Upton Sinclair - The Metropolis

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XVI parlours and Louis XIV libraries — and see them all empty! To have no one to drive with or talk with, no one to visit or play cards with — to go to the theatre and the opera and have no one to speak to! Worse than that, to be stared at and smiled at! To live in this huge place, and know that all the horde of servants, underneath their cringing deference, were sneering at you! To face that — to live in the presence of it day after day! And then, outside of your home, the ever widening circles of ridicule and contempt — Society, with all its hangers-on and parasites, its imitators and admirers!

And someone had defied all that — someone had taken up the sword and gone forth to beat down that opposition! Montague looked at this little family of four, and wondered which of them was the driving force in this most desperate emprise!

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.

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■226 THE METROPOLIS

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 realise 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 Une, 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

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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 flapjacks, and bread fried in bacon grease, and similar sensible things, while her chef was compelling her to eat fate de foie gras in aspic, and milk-fed guinea-chicks, and biscuits glacees Tor-toni. 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?"

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"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.

"And so utterly cynical! Do you know. Lady Stonebridge quite shocked mother — she told her she didn't believe in marriage at all, and that she thought all men were naturally polygamous!"

Later on, Montague came to know " Mrs. Sarey"; and one afternoon, sitting in her Petit Trianon drawing-room, he asked her abruptly, " Why in the world. do you want to get into Society.''" And the poor lady caught her breath, and tried to be indignant; and then, seeing that he was in earnest, and that she was cornered, broke down and confused. "It isn't me," she said, "it's the gals." (For along with the surrender went a reversion to natural speech.) " It's Mary, and more particularly Anne."

They talked it over confidentially — which was a great relief to Mrs. Sarey's soul, for she was cruelly lonely. So far as she was concerned, it was not because she wanted Society, but because Society didn't want her. She flashed up in sudden anger, and clenched her fists, declaring that Jack Evans was as good a man as walked the streets of New York — and they would acknowledge it before he got through with them, too! After that she intended to settle down at home and be comfortable, and mend her husband's socks.

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She went on to tell him what a hard road was the path of glory. There were hundreds of people ready to know them — but oh, such a riflfraff! They might fill up their home with the hangers-on and the yellow, but no, they could wait. They had learned a lot since they set out. One very aristocratic lady had invited them to dinner, and their hopes had been high — but alas, while they were sitting by the fireplace, someone admired a thirty-thousand-dollar emerald ring which Mrs. Evans had on her finger, and she had taken it off and passed it about among the company, and somewhere it had vanished completely! And another person had invited Mary to a bridge-party, and though she had played hardly at all, her hostess had quietly informed her that she had lost a thousand dollars. And the great Lady Stonebridge had actually sent for her and told her that she could introduce her in some of the very best circles, if only she was sVilling to lose always! Mrs. Evans had possessed a very homely Irish name before she was married; and Lady Stone-bridge had got five thousand dollars from her to use some great infiuence she possessed in the Royal College of Heralds, and prove that she was descended directly from the noble old family of Magennis, who had been the lords of Iveagh, way back in the fourteenth century. And now OUver had told them that this imposing charter would not help them in the least!

In the process of elimination, there were the Misses Evans left. Montague's friends made many jests when they heard that he had met them

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— asking him if he meant to settle down. Major Venable went so far as to assure him that there was not the least doubt that either of the girls would take him in a second. Montague laughed, and answered that Mary was not so bad — she had a sweet face and was good-natured; but also, she was two years younger than Anne; and he could not get over the thought that two years more might make another Anne of her.