Read Ebook: The Metropolis by Sinclair Upton

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Ebook has 1625 lines and 96741 words, and 33 pages

The singing had stopped, and Judge Ellis was standing before him. The Judge was about to go, and in his caressing voice he said that he would hope to see Montague again. Then, seeing that General Prentice was also standing up, Montague threw off the spell that had gripped him, and shook hands with the little drummer, and with Selden and Anderson and all the others of his dream people. A few minutes later he found himself outside the hotel, drinking deep draughts of the cold November air.

Major Thorne had come out with them; and learning that the General's route lay uptown, he offered to walk with Montague to his hotel.

They set out, and then Montague told the Major about the figure in the grape-vine, and the Major laughed and told how it had felt. There had been more adventures, it seemed; while he was hunting a horse he had come upon two mules loaded with ammunition and entangled with their harness about a tree; he had rushed up to seize them--when a solid shot had struck the tree and exploded the ammunition and blown the mules to fragments. And then there was the story of the charge late in the night, which had recovered the lost ground, and kept Stonewall Jackson busy up to the very hour of his tragic death. And there was the story of Andersonville, and the escape from prison. Montague could have walked the streets all night, exchanging these war-time reminiscences with the Major.

Absorbed in their talk, they came to an avenue given up to the poorer class of people; with elevated trains rattling by overhead, and rows of little shops along it. Montague noticed a dense crowd on one of the corners, and asked what it meant.

"Some sort of a meeting," said the Major.

They came nearer, and saw a torch, with a man standing near it, above the heads of the crowd.

"It looks like a political meeting," said Montague, "but it can't be, now--just after election."

"Probably it's a Socialist," said the Major. "They're at it all the time."

They crossed the avenue, and then they could see plainly. The man was lean and hungry-looking, and he had long arms, which he waved with prodigious violence. He was in a frenzy of excitement, pacing this way and that, and leaning over the throng packed about him. Because of a passing train the two could not hear a sound.

"A Socialist!" exclaimed Montague, wonderingly. "What do they want?"

"I'm not sure," said the other. "They want to overthrow the government."

The train passed, and then the man's words came to them: "They force you to build palaces, and then they put you into tenements! They force you to spin fine raiment, and then they dress you in rags! They force you to build jails, and then they lock you up in them! They force you to make guns, and then they shoot you with them! They own the political parties, and they name the candidates, and trick you into voting for them--and they call it the law! They herd you into armies and send you to shoot your brothers--and they call it order! They take a piece of coloured rag and call it the flag and teach you to let yourself be shot--and they call it patriotism! First, last, and all the time, you do the work and they get the benefit--they, the masters and owners, and you--fools--fools--fools!"

The man's voice had mounted to a scream, and he flung his hands into the air and broke into jeering laughter. Then came another train, and Montague could not hear him; but he could see that he was rushing on in the torrent of his denunciation.

Montague stood rooted to the spot; he was shocked to the depths of his being--he could scarcely contain himself as he stood there. He longed to spring forward to beard the man where he stood, to shout him down, to rebuke him before the crowd.

The Major must have seen his agitation, for he took his arm and led him back from the throng, saying: "Come! We can't help it."

"But--but--," he protested, "the police ought to arrest him."

"They do sometimes," said the Major, "but it doesn't do any good."

They walked on, and the sounds of the shrill voice died away. "Tell me," said Montague, in a low voice, "does that go on very often?"

"Around the corner from where I live," said the other, "it goes on every Saturday night."

"And do the people listen?" he asked.

"Sometimes they can't keep the street clear," was the reply.

And again they walked in silence. At last Montague asked, "What does it mean?"

The Major shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps another civil war," said he.

Allan Montague's father had died about five years before. A couple of years later his younger brother, Oliver, had announced his intention of seeking a career in New York. He had no profession, and no definite plans; but his father's friends were men of influence and wealth, and the doors were open to him. So he had turned his share of the estate into cash and departed.

Oliver was a gay and pleasure-loving boy, with all the material of a prodigal son in him; his brother had more than half expected to see him come back in a year or two with empty pockets. But New York had seemed to agree with Oliver. He never told what he was doing--what he wrote was simply that he was managing to keep the wolf from the door. But his letters hinted at expensive ways of life; and at Christmas time, and at Cousin Alice's birthday, he would send home presents which made the family stare.

Montague had always thought of himself as a country lawyer and planter. But two months ago a fire had swept away the family mansion, and then on top of that had come an offer for the land; and with Oliver telegraphing several times a day in his eagerness, they had taken the sudden resolution to settle up their affairs and move to New York.

There were Montague and his mother, and Cousin Alice, who was nineteen, and old "Mammy Lucy," Mrs. Montague's servant. Oliver had met them at Jersey City, radiant with happiness. He looked just as much of a boy as ever, and just as beautiful; excepting that he was a little paler, New York had not changed him at all. There was a man in uniform from the hotel to take charge of their baggage, and a big red touring-car for them; and now they were snugly settled in their apartments, with the younger brother on duty as counsellor and guide.

