THE METROPOLIS UPTON SINCLAIR ^^ ^ CORNELL ^Jn UNIVERSITY ^^ LIBRARY Digitized by Microsoft® Cornell Unlverstty Library PS 3537.I37M5 The metropolis, DATE . DUE klA 1 O !•■ ^ Jtf •Mm^ i GAYLORO PRINTED IN U.S.A. Digitized by Microsoft® This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation with Corneii University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in iimited quantity for your personai purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partiai versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commerciai purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METEOPOLIS Digitized by Microsoft® BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC THE JUNGLE MANASSAS THE OVERMAN PRINCE HAGEN KING MIDAS THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS BY UPTON SINCLAIR AUTHOR OF "THE JUNGLE," "THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC," ETC. NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1908 Digitized by Microsoft® COPTEIOHT, 1907, BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY. COPYEIGHT, 1908, BY UPTON SINCLAIR. Published March, 1908. All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. V n'^. Digitized by Microsoft® TO MAXIM GORKI ^ COMRADE Digitized by Microsoft® A Cornell University y Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924021 691 1 12 Digitizetrby Microsoft® CHAPTER I RETURN at ten-thirty," the General said to his chauffeur, and then they entered the corridor of the hotel. Montague gazed about him, and found him- self trembling just a little with anticipation. It was not the magnificence of the place. The quiet uptown hotel would have seemed magnificent to him, fresh as he was from the country; but he did not see the marble columns and the gilded carvings — he was thinking of the men he was to meet. It seemed too much to crowd into one day — first the vision of the whirling, seething city, the centre of all his hopes of the future; and then, at night, this meeting, overwhelming him with the crowded memories of everything that he held precious in the past. There were groups of men in faded uniforms standing about in the corridors. General Pren- tice bowed here and there as they went to the rear and took the elevator to the reception rooms. In the doorway they passed a stout little man with stubby white mustaches, and the General stopped, exclaiming, "Hello, Major!" Then he added: " Let me introduce Mr. Allan Montague. Mon- tague, this is Major Thorne." A look of sudden interest flashed across the Major's face. "General Montague's son.?" he cried. And then he seized the other's hand in Digitized by Microsoft® 2 THE METROPOLIS both of his, exclaiming, "My boy! my boy! I'm glad to see you !" Now Montague was no boy — he was a man of thirty, and rather sedate in his appearance and manner; there was enough in his six feet one to have made two of the round and rubicund little Major. And yet it seemed to him quite proper that the other should address him so. He was back in his boyhood to-night — he was a boy whenever anyone mentioned the name of Major Thome. "Perhaps you have heard your father speak of me.''" asked the Major, eagerly ; and Montague answered, "A thousand times." He was tempted to add that the vision that rose before him was of a stout gentleman hanging in a grape-vine, while a whole battery of artillery made him their target. Perhaps it was irreverent, but that was what Montague had always thought of, ever since he had first laughed over the tale his father told. It had happened one January afternoon in the Wilderness, during the terrible battle of Chan- cellorsville, when Montague's father had been a rising young staif-ofEcer, and it had fallen to his lot to carry to Major Thorne what was surely the most terrifying order that ever a cavalry officer received. It was in the crisis of the con- flict, when the Army of the Potomac was reeling before the onslaught of Stonewall Jackson's columns. There was no one to stop them — and yet they must be stopped, for the whole right wing of the army was going. So that cavalry regiment had charged full tilt through the thickets. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 3 and into a solid wall of infantry and artillery. The crash of their volley was blinding — men and horses were fairly shot to fragments; and the Major's horse, with its lower jaw torn off, had plunged madly away and left its rider hang- ing in the aforementioned grape-vine. After he had kicked himself loose, it was to find himself in an arena where pain-maddened horses and frenzied men raced about amid a rain of minie- balls and canister. And in this inferno the gal- lant Major had captured a horse, and rallied the remains of his shattered command, and held the line until help came — and then helped to hold it, all through the afternoon and the twi- light and the night, against charge after charge. — And now to stand and gaze at this stout and red-nosed little personage, and realise that these mighty deeds had been his ! Then, even while Montague was returning his hand-clasp and telling him of his pleasure, the Major's eye caught someone across the room, and he called eagerly, " Colonel Anderson ! Colonel Anderson ! " And this was the heroic Jack Anderson ! "Parson" Anderson, the men had called him, because he always prayed before everything he did. Prayers at each mess, — a prayer-meeting in the evening, — and then rumour said the Colonel prayed on while his men slept. With his battery of artillery trained to perfection under three years of divine guidance, the gallant Colonel had stood in the line of battle at Cold Harbor — name of frightful memory ! — and when the enemy had swarmed out of their intrenchments and swept Digitized by Microsoft® 4 THE METROPOLIS back the whole Hne just beyond him, his battery had stood hke a cape in a storm-beaten ocean, attacked on two sides at once; and for the half hour that elapsed before infantry support came up, the Colonel had ridden slowly up and down his line, repeating in calm and godly accents, "Give 'em hell, boys — give 'em hell!"— The Colonel's hand trembled now as he held it out, and his voice was shrill and cracked as he told what pleasure it gave him to meet General Mon- tague s son. Why have we never seen you before ?" asked Major Thorne. Montague replied that he had spent all his life in Mississippi — his father having married a Southern woman after the war. Once every year the General had come to New York to attend the reunion of the Loyal Legion of the state; but someone had had to stay at home with his mother, Montague explained. There were perhaps a hundred men in the room, and he was passed about from group to group. Many of them had known his father intimately. It seemed almost uncanny to him to meet them in the body ; to find them old and feeble, white-haired and wrinkled. As they lived in the chambers of his memory, they were in their mighty youth — heroes, transfigured and radiant, not subject to the power of time. Life on the big plantation had been a lonely one, especially for a Southern-born man who had fought in the Union army. General Montague had been a person of quiet tastes, and his great- est pleasure had been to sit with his two boys on his knees and "fight his battles o'er again." He Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 5 had collected all the literature of the corps which he had commanded — a whole library of it, in which Allan had learned to find his way as soon as he could read. He had literally been brought up on the war — for hours he would lie buried in some big illustrated history, until people came and called nim away. He studied maps of cam- paigns and battle-fields, until they became alive with human passion and struggle; he knew the Army of the Potomac by brigade and division, with the names of commanders, and their faces, and their ways — until they lived and spoke, and the bare roll of their names had power to thrill him. — And now here were the men them- selves, and all these scenes and memories crowd- ing upon him in tumultuous throngs. No won- der that he was a little dazed, and could hardly find words to answer when he was spoken to. But then came an incident which called him suddenly back to the world of the present. "There is Judge Ellis," said the General. Judge Ellis ! The fame of his wit and elo- quence had reached even far Mississippi — was there any remotest corner of America where men had not heard of the silver tongue of Judge Ellis.? "Cultivate him!" Montague's brother Oliver had laughed, when it was mentioned that the Judge would be present — " Cultivate him — he may be useful." It was not difficult to cultivate one who was as gracious as Judge Ellis. He stood in the door- way, a smooth, perfectly groomed gentleman, conspicuous in the uniformed assembly by his evening dress. The Judge was stout and jovial. Digitized by Microsoft® 6 THE METROPOLIS and cultivated Dundreary whiskers and a beam- ing smile. "General Montague's son!" he exclaimed, as he pressed the young man's hands. " Why, why — I m surprised ! Why have we never seen you before .'' ' Montague explained that he had only been in New Yom about six hours. "Oh, I see," said the Judge. "And shall you remain long.?" " I have come to stay," was the reply. "Well, well!" said the other, cordially. "Then we may see more of you. Are you going into business.?" "I am a lawyer," said Montague. "I expect to practise." The Judge's quick glance had been taking the measure of the tall, handsome man before him, 'with his raven-black hair and grave features. "You must give us a chance to try your mettle," he said ; and then, as others approached to meet him, and he was forced to pass on, he laid a caress- ing hand on Montague's arm, whispering, with a sly smile, "I mean it." Montague felt his heart beat a little faster. He had not welcomed his brother's suggestion — there was nothing of the sycophant in him; but he meant to work and to succeed, and he knew what the favour of a man like Judge Ellis would mean to him. For the Judge was the idol of New York's business and political aristocracy, and the doorways of fortune yielded at his touch. There were rows of chairs in one of the rooms, and here two or three hundred men were gath- ered. There were stands of battle-flags in the corners, each one of them a scroll of tragic his- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 7 tory, to one like Montague, who understood. His eye roamed over them while the secretary was reading minutes of meetings and other rou- tine announcements. Then he began to study the assemblage. There were men with one arm and men with one leg — one tottering old soldier ninety years of age, stone blind, and led about by his friends. The Loyal Legion was an officers' organisation, and to that extent aristo- cratic; but worldly success counted for nothing in it — some of its members were struggling to exist on their pensions, and were as much thought of as a man like General Prentice, who was president of one of the city's largest banks, and a rich man, even in New York's understand- ing of that term. The presiding officer introduced " Colonel Rob- ert Selden, who will read the paper of the even- ing: 'Recollections of Spottsylvania.' " Mon- tague started at the name — for "Bob" Selden had been one of his father's messmates, and had fought all through the Peninsula Campaign at his side. He was a tall, hawk-faced man with a grey imperial. The room was still as he arose, and after adjusting his glasses, he begari to read his story. He recalled the situation of the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864; for three years it had marched and fought, stumbling through defeat after defeat, a mighty weapon, lacking only a man who could wield it. Now at last the man had come — one who would put them into the battle and give them a chance to fight. So they had marched into the Wilderness, Digitized by Microsoft® 8 THE METROPOLIS and there Lee struck them, and for three days they groped in a bUnd thicket, fighting hand to hand, amid suffocating smoke. The Colonel read in a quiet, unassuming voice ; but one could see that he had hold of his hearers by the light that crossed their features when he told of the army's recoil from the shock, and of the wild joy that ran through the ranks when they took up their march to the left, and realised that this time they were not going back. — So they came to the twelve days' grapple of the Spottsylvania Campaign. There was still the Wilderness thicket; the enemy's intrenchments, covering about eight miles, lay in the shape of a dome, and at the cu- pola of it were breastworks of heavy timbers banked with earth, and with a ditch and a tangle of trees in front. The place was the keystone of the Confederate arch, and the name of it was "the Angle"— "Bloody Angle!" Montague heard the man who sat next to him draw in nis breath, as if a spasm of pain had shot through him. At dawn two brigades had charged and cap- tured the place. The enemy returned to the attack, and for twenty hours thereafter the two armies fought, hurling regiment after regiment and brigade after brigade into the trenches. There was a pouring rain, and the smoke hung black about them ; they could only see the flashes of the guns, and the faces of the enemy, here and there. The Colonel described the approach of his regiment. They lay down for a moment in a swamp, and the minie-balls sang like swarming Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 9 bees, and split the blades of the grass above them. Then they charged, over ground that ran with human blood. In the trenches the bodies of dead and dying men lay three deep, and were trampled out of sight in the mud by the feet of those who fought. They would crouch behind the works, lifting their guns high over their heads, and firing into the throngs on the other side; again and again men sprang upon the breastworks and fired their muskets, and then fell dead. They dragged up cannon, one after another, and blew holes through the logs, and raked the ground with charges of canister. While the Colonel read, still in his calm, mat- ter-of-fact voice, you might see men leaning for- ward in their chairs, hands clenched, teeth set. They knew ! They knew ! Had there ever be- fore been a time in history when breastworks had been charged by artillery? Twenty-four men in the crew of one gun, and only two unhurt ! One iron sponge-bucket with thirty-nine bullet holes shot through it ! And then blasts of canis- ter sweeping the trenches, and blowing scores of living and dead men to fragments ! And into this hell of slaughter new regiments charging, in lines four deep ! And squad after squad of the enemy striving to surrender, and shot to pieces by their own comrades as they clambered over the blood-soaked walls ! And heavy timbers in the defences shot to splinters ! Huge oak trees — one of them twenty-four inches in diameter — crashing down upon the combatants, gnawed through by rifle-bullets ! Since the world began had men ever fought like that .J* Digitized by Microsoft® 10 , THE METROPOLIS Then the Colonel told of his own wound in the shoulder, and how, toward dusk, he had crawled away ; and how he became lost, and strayed into the enemy's line, and was thrust into a batch of prisoners and marched to the rear. And then of the night that he spent beside a hospital camp in the wilderness, where hundreds of wounded and dying men lay about on the rain-soaked ground, moaning, screaming, praying to be killed. Again the prisoners were moved, naving been ordered to march to the railroad; and on the way the Colonel went blind from suffering and exhaustion, and staggered and fell in the road. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, in the pause between sentences in his story, as he told how the guard argued with him to persuade him to go on. It was their duty to kiU him if he refused, but they could not bring themselves to do it. In the end they left the job to one, and he stood and cursed the officer, trying to get up his courage; and finally fired his gun into the air, and went off and left him. Then he told how an old negro had found him, and how he lay deUrious; and how, at last, the army marched his way. He ended his narrative with the simple sentence : " It was not until the siege of Petersburg that I was able to rejoin my command." There was a murmur of applause; and then silence. Suddenly, from somewhere in the room, came the sound of singing — "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" The old battle-hymn seemed to strike the very mood of the meeting; the whole throng took it Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 11 up, and they sang it, stanza by stanza. It was rolling forth like a mighty organ-chant as they came to the fervid closing : — " He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet, — Our God is marching on !" There was a pause again; and the presiding officer rose and said that, owing to the presence of a distinguished guest, they would forego one of their rules, and invite Judge Ellis to say a few words. The Judge came forward, and bowed his acknowledgment of their welcome. Then, per- haps feeling a need of relief after the sombre re- cital, the Judge took occasion to apologise for his own temerity in addressing a roomful of warriors; and somehow he managed to make that remind him of a story of an army mule, a very amusing story; and that reminded him of another story, until, when he stopped and sat down, everyone in the room broke into delighted applause. They went in to dinner. Montague sat by General Prentice, and he, in turn, by the Judge ; the latter was reminded of more stories during the dinner, and kept everyone near him laughing. Finally Montague was moved to tell a story him- self — about an old negro down home, who passed himself off for an Indian. The Judge was so good as to consider this an immensely funny story, and asked permission to tell it himself. Digitized by Microsoft® 12 THE METROPOLIS Several times after that he leaned over and spoke to Montague, who felt a slight twinge of guilt as he recalled his brother's cynical advice, ' Culti- vate him !" The Judge was so willing to be cul- tivated, however, that it gave one's conscience Uttle chance. They went back to the meeting-room again; chairs were shifted, and little groups formed, and cigars and pipes brought out. They moved the precious battle-flags forward, and someone produced a bugle and a couple of drums; then the walls of the place shook, as the whole com- pany burst forth : — " Bring the good old bugle , boys ! we'll sing another song — Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along — Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong, — While we were marching through Georgia ! " It was wonderful to witness the fervour with which they went through this rollicking chant — whose spirit we miss because we hear it too often. They were not skilled musicians — they could only sing loud ; but the fire leaped into their eyes, and they swayed with the rhythm, and sang ! Montague found himself watching the old blind soldier, who sat beating his foot in time, upon his face the look of one who sees visions. And then he noticed another man, a little, red- faced Irishman, one of the drummers. The very spirit of the drum seemed to have entered into him — into his hands and his feet, his eyes and his head, and his round little body. He played a long roll between the verses, and it seemed as if he must surely be swept away upon the wings of Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 13 it. Catching Montague's eye, he nodded and smiled; and after that, every once in a while their eyes would meet and exchange a greeting. They sang "The Loyal Legioner" and "The Army Bean" and "John Brown's Body" and "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching" ; all the while the drum rattled and thundered, and the little drummer laughed and sang, the very incarnation of the care-free spirit of the soldier ! They stopped for a while, and the little man came over and was introduced. Lieutenant O'Day was his name; and after he had left. General Prentice leaned over to Montague and told him a story. "That little man," he said, "began as a drummer-boy in my regiment, and went all through the war in my brigade ; and two years ago I met him on the street one cold winter night, as thin as I am, and shivering in a sum- mer overcoat. I took him to dinner with me and watched him eat, and I made up my mind there was something wrong. I made him take me home, and do you know, the man was starving ! He had a little tobacco shop, and he'd got into trouble — the trust had taken away his trade. And he had a sick wife, and a daughter clerking at six dollars a week!" The General went on to tell of his struggle to induce the little man to accept his aid — to accept a loan of a few hundreds of dollars from Prentice, the banker ! " I never had anything hurt me so in all my life," he said. "Finally I took him into the bank — and now you can see he has enough to eat!" Digitized by Microsoft® 14 THE METROPOLIS They began to sing again, and Montague sat and thought over the story. It seemed to him typical of the thing that made this meeting beau- tiful to him — of the spirit of brotherhood and service that reigned here. — They sang "We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground" ; they sang Benny Havens, Oh!" and "A Soldier No More" ; they sang other songs of tenderness and sorrow, and men felt a trembUng in their voices and a mist stealing over their eyes. Upon Montague a spell was falling. Over these men and their story there hung a mystery — a presence of wonder, that discloses itself but rarely to mortals, and only to those who have dreamed and dared. They had not found it easy to do their duty ; they had had their wives and children, their homes and friends and familiar places; and all these they had left to serve the Eepublic. They had taught themselves a new way of life — they had. forged themselves into an iron sword of war. They had marched and fought in dust and heat, in pouring rains and driving, icy blasts; they had become men grim and terrible in spirit — men with limbs of steel, who could march or ride for days and nights, who could lie down and sleep upon the ground in rain storms and winter snows, who were ready to leap at a word and seize their muskets and rush into the cannon's mouth. They had learned to stare into the face of death, to meet its fiery eyes ; to march and eat and sleep, to laugh and play and sing, in its presence — to carry their life in their hands, and toss it about as a juggler tosses a ball. And this for Freedom : for the star- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 15 crowned goddess with the flaming eyes, who trod upon the mountain tops and called to them in the shock and fury of the battle ; whose trailing robes they followed through the dust and cannon-smoke ; for a gUmpse of whose shining face they had kept the long night vigils and charged upon the guns in the morning ; for a touch of whose shimmer- ing robe they had wasted in prison pens, where famine and loathsome pestilence and raving madness stalked about in the broad daylight. And now this army of deliverance, with its waving banners and its prancing horses and its rumbling cannon, had marched into the shadow- world. The very ground that it had trod was sacred ; and one who fingered the dusty volumes which held the record of its deeds would feel a strange awe come upon him, and thrill with a sudden fear of life — that was so fleeting and so Uttle to be understood. There were boyhood memories in Montague's mind, of hours of con- secration, when the vision had descended upon him, and he had sat with face hidden in his hands. It was for the Republic that these men had suffered ; for him and his children — that a gov- ernment of the people, by the people, for the people, might not perish from the earth. And with the organ-music of the Gettysburg Address echoing within him, the boy laid his soul upon the altar of his country. They had done so much for him — and now, was there anything that he could do.? A dozen years had passed since then, and still he knew that deep within him — deeper than all other purposes, than all Digitized by Microsoft® 16 THE METROPOLIS thoughts of wealth and fame and power — was the purpose that the men who had died for the RepubUe should find him worthy of their trust. The singing had stopped, and Judge EUis 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, see- ing 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 of 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 Ma^or 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 Icept Stonewall Jackson busy up to the very hour of his tragic death. And there was the story of Anderson- ville, and the escape from prison. Montague Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 17 could have walked the streets all night, exchang- ing these war-time reminiscences with the Major. Absorbed in their talk, they came to an avenue given up to the poorer class of peo- ple; with elevated trains rattling by overhead, and rows of little shops along it. Montague noticed a dense crowd on one of the comers, 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 Mon- tague, "but it cant be, now — just after elec- tion." "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 lean- ing over the throng packed about him. Because of a passing train the two could not hear a sound. "A Socialist!" exclaimed Montague, wonder- ingly. " 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 pal- aces, 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 18 THE METROPOLIS force you ta make guns, and then they shoot you with them ! They own the pohtical parties, and they name the candidates, and trick you into vot- ing 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 pcdriotism I 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 I" 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 : "Gome! 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 ?" Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 19 "Around the comer from where I live," said the other, "it goes on every Saturday night." "And do the people hsten?" 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. "Per- haps: another civil war," said he. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER II 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. 20 Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 21 There were Montague and his mother, and Cousin Alice, who was nineteen, and old " Mammy Lucy," Mrs. Montage'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 hurry- ing throngs on the ferry-boat, and then the cab- men and the newsboys shouting, and the cars with clanging gongs ; then the swift motor, glid- ing between trucks and carriages and around cor- ners where big policemen shepherded the scurry- ing 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 22 THE METROPOLIS entered this latest "apartment hotel" — which catered to two or three hundred of the most ex- clusive 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 modem masters. Men in hvery 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 cor- ridor 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 splendor quite appaUing to Mon- tague. 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 any- thing, 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 ! " Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 23 "It is a very good bargain," smiled the other; 'I have some influence with them." you! could pay such a price?" "I didn't think it," said Oliver; "I told you I expected to pay it myself." "But how could we let you pay it for us.?" cried the other. " Can you fancy that 1 will ever earn enough to pay such a price.''" " Of course you will," said OUver. " Don't be foohsh, 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 Ohver; "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 spenid, the more you'U 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 pro- ceeded to set forth the paradoxical philosophy of extravagance. His brother had come into a city of milUonaires. 