Upton Sinclair - The Metropolis

There was nothing that Montague could do save to sit and listen to this outburst of wretched-

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ness. His attempts to soothe the old man only had the effect of exciting him more.

"Why does it all have to fall on me?" he moaned. " I want to be like other people — I want to live! And instead, I'm like a man with a pack of hungry wolves prowling round him — that's what it's like! It's like Nature — hungry and cruel and savage! You think you know what life is; it seems so beautiful and gentle and pleasant — that's when you're on top ! But now I'm down, and I know what it is — it's a thing like a nightmare, that reaches out for you to clutch you and crush you! And you can't get away from it — you're helpless as a rat in a corner — you're damned—you're damned!" The miserable man's voice broke in a cry of despair, and he sank down in a heap in front of Montague, shaking and sobbing. The other was trembling slightly, and stricken with awe.

There was a long silence, and then the stranger lifted his tear-stained face, and Montague helped to support him. "Have a little more of the whiskey," said he.

"No," the other answered feebly, "I'd better not." _ :

" — My doctors won't let me have whiskey," he added, after a while. " That's my liver. I've so many don'ts, you know, that it takes a notebook to keep track of them. And all of them together do me no good ! Think of it — I have to live on graham crackers and milk — actually, not a thing has passed my lips for two years but graham crackers and milk."

And then suddenly, with a start, it came to

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Montague where he had seen this wrinkled old face before. It was Laura Hegan's uncle, whom the Major had pointed out to him in the dining room of the Millionaires' Club! Old Henry S. Grimes, who was really only sixty, but looked eighty; and who owned slum tenements, and evicted more people in a month than could be crowded into the club-house!

Montague gave no sign, but sat holding the man in his arms. A little trickle of blood came from under the handkerchief and ran down his cheek; Montague felt him tremble as he touched this with his finger.

"Is it much of a cut.!*" he asked.

"Not much," said Montague; "two or three stitches, perhaps."

"Send for my family physician," the other added. "If I should faint, or anything, you'll find his name in my card-case. What's that.''"

There was the sound of voices down the road. "Hello!" Montague shouted; and a moment later two men in automobile costume came run--ning toward him. They stopped, staring in dismay at the sight which confronted them.

At Montague's suggestion they made haste to find a log, by means of which they lifted the auto sufficiently to drag out the body of the chauffeur. Montague saw that it was quite cold.

He went back to old Grimes. "Where do you wish to go.''" he asked.

The other hesitated. "I was bound for the Harrisons' —" he said.

"The Leslie Harrisons.''" asked Montague. (They were people he had met at the Devons'.)

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The other noticed his look of recognition. "Do you know them?" he asked.

"I do," said Montague.

"It isn't far," said the old man. "Perhaps I had best go there." — And then he hesitated for a moment; and catching Montague by the arm, and pulling him toward him, whispered, "Tell me — you — you won't tell —"

Montague, comprehending what he meant, answered, " It will be between us." At the same time he felt a new thrill of revulsion for this most miserable old creature.

They lifted him into the car; and because they delayed long enough to lay a blanket over the body of the chauffeur, he asked peevishly why they did not start. During the ten or fifteen minutes' trip he sat clinging to Montague, shuddering with fright every time they rounded a turn in the road.

They reached the Harrisons' place; and the footman who opened the door was startled out of his studied impassivity by the sight of a big bundle of bearskin in Montague's arms. "Send for Mrs. Harrison," said Montague, and laid the bundle upon a divan in the hall. " Get a doctor as quickly as you can," he added to a second attendant.

Mrs. Harrison came. "It's Mr. Grimes," said Montague; and then he heard a frightened exclamation, and turned and saw Laura Hegan, in a walking costume, fresh from the cold outside.

"What is it.?" she cried. And he told her, as quickly as he could, and she ran to help the

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old man. Montague stood by, and later carried him upstairs, and waited below until the doctor came.

It was only when he set out for home again that he found time to think about Laura Hegan, and how beautiful she had looked in her furs. He wondered if it would always be his fate to meet her under circumstances which left her no time to be aware of his own existence.

At home he told about his adventure, and found himself quite a hero for the rest of the day. He was obliged to give interviews to several newspaper reporters, and to refuse to let one of them take his picture. Everyone at the Devons' seemed to know old Harry Grimes, and Montague thought to himself that if the comments of this particular group of people were a fair sample, the poor wretch was right in saying that he had not a friend in the world.

When he came downstairs the next morning, he found elaborate accounts of the accident in the papers, and learned that Grimes had nothing worse than a scalp wound and a case of shock. Even so, he felt it was incumbent upon him to pay a visit of inquiry, and rode over shortly before lunch.

Laura Hegan came down to see him, wearing a morning gown of white. She confirmed the good news of the papers, and said that her uncle was resting quietly. (She did not say that his physician had come post-haste, with two nurses, and taken up his residence in the house, and that the poor old millionaire was denied even his

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graham crackers and milk.) Instead she said that he had mentioned Montague's kindness particularly, and asked her to thank him. Montague was cynical enough to doubt this.

It was the first time that he had ever had any occasion to talk with Miss Hegan. He noticed her gentle and caressing voice, with the least touch of the South in it; and he was glad to find that it was possible for her to talk without breaking the spell of her serene and noble beauty. Montague stayed as long as he had any right to stay.

And all the way as he rode home he was thinking about Laura Hegan. Here for the first time was a woman whom he felt he should like to know; a woman with reserve and dignity, and some ideas in her life. And it was impossible for him to know her — because she was rich!

There was no dodging this fact — Montague did not even try. He had met women with fortunes already, and he knew how they felt about themselves, and how the rest of the world felt about them. They might wish in their hearts to be something else besides the keepers of a treasure-chest, but their wishes were futile; the money went with them, and they had to defend it against all comers. Montague recalled one heiress after another — debutantes, some of them, exquisite and delicate as butterflies — but under the surface as hard as chain-armour. All their lives they had been trained to think of themselves as representing money, and of everyone who came near them as adventurers seeking money. In every word they uttered, in every

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glance and motion, one might read this meaning. And then he thought of Laura Hegan, with the fortune she would inherit; and he pictured what her life must be — the toadies and parasites and flatterers who would lay siege to her —the scheming mammas and the affectionate sisters and cousins who would plot to gain her confidence ! For a man who was poor, and who meant to keep his self-respect, was there any possible conclusion except that she was entirely unknowable to him ?