Montague had come to begin life all over again. He had brought his money, and he expected to invest it, and to live upon the income until he had begun to earn something. He had worked hard at his profession, and he meant to work in New York, and to win his way in the end. He knew almost nothing about the city--he faced it with the wide-open eyes of a child.

One began to learn quickly, he found. It was like being swept into a maelstrom: first the hurrying throngs on the ferry-boat, and then the cabmen and the newsboys shouting, and the cars with clanging gongs; then the swift motor, gliding between trucks and carriages and around corners where big policemen shepherded the scurrying populace; and then Fifth Avenue, with its rows of shops and towering hotels; and at last a sudden swing round a corner--and their home.

"I have picked a quiet family place for you," Oliver had said, and that had greatly pleased his brother. But he had stared in dismay when he entered this latest "apartment hotel"--which catered for two or three hundred of the most exclusive of the city's aristocracy--and noted its great arcade, with massive doors of bronze, and its entrance-hall, trimmed with Caen stone and Italian marble, and roofed with a vaulted ceiling painted by modern masters. Men in livery bore their wraps and bowed the way before them; a great bronze elevator shot them to the proper floor; and they went to their rooms down a corridor walled with blood-red marble and paved with carpet soft as a cushion. Here were six rooms of palatial size, with carpets, drapery, and furniture of a splendour quite appalling to Montague.

As soon as the man who bore their wraps had left the room, he turned upon his brother.

"Oliver," he said, "how much are we paying for all this?"

Oliver smiled. "You are not paying anything, old man," he replied. "You're to be my guests for a month or two, until you get your bearings."

"That's very good of you," said the other; "--we'll talk about it later. But meantime, tell me what the apartment costs."

And then Montague encountered his first full charge of New York dynamite. "Six hundred dollars a week," said Oliver.

He started as if his brother had struck him. "Six hundred dollars a week!" he gasped.

"Yes," said the other, quietly.

It was fully a minute before he could find his breath. "Brother," he exclaimed, "you're mad!"

"It is a very good bargain," smiled the other; "I have some influence with them."

Again there was a pause, while Montague groped for words. "Oliver," he exclaimed, "I can't believe you! How could you think that we could pay such a price?"

"I didn't think it," said Oliver; "I told you I expected to pay it myself."

"Of course you will," said Oliver. "Don't be foolish, Allan--you'll find it's easy enough to make money in New York. Leave it to me, and wait awhile."

But the other was not to be put off. He sat down on the embroidered silk bedspread, and demanded abruptly, "What do you expect my income to be a year?"

"I'm sure I don't know," laughed Oliver; "nobody takes the time to add up his income. You'll make what you need, and something over for good measure. This one thing you'll know for certain--the more you spend, the more you'll be able to make."

And then, seeing that the sober look was not to be expelled from his brother's face, Oliver seated himself and crossed his legs, and proceeded to set forth the paradoxical philosophy of extravagance. His brother had come into a city of millionaires. There was a certain group of people--"the right set," was Oliver's term for them--and among them he would find that money was as free as air. So far as his career was concerned, he would find that there was nothing in all New York so costly as economy. If he did not live like a gentleman, he would find himself excluded from the circle of the elect--and how he would manage to exist then was a problem too difficult for his brother to face.

And so, as quickly as he could, he was to bring himself to a state of mind where things did not surprise him; where he did what others did and paid what others paid, and did it serenely, as if he had done it all his life. He would soon find his place; meantime all he had to do was to put himself into his brother's charge. "You'll find in time that I have the strings in my hands," the latter added. "Just take life easy, and let me introduce you to the right people."

All of which sounded very attractive. "But are you sure," asked Montague, "that you understand what I'm here for? I don't want to get into the Four Hundred, you know--I want to practise law."

"In the first place," replied Oliver, "don't talk about the Four Hundred--it's vulgar and silly; there's no such thing. In the next place, you're going to live in New York, and you want to know the right people. If you know them, you can practise law, or practise billiards, or practise anything else that you fancy. If you don't know them, you might as well go practise in Dahomey, for all you can accomplish. You might come on here and start in for yourself, and in twenty years you wouldn't get as far as you can get in two weeks, if you'll let me attend to it."

Montague was nearly five years his brother's senior, and at home had taken a semi-paternal attitude toward him. Now, however, the situation seemed to have reversed itself. With a slight smile of amusement, he subsided, and proceeded to put himself into the attitude of a docile student of the mysteries of the Metropolis.

They agreed that they would say nothing about these matters to the others. Mrs. Montague was half blind, and would lead her placid, indoor existence with old Mammy Lucy. As for Alice, she was a woman, and would not trouble herself with economics; if fairy godmothers chose to shower gifts upon her, she would take them.

Alice was built to live in a palace, anyway, Oliver said. He had cried out with delight when he first saw her. She had been sixteen when he left, and tall and thin; now she was nineteen, and with the pale tints of the dawn in her hair and face. In the auto, Oliver had turned and, stared at her, and pronounced the cryptic judgment, "You'll go!"

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