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 24 THE METROPOLIS 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 un- derstand 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." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 25 Montague was nearly five years his brother's senior, and at home had taken a semi-paternal attitude toward him. Now, however, the situa- tion seemed to have reversed itself. With a slight smile of amusement, he subsided, and Proceeded to put himself into the attitude of a ocile student of the mysteries of the Metropohs. 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 !" Just now she was wandering about the rooms, exclaiming with wonder. Everything here was so quiet and so harmonious that at first one's suspicions were lulled. It was simplicity, but of a strange and perplexing kind — simplicity elaborately studied. It was luxury, but grown assured of itself, and gazing down upon itself with aristocratic disdain. And after a while this began to penetrate the vulgarest mind, and to fill it with awe ; one cannot remain long in an apartment which is trimmed and furnished in rarest Circassian walnut, and "papered" with Digitized by Microsoft® 26 THE METROPOLIS hand-embroid«red silk cloth, without feeling some excitement — even though there be no one to mention that the furniture has cost eight thousand dollars per room, and that the wall covering has been imported from Paris at a cost of seventy dollars per yard. Montague also betook himself to gazing about. He noted the great double windows, with sashes of bronze; the bronze fire-proof doors; the bronze electric candles and chandeKers, from which the room was flooded with a soft radiance at the touch of a button; the "duchesse" and "marquise" chairs, with upholstery matching the walls ; the huge leather " slumber-couch,' with adjustable lamp at its head. When one opened the door of the dressing-room closet, it was automatically filled with light ; there was an adjustable three-sided mirror, at which one could study his own figure from every side. There was a Uttle broJize box near the bed, in which one mi^t set his shoes, and with a locked door opening out into the hall, so that the floor-porter could get them without disturbing one. Each of the bath-rooms was the size of an ordinary man's parlour, with floor and walls of snow- white marble, and a door composed of an im- jorted plate-glass mirror. There was a great porcelain tub, with glass handles upon the wall jy which you could help yourself out of it, and a shower-bath with hnen duck curtains, which were changed every day; and a marble slab upon which you might lie to be rubbed by the masseur who would come at the touch of a button. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 27 There was no end to the miracles of this establishment, as Montague found in the course of time. There was no chance that the antique bronze clock on the mantel might go wrong, for it was electrically controlled from the office. You did not open the window and let in the dust, for the room was automatically ventilated, and you turned a switch marked "hot" and "cold.'' The office would furnish you a guide who would show you the establishment; and you might see your bread being kneaded by electricity, upon an opal glass table, and your eggs being tested by electric light; you might peer into huge refrigerators, ventilated by electric tans, and in which each tiny lamb chop reposed in a separate holder. Upon your own floor was a pantry, provided with hot and cold storage- rooms and an air-tight dumb-waiter; you might have your own private linen and crockery and plate, and your own family butler, if you wished. Your children, however, would not be permitted in the building, even though you were dying — this was a small concession which you made to a host who had invested a million dollars and a half in furniture alone. A few minutes later the telephone bell rang, and Oliver answered it and said, "Send him up." "Here's the tailor," he remarked, as he hung up the receiver. "Whose tailor?" asked his brother. "Yours," said he. "Do I have to have some new clothes.?" Montague asked. Digitized by Microsoft® 28 THE METROPOLIS "You haven't any clothes at present," was the reply. Montague was standing in front of the "cos- turner," as the elaborate mirror was termed. He looked himself over, and then he looked at his brother. Oliver's clothing was a little like the Circassian walnut; at first you thought that it was simple, and even a trifle careless — it was only by degrees you realised that it was original and distinguished, and very expensive. "Won't your New York friends make allow- ance for the fact that I am fresh from the coun- try?" asked Montague, quizzically. "They might," was the reply. "I know a hundred who would lend me money, if I asked them. But I don't ask them." "Then how soon shall I be able to appear.?" asked Montague, with visions of himself locked up in the room for a week or two. "You are to have three suits to-morrow morn- ing," said Oliver. " Genet has promised." 'Suits made to order.?" gasped the other, in perplexity. ' He never heard of any other sort of suits," said Oliver, with grave rebuke in his voice. M. Genet had the presence of a Russian grand duke, and the manner of a court chamberlain. He brought a subordinate to take Montague's measure, while he himself studied his colour- scheme. Montague gathered from the conversa- tion that he was going to a house-party in the country the next morning, and that he would need a dress suit, a hunting-suit, and a "morn- ing coat." The rest might wait until his return. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 2» The two discussed him and his various "points " as they might have discussed a horse; he pos- sessed distinction, he learned, and a great deal could be done with him — with a little skill he might be made into a personality. His French was not in training, but he managed to make out that it was M. Genet's opinion that the husbands of New York would tremble when he made his appearance among them. When the tailor had left, Alice came in, with her face shining from a cold bathing. "Here you are decking yourselves out!" she cried. "And what about me.'*" "Your problem is harder," said Oliver, with a laugh ; but you begin this afternoon. Reggie Mann is going to take you with him, and get you some dresses. ' "What!" gasped Alice. "Get me some dresses! A man.?" "Of course," said the other. "Reggie Mann advises half the women in New York about their clothes." "Who is he.? A tailor?" asked the girl. Oliver was sitting on the edge of the canape, swinging one leg over the other ; and he stopped abruptly and stared, and then sank back, laugh- ing softly to himself. "O dear me!" he said. "Poor Reggie!" Then, reaUsing that he would have to begin at the beginning, he proceeded to explain that Reggie Mann was a cotillion leader, the idol of the feminine side of society. He was the spe- cial pet and protege of the great Mrs. de Graffen- ried, of whom they had surely heard — Mrs. de Digitized by Microsoft® so THE METROPOLIS Graff enried, who was acknowledged to be the mistress of society at Newport, and was destined some day to be mistress in New York. Reggie and Ohver were "thick," and he had stayed in town on purpose to attend to her attiring — having seen her picture, and vowed that he would make a work of art out of her. And then Mrs. Robbie Walling would give her a dance, and all the world would come to fall at her feet. "You and I are going out to 'Black Forest,' the Wallings' shooting-lodge, to-morrow," Oliver added to his brother. " You'll meet Mrs. Robbie there. You've heard of the Wallings, I hope." "Yes," said Montague, "I'm not that igno- rant." "All right," said the other, "we're to motor down. I'm going to take you in my racing-car, so you'll have an experience. We'll start early." "I'll be ready," said Montague; and when his brother replied that he would be at the door at eleven, he made another amused note as to the habits of New Yorkers. The price which he paid at the hotel included the services of a valet or a maid for each of them, and so when their baggage arrived they had nothing to do. They went to lunch in one of the main dining rooms of the hotel, a room with towering columns of dark green marble and a maze of palms and flowers. Oliver did the ordering ; his brother noticed that the sim- ple meal cost them about fifteen dollars, and he wondered if they were to eat at that rate all the time. Then Montague mentioned the fact that before Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 31 leaving home he had received a telegram from. General Prentice, asking him to go with him that evening to the meeting of the Loyal Legion. Montague wondered, half amused, if his brother would deem his old clothing fit for such a func- tion. But Oliver replied that it would not matter what he wore there; he would not meet anyone who counted, except Prentice himself. The General and his family were prominent in society, it appeared, and were to be cultivated. But Oliver shrewdly forebore to elaborate upon this, knowing that his brother would be certain to talk about old times, which would be the surest possible method of lodging himself in the good graces of General Prentice. After luncheon came Reggie Mann, dapper and exquisite, with slender little figure and mincing gait, and the delicate hands and soft voice of a woman. He was dressed for the after- noon parade, and wore a wonderful scarlet orchid in his buttonhole. Montague's hand he shook at his shoulder's height; but when Alice came in he did not shake hands with her. Instead, he stood and gazed, and gazed again, and lifting his hands a little with excess of emotion, ex- claimed, " Oh, perfect ! perfect ! " "And OUie, I told you so !" he added, eagerly. "She is tall enough to wear satin! She shall have the pale blue Empire gown — she shall have the pale blue Empire gown if I have to pay for it myself ! And oh, what times we shall have with tidat hair! And the figure — Reval will simply go wild !" Digitized by Microsoft® 32 THE METROPOLIS So Reggie prattled on, with his airy grace ; he took her hand and studied it, and then turned her about to survey her figure, while Alice blushed and strove to laugh to hide her em- barrassment. "My dear Miss Montague," he exclaimed, "I bring all Gotham and lay it at your feet ! OUie, your battle is won ! Won without firing a shot ! I know the very man for her — his father is dying, and he will have four millions in Transcontinental alone. And he is as handsome as Antinous and as fascinating as Don Juan ! Allans ! we may as well begin with the trousseau this afternoon!" Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER III OLIVER was not rooming with them ; he had his own quarters at the club, which he did not wish to leave. But the next morning, about twenty minutes after the hour he had named, he was at the door, and Montague went down. Oliver's car was an imported French racer. It had only two seats, open in front, with a rumble behind for the mechanic. It was long and low and rakish, a most wicked-looking object ; when- ever it stopped on the street a crowd gathered to stare at it. Oliver was clad in a black bearskin coat, covering his feet, and with cap and gloves to match ; he wore goggles, pushed up over his forehead. A similar costume lay ready in his brother's seat. The suits of clothing had come, and were borne in his grips by his valet. " We can't carry them with us," said Oliver. "He'll have to take them down by train." And while his brother was buttoning up the coat, he gave the address ; then Montague clambered in, and after a quick glance over his shoulder, Oliver pressed a lever and threw over the steering-wheel, and they whirled about and sped down the street. Sometimes, at home in Mississippi, one would meet automobiling parties, generally to the dam- age of one's harness and temper. But until the day before, when he had stepped off the ferry, Montague had never ridden in a motor- 33 Digitized by Microsoft® S4 THE METROPOLIS car. Riding in this one was like travelling in a dream — it slid along without a sound, or the slightest trace of vibration; it shot forward, it darted to right or to left, it slowed up, it stopped, as if of its own will — the driver seemed to do nothing. Such things as car tracks had no effect upon it at all, and serious defects in the pave- ment caused only the faintest swelling motion; it was only when it leaped ahead like a living thing that one felt the power of it, by the pres- sure upon his back. They went at what seemed to Montague a breakneck pace through the city streets, dodging among trucks and carriages, grazing cars, whirl- ing round corners, taking the wildest of chances. Oliver seemed always to know what the other fellow would do ; but the thought that he might do something different kept his companion's heart pounding in a painful way. Once the latter cried out as a man leaped for his life; Oliver laughed, and said, without turning his head, "You'll get used to it by and by." They went down Fourth Avenue and turned into the Bowery. Elevated trains pounded over- head, and a maze of gin-shops, dime-museums, cheap lodging-houses, and clothing-stores sped past them. Once or twice Oliver's hawk-like glance detected a blue uniform ahead, and then they slowed down to a decorous pace, and the other got a chance to observe the miserable popu- lation of the neighbourhood. It was a cold November day, and an "out of work" time, and wretched outcast men walked with shoulders drawn forward and hands in their pockets. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 35 "Where in the world are we going ?" Montague asked, "To Long Island," said the other. "It's a beastly ride — this part of it — but it's the only way. Some day we'll have an overhead speed- way of our own, and we won't have to drive through this mess." They turned off at the approach to the Wil- liamsburg Bridge, and found the street closed for repairs. They had to make a detour of a block, and they turned with a vicious sweep and plunged into the very heart of the tenement district. Narrow, filthy streets, with huge, canon- like blocks of buildings, covered with rusty iron fire-escapes and decorated with soap-boxes and pails and laundry and babies; narrow stoops, crowded with playing children; grocery-shops, clothing-shops, saloons ; and a maze of placards and signs in English and German and Yiddish. Through the throngs Oliver drove, his brows knitted with impatience and his horn honking angrily. "Take it easy," protested Montague; but the other answered, "Bah!" Children screamed and darted out of the way, and men and women started back, scowling and mutter- ing; when a blockade of wagons and push-carts forced them to stop, the children gathered about and jeered, and a group of hoodlums loafing by a saloon flung ribaldry at them ; but Oliver never turned his eyes from the road ahead. And at last they were out on the bridge. "Slow vehicles keep to the right," ran the sign, and so there was a lane for them to the left. They sped up the slope, the cold air beating Digitized by Microsoft® 86 THE METROPOLIS upon them like a hurricane. Far below lay the river, with tugs and ferry-boats ploughing the wind-beaten grey water, and a city spread out on either bank — a wilderness of roofs, with chimneys sticking up and white jets of steam spouting everywhere. Then they sped down the farther slope, and into Brooklyn. There was an asphalted avenue, lined with little residences. There was block upon block of them, mile after mile of them — Montague had never seen so many houses in his life before, and nearly all poured out of the same mould. Many other automobiles were speeding out this avenue, and they raced with one another. The one which was passed the most frequently got the dust and smell ; and so the universal rule was that when you were behind you watched for a clear track, and then put on speed, and went to the front ; but then just when you had struck a comfortable pace, there was a whirring and a puffing at your left, and your rival came stealing past you. If you were ugly, you put on speed yourself, and forced him to fall back, or to run the risk of trouble with vehicles copiing the other way. For Oliver there seemed to be but one rule, — pass everything. They came to the great Ocean Driveway. Here were many automobiles, nearly all going one way, and nearly all racing. There were two which stuck to Oliver and would not be left behind — one, two, three — one, two, three — they passed and repassed. Their dust was blinding, and the continual odour was sicken- ing; and so Oliver set his lips tight, and the Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 37 little dial on the indicator began to creep ahead, and they whirled away down the drive. " Catch us this time !" he muttered. A few seconds later Oliver gave a sudden exclamation, as a policeman, concealed behind a bush at the roadside, sprang out and hailed them. The policeman had a motor-cycle, and Oliver shouted to the mechanic, " Pull the cord ! " His brother turned, alarmed and perplexed, and saw the man reach down to the floor of the car. He saw the policeman leap upon the cycle and start to follow. Then he lost sight of him in the clouds of dust. For perhaps five minutes they tore on, tense and silent, at a pace that Montague had never equalled in an express train. Vehicles coming the other way would leap into sight, charging straight at them, it seemed, and shooting past a hand's breadth away. Montague had just about made up his mind that one such ride would last him for a lifetime, when he noticed that they were slacking up. "You can let go the cord," said Oliver. "He'll never catch us now." "What is the cord.?" asked the other. "It's tied to the tag with our number on, in back. It swings it up so it can't be seen." They were turning off into a country road, and Montague sank back and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. "Is that a common trick.''" he asked. " Quite," said the other. " Mrs. Robbie has a trough of mud in their garage, and her driver sprinkles the tag every time before she goes out. Digitized by Microsoft® 38 THE METROPOLIS You have to do something, you know, or you'd be taken up all the time." "Have you ever been arrested?" "I've only been in court once," said Oliver. "I've been stopped a dozen times." " What did they do the other times — warn you.?" "Warn me?" laughed Oliver. "What they did was to get in with me and ride a block or two, out of sight of the crowd; and then I slipped them a ten-dollar bill and they got out." To which Montague responded, "Oh, I see!" They turned into a broad macadamised road, and here were more autos, and more dust, and more racing. Now and then they crossed a trolley or a railroad track, and here was always a warning sign ; but Oliver must have had some occult way of knowing that the track was clear, for he never seemed to slow up. Now and then they came to villages, and did reduce speed; but from the pace at which they went through, the villagers could not have suspected it. And then came another adventure. The road was in repair, and was very bad, and they were picking their way, when suddenly a young man who had been walking on a side path stepped out before them, and drew a red handkerchief from his pocket, and faced them, waving it. Oliver muttered an oath. "What's the matter.?" cried his brother. " We're arrested ! " he exclaimed. " What !" gasped the other. "Why, we were not going at all." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 39 "I know," said Oliver; "but they've got us all the same." He must have made up his mind at one glance that the ease was hopeless, for he made no attempt to put on speed, but let the young man step aboard as they reached him. *^ What is it ?" Oliver demanded. "I have been sent out by the Automobile Association," said the stranger, "to warn you that they have a trap set in the next town. So watch out." And Oliver gave a gasp, and said, "Oh! Thank you !" The young man stepped off, and they went ahead, and he lay back in his seat and shook with laughter. "Is that common ?" his brother asked, between laughs. "It happened to me once before," said Oliver. "But I'd forgotten it completely." They proceeded very slowly; and when they came to the outskirts of the village they went at a funereal pace, while the car throbbed in pro- test. In front of a country store they saw a group of loungers watching them, and Oliver said, "There's the first part of the trap. They have a telephone, and somewhere beyond is a man with another telephone, and beyond that a man to stretch a rope across the road." "What would they do with you.?" asked the other. "Haul you up before a justice of the peace, and fine you anywhere from fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars. It's regular highway robbery — there are some places that boast of never Digitized by Microsoft® 40 THE METROPOLIS levying taxes; they get all their money out of us!" Oliver pulled out his watch. "We're going to be late to lunch, thanks to these delays," he said. He added that they were to meet at the "Hawk's Nest," which he said was an "auto- mobile joint." Outside of the town they "hit it up" again; and half an hour later they came to a huge sign, "To the Hawk's Nest," and turned off. They ran up a hill, and came suddenly out of a pine forest into view of a hostelry, perched upon the edge of a bluff overlooking the Sound. There was a broad yard in front, in which automobiles wheeled and sputtered, and a long shed that was lined with them. Half a dozen attendants ran to meet them as they drew up at the steps. They all knew Oliver, and two fell to brushing his coat, and one got his cap, while the mechanic took the car to the shed. Oliver had a tip for each of them ; one of the things that Montague observed was that in New York you had to carry a pocketful of change, and scatter it about wherever you went. They tipped the man who carried their coats and the boy who opened the door. In the washrooms they tipped the boys who filled the basins for them and those who gave them a second brushing. The piazzas of the inn were crowded with automobiling parties, in all sorts of strange cos- tumes. It seemed to Montague that most of them were flashy people — the men had red faces and the women had loud voices; he saw Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 41 one in a sky blue coat with bright scarlet facing. It occurred to him that if these women had not worn such large hats, they would not have needed quite such a supply of the bright-coloured veiling which they wound over the hats and tied under their chins, or left to float about in the breeze. The dining room seemed to have been built in sections, rambling about on the summit of the cliff. The side of it facing the water was all glass, and could be taken down. The ceiling was a maze of streamers and Japanese lanterns, and here and there were orange trees and palms and artificial streams and fountains. Every table was crowded, it seemed; one was half deafened by the clatter of plates, the voices and laughter, and the uproar of a negro orchestra of banjos, mandolins, and guitars. Negro waiters flew here and there, and a huge, stout head waiter, who was pirouetting and strutting, sud- denly espied Oliver, and made for him with smiles of welcome. "Yes, sir — just come in, sir," he said, and led the way down the room, to where, in a cor- ner, a table had been set for sixteen or eighteen people. There was a shout, "Here's Oliie !" — ana a pounding of glasses and a chorus of welcome — "Hello, OUie ! You're late, Ollie ! What's the matter — car broke down ?" Of the party, about half were men and half women. Montague braced himself for the pain- ful ordeal of being introduced to sixteen people in succession, but this was considerately spared him. He shook hands with Robbie WaUing, a Digitized by Microsoft® 42 THE METROPOLIS tall and rather hollow-chested young man, with slight yellow mustaches ; and with Mrs. Robbie, who bade him welcome, and presented him with the freedom of the company. Then he found himself seated between two young ladies, with a waiter leaning over him to take his order for the drinks. He said, a little hesitatingly, that he would like some whiskey, as he was about frozen, upon which the girl on his right remarked, "You'd better try a cham- pagne cocktail — you'll get your results quicker." She added, to the waiter, "Bring a couple of them, and be quick about it." "You had a cold ride, no doubt, in that low car," she went on, to Montague. "What made you late.''" " We had some delays," he answered. " Once we thought we were arrested." "Arrested!" she exclaimed ; and others took up the word, crying, "Oh, OUie ! tell us about it !" Oliver told the tale, and meantime his brother had a chance to look about him. All of the party were young — he judged that he was the oldest person there. They were not of the flashily dressted sort, but no one would have had to look twice to know that there was money in the crowd. They had had their first round of drinks, and started in to enjoy themselves. They were all intimates, calling each other by their first names. Montague noticed that these names always ended in "ie," — there was Robbie and Freddie and Auggie and Clarrie and Bertie and Chappie; if their names could not be made to end properly, they had nicknames instead. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 43 "OUie" told how they had distanced the policeman; and Clarrie Mason (one of the younger sons of the once mighty railroad king) told of a similar feat which his car had per- formed. And then the young lady who sat be- side him told how a fat Irish woman had skipped out of their way as they rounded a corner, and stood and cursed them from the vantage point of the sidewalk. The waiter came with the liquor, and Mon- tague thanked his neighbour, Miss Price. Anabel Price was her name, and they called her "Billy" ; she was a tall and splendidly formed creature, and he learned in due time that she was a fa- mous athlete. She must have divined that he would feel a little lost in this crowd of intimates, and set to work to make him feel at home — an attempt in which she was not altogether successful. They were bound for a shooting-lodge, and so she asked him if he were fond of shooting. He replied that he was ; in answer to a further question he said that he had hunted chiefly deer and wild turkey. "Ah, then you are a real hunter!" said Miss Price. "I'm afraid you'll scorn our way." "What do you do.?" he inquired. " Wait and you'll see," replied she ; and added, casually, "When you get to be pally with us, you'll conclude we don t furnish." Montague's jaw dropped just a little. He re- covered himself, however, and said that he pre- sumed so, or that he trusted not; afterward, when he had made inquiries and found out what Digitized by Microsoft® 44 THE METROPOLIS he should have said, he had completely forgotten what he had said. — Down in a hotel in Natchez there was an old head waiter, to whom Mon- tague had once appealed to seat him next to a friend. At the next meal, learning that the re- <|uest had been granted, he said to the old man, "I'm afraid you have shown me partiality;" to which the reply came, "I always tries to show it as much as I Tkin." Montague always thought of this whenever he recalled his first encounter with "Billy" Price. The young lady on the other side of him now remarked that Kobbie was ordering another *' topsy-turvy lunch." He inquired what sort of a lunch that was ; she told him that Robbie called it a "digestion exercise." That was the only remark that Miss de Mille addressed to him during the meal (Miss Gladys de Mille, the banker's daughter, known as "Baby" to her intimates). She was a stout and round-faced ^rl, who devoted herself strictly to the business of lunching; and Montague noticed at the end that she was breathing rather hard, and that her big round eyes seemed bigger than ever. Conversation was general about the table, but it was not easy conversation to follow. It con- sisted mostly of what is known as "joshing" and involved acquaintance with intimate details of personalities and past events. Also, there was a great deal of slang used, which kept a stranger's wits on the jump. However, Montague con- cluded that all his deficiencies were made up for by his brother, whose sallies were the cause of the loudest laughter. Just now he seemed to Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 45 the other more Uke the OUver he had known of old — for Montague had already noted a change in him. At home there had never been any end to his gaiety and fun, and it was hard to get him to take anything seriously; but now he kept all his jokes for company, and when he was alone he was in deadly earnest. Apparently he was working hard over his pleasures. Montague could understand how this was pos- sible. Someone, for instance, had worked hard over the ordering of the lunch — to secure the maximum of explosive effect. It began with ice- cream, moulded in fancy shapes and then buried in white of egg and baked brown. Then there was a turtle soup, thick and green and greasy; and then — horror of horrors — a great steam- ing plum-pudding. It was served in a strange f)henomenon of a platter, with six long, silver egs; and the waiter set it in front of Robbie WalHng and lifted the cover with a sweeping gesture — and then removed it and served it himself. Montague had about made up his. mind that this was the end, and begun to fill up on bread and butter, when there appeared cold asparagus, served in individual silver holders resembling andirons. Then — appetite now being sufficiently whetted — there came quail, in piping hot little casseroles; and then half a grape-fruit set in a block of ice and filled with wine; and then little squab ducklings, bursting fat, and an artichoke; and then a cafe parfait; and then — as if to crown the audacity — huge thick slices of roast beef ! Montague had given up long ago — he could keep no track oi the Digitized by Microsoft® 46 THE METROPOLIS deluge of food which poured forth. And be- tween all the courses there were wines of pre- cious brands, tumbled helter-skelter, — sherry and port, champagne and claret and Uqueur. Montague watched poor "Baby" de Mille out of the corner of his eye, and pitied her ; for it was evident that she could not resist the impulse to eat whatever was put before her, and she was visibly suffering. He wondered whether he might not manage to divert her by conversation, but he lacked the courage to make the attempt. The meal was over at four o'clock. By that time most of the other parties were far on their way to New York, and the inn was deserted. They possessed themselves of their belongings, and one by one their cars whirled away toward "Black Forest." Montague had been told that it was a " shoot- ing-lodge." He had a vision of some kind of a rustic shack, and wondered dimly how so many people would be stowed away. When they turned off the main road, and his brother re- marked, " Here we are," he was surprised to see a rather large building of OTanite, with an arch- way spanning the road. He was still more sur- prised when they whizzed through and went on. "Where are we going?" he asked. "To 'Black Forest,'" said OUver. "And what was that we passed?" "That was the gatekeeper's lodge," was Oliver's reply. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER IV THEY ran for about three miles upon a broad macadamised avenue, laid straight as an ar- row's flight through the forest; and then the sound of the sea came to them, and before them was a mighty granite pile, looming grim in the twiUght, with a drawbridge and moat, and four great castellated towers. "Black Forest" was uilt in imitation of a famous old fortress in Pro- vence — only the fortress had forty small rooms, and its modern prototype had seventy large ones» and now every window was blazing with lights. A man does not let himself be caught twice in such a blunder; and having visited a "shooting- lodge" which had cost three-quarters of a million dollars and was set in a preserve of ten thousand acres, he was prepared for Adirondack "camps" which had cost half a million and Newport " cot- tages" which had cost a million or two. Liveried servants took the car, and others opened the door and took their coats. The first thing they saw was a huge fireplace, a fireplace ai dozen feet across, made of great boulders, and with whole sections of a pine tree blazing in it. Underfoot was polished hardwood, with skins of bear and buffalo. The firehght flickered upon shields and battle-axes and broadswords, hung- upon the oaken pillars ; while between them were tapestries, picturing the Song of Roland and the battle of Roncevalles. One followed the pillars 47 Digitized by Microsoft® 48 THE METROPOLIS of the great hall to the vaulted roof, whose glass was glowing blood-red in the western light. A broad stairway ascended to the second floor, which opened upon galleries about the hall. Montague went to the fire, and stood rubbing his hands before the grateful blaze. " Scotch or Irish, sir.?" inquired a lackey, hovering at his side. He had scarcely given his order when the door opened and a second motor load of the party appeared, shivering and rushing for the lire. In a couple of minutes they were all assembled — and roaring with laughter over "Baby" de Mille's account of how her car had run over a dachshund. "Oh, do you know," she cried, "he simply popped!" Half a dozen attendants hovered about, and soon the tables in the hall were covered with trays containing decanters and siphons. By this means everybody in the party was soon warmed up, and then in groups they scattered to amuse themselves. There was a great hall for indoor tennis, and there were half a dozen squash-courts. Mon- tague knew neither of these games, but he was interested in watching the water-polo in the swim- ming-tank, and in studying the appointments of this part of the building. The tank, with the walls and floor about it, were all of marble; there was a bronze gallery running about it, from which one might gaze into the green depths of the water. There were luxurious dressing rooms for men and women, with hot and cold needle-baths, steam-rooms with rubbers in at- tendance, and weighing and lifting machines. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 49 electric machines for producing "violet rays," and electric air-blasts for the drying of the women's hair. He watched several games, in which men and women took part ; and later on, when the tennis and other players appeared, he joined them in a plunge. Afterward, he entered one of the elec- tric elevators and was escorted to his room, where he found his bag unpacked, and his evening attire laid out upon the bed. It was about nine when the party went into the dining room, which opened upon a granite terrace and loggia facing the sea. The room was finished in some rare black wood, the name of which he did not know; soft radiance suf- fused it, and the table was lighted by electric candles set in silver sconces, and veiled by silk shades. It gleamed with its load of crystal and silver, set off by scattered groups of orchids and ferns. The repast of the afternoon had been simply a lunch, it seemed — and now they had an elaborate dinner, prepared by Robbie Wal- ling's famous ten-thousand-dollar chef. In con- trast with the uproar of the inn was the cloistral stillness of this dining room, where the impassive footmen seemed to move on padded slippers, and the courses appeared and vanished as if by magic. Montague did his best to accustom himself to the gowns of the women, which were cut lower than any he had ever seen in his life ; but he hesitated every time he turned to speak to the young lady beside him, because he could look so deep down into her bosom, and it was difficult for him to realise that she did not mind it. Digitized by Microsoft® 50 THE METROPOLIS The conversation was the same as before, ex- cept that it was a little more general, and louder in tone; for the guests had oecome more inti- mate, and as Robbie Walling's wines of priceless vintage poured forth, they became a little " high." The young lady who sat on Montague's right was a Miss Vincent, a granddaughter of one of the sugar-kings; she was dark-skinned and slender, and had appeared at a recent lawn fete in the costume of an Indian maiden. The company amused itself by selecting an Indian name for her; all sorts of absurd ones were suggested, depending upon various intimate details of the young lady's personality and habits. Robbie caused a, laugh by suggesting "Little Dewdrop" — it appeared that she had once been discovered writing a poem about a dewdrop; someone else suggested "Little Raindrop," and then OUie brought down the house by exclaiming, "Little Raindrop in the Mud-puddle!" A perfect gale of laughter swept over the company, and it must have been a minute before they could recover their composure; in order to appreciate the humour of the sally it was necessary to know that Miss Vincent had "come a cropper" at the last meet of the Long Island Hunt Club, and been extricated from a slough several feet deep. This was explained to Montague by the young lady on his left — the one whose half -dressed condition caused his embarrassment. She was only about twenty, with a wealth of golden hair and the bright, innocent face of a child ; he had not yet learned her name, for everyone called ber " Cherub." Not long after this she made a Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 51 remark across the table to Baby de Mille, a strange jumble of syllables, which sounded like English, yet was hot. Miss de Mille replied, and several joined in, until there was quite a conversation going on. "Cherub" explained to him that "Baby" had invented a secret lan- guage, made by transposing letters; and that OUie and Bertie were crazy to guess the key to it, and could not. The dinner lasted until late. The wine-glasses continued to be emptied, and to be magically filled again. The laughter was louder, and now and then there were snatches of singing ; women loUed about in their chairs — one beautiful boy sat gazing dreamily across the table at Mon- tague, now and then closing his eyes, and open- ing them more and more reluctantly. The attend- ants moved about, impassive and silent as ever ; no one else seemed to be cognisant of their exist- ence, but Montague could not help noticing them, and wondering what they thought of it all. When at last the party broke up, it was because the bridge-players wished to get settled for the evening. The others gathered in front of the fireplace, and smoked and chatted. At home, when one planned a day's hunting, he went to bed early and rose before dawn ; but here, it seemed, there was game a-plenty, and the hunters had nothing to consider save their own comfort. The cards were played in the vaulted "gun- room." Montague strolled through it, and his eye ran down the wall, lined with glass eases and filled with every sort of firearm known to the hunter. He recalled, with a twinge of self- Digitized by Microsoft® 52 THE METROPOLIS abasement, that he had suggested bringing his shotgun along ! He joined a group in one corner, and lounged in the shadows, and studied "Billy" Price, whose conversation had so mystified him. "Billy," whose father was a banker, proved to be a devo- tee of horses ; she was a veritable Amazon, the one passion of whose life was glory. Seeing her sitting in this group, smoking cigarettes, and drinking highballs, and listening impassively to risque stories, one might easily draw base con- clusions about Billy Price. But as a matter of fact she was made of marble; and the men, in- stead of falling in love with her, made her their confidante, and told her their troubles, and sought her sympathy and advice. Some of this was explained to Montague by a young lady, who, as the evening wore on, came in and placed herself beside him. "My name is Betty Wyman," she said, "and you and I will have to be friends, because Oliie's my side partner." Montague had to meet her advances; so had not much time to speculate as to what the term "side partner" might be supposed to convey, Betty was a radiant little creature, dressed in a robe of deep crimson, made of some soft and filmy and complicated material; there was a crimson rose in her hair, and a living glow of crimson in her cheeks. She was bright and quick, like a butterfiy, full of strange whims and impulses; mischievous lights gleamed in her eyes, and mis- chievous smiles played about her adorable little cherry lips. Some strange perfume haunted the Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 53 filmy dress, and completed the bewilderment of the intended victim. "I have a letter of introduction to a Mr. Wy- man in New York," said Montague. " Perhaps he is a relative of yours." " Is he a railroad president ? " asked she; and when he answered in the afiirmative, " Is he a railroad king.?" she whispered, in a mocking, awe-stricken voice, " Is he rich — oh, rich as Solomon — and is he a terrible man who eats people aUve all the time.''" " Yes," said Montague — " that must be the one. " Well," said Betty, " he has done me the hon- our to be my granddaddy ; but don't you take any letter of introduction to him." "Why not.?" asked he, perplexed. "Because he'll eat you" said the girl. "He hates OUie." " Dear me," said the other ; and the girl asked, "Do you mean that the boy hasn't said a word about me.?" "No," said Montague — "I suppose he left it for you to do." "Well," said Betty, "it's like a fairy story. Do you ever read fairy stories.? In this story there was a princess — oh, the most beautiful princess! Do you understand ? " "Yes," said Montague. "She wore a red rose in her hair." "And then," said the girl, "there was a young courtier — very handsome and gay, and they fell in love with each other. But the terrible old king — he wanted his daughter to wait awhile. Digitized by Microsoft® 54 THE METROPOLIS until he got iiirough conquering his enemies, so that he might have time to pick out some prince OT other, or maybe some ogre who was wasting his lands — do you follow me?" "Perfectly," said he. "And then did the beautiful princess pine away?" "Um — no," said Betty, pursing her lips. "But she had to dance terribly hard to keep from thinking about herself." Then she laughed, and exclaimed, "Dear me, we are getting poeti- cal!" And next, looking sober again, "Do you know, I was half afraid to talk to you. Ollie tells me you're terribly serious. Are you?" "I don't know," said Montague — but she broke in with a laugh, "We were talking about you at dinner last night. They had some whipped cream done up in funny little curliques, and Ollie said, 'Now, if my brother Allan were here, he'd be thinking about the man who fixed this cream, and how long it took him, and how he might have been reading " The Simple Life." ' Is that true?" "It involves a question of literary criticism" — said Montague. "I don't want to talk about literature," ex- claimed the other. In truth, she wanted nothing save to feel of his armour and find out if there were any weak spots through which he could be teased. Montague was to find in time that the adorable Miss Elizabeth was a very thorny species of rose — she was more like a gay-coloured wasp, of predatory temperament. ' Ollie says you want to go down town and work," she went on. "I think you're awfully Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 55 foolish. Isn't it mucli nicer to spend your time in an imitation castle like this ? " "Perhaps," said he, "but I haven't any castle." ' ' You might get one, " answered B etty . ' ' Stay around awhile and let us marry you to a nice girl. They will all throw themselves at your feet, you know, for you have such a delicious melting voice, and you look romantic and ex- citing.' (Montague made a note to inquire whether it was customary in New York to talk about you so frankly to your face.) Miss Betty was surveying him quizzically meantime. 'I don't know," she said. "On second thoughts, maybe you'll frighten the girls. Then it'll be the married women who'll fall in love with you. You'll have to watch out." "I've already been told that by my tailor," said Montague, with a laugh. "That would be a still quicker way of making your fortune," said she. "But I don't think you'd fit in the role of a tame cat." "A what?" he exclaimed; and Miss Betty laughed. " Don't you know what that is ? Dear me — how charmingly naive! But perhaps you'd better get OUie to explain for you." That brought the conversation to the subject of slang ; and Montague, in a sudden burst of confidence, asked for an interpretation of Miss Price's cryptic utterance. "She said" — he re- peated slowly — " that when I got to be pally with her, I'd conclude she didn't furnish." "Oh, yes," said Miss Wyman. "She just meant that when you knew her, you'd be disap- Digitized by Microsoft® 56 THE METROPOLIS pointed. You see, she picks up all the race- track slang — one can't help it, you know. And last year she took her coach over to England, and so she's got all the English slang. That makes it hard, even for us." And then Betty sailed in to entertain him with little sketches of other members of the party. A phenomenon that had struck Montague im- mediately was the extraordinary freedom with which everybody in New York discussed every- body else. As a matter of fact, one seldom dis- cussed anything else; and it made not the least diflference, though the person were one of your set, — though he ate your bread and salt, and you ate his, — still you would amuse yourself by pouring forth the most painful and humihating and terrifying things about him. There was poor Clarrie Mason: Clarrie, sit- ting in at bridge, with an expression of feverish eagerness upon his pale face. Clarrie always lost, and it positively broke his heart, though he had ten millions laid by on ice. Clarrie went about all day, bemoaning his brother, who had been kidnapped. Had Montague not heard about it ? Well, the newspapers called it a mar- riage, but it was really a kidnapping. Poor Larry Mason was good-natured and weak in the knees, and he had been carried off by a terrible creature, three times as big as himself, and with a temper like — oh, there were no words for it ! She had been an actress ; and now she had car- ried Larry away in her talons, and was building a big castle to keep him in — for he had ten mil- lions too, alas ! Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 57 And then there was Bertie Stuyvesant, beauti- ful and winning — the boy who had sat opposite Montague at dinner. Bertie's father had been a coal man, and nobody knew how many mil- Uons he had left. Bertie was gay; last week he had invited them to a brook-trout breakfast — in November — and that had been a lark ! Somebody had told him that trout never really tasted good unless you caught them yourself, and Bertie had suddenly resolved to catch them for that breakfast. "They have a big preserve up in the Adirondacks," said Betty; " and Bertie ordered his private train, and he and Chappie de Peyster and some others started that night ; they drove I don't know how many miles the next day, and caught a pile of trout — and we had them for breakfast the next morning! The best joke of all is that Chappie vows they were so full they couldn't fish, and that the trout were caught with nets ! Poor Bertie — somebody'U have to sepa- rate him from that decanter now !" From the hall there came loud laughter, with sounds of scuffling, and cries, "Let me have it !" — "That's Baby de Mille," said Miss Wyman. " She's always wanting to rough-house it. Robbie was mad the last time she was down here; she got to throwing sofa-cushions, and upset a vase. "Isn't that supposed to be good form.'' asked Montague. "Not at Robbie's," said she. " Have you had a chance to talk with Robbie yet.? You'll like him — he's serious, like you." "What's he serious about.?" "About spending his money," said Betty. Digitized by Microsoft® j> 58 THE METROPOLIS "That's the only thing he has to be serious about." " Has he got so very much ? " "Thirty or forty milHons," she replied; "but then, you see, a lot of it's in the inner com- panies of his railroad system, and it pays him fabulously. And his wife has money, too — she was a Miss Mason, you know, her father's one of the steel crowd. We've a saying that there are millionaires, and then multimillionaires, and then Pittsburg millionaires. Anyhow, the two of them spend all their income in entertaining- It's Robbie's fad to play the perfect host — he likes to have lots of people round him. He does put up good times — only he's so very important about it, and he has so many ideas of what is proper ! I guess most of his set would rather go to Mrs. Jack Warden's any day; I'd be there to-night, if it hadn't been for Ollie." "Who's Mrs. Jack Warden.?" asked Mon- tague. ' Haven't you ever heard of her ? " said Betty. "She used to be Mrs. van Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber man. She used to give 'boy and girl' parties, in the English fashion; and when we went there we'd do as we please — play tag all over the house, and have pillow-fights, and ran- sack the closets and get up masquerades ! Mrs- Warden's as good-natured as an old cow. You'll meet her sometime — only don't you let her fool you with those soft eyes of hers. You'll find she doesn't mean it; it's just that she likes to have handsome men hanging round her." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 59 At one o'clock a few of Robbie's guests went to bed, Montague among them. He left two tables of bridge fiends sitting immobile, the women with flushed faces and feverish hands, and the men with cigarettes dangling from their lips. There were trays and decanters beside each card- table; and in the hall he passed three youths staggering about in each other's arms and feebly singing snatches of "coon songs." OUie and Betty had strolled away together to parts un- known. Montague had entered his name in the order- book to be called at nine o'clock. The man who awakened him brought him coffee and cream upon a silver tray, and asked him if he would have anything stronger. He was privileged to have his breakfast in his room, if he wished ; but he went downstairs, trying his best to feel natural in his elaborate hunting costume. No one else had appeared yet, but he found the traces of last night cleared away, and breakfast ready — served in English fashion, with urns of tea and coflfee upon the buffet. The grave butler and his satellites were in attendance, ready to take his order for anything else under the sun that he fancied. Montague preferred to go for a stroll upon the terrace, and to watch the sunlight sparkling upon the sea. The morning was beautiful — every- thing about the place was so beautiful that he wondered how men and women could live here and not feel the spell of it. Billy Price came down shortly afterward, clad in a khaki hunting suit, with knee kilts and but- Digitized by Microsoft® 60 THE METROPOLIS ton-pockets and gun-pads and Cossack cartridge- loops. She joined him in a stroll down the beach, and talked to him about the coming winter season, with its leading personalities and events, — the Horse Show, which opened next week, and the prospects for the opera, and Mrs. de Graffenried's opening entertainment When they came back it was eleven o'clock, and they found most of the guests assembled, nearly all of them looking a little pale and uncomfortable in the merciless morning light. As the two came in they observed Bertie Stuyvesant standing by the buffet, in the act of gulping down a tum- bler of brandy. " Bertie has taken up the ' no breakfast fad,'" said Billy with an ironical smile. Then began the hunt. The equipment of "Black Forest" included a granite building, steam-heated and elaborately fitted, in which an English expert and his assistants raised im- Eorted pheasants — magnificent bronze-coloured irds with long, floating black tails. Just be- fore the opening of the season they were dumped by thousands into the covers — fat, and almost tame enough to be fed by hand ; and now came the "hunters." First they drew lots, for they were to hunt in pairs, a man and a woman. Montague drew Miss Vincent — " Little Raindrop in the Mud- puddle." Then OUie, who was master of cere- monies, placed them in a long line, and gave them the direction; and at a signal they moved through the forest. Following each person were two attendants, to carry the extra guns and reload Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 61 them; and out in front were men to beat the bushes and scare the birds into flight. Now Montague's idea of hunting had been to steal through the bayou forests, and match his eyes against those of the wild turkey, and shoot off their heads with a rifle bullet. So, when one of these birds rose in front of him, he fired, and the bird dropped ; and he could have done it for- ever, he judged — only it was stupid slaughter, and it sickened him. However, if the creatures were not shot, they must inevitably perish in the winter snows; and he had heard that Robbie sent the game to the hospitals. Also, the score was being kept, and Miss Vincent, who was some- thing of a shot herself, was watching him with eager excitement, being wild with desire to beat out Billy Price and Chappie de Peyster, who were the champion shots of the company. Baby de MiUe, who was on his left, and who could not shoot at all, was blundering along, puffing for breath and eying him enviously; and the attend- ants at his back were trembling with delight and murmuring their applause. So he shot on, as long as the drive lasted, and again on their way back, over a new stretch of the country. Sometimes the birds would rise in pairs, and he would drop them both ; and twice when a blun- dering flock took flight in his direction he seized a second gun and brought down a second pair. When the day's sport came to an end his score was fifteen better than his nearest competitor, and he and his partner had won the day. They crowded round to congratulate him; first his partner, and then his rivals, and his host Digitized by Microsoft® 62 THE METROPOLIS and hostess. Montague found that he had sud- denly become a person of consequence. Some who had previously taken no notice of him now became aware of his existence; proud society belles condescended to make conversation with him, and Clarrie Mason, who hated de Peyster, made note of a way to annoy him. As for Oliver, he was radiant with delight. " When it came to horses and guns, I knew you'd make good," he whispered. Leaving the game to be gathered up in carts, they made their way home, and there the two victors received their prizes. The man's con- sisted of a shaving set in a case of solid gold, set with diamonds. Montague was simply stunned, for the thing could not have cost less than one or two thousand dollars. He could not persuade himself that he had a right to accept of such hos- pitality, which he could never hope to return. He was to reaUse in time that Robbie lived for the pleasure of thus humiliating his fellow-men. After luncheon, the party came to an end. Some set out to return as they had come; and others, who had dinner engagements, went back with their host in his private car, leaving their autos to be returned by the chauffeurs. Mon- tague and his brother were among these; and about dusk, when the swarms of working people were pouring out of the city, they crossed the ferry and took a cab to their hotel. