Upton Sinclair - The Metropolis

The name written on his card was Mrs. Alden. She came in just after him — a matron of about fifty, of vigorous aspect and ample figure, approaching what he had not yet learned to call embonpoint. She wore brocade, as became a grave dowager, and upon her ample bosom there lay an ornament the size of a man's hand, and made wholly out of blazing diamonds — the most imposing affair that Montague had ever laid eyes upon. She gave him her hand to shake, and

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made no attempt to disguise the fact that she was looking him over in the meantime.

"Madam, dinner is served," said the stately butler; and the glittering procession moved into the dining room — a huge state apartment, finished in some lustrous jet-black wood, and with great panel paintings illustrating the Romaunt de la Rose. The table was covered with a cloth of French embroidery, and gleaming with its load of crystal and gold plate. At either end there were huge candlesticks of solid gold, and in the centre a mound of orchids and lilies of the vaUey, matching in colour the shades of the candelabra and the daintily painted menu cards.

" You are fortunate in coming to New York late in life," Mrs. Alden was saying to him. " Most of our young men are tired out before they have sense enough to enjoy anything. Take my advice and look about you — don't let that lively brother of yours set the pace for you."

In front of Mrs. Alden there was a decanter of Scotch whiskey. "Will you have some.!*" she asked, as she took it up.

"No, I thank you,' said he, and then wondered if perhaps he should not have said yes, as he watched the other select the largest of the half-dozen wine-glasses clustered at her place, and pour herself out a generous libation.

" Have you seen much of the city ? " she asked, as she tossed it off — without as much as a quiver of an eyelash.

"No," said he. "They have not given me much time. They took me off to the country — to the Robert Wallings'."

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" Ah," said Mrs. Alden; and Montague, struggling to make conversation, inquired, " Do you know Mr. Clarrie Mason ? "

" Quite well," said the other, placidly. " I used to be a Mason myself, you know."

" Oh," said Montague, taken aback; and then added, "Before you were married.''"

"No," said Mrs. Alden, more placidly than ever, "before I was divorced."

There was a dead silence, and Montague sat gasping to catch his breath. Then suddenly he heard a faint subdued chuckle, which grew into open laughter; and he stole a glance at Mrs. Alden, and saw that her eyes were twinkling; and then he began to laugh himsfelf. They laughed together, so merrily that others at the table began to look at them in perplexity.

So the ice was broken between them; which filled Montague with a vast relief. But he was still dimly touched with awe—for he realised that this must be the great Mrs. Billy Alden, whose engagement to the Duke of London was now the topic of the whole country. And that huge diamond ornament must be part of Mrs. Alden's million-dollar outfit of jewellery!

The great lady volunteered not to tell on him; and added generously that when he came to dinner with her she would post him concerning the company. "It's awkward for a stranger, I can understand," said she; and continued, grimly: " When people get divorces it sometimes means that they have quarrelled — and they don't always make it up afterward, either. And sometimes other people quarrel — almost as

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bitterly as if they had been married. Many a hostess has had her reputation ruined by not keeping track of such things."

So Montague made the discovery that the great Mrs. Billy, though forbidding of aspect, was good-natured when she chose to be, and with a pretty wit. She was a woman with a mind of her own — a hard-fighting character, who had marshalled those about her, and taken her place at the head of the column. She had always counted herself a personage enough to do exactly as she pleased; through the course of the dinner she would take up the decanter of Scotch, and make a pass to help Montague — and then, when he declined, pour out imperturbably what she wanted. "I don't like your brother," she said to him, a little later. "He won't last; but he tells me you're different, so maybe I will like you. Come and see me sometime, and let me tell you what not to do in New York."

Then Montague turned to talk with his hostess, who sat on his right.

"Do you play bridge.!*" asked Mrs. Winnie, in her softest and most gracious tone.

"My brother has given me a book to study from," he answered. "But if he takes me about day and night, I don't know how I'm to manage it."

"Come and let me teach you," said Mrs. Winnie. "I mean it, really," she added. "I've nothing to do — at least that I'm not tired of. Only I don't believe you'd take long to learn all that I know."

"Aren't you a successful player.?" he asked sympathetically.

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"I don't believe anyone wants me to learn," said Mrs. Winnie.— "They'd rather come and get my money. Isn't that true, Major.''"

Major Venable sat on her other hand, and he

Eaused in the act of raising a spoonful of soup to is lips, and laughed, deep down in his throat — a queer little laugh, that snook his fat cheeks and neck. "I may say," he said, "that I know several people to whom the status quo is satisfactory."

"Including yourself," said the lady, with a little moue. "The wretched man won sixteen hundred dollars from me last night; and he sat in his club window all afternoon, just to have the pleasure of laughing at me as I went by. I don't believe I'll play at all to-night — I'm going to make myself agreeable to Mr. Montague, and let you win from Virginia Landis for a change."

And then the Major paused again in his attack upon the soup. "My dear Mrs. Winnie," he said, "I can live for much more than one day upon sixteen hundred dollars!"

The Major was a famous club-man and bon vivant, as Montague learned later on. " He's an uncle of Mrs. Robbie WalUng's," said Mrs. Alden, in his ear. "And incidentally they hate each other like poison."

"That is so that I won't repeat my luckless question again .''" asked Montague, with a smile.

"Oh, they meet," said the other. "You wouldn't be supposed to know that. Won't you have any Scotch.!^"

Montague's thoughts were so much taken up with the people at this repast that he gave little thought to the food. He noticed with surprise

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that they had real spring lamb — it being the middle of November. But he could not know that the six-weeks-old creatures from which it had come had been raised in cotton wool and fed on milk with a spoon — and had cost a dollar and a half a pound. A little later, however, there was placed before him a delicately browned sweetbread upon a platter of gold, and then suddenly he began to pay attention. Mrs. Winnie had a coat of arms; he had noticed it upon her auto, and again upon the great bronze gates of the Snow Palace, and again upon the liveries of her footmen, and yet again upon the decanter of Scotch. And now — incredible and appalling — he observed it branded upon the delicately trowned sweetbread!

After that, who would not have watched.'' There were large dishes of rare fruits upon the table — fruits which had been packed in cotton wool and shipped in cold storage from every corner of the earth. There were peaches which Tiad come from South Africa (they had cost ten ■dollars apiece). There were bunches of Hamburg grapes, dark purple and bursting fat, which had been grown in a hot-house, wrapped in paper bags. There were nectarines and plums, and pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes of plump strawberries — raised in pots. There were quail which had come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan. There was lettuce raised by elec-