Upton Sinclair - The Metropolis

"I haven't the least doubt of it," responded Montague.

"And what's more," she went on, "you don't want to be shy about taking advantage of the opportunities that come to you. You'll find you won't get along in New York unless you go right in and grab what you can. People will be quick enough to take advantage of you."

"They have all been very kind to me so far," said he. "But when I get ready for business, I'll harden my heart."

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Mrs. Winnie sat lost in meditation. "I think business is dreadful," she said. "So much hard work and worry! Why can't men learn to get along without it.'*"

"There are bills that have to be paid," Montague replied.

It's our dreadfully extravagant way of life," exclaimed the other. "Sometimes I wish I had never had any money in my life."

"You would soon tire of it," said he. "You would miss this house."

"I should not miss it a bit," said Mrs. Winnie, promptly. " That is really the truth — I don't care for this sort of thing at all. I'd like to live simply, and without so many cares and responsibilities. And some day I'm going to do it, too — I really am. I'm going to get myself a little farm, away off somewhere in the country. And I'm going there to live and raise chickens and vegetables, and have my own flower-gardens, that I can take care of myself. It will all be plain and simple—" and then Mrs. Winnie stopped short, exclaiming, "You are laughing at me!"

"Not at all!" said Montague. "But I couldn't help thinking about the newspaper reporters —"

"There you are !" said she. "One can never have a beautiful dream, or try to do anything sensible — because of the newspaper reporters!"

If Montague had been meeting Mrs. Winnie Duval for the first time, he would have been impressed by her yearnings for the simple life;

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he would have thought it an important sign of the times. But alas, he knew by this time that his charming hostess had more flummery about her than anybody else he had encountered — and all of her own devising! Mrs. Winnie-smoked her own private brand of cigarettes, and when she offered them to you, there were the arms of the old ducal house of Montmorenci on the wrappers! And when you got a letter from Mrs. Winnie, you observed a three-cent stamp upon the envelope — for lavender was her colour, and two-cent stamps were an atrocious, red! So one might feel certain that if Mrs. Winnie ever went in for chicken raising, th& chickens would be especially imported from China or Patagonia, and the chicken-coops would be precise replicas of those in the old, Chateau de Montmorenci which she had visited in her automobile.

But Mrs. Winnie was beautiful, and quite entertaining to talk to, and so he was respectfully sympathetic while she told him about her pastoral intentions. And then she told him about Mrs. Caroline Smythe, who had called a meeting of her friends at one of the big hotels, and organised a society and founded the " Bide-a-Wee Home" for destitute cats. After that she switched off into psychic research — somebody had taken her to a seance, where grave college professors and ladies in spectacles sat round and waited for ghosts to materialise. It was. Mrs. Winnie's first experience at this, and she was as excited as a child who has just found the key to the jam-closet. " I hardly knew whether

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"to laugh or to be afraid," she said. "What Tvould you think?"

"You may have the pleasure of giving me my first impressions of it,' said Montague, with u laugh.

"Well," said she, "they had table-tipping — and it was the most uncanny thing to see the table go jumping about the room! And then there were raps — and one can't imagine how strange it was to see people who really believed ihey were getting messages from ghosts. It positively made my flesh creep. And then this woman — Madame Somebody-or-other — went into a trance — ugh ! Afterward I talked with one of the men, and he told me about how his father had appeared to him in the night and told him he had just been drowned at sea. Have you ever heard of such a thing.''"

"We have such a tradition in our family," ^aid he.

"Every family seems to have," said Mrs. Winnie. " But, dear me, it made me so uncomfortable — I lay awake all night expecting to see my own father. He had the asthma, you know; and I kept fancying I heard him breathing."

They had risen and were strolling into the •conservatory; and she glanced at the man in armour. "I got to fancying that his ghost might come to see me," she said. "I don't think I shall attend any more seances. My husband was told that I promised them some money, and he was furious — he's afraid it'll get into the papers." And Montague shook with inward laughter, picturing what a time the

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aristocratic and stately old banker must have, trying to keep his wife out of the papers!

Mrs. Winnie turned on the lights in the fountain, and sat by the edge, gazing at her fish. Montague was half expecting her to inquire whether he thought that they had ghosts; but she spared him this, going off on another hne.

"I asked Dr. Parry about it," she said. "Have you met him?"

Dr. Parry was the rector of St. Cecilia's, the fashionable Fifth Avenue church which most of Montague's acquaintances attended. " I haven't been in the city over Sunday yet,' he answered. "But Alice has met him."

"You must go with me sometime," said she. "But about the ghosts —"

"What did he say.?"

" He seemed to be shy of them," laughed Mrs. Winnie. "He said it had a tendency to lead one into dangerous fields. But oh! I forgot — I asked my swami also, and it didn't startle him. They are used to ghosts; they believe that souls keep coming back to earth, you know. I think if it was his ghost, I wouldn't mind seeing it — for he has such beautiful eyes. He gave me a book of Hindoo legends — and there was such a sweet story about a young princess who loved in vain, and died of grief; and her soul went into a tigress; and she came in the night-time where her lover lay sleeping by the firelight, and she carried him off into the ghost-world. It was a most creepy thing — I sat out here and read it, and I could imagine the terrible tigress lurking in the shadows, with

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its stripes shining in the firelight, and its green eyes gleaming. You know that poem — we used to read it in school —' Tiger, tiger, burning bright!'"

It was not very easy for Montague to imagine a tigress in Mrs. Winnie's conservatory; unless, indeed, one were willing to take the proposition in a metaphorical sense. There are wild creatures which sleep in the heart of man, and which growl now and then, and stir their tawny limbs, apd cause one to start and turn cold. Mrs. Winnie wore a dress of filmy softness, trimmed with red flowers which paled beside her own intenser colouring. She had a perfume of her own, with a strange exotic fragrance which touched the chords of memory as only an odour can. She leaned toward him, speaking eagerly, with her soft white arms lying upon the basin's rim. So much loveliness could not be gazed at without pain; and a faint trembling passed through Montague, like a breeze across a pool. Perhaps it touched Mrs. Winnie also, for she fell suddenly silent, and her gaze wandered off into the darkness. For a minute or two there was stillness, save for the pulse of the fountain, and the heaving of her bosom keeping time with it.

And then in the morning Oliver inquired, ■"Where were you, last night?" And when his brother answered, "At Mrs. Winnie's," he smiled and said, "Oh!" Then he added,

fravely, " Cultivate Mrs. Winnie — you can't do etter at present."

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CHAPTER XI

MONTAGUE accepted his friend's invitation to share her pew at St. Cecilia's, and next Sunday morning he and Alice went, and found Mrs. Winnie with her cousin. Poor Charlie had evidently been scrubbed and shined, both physically and morally, and got ready to appeal for "one more chance." While he shook hands with Alice, he was gazing at her with dumb and pleading eyes; he seemed to be profoundly grateful that she did not refuse to enter the pew with him.