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER V THEY found their apartments looking as if they had been struck by a snowstorm — a storm of red and green and yellow, and all the colours that lie between. AU day the wagons of fashionable milliners and costumers had been stopping at the door, and their contents had found their way to Alice's room. The floors were ankle-deep in tissue paper and tape, and beds and couches and chairs were covered with boxes, in which lay wonderful symphonies of colour, haK disclosed in their wrappings of gauze. In the midst of it all stood the girl, her eyes shining with excitement. "Oh, Allan!" she cried, as they entered. "How am I ever to thank you ?" "You're not to thank me," Montague replied. "This is all Oliver's doings." "Oliver!" exclaimed the girl, and turned to him. "How in the world could you do it.?" she cried. " How will you ever get the money to pay for it all.?" "That's my problem," said the man, laughing. "All you have to think about is to look beauti- ful." "If I don't," was her reply, "it won't be for lack of clothes. I never saw so many wonderful thin^ in all my life as I've seen to-day. " "There's quite a show of them," admitted Oliver. 63 Digitized by Microsoft® 64 THE METROPOLIS "And Reggie Mann ! It was so queer, Allan ! I never went shopping with a man before. And he's so — so matter-of-fact. You know, he bought me — everything !" "That was what he was told to do," said OUver. " Did you like him ? " " I don't know," said the girl. " He's queer — I never met a man hke that before. But he was awfully kind; and the people just turned their stores inside out for us — half a dozen people hurrying about to wait on you at once !" "You'll get used to such things," said Oliver; and then, stepping toward the bed, "Let's see what you got.' "Most of the things haven't come," said Alice. "The gowns all have to be fitted. — That one is for to-night," she added, as he lifted up a beauti- ful object made of rose-coloured chiffon. Oliver studied it, and glanced once or twice at the girl. "I guess you can carry it," he said. "What sort of a cloak are you to wear.?" "Oh, the cloak!" cried Alice. "Oliver, I can't believe it's really to belong to me. I didn't know anyone but princesses wore such things." The cloak was in Mrs. Montague's room, and one of the maids brought it in. It was an opera wrap of grey brocade, lined with unborn baby lamb — a thing of a gorgeousness that made Montague literally gasp for breath. "Did you ever see anything like it in your life.P" cried Alice. "And Oliver, is it true that I have to have gloves and shoes and stockings — and a hat — to match every gown ?" " Of course," said Oliver. " If you were doing Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 65 things right, you ought to have a cloak to match each evening gown as well." "It seems incredible," said the girl. "Can it be right to spend so much money for things to But Oliver was not discussing questions of ethics ; he was examining sets of tinted crepe de chine lingerie, and hand-woven hose of spun silk. There were boxes upon boxes, and bureau drawers and closet shelves already filled up with hand-embroidered and lace-trimmed creations — chemises and corset-covers, night-robes of "handkerchief linen" lawn, lace handkerchiefs and veils, corsets of French coutil, dressing- jackets of pale-coloured silks, and negligees of soft batistes, trimmed with Valenciennes lace, or even with fur. "You must have put in a full day," he said. "I never looked at so many things in my life," said Alice. "And Mr. Mann never stopped to ask the price of a thing." "I didn't think to tell him to," said Oliver, laughing. Then the girl went in to dress — and Oliver faced about to find his brother sitting and staring hard at him. "Tell me!" Montague exclaimed. "In God's name, what is all this to cost ?" "I don't know," said Oliver, impassively. "I haven't seen the bills. It'll be fifteen or twenty thousand, I guess." Montague's hands clenched involuntarily, and he sat rigid. "How long will it all last her?" he asked. Digitized by Microsoft® 66 THE METROPOLIS " Why," said the other, " when she gets enough, it'll last her until spring, of course — unless she goes South during the winter." "How much is it going to take to dress her for a year?" "I suppose thirty or forty thousand," was the reply. 'I don't expect to keep count." Montague sat in silence. "You don't want to shut her up and keep her at home, do jou?" inquired his brother, at last. 'Do you mean that other women spend that much on clothes.''" he demanded. "Of course," said Oliver, "hundreds of them. Some spend fifty thousand — I know several who go over a hundred." "It's monstrous!" Montague exclaimed. "Fiddlesticks!" was the other's response. "Why, thousands of people live by it — wouldn't know anything else to do." Montague said nothing to that. "Can you afford to have Alice compete with such women indefinitely.''" he asked. "I have no idea of her doing it indefinitely," was Oliver's reply. "I simply propose to give her a chance. When she's married, her bills will be paid by her husband." "Oh, ' said the other, "then this layout is just for her to be exhibited in." "You may say that," answered Oliver, " — if you want to be foolish. You know perfectly well that parents who launch their daughters in Society don't figure on keeping up the pace all their lifetimes." "We hadn't thought of marrying Alice off," said Montague. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 67 To which his brother replied that the best physicians left all they could to nature. "Sup- pose," said he, "that we just introduce her in the right set, and turn her loose and let her enjoy her- self — and then cross the next bridge when we come to it?" Montague sat with knitted brows, pondering. He was beginning to see a little daylight now. "Oliver," he asked suddenly, "are you sure the stakes in this game aren't too big.?" "How do you mean ?" asked the other. "Will you be able to stay in until the show- down ? Until either Alice or myself begins to bring in some returns.''" "Never worry about that," said the other, with a laugh. "But hadn't you better take me into your con- fidence.''" Montague persisted. "How many weeks can you pay our rent in this place ? Have you got the money to pay for all these clothes .''" "I've got it," laughed the other — "but that doesn't say I'm going to pay it." "Don't you have to pay your bills.? Can we do all this upon credit.''" Oliver laughed again. "You go at me like a prosecuting attorney," he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to inquire around and learn some respect for your brother." Then he added, seri- ously, "You see, Allan, people like Reggie or myself are in position to jjrmg a great deal of cus- tom to tradespeople, and so they are willing to go out of their way to oblige us. And we have com- missions of all sorts coming to us, so it's never any question of cash." Digitized by Microsoft® 68 THE METROPOLIS " Oh !" exclaimed the other, opening his eyes, "I see! Is that the way you make money?" " It's one of the ways we save it," said Oliver. "It comes to the same thing." "Do people know it ?" " Why, of course. Why not .? " "I don't know," said Montague. "It sounds a little queer." "Nothing of the kind," said Oliver. "Some of the best people in New York do it. Strangers come to the city, and they want to go to the right places, and they ask me, and I send them. Or take Robbie Walling, who keeps up five or six establishments, and spends several millions a year. He can't see to it all personally — if he did, he'd never do anything else. Why shouldn't he ask a friend to attend to things for him.? Or again, a new shop opens, and they want Mrs. Walling's trade for the sake of the ad- vertising, and they oflFer her a discount and me a commission. Why shouldn't I get her to try them.?" "It's quite intricate," commented the other. "The stores have more than one price, then .?" "They have as many prices as they have cus- tomers," was the answer. "Why shouldn't they ? New York is full of raw rich people who value things by what they pay. And why shouldn't they pay high and be happy.? That opera cloak that Alice has — Reval promised it to me for two thousand, and I'll wager you she'd charge some woman from Butte, Montana, thirty- five hundred for one just like it." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 69 Montague got up suddenly. " Stop," he said, waving his hands. "You take all the bloom off the butterfly's wings !" He asked where they were going that evening, and Oliver said that they were invited to an infor- mal dinner-party at Mrs. Winnie Duval's. Mrs. Winnie was the young widow who had recently married the founder of the great banking-house of Duval and Co. — so Oliver explained ; she was a chum of his, and they would meet an inter- esting set there. She was going to invite her cousin, Charlie Carter — she wanted him to meet Alice. "Mrs. Winnie's always plotting to get Charlie to settle down," said Oliver, with a merry laugh. He telephoned for his man to bring over his clothes, and he and his brother dressed. Then Alice came in, looking like the goddess of the dawn in the gorgeous rose-coloured gown. The colour in her cheeks was even brighter than usual ; for she was staggered to find how low the gown was cut, and was afraid she was committing a Jaux pas. "Tell me about it," she stammered. " Mammy Lucy says I'm surely supposed to wear some lace, or a bouquet." "Mammy Lucy isn't a Paris costumer," said Oliver, much amused. " Dear me — wait until you have seen Mrs. Winnie!" Mrs. Winnie had kindly sent her limousine car for them, and it stood throbbing in front of the hotel-entrance, its acetylenes streaming far up the street. Mrs. Winnie's home was on Fifth Avenue, fronting the park. It occupied half a block, and had cost two millions to build and Digitized by Microsoft® 70 THE METROPOLIS furnish. It was known as the "Snow Palace," being all of white marble. At the curb a man in livery opened the door of the car, and in the vestibule another man in livery bowed the way. Lined up just inside of the door was a corps of imposing personages, clad in scarlet waistcoats and velvet knee-breeches, with powdered wigs, and gold buttons, and gold buckles on their patent-leather pumps. These splendid creatures took their wraps, and then presented to Montague and Oliver a bouquet of flowers upon a silver salver, and upon another salver a tiny envelope bearing the name of their partner at this strictly "informal" dinner-party. Then the functionaries stood out of the way and permitted them to view the dazzling splendour of the entrance hall of the Snow Palace. There was a great marble staircase running up from the centre of the hall, with a carved marble gallery above, and a marble fireplace below. To deco- rate this mansion a real palace in the Punjab had been bought outright and plundered ; there were mosaics of jade, and wonderful black marble, and rare woods, and strange and perplexing carvings. The head butler stood at the. entrance to the salon, pronouncing their names ; and just inside was Mrs. Winnie. Montague never forgot that first vision of her ; she might have been a real princess out of the palace m the Punjab. She was a brunette, rich- coloured, full-throated and deep-bosomed, with scarlet lips, and black hair and eyes. She wore a court-gown of cloth of silver, with white kid Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 71 shoes embroidered with jewelled flowers. All her life she had been collecting large turquoises, and these she had made into a tiara, and a neck ornament spreading over her chest, and a stom- acher. Each of these stones was mounted with diamonds, and set upon a slender wire. So as she moved they quivered and shimmered, and the effect was dazzling, barbaric. She must have seen that Montague was stag- gered, for she gave him a little extra pressure of the hand, and said, "I'm so glad you came. OUie has told me all about you." Her voice was soft and melting, not so forbidding as her garb. Montague ran the gauntlet of the other guests : Charlie Carter, a beautiful, dark-haired boy, hav- ing the features of a Greek god, but a sallow and unpleasant complexion; Major "Bob" Venable, a stout little gentleman with a red face and a heavy jowl; Mrs. Frank Landis, a merry-eyed young widow with pink cheeks and auburn hair ; Willie Davis, who had been a famous half-back, and was now junior partner in the banking-house ; and two young married couples, whose names Montague missed. 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, ap- proaching 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 72 THE METROPOLIS 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, fin- ished 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 ad- vice 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 won- dered 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'." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 73 " Ah," said Mrs. Alden ; and Montague, strug- gling 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 dia- mond 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 74 THE METROPOLIS 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 host- ess, 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. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 75 "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 sev- eral 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 76 THE METROPOLIS 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 sud- denly 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 cor- ner of the earth. There were peaches which Tiad come from South Africa (they had cost ten ■dollars apiece). There were bunches of Ham- burg 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- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 77 trie light, and lima beans that had come from Porto Kico, and artichokes brought from France at a cost of one dollar each. — And all these extraordinary viands were washed down by eight or nine varieties of wines, from the cellar of a man who had made collecting them a fad for the last thirty years ; who had a vineyard in France for the growing of his own champagne, and kept twenty thousand quarts of claret m storage all the time — and procured his Rhine wine from the cellar of the Emperor of Germany, at a cost of twenty- five dollars a quart ! There were twelve people at dinner, and after- ward they made two tables for bridge, leaving Charlie Carter to talk to Alice, and Mrs. Winnie to devote herself to Montague, according to her promise. "Everybody likes to see my house," she said. "Would you.?" And she led the way from the dining room into the great conserv- atory, which formed a central court extending to the roof of the building. She pressed a but- ton, and a soft radiance streamed down from above, in the midst of which Mrs. Winnie stood, with her shimmering jewels a very goddess of the fire. The conservatory was a place in which he could have spent the evening; it was filled with the most extraordinary varieties of plants. "They were gathered from all over the world," said Mrs. Winnie, seeing that he was staring at them. " My" husband employed a connoisseur to hunt them out for him. He did it before we were married — he thought it would make me happy." In the centre of the place there was a fountain^ Digitized by Microsoft® 78 THE METROPOLIS twelve or fourteen feet in height, and set in a basin of purest Carrara marble. By the touch of a button the pool was flooded with submerged lights, and one might see scores of rare and beau- tiful fish swimming about. "Isn't it fine!" said Mrs. Winnie, and added eagerly, "Do you know, I come here at night, sometimes when I can't sleep, and sit for hours and gaze. All those living things, with their extraordinary forms — some of them have faces, and look like human beings ! And I wonder what they think about, and if life seems as strange to them as it does to me." She seated herself by the edge of the pool, and gazed in. "These fish were given to me by my cousin, Ned Carter. They call him Buzzie. Have you met him yet ? — No, of course not. He's Charlie's brother, and he collects art things — the most unbelievable things. Once, a long time ago, he took a fad for goldfish — some gold- fish are very rare and beautiful, you know — one can pay twenty-five and fifty dollars apiece for them. He got all the dealers had, and when he learned that there were some they couldn't get, he took a trip to Japan and China on purpose to get them, xou know they raise them there, and some of them are sacred, and not allowed to be sold or taken out of the country. And he had all sorts of carved ivory receptacles for them, that he brought home with him — he had one beauti- ful marble basin about ten feet long, that had been stolen from the Emperor." Over Montague's shoulder where he sat, there hung an orchid, a most curious creation, an ex- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 79 plosion of scarlet flame. "That is the odonto- glossum" said Mrs. Winnie. "Have you heard of it.?" "Never," said the man. "Dear me," said the other. "Such is fame !" "Is it supposed to be famous .?" he asked. "Very," she replied. "There was a lot in the newspapers about it. You see Winton — that's my husband, you know — paid twenty-five thou- sand dollars to the man who created it ; and that made a lot of foolish talk — people come from all over to look at it. I wanted to have it, be- cause its shape is exactly like the coronet on my crest. Do you notice that?" "Yes," said Montague. "It's curious." "I'm very proud of my crest," continued Mrs. Winnie. "Of course there are vulgar rich peo- ple who have them made to order, and make them ridiculous; but ours is a real one. It's my own — not my husband's ; the Duvals are an old French family, but they're not noble. I was a Morris, you know, and our line runs back to the old French ducal house of Montmorenci. And last summer, when we were motoring, I hunted up one of their chateaux ; and see ! I brought over this." Mrs. Winnie pointed to a suit of armour, placed in a passage leading to the billiard-room. 'I have had the lights fixed," she added. And she pressed a button, and all illumination van- ished, save for a faint red glow just above the man in armour. " Doesn't he look real .? " said she. (He had his visor down, and a battle-axe in his mailed hands.) Digitized by Microsoft® so THE METROPOLIS "I like to imagine that he may have been my twentieth great-grandfather. I come and sit here, and gaze at him and shiver. Think what a terrible time it must have been to live in — when men wore things like that ! It couldn't be any worse to be a crab." "You seem to be fond of strange emotions," said Montague, laughing. " Maybe I am," said the other. " I like every- thing that's old and romantic, and makes you forget this stupid society world." She stood brooding for a moment or two, gaz- ing at the figure. Then she asked, abruptly, *' Which do you like best, pictures or swimming ? " "Why," replied the man, laughing and per- plexed, "I like them both, at times." "I wondered which you'd rather see first," explained his escort ; " the art gallery or the nata- torium. I'm afraid you'll get tired before you've seen everything." " Suppose we begin with the art-gallery," said he. "There's not much to see in a swimming- pool." "Ah, but ours is a very special one," said the lady. — "And some day, if you'll be very good, and promise not to tell anyone, I'll let you see my own bath. Perhaps they've told you, I have one in my own apartments, cut out of a block of the most wonderful green marble." Montague showed the expected amount of astonishment. " Of course that gave the dreadful newspapers another chance to gossip," said Mrs. Winnie, plaintively. " People found out what I had paid Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 81 for it. One can't have anything beautiful with- out that question being asked." And then followed a silence, while Mrs. Winnie waited for him to ask it. As he forbore to do so, she added, "It was fifty thousand dollars." They were moving toward the elevator, where a small boy in the wonde:^ul livery of plush and scarlet stood at attention. "Sometimes," she continued, "it seems to me that it is wicked to pay such prices for things. Have you ever thought about it.!*" "Occasionally," Montague replied. "Of course," said she, "it makes work for people; and I suppose they can't be better em- ployed than in making beautiful things. But sometimes, when I think of all the poverty there is, I get unhappy. We have a winter place down South — one of those huge country-houses that look like exposition buildings, and have rooms for a hundred guests; and sometimes I go driv- ing by myself, down to the mill towns, and go through them and talk to the children. I came to know some of them quite well — poor little wretches." They stepped out of the elevator, and moved toward the art-gallery. " It used to make me so unhappy," she went on. "I tried to talk to my husband about it, but he wouldn't have it. 'I don't see why you can't be like other people,' he said — he's always repeating that to me. And what could I say.''" " Why not suggest that other people might be like you ? " said the man, laughing. "I wasn't clever enough," said she, regret- Digitized by Microsoft® 82 THE METROPOLIS fully. — " It's very hard for a woman, you know — with no one to understand. Once I went down to a settlement, to see what that was like. Do you know anything about settlements .''" "Nothing at all," said Montague. "Well, they are people who go to live among the poor, and try to Reform them. It takes a terrible lot of courage, I think. I give them money now and then, but I am never sure if it does any good. The trouble with poor people, it seems to me, is that there are so many of them." " There are, indeed," said Montague, thinking of the vision he had seen from Oliver's racing-car. Mrs. Winnie had seated herself upon a cush- ioned seat near the entrance to the darkened gal- lery. "I haven't been there for some time," she continued. "I've discovered something that I think appeals more to my temperament. I have rather a leaning toward the occult and the mysti- cal, I'm afraid. Did you ever hear of the Bab- ists.?" "No," said Montague. " Well, that's a religious sect — from Persia, I think — and they are quite the rage. They are priests, you understand, and they give lectures, and teach you all about the immanence of the divine, and about reincarnation, and Karma, and all that. Do you believe any of those things.?" " I can't say that I know about them," said he. "It is very beautiful and strange," added the other. " It makes you realise what a perplexing thing life is. They teach you how the universe is all one, and the soul is the only reality, and so Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 83 bodily things don't matter. If I were a Babist, I believe that I could be happy, even if I had to work in a cotton-mill." Then Mrs. Winnie rose up suddenly. "You'd rather look at the pictures, I know," she said; and she pressed a Dutton, and a soft radiance flooded the great vaulted gallery. " This is our chief pride in life," she said. " My husband's object has been to get one represen- tative work of each of the great painters of the world. We got their masterpiece whenever we could. Over there in the corner are the old masters — don't you love to look at them.''" Montague would have liked to look at them very much; but he felt that he would rather it were some time when he did not have Mrs. Win- nie by his side. Mrs. Winnie must have had to show the gallery quite frequently; and now her mind was still upon the Persian transcendental- ists. "That picture of the saint is a Botticelli," she said. "And do you know, the orange-coloured robe always makes me think of the swami. That is my teacher, you know — Swami Babu- banana. And he has the most beautiful delicate hands, and great big brown eyes, so soft and gentle — for all the world like those of the gazelles in our place down South !" Thus Mrs. Winnie, as she roamed from picture to picture, while the souls of the grave old mas- ters looked down upon her in silence. Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER VI MONTAGUE had now been officially pro- nounced complete by his tailor ; and Reval had sent home the first of Alice's street gowns, elaborately plain, but fitting her conspicuously, and costing accordingly. So the next morning they were ready to be taken to call upon Mrs. Devon. Of course Montague had heard of the Devons, but he was not sufficiently initiated to compre- hend just what it meant to be asked to call. But when Oliver came in, a little before noon, and proceeded to examine his costume and to put him to rights, and insisted that Alice should have her hair done over, he began to realise that this was a special occasion. Oliver was in quite a state of excitement; and after they had left the hotel, and were driving up the Avenue, he explained to them that their future in Society depended upon the outcome of this visit. Call- ing upon Mrs. Devon, it seemed, was the Ameri- can equivalent to being presented at court. For twenty-five years this grand lady had been the undisputed mistress of the Society of the metropo- lis ; and if she liked them, they would be invited to her annual ball, which took place in January, and then forever after their position would be assured. Mrs. Devon's ball was the one great event of the social year; about one thousand people were asked, while ten thousand disap- 84 Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 85 pointed ones gnashed their teeth in outer darkness. All of which threw Alice into a state of trepi- dation. "Suppose we don't suit her !" she said. To that the other replied that their way had been made smooth by Keggie Mann, who was one of Mrs. Devon's favourites. A century and more ago the founder of the Devon line had come to America, and invested his savings in land on Manhattan Island. Other people had toiled and built a city there, and generation after generation of the Devons had sat by and collected, the rents, until now their fortune amounted to four or five hundred millions of dollars. They were the richest old family in America, and the most famous; and in Mrs. Devon, the oldest member of the line, was centred all its social majesty and dominion. She lived a stately and formal life, precisely like a queen; no one ever saw her save upon her raised chair of state, and she wore her jewels even at breakfast. She was the arbiter of social destinies, and the breakwater against which the floods of new wealth beat in vain. Reggie Mann told wonderful tales about the contents of her enormous mail — about wives and daugh- ters of mighty rich men who flung themselves at her feet and pleaded abjectly for her favour — who laid siege to her house for months, and in- trigued and pulled wires to get near her, and even bought the favour of her servaiits ! If Reggie might be believed, great financial wars had been fought, and the stock-markets of the Digitized by Microsoft® 86 THE METROPOLIS world convulsed more than once, because of these social struggles ; and women of wealth and beauty had offered to sell themselves for the privilege which was so freely granted to them. They came to the old family mansion and rang the bell, and the solemn butler ushered them past the grand staircase and into the front reception room to wait. Perhaps five minutes later he came in and rolled back the doors, and they stood up, and beheld a withered old lady, nearly eighty years of age, bedecked with dia- monds and seated upon a sort of throne. They approached, and Oliver introduced them, and the old lady held out a lifeless hand ; and then they sat down, Mrs. Devon asked them a few questions as to how much of New York they had seen, and how they liked it, and whom they had met ; but most of the time she simply looked them over, and left the making of conversation to Oliver. As for Montague, he sat, feeling perplexed and uncomfortable, and wondering, deep down in him, whether it could really be America in which this was happening. "You see," Oliver explained to them, when they were seated in their carriage again, "her health is failing, and it's really quite difficult for her to receive." "I'm glad I don't have to call on her more than once," was Alice's comment. "When do we know the verdict.'