josh said. “Since you’re not going to eat, we have to talk.”
They threaded through the crowded room, stopped many times by young women with a flirtatious thing to say to Gray, and gentlemen with a business thing or two to say to both of them. A generation before, talking of business at a society standing supper would have been forbidden. But New York society was becoming a thing of the aristocracy of money as well as lineage, and manners that would have been condemned by the blue-blooded set who had once reigned here had been overthrown. Still, the Dylans, being both enormously wealthy and descended on their father’s side from British aristocracy, were acceptable to both old and new society. They scarcely cared, except that it gave them an opportunity to make more money. Having come from poverty, they both cared deeply about that.
They were alone in the room Josh steered Gray to, but it was hardly empty. Their host’s library was done up in the latest kick of fashion, and almost shouted of its currency. The patterned Arabian rugs argued with the patterned wallpaper, upon which dozens of gilt-framed oil paintings maintained their separate opinions; the mantel over the fireplace was crowded with shepherds and winsome seventeenth-century ladies and gentlemen, all prime, if disparate, examples of German and English pottery. Busts and statues were randomly placed beside assorted chairs, and heavy brocaded curtains covered over the windows, while ornate lamps vied with each other to see which could throw the most distorted light out from under their metal, glass, and beaded shades. The only way to find quiet was to shut one’s eyes. But Gray stared at Josh directly and curiously.
“We’re leaving soon,” Josh said, settling in a leather chair and gesturing for Gray to take the one opposite. “Lucy’s not too hungry these days, poor girl, so we’re going home. I don’t know,” he sighed. “I love fatherhood, but not when itmakes motherhood so uncomfortable for her. Still, she says it’s only the first months, and she wanted this one…”
“It’s real nice of you to ask me here so I could share that with you,” Gray murmured. “Is there something you wanted me to do about it? Maybe kidnapping you after the baby’s born, so she can get some rest for a year or two for a change?”
Josh scowled. “We saw you sulking, as usual this week, and she sent me to talk to you. She had a lot of questions. Like: why are you looking like a thundercloud, and where’s Hannah? Not me. I was just wondering why you were looking at the primest crop of rich, pretty debutantes in America like they had hoof-and-mouth disease, and where’s Hannah? We thought she was coming with you.”
“She didn’t. I didn’t ask her,” Gray said, and stretched out his legs before him and stared into the fire that was moodily dying of neglect in the fireplace.
“Look, scout,” Josh said quietly, “I guess you might say it’s none of my business, but you are my business. I know you’re a man grown, but you’re my baby brother, and you’ll never be that grown man to me—not even when you come to visit me in your invalid chair, and listen to my advice through your ear trumpet. That’s the way of it. I was just worried about you. You seemed to have found your lady. And we were glad, because she’s a good one, although, I’ll admit, I’d dreams of some rich young thing for you. But Lucy says you have to give over some dreams when a better reality steps into view. I think she’s right. Now you’re alone again. We just wondered.”
Had married people always said “we” half the time, and “so and so says” the other half? Gray wondered, as he answered wearily, “I did find her. But I think I’m losing her. And be damned to your rich young things.”
He closed his eyes and said in a gentler voice, “There’s a problem I’m trying to figure out how to handle—but Lord, Josh,” he said, opening his eyes and showing his brother the despair in his clear blue gaze, “all that high-priced college education you bought me, and all the higher-priced knowledge I half killed myself to learn isn’t helping me now. Sheisthe one. But there’s problems.”