*" "When you get a card marked 'Mrs. Devon at home,'" said Oliver. And he went on to tell them about the war which had shaken Society Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 87 long ago, when the mighty dame had assorted her right to be "Mrs. Devon," and the only "Mrs. Devon." He told them also about her wonderful dinner-set of china, which had cost thirty thousand dollars, and was as fragile as a humming-bird's wing. Each piece bore her crest, and she had a china expert to attend to washing and packing it — no common hand was ever allowed to touch it. He told them, also, how Mrs. Devon's housekeeper had wrestled for so long, trying to teach the maids to arrange the furniture in the great reception rooms precisely as the mistress ordered ; until finally a complete set of photographs had been taken, so that the maids might do their work by chart. Alice went back to the hotel, for Mrs. Robbie Walling was to call and take her home to lunch ; and Montague and his brother strolled round to Reggie Mann's apartments, to report upon their visit. Reggie received them in a pair of pink silk pajamas, decorated with ribbons and bows, and with silk-embroidered slippers, set with pearls — a present from a feminine adorer. Montague noticed, to his dismay, that the little man wore a gold bracelet upon one arm ! He explained that he had led a cotillion the night before — or rather this morning; he had got home at five o'clock. He looked quite white and tired, and there were the remains of a breakfast of brandy and soda on the table. "Did you see the old girl ?" he asked. "And how does she hold up.?" Digitized by Microsoft® 88 THE METROPOLIS "She's game," said Oliver. "I had the devil's own time getting you in," said the other. "It's getting harder every day." "You'll excuse me," Reggie added, "if I get ready. I have an engagement." And he turned to his dressing-table, which was covered with an array of cosmetics and perfumes, and proceeded, in a matter-of-fact way, to paint his face. Mean- while his valet was flitting silently here and there, getting ready his afternoon costume ; and Mon- tague, in spite of himself, followed the man with his eyes. A haberdasher's shop might have been kept going for quite a while upon the contents of Reggie's dressers. His clothing was kept in a room adjoining the dressing room; Montague, who was near the door, could see the rosewood wardrobes, each devoted to a separate article of clothing — shirts, for instance, laid upon sliding racks, tier upon tier of them, of every material and colour. There was a closet fitted with shelves and equipped like a little shoe store — high shoes and low shoes, black ones, brown ones, and white ones, and each fitted over a last to keep its shape perfect. These shoes were all made to order according to ' Reggie's designs, and three or four times a year there was a cleaning out, and those which had gone out of fashion became the prey of his " man." There was a safe in one closet, in which Reggie's jewellery was kept. The dressing room was furnished like a lady's boudoir, the furniture upholstered with exquisite embroidered silk, and the bed hung with cur- tains of the same material. There was a huge Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 89 bunch of roses on the centre-table, and the odour of roses hung heavy in the room. The valet stood at attention with a rack of neckties, from which Reggie critically selected one to match his shirt. ' Are you going to take Alice with you down to the Havens's?" he was asking; and he added, "You'll meet Vivie Patton down there — she's had another row at home." "You don't say so!" exclaimed Oliver. "Yes," said the other. "Frank waited up all night for her, and he wept and tore his hair and vowed he would kill the Count. Vivie told him to go to hell." "Good God!" said Oliver. "Who told you that.?" "The faithful Alphonse," said Reggie, nod- ding toward his valet. "Her maid told him. And Frank vows he'll sue — I half expected to see it in the papers this morning." "I met Vivie on the street yesterday," said Oliver. "She looked as chipper as ever." Reggie shrugged his shoiilders. "Have you seen this week's paper.?" he asked. "They've got another of Ysabel's suppressed poems in." — And then he turned toward Montague to ex- plain that "Ysabel" was the pseudonym of a young debutante who had fallen under the spell of Baudelaire and Wilde, and had published a volume of poems of such furious eroticism that her parents were buying up stray copies at fabulous prices. Then the conversation turned to the Horse Show, and for quite a while they talked about Digitized by Microsoft® 90 THE METROPOLIS who was going to wear what. Finally Oliver rose, saying that they would have to get a bite to eat before leaving for the Havens's. "You'll have a good time," said Reggie. " I'd have gone myself, only I promised to stay and help Mrs. de Graff enried design a dinner. So long !" Montague had heard nothing about the visit to the Havens's ; but now, as they strolled down the Avenue, Oliver explained that they were to spend the week-end at Castle Havens. There was quite a party going up this Friday afternoon, and they would find one of Havens's private cars waiting. They had nothing to do meantime, for their valets would attend to their packing, and Alice and her maid would meet them at the depot. 'Castle Havens is one of the show places of the country," Oliver added. "You'll see the real thing this time." And while they lunched, he went on to entertain his brother with particu- lars concerning the place and its owners. John had inherited the bulk of the enormous Havens fortune, and he posed as his father's successor in the Steel trust. Some day someone of the big men would gobble him up; meantime he amused himself fussing over the petty details of administration. Mrs. Havens had taken a fancy to a rural life, and they had built this huge palace in the hills of Connecticut, and she wrote verses in which she pictured herself as a simple shep- herdess — ana all that sort of stuff. But no one minded that, because the place was grand, and there was always so much to do. They had Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 91 forty or fifty polo ponies, for instance, and every spring the place was filled with polo men. At the depot they caught sight of Charlie Carter, in his big red touring-car. "Are you going to the Havens's?" he said. "Tell them we're going to pick up Chauncey on the way." "That's Chauncey Venable, the Major's nephew," said Oliver, as they strolled to the train. "Poor Chauncey — he's in exile!" " How do you mean ? " asked Montague. "Why, he daren't come into New York," said the other. "Haven't you read about it in the papers ? He lost one or two hundred thousand the other night in a gambling place, and the district attorney's trying to catch him." "Does he want to put him in jail.?" asked Montague, " Heavens, no ! " said Oliver. " Put a Venable in jail ? He wants him for a witness against the gambler; and poor Chauncey is flitting about the country hiding with his friends, and wailing because he'll miss the Horse Show." They boarded the palatial private car, and were introduced to a number of other guests. Among them was Major Venable; and while Oliver buried himself in the new issue of the fantastic-covered society journal, which con- tained the poem of the erotic "Ysabel," his- brother chatted with the Major. The latter had taken quite a fancy to the big handsome stranger, to whom everything in the city was so new and interesting. "Tell me what you thought of the Snow Palace," said he. "I've an idea that Mrs, Digitized by Microsoft® 92 THE METROPOLIS Winnie's got quite a crush on you. You'll find her dangerous, my boy — she'll make you pay for your dinners before you get through ! " After the train was under way, the Major got himself surrounded with some apoUinaris and Scotch, and then settled back to enjoy himself. *'Did you see the 'drunken kid' at the ferry .p" he asked. "(That's what our abstemious dis- trict attorney terms my precious young heir-ap- parent.) You'll meet him at the Castle — the Havens are good to hun. They know how it feels, I guess; when John was a youngster his piratical uncle had to camp in Jersey for six months or so, to escape the strong arm of the law. "Don't you know about it.''" continued the Major, sipping at his beverage. "Sic transit gloria mundi! That was when the great Cap- tain Kidd Havens was piling up the millions which his survivors are spending with such charm- ing insouciance. He was plundering a string of banks, and the original progenitor of the Wallings tried to buy the control away from him, and Havens issued a whole lot of new stock over night, in the face of a court injunction, and got away with most of his money. It reads like opera bouffe, you know — they had a regular armed camp across the river for about six months — until Captain Kidd went up to Albany with half a million dollars' worth of greenbacks in a satchel, and induced the legislature to legalise the proceedings. That was just after the war, you know, but I remember it as if it were yester- day. It seems strange to think that anyone shouldn't know about it." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 95 "I know about Havens in a general way," said Montague. "Yes," said the Major. "But I know in a particular way, because I've carried some of that bank stock all these years, and it's never paid any dividends since. It has a tendency to interfere with my appreciation of John's lavish hospitality." Montague was reminded of the story of the Roman emperor who pointed out that money had no smell. "Maybe not," said the Major. "But all the same, if you were superstitious, you might make out an argument from the Havens fortune. Take that poor girl who married the Baron." And the Major went on to picture the denoue- ment of that famous international alliance, which, many years ago, had been the sensation of two continents. All Society had attended the gor- geous wedding, an archbishop had performed the ceremony, and the newspapers had devoted pages to describing the gowns and the jewels and the presents and all the rest of the magnifi- cence. And the Baron was a wretched little degenerate, who beat and kicked his wife, and flaunted his mistresses in her face, and wasted fourteen million dollars of her money in a couple of years. The mind could scarcely follow the orgies of this half -insane creature — he had spent two hundred thousand dollars on a ban- quet, and half as much again for a tortoise-shell wardrobe in which Louis the Sixteenth had kept his clothes ! He had charged a diamond neck- lace to his wife, and taken two of the four rows Digitized by Microsoft® 94 THE METROPOLIS of diamonds out of it before he presented it to her ! He had paid a hundred thousand dollars a year to a jockey whom the Parisian populace admired, and a fortune for a palace in Verona, which he had promptly torn down, for the sake of a few painted ceilings. The Major told about one outdoor fete, which he had given upon a sudden whim : ten thousand Venetian lanterns, ten thousand metres of carpet; three thousand gilded chairs, and two or three hundred waiters in fancy costumes; two palaces built in a lake, with sea-horses and dolpnins, and half a dozen orchestras, and several hundred chorus-girls from the Grand Opera ! And in between ad- ventures such as these, he bought a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, and made speeches and fought duels in defence of the Holy Catholic Church — and wrote articles for the yellow jour- nals of America. "And that's the fate of my lost dividends!" growled the Major. There were several automobiles to meet the party at the depot, and they were whirled through a broad avenue up a valley, and past a little lake, and so to the gates of Castle Havens. It was a tremendous building, a couple of hundred feet long. One entered into a main hall, perhaps fifty feet wide, with a great fire- place and staircase of marble and bronze, and furniture of gilded wood and crimson velvet, and a huge painting, covering three of the walls, rep- resenting the Conquest of Peru. Each of the rooms was furnished in the style of a different period — one Louis Quatorze, one Louis Quinze, one Marie Antoinette, and so on. There was a Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 95 drawing-room and a regal music-room ; a dining room in the Georgian style, and a billiard-room ,^ also in the English fashion, with high wainscoting and open beams in the ceiling ; and a library, and a morning-room and conservatory. Upstairs in the main suite of rooms was a royal bedstead, which alone was rumoured to have cost twenty- five thousand dollars ; and you might have some idea of the magnificence of things when you learned that underneath the gilding of the furni- ture was the rare and precious Circassian walnut,^ All this was beautiful. But what brought the guests to Castle Havens was the casino, so the Major had remarked. It was really a private athletic club — with tan-bark hippodrome, naving a ring the size of that in Madison Square Garden, and a skylight roof, and thirty or forty arc- lights for night events. There were bowling- alleys, billiard and lounging rooms, hand-ball, tennis and racket courts, a completely equipped gymnasium, a shooting-gallery, and a swimming- pool with Turkish and Russian baths. In this casino alone there were rooms for forty guests. Such was Castle Havens ; it had cost three or four millions of dollars, and within the twelve- foot wall which surrounded its grounds lived two world-weary people who dreaded nothing so much as to be alone. There were always guests, and on special occasions there might be three or four score. They went whirling about the country in their autos; they rode and drove; they played games, outdoor and in- door, or gambled, or lounged and chatted, or wandered about at their own sweet will. Coming Digitized by Microsoft® 96 THE METROPOLIS to one of these places was not different from staying at a great hotel, save that the company was selected, and instead of paying a bill, you gave twenty or thirty dollars to the servants when you left. It was a great palace of pleasure, in which beautiful and graceful men and women played together in all sorts of beautiful and graceful ways. In the evenings great logs blazed in the fireplace in the hall, and there might be an in- formal dance — there was always music at hand. Now and then there would be a stately ball, with rich gowns and flashing jewels, and the grounds ablaze with lights, and a full orchestra, and special trains from the city. Or a whole theatrical company would be brought down to give an entertainment in the theatre; or a minstrel show, or a troupe of acrobats, or a menagerie of trained animals. Or perhaps there would be a great pianist, or a palmist, or a trance medium. Anyone at all would be welcome who could bring a new thrill — it mattered nothing at all, though the price might be several hiindred dollars a minute. Montague shook hands with his host and hostess, and with a number of others; among them BiUy Price, who forthwith challenged him, and carried him off to the shooting-gallery. Here he took a rifle, and proceeded to satisfy her as to his skill. This brought him to the notice of Siegfried Harvey, who was a famous cross-country rider and "polo man." Harvey's father owned a score of copper mines, and had named him after a race-horse; he was a big Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 97 broad-shouldered fellow, a favourite of every- one; and next morning, when he found that Montague sat a horse like one who was born to it, he invited him to come out to his place on Long Island, and see some of the fox-hunting. Then, after he had dressed for dinner, Mon- tague came downstairs, and found Betty Wyman, shining like Aurora in an orange- coloured cloud. She introduced him to Mrs. Vivie Patton, who was tall and slender and fas- cinating, and had told her husband to go to hell. Mrs. Vivie had black eyes that snapped and sparkled, and she was a geyser of animation in a perpetual condition of eruption, Montague wondered if she would have talked with him so gaily had she known what he knew about her domestic entanglements. The company moved into the dining room, where there was served another of those elabo- rate and enormously expensive meals which he concluded he was fated to eat for the rest of his life. Only, instead of Mrs. Billy Alden with her Scotch, there was Mrs. Vivie, who drank champagne in terrifying quantities; and after- ward there was the inevitable grouping of the bridge fiends. Among the guests there was a long-haired and wild-looking foreign personage, who was the "lion" of the evening, and sat with half a dozen admiring women about him. Now he was es- corted to the music-room, and revealed the fact that he was a violin virtuoso. He played what was called "salon music" — music written es- pecially for ladies and gentlemen to listen to Digitized by Microsoft® •S8 THE METROPOLIS ^fter dinner; and also a strange contrivance ■called a concerto, put together to enable the player to exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and so his mind .became atro- phied, and a naive and elemental vanity was all that was left to him. Montague stood for a while staring ; and then took to watching the company, who chattered and laughed all through the performance. After- ward, he strolled into the billiard-room, where Billy Price and Chauncey Venable were having an exciting bout", and from there to the smoking room, where the stout little Major had gotten a group of young bloods about him to play "Klon- dike." This was a game of deadly hazards, which they played without limit; the players themselves were silent and impassive, but the spectators who gathered about were tense with excitement. In the morning Charlie Carter carried off Alice and Oliver and Betty in his auto; and Montague spent his time in trying some of Havens's jumping horses. The Horse Show was to open in New York on Monday, and there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement be- cause of this prospect; Mrs. Caroline Smythe, a charming young widow, strolled about with him and told him all about this Show, and the people who would take part in it. And in the afternoon Major Venable took him for a stroll and showed him the grounds. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 99 He had been told what huge sums had been ex- pended in laying them out; but after all, the figures were nothing compared with an actual view. There were hills and slopes, and endless vistas of green lawns and gardens, dotted with the gleaming white of marble staircases and fountains and statuary. There was a great Italian walk, leading by successive esplanades to an electric fountain with a basin sixty feet across, and a bronze chariot and marble horses. There were sunken gardens, with a fountain brought from the south of France, and Greek peristyles, and seats of marble, and vases and other treasures of art. And then there were the stables; a huge Renaissance building, with a perfectly equipped theatre above. There was a model farm and dairy; a polo field, and an enclosed riding-ring for the children; and dog-kennels and pigeon- houses, greenhouses and deer-parks — one was prepared for bear-pits and a menagerie. Finally, on their way back, they passed the casino, where musical chimes pealed out the quarter hours. Montague stopped and gazed up at the tower from which the sounds had come. The more he gazed, the more he found to gaze at. The roof of this building had many gables, in the Queen Anne style ; and from the midst of them shot up the tower, which was octagonal and solid, suggestive of the Normans. It was decorated witli Christmas wreaths in white stucco, and a few miscellaneous ornaments like the gilded tassels one sees upon plush cur- tains. Overtopping all of this was the dome of Digitized by Microsoft® 100 THE METROPOLIS a Turkish mosque. Rising out of the dome was something that looked like a dove-cot ; and out of this rose the slender white steeple of a Metho- dist country church. On top of that was a statue of Diana. "What are you looking at.f*" asked the Major. "Nothing," said Montague, as he moved on. "Has there ever been any insanity in the Havens family.?" "I don't know," replied the other, puzzled. "They say the old man never could sleep at night, and used to wander about alone in the park. I suppose he had things on his con- science." They strolled away; and the Major's flood- gates of gossip were opened. There was an old merchant in New York, who had been Havens's private secretary. And Havens was always in terror of assassination, and so whenever they travelled abroad he and the secretary exchanged places. "The old man is big and imposing," said the Major, "and it's funny to hear him tell how he used to receive the visitors and be stared at by the crowds, while Havens, who was little and insignificant, would pretend to make him- self useful. And then one day a wild-looking creature came into the Havens oflSce, and be- gan tearing the wrappings off some package that shone like metal — and quick as a flash he and Havens flung themselves down on the floor upon their faces. Then, as nothing happened, they looked up, and saw the puzzled stranger gazing over the railing at them. He had a patent Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 101 churn, made of copper, which he wanted Havens to market for him ! " Montague could have wished that this party might last for a week or two, instead of only two days. He was interested in the life, and in those who lived it ; all whom he met were people prominent in the social world, and some in the business world as well, and one could not have asked a better chance to study them. Montague was taking his time and feeling his way slowly. But all the time that he was play- ing and gossiping he never lost from mind his real purpose, which was to find a place for him- self in the world of affairs ; and he watched for people from whose conversation he could get a view of this aspect of things. So he was in- terested when Mrs. Smythe remarked that among his fellow-guests was Vandam, an official of one of the great life insurance companies. "Freddie" Vandam, as the lady called him, was a man of might in the financial world ; and Montague said to himself that in meeting him he would really be accomplishing something. Crack shots and polo-players and four-in-hand experts were all very well, but he had his living to earn, and he feared that the problem was going to prove complicated. So he was glad when chance brought him and young Vandam together, and Siegfried Harvey introduced them. And then Montague got the biggest shock which New York had given him yet. It was not what Freddie Vandam said ; doubt- less he had a right to be interested in the Horse Digitized by Microsoft® 102 THE METROPOLIS Show, since he was to exhibit many fine horses, and he had no reason to feel called upon to talk about anything more serious to a stranger at a house party. But it was the manner of the man, his whole personality. For Freddie was a man of fashion, with all the exaggerated and farcical mannerisms of the dandy of the comic papers. He wore a conspicuous and foppish costume, and posed with a little cane; he cul- tivated a waving pompadour, and his silky mustache and beard were carefully trimmed to points, and kept sharp by his active fingers. His conversation was full of French phrases and French opinions; he had been reared abroad, and had a whole-souled contempt for all things American — even dictating his ousiness letters in French, and leaving it for his stenog- rapher to translate them. His shirts were em- broidered with violets and perfumed with violets — and there were bunches of violets at his horses' heads, so that he might get the odour as he drove ! There was a cruel saying about Freddie Van- dam — that if only he had had a little more brains, he would have been half-witted. And Montague sat and watched his mannerisms and listened to his inanities, with his mind in a state of bewilderment and dismay. When at last he got up and walked away, it was with a new sense of the complicated nature of the problem that confronted him. Who was there that could give him the key to this mystery — who could interpret to him a world in which a man such as this was in control of four or five hundred millions of trust funds .^^ Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER VII IT was quite futile to attempt to induce any- one to talk about serious matters just now — for the coming week all Society belonged to the horse. The parties which went to church on Sunday morning talked about horses on the way, and the crowds that gathered in front of the church door to watch them descend from their automobiles, and to get "points" on their con- spicuous costumes — these would read about horses all afternoon in the Sunday papers, and about the gowns which the women would wear at the show. Some of the party went up on Sunday evening ; Montague went with the rest on Monday morn- ing, and had lunch with Mrs. Robbie Walling and Oliver and Alice. They had arrayed him in a frock coat and silk hat and fancy "spats"; and they took him and sat him in the front row of Robbie's box. There was a great tan-bark arena, in which the horses performed; and then a railing, and a broad promenade for the spectators ; and then, raised a few feet above, the boxes in which sat all Society. For the Horse Show had now be- come a great social function. Last year a visit- ing foreign prince had seen fit to attend it, and this year "everybody" would come. Montague was rapidly getting used to things ; 103 Digitized by Microsoft® 104 THE METROPOLIS he observed with a smile how easy it was to take for granted embroidered bed and table linen, and mural paintings, and private cars, and gold Elate. At first it had seemed to him strange to e waited upon by a white woman, and by a white man quite unthinkable ; but he was becom- ing accustomed to having silent and expression- less lackeys everywhere about him, attending to his slightest want. So he presumed that if he waited long enough, he mignt even get used to horses which had their tails cut off to stumps, and their manes to rows of bristles, and which had been taught to lift their feet in strange and eccentric ways, and were driven with burred bits in their mouths to torture them and make them step lively. There were road-horses, coach-horses, saddle- horses and hunters, polo-ponies, stud-horses — every kind of horse that is used for pleasure, over a hundred different "classes" of them. They were put through their paces about the ring, and there was a* committee which judged them, and awarded blue and red ribbons. Apparently their highly artificial kind of excellence was a real thing to the people who took part in the show; for the spectators thrilled with excitement, and applauded the popular victors. There was a whole set of conventions which were generally understood — there was even a new language. You were told that these "turnouts" were "nobby" and "natty"; they were "swagger" and "smart" and "swell." However, the horse was really a small part of this show; before one had sat out an afternoon Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 105 he realised that the function was in reality a show of Society. For six or seven hours during the day the broad promenade would be so packed with human beings that one moved about with diflSculty ; and this throng gazed toward the ring almost never — it stared up into the boxes. All the year round the discontented millions of the middle classes read of the doings of the "smart set"; and here they had a chance to come and see them — alive, and real, and dressed in their showiest costumes. Here was all the grand monde, in numbered boxes, and with their names upon the programmes, so that one could get them straight. Ten thousand people from other cities had come to New York on purpose to get a look. Women who lived in boarding-houses and made their own clothes, had come to get hints ; all the dressmakers in town were present for the same purpose. Society reporters had come, with note- books in hand ; and next morning the imitators of Society all over the United States would read about it, in such fashion as this : "Mrs. Chaun- cey Venable was becomingly gowned in mauve cloth, made with an Eton jacket trimmed with silk braid, and opening over a chemisette of lace. Her hat was of the same colour, draped with a great quantity of mauve and orange tuUe, and surmounted with birds of paradise to match. Her furs were silver fox." The most intelligent of the great metropolitan dailies would print columns of this sort of mate- rial; and as for the "yellow" journals, they would have discussions of the costumes by "ex- perts," and half a page of pictures of the Digitized by Microsoft® 106 THE METROPOLIS most conspicuous of the box-holders. While Montague sat talking with Mrs. Walling, half a dozen cameras were snapped at them; and once a young man with a sketch-book placed him- self in front of them and went placidly to work. — Concerning such things the society dame had three different sets of emotions : first, the one which she showed in public, that of bored and contemptuous indifference ; second, the one which she expressed to her friends, that of outraged but helpless indignation ; and third, the one which she really felt, that of triumphant exultation over her rivals, whose pictures were not published and whose costumes were not described. It was a great dress parade of society women. One who wished to play a proper part in it would spend at least ten thousand dollars upon her cos- tumes for the week. It was necessary to have a different gown for the afternoon and evening of each day ; and some, who were adepts at quick changes and were proud of it, would wear three or four a day, and so need a couple of dozen gowns for the show. And of course there had to be hats and shoes and gloves to match. There would be robes of priceless fur hung carelessly over the balcony to make a setting; and in the evening there would be pyrotechnical displays of jewels. Mrs. Virginia Landis wore a pair of simple pearl ear-rings, which she told the reporters had cost twenty thousand dollars ; and there were two women who displayed four hundred thou- sand dollars' worth of diamonds — and each of them had hired a detective to hover about in the crowd and keep watch over her ! Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 107 Nor must one suppose, because the horse was an inconspicuous part of the show, that he' was therefore an inexpensive part. One man was to be seen here driving a four-in-hand of black staUions which had cost forty thousand ; there were other men who drove only one horse, and had paid forty thousand for that.. Half a million was a moderate estimate of the cost of the "string" which some would exhibit.. And of course these horses were useless, save for show purposes, and to breed other horses like them. Many of them never went out of their stables except for exercise upon a track ; and the cumbrous and enormously expensive coaches; were never by any possibility used elsewhere — when they were taken from place to place they seldom went upon their own wheels. And there were people here who made their chief occupation in life the winning of blue rib- bons at these shows. They kept great country estates especially for the horses, and had private indoor exhibition rings. Robbie Walling and Chauncey Venable were both such people; in the summer of next year another of the Wallings. took a string across the water to teach the horse- show game to Society in London. He took twenty or thirty horses, under the charge of an expert manager and a dozen assistants ; he sent, sixteen different kinds of carriages, and two great coaches, and a ton of harness and other stuff. It required one whole deck of a steamer, and the- expedition enabled him to get rid of six hundred, thousand dollars. All through the day, of course, Robbie was. Digitized by Microsoft® 108 THE METROPOLIS ■down in the ring with his trainers and his com- petitors, and Montague sat and kept his wife company. There was a steady stream of visit- ors, who came to congratulate her upon their successes, and to commiserate with Mrs. Chaun- cey Venable over the sufferings of the unhappy victim of a notoriety-seeking district attorney. There was just one drawback to the Horse Show, as Montague gathered from the conversa- tion that went on among the callers : it was pub- lic, and there was no way to prevent undesirable people from taking part. There were, it ap- peared, hordes of rich people in New York who 'were not in Society, and of whose existence Society was haughtily unaware ; but these people might enter horses and win prizes, and even rent a box and exhibit their clothes. And they might induce the reporters to mention them — and of course the ignorant populace did not know the difference, and stared at them just as hard as at Mrs. Robbie or Mrs. Winnie. And so for a whole blissful week these people had all the sen- sations of being in Society! "It won't be very long before that will kill the Horse Show," said Mrs. Vivie Patton, with a snap of her black eyes. There was Miss Yvette Simpkins, for instance ; Society frothed at the mouth when her name was mentioned. Miss Yvette was the niece of a stock-broker who was wealthy, and she thought that she was in Society, and the foolish public thought so, too. Miss Yvette made a specialty of newspaper publicity; you were always seeing her picture, with some new "Worth creation, and the picture would be labelled "Miss Yvette Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 109 Simpkins, the best-dressed woman in'New York," or ' Miss Yvette Simpkins, who is known as the best woman whip in Society." It was said that Miss Yvette, who was short and stout, and had a rosy German face, had paid five thousand dollars at one clip for photographs of herself in a new wardrobe; and her pictures were sent to the newspapers in bundles of a dozen at a time. Miss Yvette possessed over a million dollars' worth of diamonds — the finest in the country, according to the newspapers ; she had spent a hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars this year upon her clothes, and she gave long interviews, in which she set forth the fact that a woman nowadays could not really be well dressed upon less than a hun- dred thousand a year. It was Miss Yvette's boast that she had never ridden in a street-car in her life. Montague always had a soft spot in his heart for the unfortunate Miss Yvette, who laboured so hard to be a guiding light ; for it chanced to be while she was in the ring, exhibiting her skill in driving tandem, that ne met with a fateful encounter. Afterward, when he came to look back upon these early days, it seemed strange to him that he should have gone about this place, so careless and unsuspecting, while the fates were weaving strange destinies about him. It was on Tuesday afternoon, and he sat in the box of Mrs. Venable, a sister-in-law of the Major. The Major, who was a care-free bache- lor, was there himself, and also Betty Wyman, who was making sprightly comments on the passers-by; and there strolled into the box Digitized by Microsoft® 110 THE METROPOLIS Chappie de Peyster, accompanied by a young lady. So many people had stopped and been intro- duced and then passed on, that Montague merely glanced at her once. He noticed that she was tall and graceful, and caught her name, Miss Hegan. The turnouts in the ring consisted of one horse harnessed in front of another; and Montague was wondering what conceivable motive could induce a human being to hitch and drive horses in that fashion. The conversation turned upon Miss Yvette, who was in the ring; and Betty remarked upon the airy grace with which she wielded the long whip she carried. "Did you see what the paper said about her this morning ? " she asked. " Miss Simpkins was exquisitely clad in purple velvet,' and so on ! She looked for all the world like the Venus at the Hippo- drome !" "Why isn't she in Society.?" asked Mon- tague, curiously. "She!" exclaimed Betty. "Why, she's a travesty!" There was a moment's pause, preceding a re- mark by their young lady visitor. " I've an idea," said she, "that the real reason she never got into Society was that she was fond of her old uncle." And Montague gave a short glance at the speaker, who was gazing fixedly into the ring. He heard the Major chuckle, and he thought that he heard Betty Wyman give a little sniff. A few moments later the young lady arose, and with some remark to Mrs. Venable about how well Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 111 her costume became her, she passed on out of the box. "Who is that?" asked Montague. "That," the Major answered, "that's Laura Hegan — Jim Hegan's daughter." Oh ! " said Montague, and caught his. breath. Jim Hegan — Napoleon of finance — • czar of a gigantic system of railroads, and the power behind the political thrones of many states. "His only daughter, too," the Major added. " Gad, what a juicy morsel for somebody ! " "Well, she'll make him pay for all he gets, whoever he is!" retorted Betty, vindictively. "You don't like her.?" inquired Montague; and Betty replied promptly, "I do not !" "Her daddy and Betty's granddaddy are al- ways at swords' points," put in Major Venable. "I have nothing to do with my granddaddy's quarrels," said the young lady. "I have troub- les enough of my own." "What is the matter with Miss Hegan.?'* asked Montague, laughing. "She's an idea she's too good for the world she lives in," said Betty. "When you're with her, you feel as you will before the judgment throne." "Undoubtedly a disturbing feeling," put in the Major. "She never hands you anything but you find a pin hidden in it," v/ent on the girl. 'All her remarks are meant to be read backward, and my life is too short to straighten out their kinks. I like a person to say what they mean in plain English, and then I can either like them or not/' Digitized by Microsoft® 112 THE METROPOLIS "Mostly not," said the Major, grimly; and added, "Anyway, she's beautiful." "Perhaps," said the other. "So is the Jung- frau ; but I prefer something more comfortable." "What's Chappie de Peyster beauing her around for.''" asked Mrs. Venable. "Is he a candidate .P" "Maybe his debts are troubling him again," said Mistress Betty. "He must be in a desper- ate plight. — Did you hear how Jack Audu- bon proposed to her.?" "Did Jack propose .?" exclaimed the Major. "Of course he did," said the girl. "His brother told me." Then, for Montague's bene- fit, she explained, " Jack Audubon is the Major's nephew, and he's a bookworm, and spends all his time collecting scarabs." "What did he say to her.?" asked the Major, highly amused. "Why," said Betty, "he told her he knew she didn't love him; but also she knew that he didn't care anything about her money, and she might like to marry him so that other men would let her alone." " Gad ! " cried the old gentleman, slapping his knee. " A masterpiece ! " " Does she have so many suitors .? " asked Mon- tague ; and the Major replied, " My dear boy — she'll have a hundred million dollars some day !" At this point Oliver put in appearance, and Betty got up and went for a stroll with him ; then Montague asked for light upon Miss Hegan's remark. "What she said is perfectly true," replied the Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 113 Major; "only it riled Betty. There's many a gallant dame cruising the social seas who has stowed her old relatives out of sight in the hold." "What's the matter with old Simpkins?" asked the other. "Just a queer boy," was the reply. "He has. a big pile, and his one joy in life is the divine Yvette. It is really he who makes her ridiculous — he has a regular press agent for her, a chap he loads up with jewellery and checks whenever he gets her picture into the papers." The Major paused a moment to greet some ac- quaintance, and then resumed the conversation^ Apparently he could gossip in this intimate fash- ion about any person whom you named. Old Simpkins had been very poor as a boy, it ap- peared, and he had never got over the memory of it. Miss Yvette spent fifty thousand at a clip for Paris gowns; but every day her old uncle would save up the lumps of sugar which came with the expensive lunch he had brought to his office. And when he had several pounds he would send them home by messenger ! This conversation gave Montague a new sense of the complicatedness of the world into- which he had come. Miss Simpkins was "im- possible"; and yet there was — for instance — - that Mrs. Landis whom he had met at Mrs. Winnie Duval's. He had met her several times at the show; and he heard the Major and his sister-in-law chuckling over a paragraph in the society journal, to the effect that Mrs. Virginia van Rensselaer Landis had just returned from a successful hunting-trip in the far West. He did Digitized by Microsoft® 114 THE METROPOLIS not see the humour of this, at least not until they had told him of another paragraph which had appeared some time before : stating that Mrs. Landis had gone to acquire residence in South Dakota, taking with her thirty-five trunks and a poodle; and that "Leanie" Hopkins, the handsome young stock-broker, had taken a six months' vow of poverty, chastity, and obedi- ence. And yet Mrs. Landis was "in" Society! And moreover, she spent nearly as much upon her clothes as Miss Yvette, and the clothes were quite as conspicuous; and if the papers did not print pages about them, it was not because Mrs. Landis was not perfectly willing. She was painted and made up quite as frankly as any chorus girl on the stage. She laughed a great deal, and in a high key, and she and her friends told stories which made Montague wish to move out of the way. Mrs. Landis had for some reason taken a fancy to Alice, and invited her home to lunch with her twice during the show. And after they had got home in the evening, the girl sat upon the bed in her fur-trimmed wrapper, and told Montague and his mother and Mammy Lucy all about her visit. "I don't believe that woman has a thing to ■do or to think about in the world except to wear clothes!" she said. "Why, she has ad- justable mirrors on ball-bearings, so that she can see every part of her skirts ! And she gets all her gowns from Paris, four times a year — she says there are four seasons now, instead of two ! Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 115 I thought that my new clothes amounted to something, but my goodness, when I saw hers !" Then AHce went on to describe the unpacking of fourteen trunks, which had just come up from the custom-house that day. Mrs. Vir- ginia's coutouriere had her photograph and her colouring (represented in actual pamts) and a figure made up from exact measurements; and so every one of the garments would fit her per- fectly. Each one came stuffed with tissue paper and held in place by a lattice-work of tape ; and attached to each gown was a piece of the fabric, from which her shoemaker would make shoes or slippers. There were street-costumes and opera wraps, robes de chambre and tea-gowns, recep- tion dresses, and wonderful ball and dinner gowns. Most of these latter were to be em- broidered with jewellery before they were worn, and imitation jewels were sewn on, to show how the real ones were to be placed. These gar- ments were made of real lace or Parisian em- broidery, and the prices paid for them were almost impossible to credit. Some of them were made of lace so filmy that the women who made them had to sit in damp cellars, because the sunlight would dry the fine threads and they would break; a single yard of the lace repre- sented forty days of labour. There was a pastel "batiste de sole" Pompadour robe, embroidered with cream silk flowers, which had cost one thousand dollars. There was a hat to go with it, which had cost a hundred and twenty-five, and shoes of grey antelope skin, buckled with mother of pearl, which had cost forty. There Digitized by Microsoft® 116 THE METROPOLIS was a gorgeous and intricate ball-dress of pale green chiffon satin, with orchids embroidered in oxidised silver, and a long court train, studded with diamonds — and this had cost six thousand dollars without the jewels ! And there was an auto coat which had cost three thousand; and an opera wrap made in Leipsic, of white unborn baby lamb, lined with ermine, which had cost twelve thousand — with a thousand additional for a hat to match ! Mrs. Landis thought noth- ing of paying thirty-five dollars for a lace hand- kerchief, or sixty dollars for a pair of spun silk hose, or two hundred dollars for a pearl and gold handled parasol trimmed with cascades of chiflfon, and made, like her hats, one for each gown. "And she insists that these things are worth the money," said Alice. "She says it's not only the material in them, but the ideas. Each cos- tume is a study, like a picture. 'I pay for the creative genius of the artist,' she said to me — 'for his ability to catch my ideas and apply them to my personality — my complexion and hair and eyes. Sometimes I design my own costumes, and so I know what hard work it is I"' Mrs. Landis came from one of New York's oldest families, and she was wealthy in her own right; she had a palace on Fifth Avenue, and now that she had turned her husband out, she had nothing at all to put in it except her clothes. Alice told about the places in which she kept them — it was like a museum ! There was a gown-room, made dust-proof, of polished hard- wood, and with tier upon tier of long poles run- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 117 ning across, and padded skirt-supporters hang- ing from them. Everywhere there was order and system — each skirt was numbered, and in a chiflFonier-drawer of the same number you would find the waist — and so on with hats and stockings and gloves and shoes and parasols. There was a row of closets, having shelves piled up with dainty lace-trimmed and beribboned lingerie; there were two closets full of hats and three of shoes. "When she went West,'.' said Alice, "one of her maids counted, and found that she had over four hundred pairs ! And she actually has a cabinet with a card-catalogue to keep track of them. And all the shelves are lined with perfumed silk sachets, and she has tiny sachets sewed in every skirt and waist ; and she has her own private perfume — she gave me some. She calls it Coeur de Jeannette, and she says she designed it herself, and had it patented !" And then Alice went on to describe the maid's workroom, which was also of polished hard- wood, and dust-proof, and had a balcony for brushing clothes, and wires upon which to hang them, and hot and cold water, and a big ironing- table and an electric stove. "But there can't be much work to do," laughed the girl, "for she never wears a gown more than two or three times. Just think of paying several thousand dollars for a costume, and giving it to your poor relations after you have worn it only twice ! And the worst of it is that Mrs. Landis says it's all nothing unusual ; you'll find such arrangements in every home of people who are socially promi- Digitized by Microsoft® 118 THE METROPOLIS nent. She says there are women who boast of never appearing twice in the same gown, and there's one dreadful personage in Boston who wears each costume once, and then has it solemnly cremated by her butler!" "It is wicked to do such things," put in old Mrs. Montague, when she had heard this tale through. "I don't see how people can get any pleasure out of it." "That's what I said," replied Alice. "To whom did you say that.^" asked Mon- tague. "To Mrs. Landis.?" 'No," said Alice, "to a cousin of hers. I was downstairs waiting for her, and this girl came in. And we got to talking about it, and I said that I didn't think I could ever get used to such things." "What did she say.?" asked the other. "She answered me strangely," said the girl. "She's tall, and very stately, and I was a little bit afraid of her. She said, 'You'll get used to it. Everybody you know will be doing it, and if you try to do differently, they'll take offence; and you won't have the courage to do without friends. You'll be meaning every day to stop, but you never will, and you'll go on until you die.'" "What did you say to that.?" " Nothing," answered Alice. " Just then Mrs. Landis came in, and Miss Hegan went away." " Miss Hegan ? " echoed Montague. "Yes," said the other. "That's her name — Laura Hegan. Have you met her.?" Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER VIII THE Horse Show was held in Madison Square Garden, a building occupying a whole city block. It seemed to Montague that during the four days he attended he was intro- duced to enough people to fill it to the doors. Each one of the exquisite ladies and gentlemen extended to him a delicately gloved hand, and remarked what perfect weather they were hav- ing, and asked him how long he had been in New York, and what he thought of it. Then they would talk about the horses, and about the people who were present, and what they had on. He saw little of his brother, who was squiring the Walling ladies most of the time ; and Alice, too, was generally separated from him and taken care of by others. Yet he was never alone — there was always some young matron ready to lead him to her carriage and whisk him away to lunch or dinner. Many times he wondered why people should be so kind to him, a stranger, and one who could do nothing for them in return. Mrs. Billy Alden undertook to explain it to him, one afternoon, as he sat in her box. There had to be some people to enjoy, it appeared, or there would be no fun in the game. "Everything is new and strange to you," said she, "and you're delicious and refreshing ; you make these women 119 Digitized by Microsoft® 120 THE METROPOLIS think perhaps they oughtn't to be so bored after all ! Here's a woman who's bought a great painting; she's told that it's great, but she doesn't understand it herself — all she knows is that it cost her a hundred thousand dollars. And now you come along, and to you it's really a painting — and don't you see how gratifying that is to her?" "Oliver is always telling me it's bad form to admire," said the man, laughing. " Yes ?" said the other. "Well, don't you let that brother of yours spoil you. There are more than enough of blase people in town — you be yourself." He appreciated the compliment, but added, "I'm afraid that when the novelty is worn off, people will be tired of me." "You'll find your place," said Mrs. Alden — "the people you like and who like you." And she went on to explain that here he was being passed about among a number of very different 'sets," with different people and different tastes. Society had become split up in that manner of late — each set being jealous and contemptuous of all the other sets. Because of the fact that they overlapped a little at the edges, it was pos- sible for him to meet here a great many people who never met each other, and were even un- aware of each other's existence. And Mrs. Alden went on to set forth the dif- ference between these "sets"; they ran from the most exclusive down to the most "yellow," where they shaded off into the disreputable rich — of whom, it seemed, there were hordes in the Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 121 city. These included "sporting" and theatrical and political people, some of whom were very rich indeed; and these sets in turn shaded off into the criminals and the demi-monde — who might also easily be rich, "Some day," said Mrs. Alden, "you should get my brother to tell you about all these people. He's been in poli- tics, you know, and ne has a racing-stable." And Mrs. Alden told him about the subtle little differences in the conventions of these various sets of Society. There was the matter of women smoking, for instance. All women smoked, nowadays; but some would do it only in their own apartments, with their women friends ; and some would retire to an out-of-the- way corner to do it; while others would smoke in their own dining rooms, or wherever the men smoked. All agreed, however, in never smok- ing "in public" — that is, where they would be seen by people not of their own set. Such, at any rate, had always been the rule, though a few daring ones were beginning to defy even that. Such rules were very rigid, but they were purely conventional, they had nothing to do with right or wrong: a fact which Mrs. Alden set forth with her usual incisiveness. A woman, married or unmarried, might travel with a man all over Europe, and everyone might know that she did it, but it would make no difference, so long as she did not do it in America. There was one young matron whom Montague would meet, a raging beauty, who regularly got drunk at dinner parties, and had to be escorted to her carriage by the butler. She moved in the most Digitized by Microsoft® 122 THE METROPOLIS exclusive circles, and everyone treated it as a joke. Unpleasant things like this did not hurt a person unless they got "out" — that is, unless they became a scandal in the courts or the newspapers. Mrs. Alden herself had a friend (whom she cordially hated) who had gotten a divorce from her husband and married her lover forthwith, and had for this been ostracised by Society. Once when she came to some semi- public affair, fifty women had risen at once and left the room ! She might have lived with her lover, both before and after the divorce, and everyone might have known it, and no one would have cared; but the convenances declared that she should not marry him until a year had elapsed after the divorce. One thing to which Mrs. Alden could testify, as a result of a lifetime's observation, was the rapid rate at which these conventions, even the most essential of them, were giving way, and being replaced by a general "do as you please." Anyone could see that the power of women like Mrs. Devon, who represented the old regime, and were dignified and austere and exclusive, was yielding before the onslaught of new people, who were bizarre and fantastic and promiscu- ous and loud. And the younger sets cared no more about anyone — nor about anything under heaven, save to have a good time in their own harum-scarum ways. In the old days one always received a neatly written or engraved invitation to dinner, worded in impersonal and formal style; but the other day Mrs. Alden had found a message which had been taken from the Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 123 telephone: "Please come to dinner, but don't come unless you can bring a man, or we'll be thirteen at the table." And along with this went a perfectly incredible increase in luxury and extravagance. "You are surprised at what you see here to-day," said she — "but take my word for it, if you were to come back five years later, you'd find all our present standards antiquated, and our present pace- makers sent to the rear. You'd find new hotels and theatres opening, and food and clothing and furniture that cost twice as much as they cost now. Not so long ago a private car was a luxury; now it's as much a necessity as an opera-box or a private ballroom, and people who really count have private trains. I can remember when our girls wore pretty musUn gowns in summer, and sent them to wash; now they wear what they call lingerie gowns, dimity en princesse, with silk embroidery and real lace and ribbons, that cost a thousand dollars apiece and won't wash. Years ago when I gave a dinner, I invited a dozen friends, and my own chef cooked it and my own servants served it. Now I have to pay my steward ten thousand a year, and nothing that I have is good enough. I have to ask forty or fifty people, and I call in a caterer, and he brings everything of his own, and my servants go off and get drunk. You used to get a good dinner for ten dollars a plate, and fifteen was something special ; but now you hear of dinners that cost a thousand a plate ! And it's not enough to have beautiful flowers on the table — you have to have 'scenery'; there Digitized by Microsoft® 124 THE METROPOLIS must be a rural landscape for a background, and goldfish in the finger-bowls, and five thou- sand dollars' worth of Florida orchids on the table, and floral favours of roses that cost a hundred and fifty dollars a dozen. I attended a dinner at the Waldorf last year that had cost fifty thousand dollars; and when I ask those people to see me, I have to give them as good as I got. The other day I paid a thousand dollars for a table-cloth !" "Why do you do it.?" asked Montague, abruptly. "God knows," said the other; "I don't. I sometimes wonder myself. I guess it's because I've nothing else to do. It's like the story they tell about my brother — he was losing money in a gambUng-place in Saratoga, and someone said to him, ' Davy, why do you go there — don't you know the game is crooked .?' 'Of course it's crooked,' said he, 'but damn it, it's the only game in town !'" "The pressure is more than anyone can stand," said Mrs. Alden, after a moment's thought. "It's like trying to swim against a current. You have to float, and do what every- one expects you to do — your children and your friends and your servants and your tradespeople. All the world is in a conspiracy against you." " It's appalhng to me," said the man. "Yes," said the other, "and there's never any end to it. You think you know it all, but you find you really know very httle. Just think of the number of people there are trying to go the pace ! They say there are seven thousand Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 125 millionaires in this country, but I say there are twenty thousand in New York alone — or if they don't own a million, they're spending the income of it, which amounts to the same thing. You can figure that a man who pays ten thou- sand a year for rent is paying fifty thousand to live; and there's Fifth Avenue — two miles of it, if you count the uptown and downtown parts ; and there's Madison Avenue, and half a dozen houses adjoining on every side street; and then there are the hotels and apartment houses, to say nothing of the West Side and Riverside Drive. And you meet these mobs of people in the shops and the hotels and the theatres, and they aU want to be better dressed than you. I saw a woman here to-day that I never saw in my hfe before, and I heard her say she'd paid two thousand dollars for a lace handkerchief; and it might have been true, for I've been asked to pay ten thousand for a lace shawl at a bar- gain. It's a common enough thing to see a woman walking on Fifth Avenue with twenty or thirty thousand dollars' worth of furs on her. Fifty thousand is often paid for a coat of sable, and I know of one that cost two hundred thou- sand. I know women who have a dozen sets of furs — ermine, chinchilla, black fox, baby lamb, and mink and sable; and I know a man whose chauffeur quit him because he wouldn't buy him a ten-thousand-dollar fur coat ! And once people used to pack their furs away, and take care of them; but now they wear them about the street, or at the sea-shore, and you can fairly see them fade. Or else their cut goes but Digitized by Microsoft® 126 THE METROPOLIS of fashion, and so they have to have new ones!" All that was material for thought. It was all true — there was no question about that. It seemed to be the rule that whenever you ques- tioned a tale of the extravagances of New York, you would hear the next day of something several times more starthng. Montague was staggered at the idea of a two-hundred- thousand- dollar fur coat; and yet not long afterward there arrived in the city a titled Englishwoman, who owned a coat worth a million dollars, which hard-headed insurance companies had insured for half a million. It was made of the soft plumage of rare Hawaiian birds, and had taken twenty years to make ; each feather was crescent- shaped, and there were wonderful designs in crim- son and gold and black. Every day in the casual conversation of your acquaintances you heard of similar incredible things : a tiny antique Persian rug, which could be folded into an overcoat pocket, for ten thousand dollars; a set of five 'art fans," each blade painted by a famous artist, and costing forty-three thousand dollars; a crystal cup for eighty thousand ; an edition de luxe of the works of Dickens for a hundred thou- sand ; a ruby, the size of a pigeon's egg, for three hundred thousand. In some of these great New York palaces there were fountains which cost a hundred dollars a minute to run; and in the harbour there were yachts which cost twenty thousand a month to keep in commission. And that same day, as it chanced, he learned of a brand-new kind of squandering. He went Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 127 home to lunch with Mrs. Winnie Duval, and there met Mrs. Caroline Smythe, with whom he had talked at Castle Havens. Mrs. Smythe, whose husband had been a well-known Wall Street plunger, was soft and mushy, and very gushing in manner ; and she asked him to come home to dinner with her, adding, " I'll introduce you to my babies." From what Montague had so far seen, he judged that babies played a very small part in the lives of the women of Society ; and so he was interested, and asked, "How many have you .J*" "Only two, in town," said Mrs. Smythe. "I've just come up, you see." "How old are they.^*" he inquired politely; and when the lady added, "About two years," he asked, "Won't they be in bed by dinner time?" "Oh my, no!" said Mrs. Smythe. "The dear httle lambs wait up for me. I always find them scratching at my chamber door and wagging their little tails." Then Mrs. Winnie laughed merrily, and said, "Why do you fool him?" and went on to in- form "Montague that CaroUne's "babies" were griffons Bruxelloises. Griffons suggested to him vague ideas of dragons and unicorns and gar- goyles ; but he said nothing more, save to accept the invitation, and that evening he discovered that griffons Bruxelloises were tiny dogs, long- haired, yellow, and fluflfy; and that for her two priceless treasures Mrs. Smythe had an expert nurse, to whom she paid a hundred dollars a month, and also a footman, and a special cuisine Digitized by Microsoft® 128 THE METROPOLIS in which their complicated food was prepared. They had a regular dentist, and a physician, and gold plate to eat from. Mrs. Smythe also Owned two long-haired St. Bernards of a very rare breed, and a fierce Great Dane, and a very fat Boston bull pup — the last having been trained to go for an airing all alone in her car- riage, with a solemn coachman and footman to drive him. , Montague, deftly keeping the conversation upon the subject of pets, learned that all this was quite common. Many women in Society artificially made themselves barren, because of the inconvenience incidental to pregnancy and motherhood; and instead they lavished their affections upon cats and dogs. Some of these animals had elaborate costumes, rivalling in expensiveness those of their step-mothers. They wore tiny boots, which cost eight dollars a pair — house boots, and street boots lacing up to the knees ; they had house-coats, walking-coats, dusters, sweaters, coats lined with ermine, and automobile coats with head and chest-protectors and hoods and goggles — and each coat fitted with a pocket for its tiny handkerchief of fine linen or lace ! And they had collars set with rubies and pearls and diamonds — one had a collar that cost ten thousand dollars ! Some- times there would be a coat to match every gown of the owner. There were dog nurseries and resting-rooms, in which they might be left temporarily; and manicure parlours for cats, with a physician in charge. When these pets died, there was an expensive cemetery in Brooklyn Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 129 especially for their interment; and they would be duly embalmed and buried in a plush-lined casket, and would have costly marble monu- ments. When one of Mrs. Smythe's best-beloved >ugs had fallen ill of congestion of the liver, she lad had tan-bark put upon the street in front of ler house; and when in spite of this the dog died, she had sent out cards edged in black, inviting her friends to a "memorial service." Also she showed Montague a number of books with very costly bindings, in which were demon- strated the unity, simphcity, and immortality of the souls of cats and dogs. Apparently the sentimental Mrs. Smythe was willing to talk about these pets all through dinner ; and so was her aunt, a thin and angular spinster, who sat on Montague's other side. And he was willing to listen — he wanted to know it all. There were umbrellas for dogs, to be fastened over their backs in wet weather; there were manicure and toilet sets, and silver medicine-chests, and jewel-studded whips. There were sets of engraved visiting-cards ; there were wheel-chairs in which invahd cats and dogs might be taken for an airing. There were shows for cats and dogs, with pedigrees and prizes, and nearly as great crowds as the Horse Show ; Mrs. Smythe's St. Bernards were worth seven thou- sand dollars apiece, and there were bull-dogs worth twice that. There was a woman who had come all the way from the Pacific coast to have a specialist perform an operation upon the throat of her Yorkshire terrier ! There was an- other who had built for her dog a tiny Queen Digitized by Microsoft® 130 THE METROPOLIS Anne cottage, with rooms papered and ca,rpeted and hung with lace curtains ! Once a young man of fashion had come to the Waldon and registered himself and "Miss Elsie Cochrane"; and when the clerk made the usual inquiries as to the relationship of the young lady, it tran- spired that Miss Elsie was a dog, arrayed in a Erim little tea-gown, and requiring a room to erself. And then there was a tale of a cat which had inherited a life-pension from a forty- thousand-dollar estate ; it had a two-floor apart- ment and several attendants, and sat at table and ate shrimps and Italian chestnuts, and had a velvet couch for naps, and a fur-Uned basket for sleeping at night ! Four days of horses were enough for Mon- tague, and on Friday morning, when Siegfried Harvey called him up and asked if he and Alice would come out to ' The Roost" for the week- end, he accepted gladly. Charlie Carter was going, and volunteered to take them in his car; and so again they crossed the Williamsburg Bridge — 'the Jewish passover," as Charlie called it — and went out on Long Island. Montague was very anxious to get a "line" on Charlie Carter; for he had not been pre- pared for the startling promptness with which this young man had fallen at Alice's feet. It was so obvious, that everybody was smiling over it — he was with her every minute that he could arrange it, and he turned up at every place to which she was invited. Both Mrs. Winnie and Oliver were quite evidently complacent, but Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 131 Montague was by no means the same, Charlie ' had struck him as a good-natured but rather weak youth, inclined to melancholy; he was never without a cigarette in his fingers, and there had been signs that he was not quite proof against the pitfalls which Society set about him in the shape of decanters and wine-ciips : though in a world where the fragrance of spirits was never out of one's nostrils, and where people drank with such perplexing frequency, it was hard to know where to draw a line. "You won't find my place like Havens's," Siegfried Harvey had said. "It is real country." Montague found it the most attractive of all the homes he had seen so far. It was a big rambling house, all in rustic style, with great hewn logs outside, and rafters within, and a winding oak stairway, and any number of dens and cosey corners, and broad window-seats with moun- tains of pillows. Everything here was built for comfort — there was a buliard-room and a smoking room, and a real library with readable books and great chairs in which one sank out of sight. There were log fires blazing everywhere, and pictures on the walls that told of sport, and no end of guns and antlers and trophies of all sorts. But you were not to suppose that all this elaborate rusticity would be any excuse for the absence of attendants in livery, and a chef who boasted the cordon bleu, and a dinner-table resplendent with crystal and silver and orchids and ferns. After all, though the host called it a "small" place, he had invited twenty guests, and he had a hunter in his stables for each one of them. Digitized by Microsoft® 132 THE METROPOLIS But the most wonderful thing about "The Roost" was the fact that, at a touch of a button, all the walls of the lower rooms vanished into the second story, and there was one huge, lo lighted room, with violins tuning up and cal ing to one's feet. They set a fast pace here — the dancing lasted until three o'clock, and at dawn again they were dressed and mounted, and following the pink-coated grooms and the hounds across the frost-covered fields. Montague was half prepared for a tame fox, but this was spared him. There was real game, it seemed ; and soon the pack gave tongue, and away went the hunt. It was the wildest ride that Montague ever had taken — over ditches and streams and innumerable rail-fences, and through thick coverts and densely populated barnyards; but he was in at the death, and Alice was only a few yards behind, to the im- mense delight of the company. This seemed to Montague the first real life he had met, and he thought to himself that these full-blooded and high-spirited men and women made a "set" into which he would have been glad to fit — ■ save only that he had to earn his living, and they did not. In the afternoon there was more riding, and walks in the crisp November air; and indoors, bridge and rackets and ping-pong, and a fast and furious game of roulette, with the host as banker. "Do I look much Uke a professional gambler?" he asked of Montague; and when the other repUed that he had not yet met any New York gamblers, young Harvey went on to Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 133 tell how he haxi gone to buy this apparatus (the sale of which was forbidden by law) and had been asked by the dealer how "strong" he wanted it ! Then in the evening there was more dancing, and on Sunday another hunt. That night a gambling mood seemed to seize the company — there were two bridge tables, and in another room the most reckless game of poker that Mon- tague had ever sat in. It broke up at three in the morning, and one of the company wrote him a check for sixty-five hundred dollars ; but even that could not entirely smooth his conscience, nor reconcile him to the fever that was in his blood. Most important to him, however, was the fact that during the game he at last got to know Char- he Carter. Charlie did not play, for the reason that he was drunk, and one of the company told him so and refused to play with him ; which left poor Charlie nothing to do but get drunker. This he did, and came and hung over the shoul- ders of the players, and told the company all about himself. Montague was prepared to allow for the "wUd oats" of a youngster with unlimited money, but never in his life had he heard or dreamed of anything like this boy. For half an hour he wandered about the table, and poured out a steady stream of obscenities; his mind was hke a swamp, in which dwelt loathsome and hideous serpents which came to the surface at night and showed their flat heads and their sUmy coils. In the heavens above or the earth beneath there was Digitized by Microsoft® 134 THE METROPOLIS nothing sacred to him; there was nothing too revolting to be spewed out. And the company accepted the performance as an old story — the men would laugh, and push the boy away, and say, "Oh, Charlie, go to the devil!" After it was all over, Montague took one of the company aside and asked him what it meant; to which the man replied : " Good God ! Do you mean that nobody has told you about Charlie Carter?" It appeared that Charlie was one of the "gilded youths" of the Tenderloin, whose ex- ploits had been celebrated in the papers. And after the attendants had bundled him off to bed, several of the men gathered about the fire and sipped hot punch, and rehearsed for Montague's benefit some of his leading exploits. CharUe was only twenty-three, it seemed ; and when he was ten his father had died and left eight or ten milUons in trust for him, in the care of a poor, foolish aunt whom he twisted about his finger. At the age bf twelve he was a ciga- rette fiend, and had the run of the wine-cellar. When he went to a rich private school he took whole trunks full of cigarettes with him, and finally ran away to Europe, to acquire the learn- ing of the brothels of Paris. And then he came home and struck the Tenderloin; and at three o'clock one morning he walked through a plate- glass window, and so the newspapers took him up. That had suddenly opened a new vista in life for Charlie — he became a devotee of fame; everywhere he went he was followed by newspaper reporters and a staring crowd. He Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 135 carried wads as big around as his arm, and gave away hundred-dollar tips to bootblacks, and lost forty thousand dollars in a game of poker. He ?ave a fete to the demi-monde, with a jewelled !hristmas tree in midsummer, and fifty thousand dollars' worth of splendour. But the greatest stroke of all was the announcement that he was going to build a submarine yacht and fill it with chorus-girls ! — Now Charlie had sunk out of Eublic attention, and his friends would not see im for days; he would be lying in a "sporting house" literally wallowing in champagne. And all this, Montague realised, his brother must have known ! And he had said not a word about it — because of the eight or ten millions which Charlie would have when he was twenty- five! Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER IX IN the morning they went home with others of the party by train. They could not wait for CharUe and his automobile, because Monday was the opening night of the Opera, and no one could miss that. Here Society would appear in its most gorgeous raiment, and there would be a show of jewellery such as could be seen nowhere else in the world. General Prentice and his wife had opened their town-house, and had invited them to dinner and to share their box ; and so at about hatf-past nine o'clock Montague found himself seated in a great balcony of the shape of a horseshoe, with several hundred of the richest people in the city. There was another tier of boxes above, and three gal- leries above that, and a thousand or more people seated and standing below him. Upon the big stage there was an elaborate and showy play, the words of which were sung to the accompani- ment of an orchestra. Now Montague had never heard an opera, and he was fond of music. The second act had just begun when he came in, and all through it he sat quite spellbound, listening to the most ravish- ing strains that ever he had heard in his life. He scarcely noticed that Mrs. Prentice was spending her time studying the occupants of the other boxes through a jewelled lorgnette, or that Oliver was chattering to her daughter. 136 Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 137 But after the act was over, OKver got him alone outside of the box, and whispered, "For God's sake, Allan, don't make a fool of yourself." "Why, what's the matter?" asked the other. "What will people think," exclaimed Ohver, "seeing you sitting there like a man in a dope dream.?" "Why," laughed the other, "they'll think I'm listening to the music." To which Ohver responded, "People don't come to the Opera to listen to the music." This sounded like a joke, but it was not. To Society the Opera was a great state function, an exhibition of far more exclusiveness and magnifi- cence than the Horse Show; and Society cer- tainly had the right to say, for it owned the opera- house and ran it. The real music-lovers who came, either stood up in the back, or sat in the fifth gallery, close to the ceiling, where the air was foul and hot. How much Society cared about the play was suflSciently indicated by the fact that all of the operas were sung in foreign languages, and sung so carelessly that the few who under- stood the languages could make but Uttle of the words. Once there was a world-poet who de- voted his life to trying to make the Opera an art; and in the battle with Society he all but starved to death. Now, after half a century, his genius had triumphed, and Society consented to sit for hours in darkness and listen to the domestic dis- putes of German gods and goddesses. But what Society really cared for was a play with beautiful costumes and scenery and dancing, and pretty songs to which one could hsten while one talked ; Digitized by Microsoft® 138 THE METROPOLIS the story must be elemental and passionate, so that one could understand it in pantomime — say the tragic love of a beautiful and noble-minded courtesan for a gallant young man of fashion. Nearly everyone who came to the Opera had a glass, by means of which he could bring each gorgeously clad society dame close to him, and study her at leisure. There were said to be two hundred million dollars' worth of diamonds in New York, and those that were not in the stores were very apt to be at this show; for here was where they could accomplish the purpose for which they existed — here was where all the world came to stare at them. There were nine prominent society women, who among them dis- played five million dollars' worth of jewels. You would see stomachers which looked like a Eiece of a coat of mail, and were made wholly of lazing diamonds. You would see emeralds and rubies and diamonds and pearls made into tiaras — that is to say, imitation crowns and coro- nets — and exhibited with a stout and solemn dowager for a pediment. One of the Wallings had set this fashion, and now everyone of impor- tance wore them. One lady to whom Montague was introduced made a specialty of pearls — two black pearl ear-rings at forty thousand dol- lars, a string at three hundred thousand, a brooch of pink pearls at fifty thousand, and two necklaces at a quarter of a million each ! This incessant repetition of the prices of things came to seem very sordid ; but Montague found that there was no getting away from it. The people in Society who paid these prices affected Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 139 to be above all such considerations, to be inter- ested only in the beauty and artistic excellence of the things themselves; but one found that they always talked about the prices which other people had paid, and that somehow other people always knew what they had paid. They took care also to see that the public and the news- papers knew what they had paid, and knew everything else that they were doing. At this Opera, for instance, there was a diagram of the boxes printed upon the programme, and a list of all the box-holders, so that anyone could tell who' was who. You might see these great dames in their gorgeous robes coming from their carriages, with crowds staring at them and detectives hovering about. And the bosom of each would be throb- bing with a wild and wonderful vision of the moment when she would enter her box, and the music would be forgotten, and all eyes would be turned upon her; and she would lay aside her wraps, and flash upon the staring throngs, a vision of dazzling splendour. Some of these jewels were family treasures, well known to New York for generations ; and in such cases it was becoming the fashion to leave the real jewels in the safe-deposit vault, and to wear imitation stones exactly like them. From homes where the jewels were kept, detectives were never absent, and in many cases there were detectives watching the detectives ; and yet every once in a while the newspapers would be full of a sensa- tional story of a robbery. Then the unfortu- nates who chanced to be suspected would be seized by the police and subjected to what was Digitized by Microsoft® 140 THE METROPOLIS jocularly termed the "third degree," and con- sisted of tortures as elaborate and cruel as any which the Spanish Inquisition had invented. The advertising value of this kind of thing was found to be so great that famous actresses also had costly jewels, and now and then would have "them stolen. That night, when they had got home, Montague lad a talk with his cousin about Charlie Carter. He discovered a peculiar situation. It seemed that Alice already knew that Charlie had been *'bad." He was sick and miserable; and her beauty and innocence had touched him and made bim ashamed of himself, and he had hinted darkly at dreadful evils. Thus carefully veiled, and tinged with mystery and romance, Montague could understand how Charlie made an interest- ing and appealing figure. "He says I'm differ- ent from any girl he ever met," said Alice — a remark of such striking originality that her cousin could not keep back his smile. Alice was not the least bit in love with him, and bad no idea of being ; and she said that she would accept no invitations, and never go alone with him; but she did not see how she could avoid him when she met him at other people's houses. And to this Montague had to assent. General Prentice had inquired kindly as to what Montague had seen in New York, and how he was getting along. He added that he had talked about him to Judge Ellis, and that when he was ready to get to work, the Judge would per- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 141 haps have some suggestions to make to him. He approved, however, of Montague's plan of getting his bearings first ; and said that he would intro- duce him and put him up at a couple of the lead- ing clubs. All this remained in Montague's mind; but there was no use trying to think of it at the mo- ment. Thanksgiving was at hand, and in count- less country mansions there would be gaieties under way. Bertie Stuyvesant had planned an excursion to his Adirondack camp, and had in- vited a score or so of young people, including the Montagues. This would be a new feature of the city's life, worth knowing about. Their expedition began with a theatre-party. Bertie had engaged four boxes, and they met there, an hour or so after the performance had begun. This made no difference, however, for the play was like the opera — a number of songs and dances strung together, and with only plot enough to provide occasion for elaborate scenery and costumes. From the play they were carried to the Grand Central Station, and a little before mid- night Bertie's private train set out on its journey. This train was a completely equipped hotel. There was a baggage compartment and a dining- car and kitchen; and a drawing-room and library car ; and a bedroom-car — not with berths, such as the ordinary sleeping-car provides, but with comfortable bedrooms, furnished in white mahogany, and provided with running water and electric light. All these cars were built of steel, and automatically ventilated ; and they were furnished in the luxurious fashion of Digitized by Microsoft® 142 THE METROPOLIS everything with which Bertie Stuyvesant had any- thing to do. In the Ubrary-car there were velvet carpets upon the floor, and furniture of South American mahogany, and paintings upon the walls over which great artists had laboured for years. Bertie's chef and servants were on board, and a supper was ready in the dining-car, which they ate while watching the Hudson by moonlight. And the next morning they reached their desti- nation, a httle station in the mountain wilder- ness. The train lay upon a switch, and so they had breakfast at their leisure, and then, bundled in furs, came out into the crisp pine-laden air of the woods. There was snow upon the ground, and eight big sleighs waiting; and for nearly three hours they drove in the frosty sunlight, through most beautiful mountain scenery. A good part of the drive was in Bertie's " preserve," and the road was private, as big signs notified one every hundred yards or so. So at last they reached a lake, winding like a snake among towering hills, and with a huge baronial castle standing out upon the rocky shore. This imitation fortress was the "camp." Bertie's father had built it, and visited it only half a dozen times in his life. Bertie himself had only been here twice, he said. The deer were so plentiful that in the winter they died in scores. Nevertheless there were thirty game- keepers to guard the ten thousand acres of forest, and prevent anyone's hunting in it. There were many such "preserves" in this Adirondack wil- derness, so Montague was told ; one man had a whole mountain fenced about with heavy iron Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 14S railing, and had moose and elk and even wild boar inside. And as for the " camps," there were so many that a new style of architecture had been developed here — to say nothing of those which followed old styles, like this imported Rhine castle. One of Bertie's crowd had a big Swiss chalet ; and one of the Wallings had a Japanese palace to which he came every August — a house which had been built from plans drawn in Japan, and by labourers imported especially from Japan. It was full of Japanese ware — furniture, tapes- try, and mosaics; and the guides remembered with wonder the strange silent, brown-skinned httle men who had laboured for days at carving a bit of wood, and had built a tiny pagoda-like tea-house with more bits of wood in it than a man could count in a week. They had a luncheon of fresh venison and par- tridges and trout, and in the afternoon a hunt. The more active set out to track the deer in the snow; but most prepared to watch the lake- shore, while the gamekeepers turned loose the dogs back in the hills. This "hounding" was against the law, but Bertie was his own law here — and at the worst there could simply be a small fine, imposed upon some of the keepers. They drove eight or ten deer to water ; and as they fired as many as twenty shots at one deer, they had quite a lively time. Then at dusk they came back, in a fine glow of excitement, and spent the evening before the blazing logs, telling over their adventures. The party spent two days and a half here, and on the last evening, which was Thanksgiving, Digitized by Microsoft® 144 THE METROPOLIS they had a wild turkey which Bertie had shot the week before in Virginia, and were entertained by a minstrel show which had been brought up from New York the night before. The next afternoon they drove back to the train. In the morning, when th^^ reached the city, Alice found a note from Mrs. Winnie Duval, begging her and Montague to come to lunch and attend a private lecture by the Swami Babuba- nana, who would tell them all about the previous states of their souls. They went — though not without a protest from old Mrs. Montague, who declared it was "worse than Bob IngersoU." And then, in the evening, came Mrs. de Graffenried's opening entertainment, which was one of the great events of the social year. In the general rush of things Montague had not had a chance properly to realise it ; but Reggie Mann and Mrs. de Graffenried had been working over it for weeks. When the Montagues arrived, they found the Riverside mansion — which was deco- rated in imitation of an Arabian palace — turned into a jungle of tropical plants. They had come early at Reggie's request, and he introduced them to Mrs. de Graffenried, a tall and angular lady with a leathern complexion painfully painted ; Mrs. de Graffenried was about fifty years of age, but like all the women of So- ciety she was made up for thirty. Just at present there were beads of perspiration upon her fore- head; something had gone wrong at the last moment, and so Reggie would have no time to show them the favours, as he had intended. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 145 About a hundred and fifty guests were invited to this entertainment. A supper was served at little tables in the great ballroom, and afterward the guests wandered about the house while the tables were whisked out of the way and the room turned into a playhouse. A company from one of the Broadway theatres would be bundled into cabs at the end of the performance, and by mid- night they would be ready to repeat the perform- ance at Mrs. de Graff enried's. Montague chanced to be near when this company arrived, and he observed that the guests had crowded up too close, and not left room enough for the actors. So the manager had placed them in a little ante- room, and when Mrs. de Graff enried observed this, she rushed at the man, and swore at him like a dragoon, and ordered the bewildered performers, out into the main room. But this was peering behind the scenes, and he was supposed to be watching the play. The en- tertainment was another "musical comedy" like the one he had seen a few nights before. On that occasion, however, Bertie Stuyvesant's sister had talked to him the whole time, while now he was let alone, and had a chance to watch the per- formance. This was a very popular play ; it had had a long run, and the papers told how its author had an income of a couple of hundred thousand dol- lars a year. And here was an audience of the most rich and influential people in the city ; and they laughed and clapped, and made it clear that they were enjoying themselves heartily. And what sort of a play was it ? Digitized by Microsoft® 146 THE METROPOLIS j» It was called "The Kaliph of Kamskatka It had no shred of a plot ; the Kaliph had seven- teen wives, and there was an American drummer who wanted to sell him another — but then you did not need to remember this, for nothing came of it. There was nothing in the play which could be called a character — there was nothing which could be connected with any real emotion •ever felt by human beings. Nor could one say that there was any incident — at least nothing happened because of anything else. Each event was a separate thing, like the spasmodic jerking in the face of an idiot. Of this sort of "action" there was any quantity — at an instant's no- tice everyone on the stage would fall sim,ultane- ously into this condition of idiotic jerking. There was rushing about, shouting, laughing, exclaiming; the stage was in a continual uproar of excitement, which was without any reason or meaning. So it was impossible to think of the actors in their parts ; one kept thinking of them as human beings — thinking of the awful tragedy of full-grown men and women being compelled by the pressure of hunger to dress up and paint themselves, and then come out in public and dance, stamp, leap about, wring their hands, make faces, and otherwise be "lively." The costumes were of two sorts : one fantas- tic, supposed to represent the East, and the other a kind of redtictio ad absurdum of fashionable garb. The leading man wore a "natty" outing- suit, and strutted with a little cane ; his stock in trade was a jaunty air, a kind of perpetual flour- ish, and a wink that suggested the cunning of a Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 147 satyr. The leading lady changed her costume several times in each act ; but it invariably con- tained the elements of bare arms and bosom and back, and a skirt which did not reach her knees, and bright-coloured silk stockings, and slippers with heels two inches high. Upon the least prov- ocation she would execute a little pirouette, which would reveal the rest of her legs, surrounded by a mass of lace ruffles. It is the nature of the human mind to seek the end of things; if this woman had worn a suit of tights and nothing else, she would have been as uninteresting as an underwear advertisement in a magazine; but this incessant not-quite-revealing of herself ex- erted a subtle fascination. At frequent intervals the orchestra would start up a jerky little tune, and the two "stars" would begin to sing in nasal voices some words expressive of passion; then the man would take the woman about the waist and dance and swing her about and bend her back- ward and gaze into her eyes — actions all vaguely suggestive of the relationship of sex. At the end of the verse a chorus would come gliding on, clad in any sort of costume which admitted of colour and the display of legs ; the painted women of this chorus were never still for an instant — if they were not actually dancing, they were wriggling their legs, and jerking their bodies from side to side, and nodding their heads, and in all other possible ways being "lively." But it was not the physical indecency of this show that struck Montague so much as its intel- lectual content. The dialogue of the piece was what is called "smart"; that is, it was full of a Digitized by Microsoft® 148 THE METROPOLIS kind of innuendo which implied a secret under- standing of evil between the actor and his audi- ence — a sort of countersign which passed be- tween them. After all, it would have been an error to say that there were no ideas in the play — there was one idea iipon which all the interest of it was based ; and Montague strove to analyse this idea and formulate it to himself. There are certain life principles — one might call them moral axioms — which are the result of the experience of countless ages of the human race, and upon the adherence to which the continu- ance of the race depends. And here was an audience by whom all these principles were — '• not questioned, nor yet disputed, nor yet denied — but to whom the denial was the axiom, some- thing which it would be too banal to state jHatly, but which it was elegant and witty to take for granted. In this audience there were elderly people, and married men and women, and young men and maidens ; and a perfect gale of laughter swept through it at a story of a married woman whose lover had left her when he got married : — ' " She must have been heartbroken," said the' leading lady. " She was desperate," said the leading man, with a grin. " What did she do," asked the lady. " Go and shoot herself ? " " Worse than that," said the man. " She went back to her husband and had a baby ! " But to complete your understanding of the sig- nificance of this play, you must bring yourself Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 149 to realise that it was not merely a play, but a hind of a play ; it had a name — a "musical comedy" — the meaning of which everyone understood. Hundreds of such plays were written and pro- duced, and "dramatic critics" went to see them and gravely discussed them, and many thousands of people made their livings by travel- ling over the country and playing them ; stately theatres were built for them, and hxindreds of thousands of people paid their money every night to see them. And all this no joke and no night- mare — but a thing that really existed. Men and women were doing these things — actual flesh-and-blood human beings. Montague wondered, in an awe-stricken sort of way, what kind of human being it could be who had flourished the cane and made the gri- maces in that play. Later on, when he came to know the "Tenderloin," he met this same actor, and he found that he had begun life as a little Irish " mick " who lived in a tenement, and whose mother stood at the head of the stairway and de- fended him with a rolling-pin against a police- man who was chasing him. He had discovered that he could make a living by his comical antics ; but when he came home and told his mother that he had been offered twenty dollars a week by a show manager, she gave him a licking for lying to her. Now he was making three thou- sand dollars a week — more than the President of the United States and his cabinet ; but he was not happy, as he confided to Montague, because he did not know how to read, and this was a cause pf perpetual humiliation. The secret desire of Digitized by Microsoft® 150 THE METROPOLIS this little actor's heart was to play Shakespeare ; he had " Hamlet " read to him, and pondered how to act it — all the time that he was flourish- ing his little cane and making his grimaces! He had chanced to be on the stage when a fire had broken out, and five or six hundred victims of greed were roasted to death. The actor had pleaded with the people to keep their seats, but all in vain ; and all nis life thereafter he went about with this vision of horror in his mind, and haunted by the passionate conviction that he had failed because of his lack of education — ■ that if only he had been a man of culture, he would have been able to think of something to say to hold those terror-stricken people ! At three o'clock in the morning the perform- ance came to an end, and then there were more refreshments; and Mrs. Vivie Patton came and sat by him, and they had a nice comfortable gossip. When Mrs. Vivie once got started at talking about people, her tongue ran on like a windmill. There was Reggie Mann, meandering about and simpering at people. Reggie was in his glory at Mrs. de Graffenried's affairs. Reggie had arranged all this — he did the designing and the ordering, and contracted for the shows with the agents. You could bet that he had got his commission on them, too — though sometimes Mrs. de Graff enried got the shows to come for nothing, because of the advertising her name would bring. Commissions were Reggie's spe- cialty — he had begun life as an auto agent. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 151 Montague didn't know what that was ? An auto a^ent was a man who was for ever begging his friends to use a certain kind of car, so that he might make a living; and Reggie had made about thirty thousand a year in that way. He had come from Boston, where his reputation had been made by the fact that early one morning, as they were driving home from a celebration, he had dared a young society matron to take off her shoes and stockings, and get out and wade in the public fountain ; and she had done it, and he had followed her. On the strength of the eclat of this he had been taken up by Mrs. Devon ; and one day Mrs. Devon had worn a white gown, and asked him what he thought of it. "It needs but one thing to make it perfect," said Reggie, and taking a red rose, he pinned it upon her corsage. The effect was magical; everyone exclaimed with delight, and so Reggie's reputa- tion as an authority upon dress was made for ever. Now he was Mrs. de Graffenried's right- hand man, and they made up their pranks to- gether. Once they had walked down the street in summer with a big rag doll between them. And Reggie had given a dinner at which the guest of honour had been a monkey — surely Montague had heard of that, for it had been the sensation of the season. It was really the funniest thing imaginable; the monkey wore a suit of broad- cloth with collar and cuffs, and he shook hands with all the guests, and behaved himself exactly like a gentleman — except that he did not get drunk. And then Mrs. Vivie pointed out the great Digitized by Microsoft® 152 THE METROPOLIS Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden, who was sitting with one of her favourites, a grave, black-bearded gentle- man who had leaped into fame by inheriting fifty million dollars. " Mrs. R.-C." had taken him up, and ordered his engagement book for him, and he was solemnly playing the part of a social light. He had purchased an old New York mansion, upon the decoration of which three million dollars had been spent ; and when he came down to business from Tuxedo, his private train waited all day for him with steam up. Mrs. Vivie told an amusing tale of a woman who had announced her engagement to him, and borrowed large sums of money upon the strength of it, before his denial came out. That had been a source of great delight to Mrs. de Graffenried, who was furiously jealous of " Mrs. R.-C." From the anecdotes that people told, Montague judged that Mrs. de Graflfenried must be one of those new leaders of Society, who, as Mrs. Alden said, were inclined to the bizarre and fantastic. Mrs. de Graffenried spent half a million dollars every season to hold the position of leader of her set, and you could always count upon her for new and striking ideas. Once she had given away as cotillion favours tiny globes with gold- fish in them; again she had given a dance at which everybody got themselves up as differ- ent vegetables. She was fond of going about and inviting people haphazard to lunch — thirty or forty at a time — and then surprising them with a splendid banquet. Again she would give a big formal dinner, and perplex people by Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 153 offering them something which they really cared to eat. "You see," explained Mrs. Vivie, "at these dinners we generally get thick green turtle soup, and omelettes with some sort of Florida water poured over them, and mushrooms cooked under glass, and real hand-made desserts; but Mrs. de Graffenried dares to have baked ham and sweet potatoes, or even real roast beef. You saw to-night that she had green corn ; she must have arranged for that months ahead — we can never get it from Porto Rico until January. And you see this little dish of wild strawberries — they were probably transplanted and raised in a hot- house, and every single one wrapped separately before they were shipped." All these labours had made Mrs. de Graffen- ried a tremendous power in the social world. She had a savage tongue, said Mrs. Vivie, and everyone lived in terror of her; but once in a while she met her match. Once she had invited a comic opera star to sing for her guests, and all the men had crowded round this actress, and Mrs. de Graffenried had flown into a passion and tried to drive them away ; and the actress, lolling back in her chair, and gazing up idly at Mrs. de Graffenried, had drawled, " Ten years older than God!" Poor Mrs. de Graffenried would carry that saying with her until she died. Something reminiscent of this came under Montague's notice that same evening. At about four o'clock Mrs. Vivie wished to go home, and asked him to find her escort, the Count St. Elme de Champignon — the man, by the way, for whom her husband was gunning. Montague Digitized by Microsoft® 154 THE METROPOLIS roamed all about the house, and finally went down- stairs, where a room had been set apart for the theatrical company to partake of refreshments. Mrs. de Graffenried's secretary was on guard at the door ; but some of the boys had got into the room, and were drinking champagne and "mak- ing dates" with the chorus-girls. And here was Mrs. de Graffenried herself, pushing them bodily out of the room, a score and more of them — and among them Mrs. Vivie's Count ! Montague delivered his message, and then went upstairs to wait until his own party should be ready to leave. In the smoking room were a number of men, also waiting ; and among them he noticed Major Venable, in conversation with a man whom he did not know. "Come over here," the Major called; and Montague obeyed, at the same time noticing the stranger. He was a tall, loose- jointed, powerfully built man, with a small head and a very striking face : a grim mouth with drooping corners tightly set, and a hawk-like nose, and deep-set, peering eyes. "Have you met Mr. Hegan?" said the Major. "Hegan, this is Mr. Allan Montague." Jim Hegan ! Montague repressed a stare and took the chair which they offered him. "Have a cigar," said Hegan, holding out his case. "Mr. Montague has just come to New York," said the Major. "He is a Southerner, too." "Indeed.?" said Hegan, and inquired what state he came from. Montague replied, and added, "I had the pleasure of meeting your ■daughter last week, at the Horse Show." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 15& That served to start a conversation; for Hegan came from Texas, and when he found that Montague knew about horses — real horses; — he warmed to him. Then the Major's party- called him away, and the other two were left ta carry on the conversation. It was very easy to chat with Hegan; and yet underneath, in the other's mind, there lurked a vague feeling of trepidation, as he realised that he was chatting with a hundred millions of dollars. Montague was new enough at the game to imagine that there ought to be some- thing strange, some atmosphere of awe and mystery, about a man who was master of a dozen railroads and of the politics of half a, dozen states. He was simple and very kindly in his manner,^ a plain man, interested in plain things. There- was about him, as he talked, a trace of timidity,, almost of apology, which Montague noticed and. wondered at. It was only later, when he had time to think about it, that he realised that Hegan had begun as a farmer's boy in Texas, a ' poor white"; and could it be that after all these years an instinct remained in him, so that- whenever he met a gentleman of the old South he stood by with a little deference, seeming to beg pardon for his hundred millions of dollars .f* And yet there was the power of the man. Even chatting about horses, you felt it; you felt that there was a part of him which did not chat, but which sat behind and watched. And strangest of all, Montague found himself fancy- ing that behind the face that smiled was an- Digitized by Microsoft® 156 THE METROPOLIS other face, that did not smile, but that was grim and set. It was a strange face, with its broad, sweeping eyebrows and its drooping mouth; it haunted Montague and made nim feel ill at ease. There came Laura Hegan, who greeted them in her stately way; and Mrs. Hegan, bustling and vivacious, costumed en grande dame. " Come ^nd see me sometime," said the man. "You won't be apt to meet me otherwise, for I don't go about much." And so they took their de- parture; and Montague sat alone and smoked and thought. The face still stayed with him; and now suddenly, in a burst of light, it came to him what it was: the face of a bird of Erey — of the great wild, lonely eagle ! You ave seen it, perhaps, in a menagerie; sitting liigh up, submitting patiently, biding its time. But all the while the soul of the eagle is far away, ranging the wide spaces, ready for the lightning swoop, and the clutch with the talons ! Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER X THE next week was a busy one for the Montagues. The Robbie Wallings had come to town and opened their house, and the time drew near for the wonderful debutante dance at which Alice was to be formally pre- sented to Society. And of course AUce must have a new dress for the occasion, and it must be absolutely the most beautiful dress ever known. In an idle moment her cousin figured out that it was to cost her about five dollars a minute to be entertained by the Wallings ! What it would cost the Wallings, one scarcely dared to think. Their ballroom would be turned into a flower-garden; and there would be a supper for a hundred guests, and still an- other supper after the dance, and costly favours for every figure. The purchasing of these latter had been intrusted to Oliver, and Mon- tague heard with dismay what they were to cost. " Robbie couldn't afford to do anything second- rate," was the younger brother's only reply to his exclamations. Alice divided her time between the Wallings and her costumers, and every evening she came home with a new tale of important develop- ments. Alice was new at the game, and could afford to be excited; and Mrs. Robbie liked to see her bright face, and to smile indulgently at 157 Digitized by Microsoft® 158 THE METROPOLIS her eager inquiries. Mrs. Robbie herself had given her orders to her steward and her florist and her secretary, and went on her way and thought no more about it. That was the way of the great ladies — or at any rate, it was their pose. The town-house of the Robbies was a stately palace occupying a block upon Fifth Avenue — one of the half-dozen mansions of the Walling family which were among the show places of the city. It would take a catalogue to list the establishments maintained by the Wallings — there was an estate in Georgia, and another in the Adirondacks, and others on Long Island and in New Jersey. Also there were several jn Newport — one which was almost never occupied, and which Mrs. Billy Alden sarcasti- cally described as " a three-million-dollar castle on a desert." Montague accompanied Alice once or twice, and had an opportunity to study Mrs. Robbie at home. There were thirty-eight servants in her establishment ; it was a little state all in itself, with Mrs. Robbie as queen, and her housekeeper as prime minister, and under them as many different ranks and classes and castes as in a feudal principality. There had to be six separate dining rooms for the various kinds of servants who scorned each other; there were servants' servants and servants of servants' servants. There were only three to whom the mistress was supposed to give orders — the but- ler, the steward, and the housekeeper ; she did not even know the names of many of them, and Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 159 they were changed so often, that, as she de- clared, she had to leave it to her detective ta distinguish between employees and burglars. Mrs. Robbie was quite a young woman, but it pleased her to pose as a care-worn matron, weary of the responsibilities of her exalted station. The ignorant looked on and pictured her as living in the lap of ease, endowed with every opportunity ; in reality the meanest kitchen maid was freer — she was quite worn thin with the burdens that fell upon her. The huge ma- chine was forever threatening to fall to pieces, and required the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job to keep it running. One paid one's steward a fortune, and yet he robbed right and left, and quarrelled with the chef besides. The butler was suspected of getting drunk upon rare and costly vintages, and the new parlour- maid had turned out to be a Sunday reporter in disguise. The man who had come every day for ten years to wind the clocks of the establish- ment was dead, and the one who took care of the bric-a-brac was sick, and the housekeeper was in a panic over the prospect of having ta train another. And even suppose that you escaped from these things, the real problems of your life had still to be faced. It was not enough to keep alive ; you had your career — your duties as a leader of Society. There was the daily mail, with all the pitiful letters from people begging money — actually in one single week there were demands for two million dollars. There were geniuses with patent incubators and stove-lifters. Digitized by Microsoft® 160 THE METROPOLIS and every time you gave a ball you stirred up swarms of anarchists and cranks. And then there were the letters you reaUy had to answer, and the calls that had to be paid. These latter were so many that people in the same neighbour- hood had arranged to have the same day at home; thus, if you lived on Madison Avenue you had Thursday; but even then it took a whole afternoon to leave your cards. And then there were invitations to be sent and accepted; and one was always ma,king mistakes and offending somebody — people would become mortal enemies over night, and expect all the world to know it the next morning. And now there were so many divorces and remarryings, with consequent changing of names; and some men knew about their wives' lovers and didn't care, and some did care, but didn't know — all together it was like carrying a dozen chess games in your head. And then there was the hair-dresser and the manicurist and the masseuse, and the tailor and the bootmaker and the jeweller; and then one absolutely had to glance through a newspaper, and to see one's children now and then. All this Mrs. Robbie explained at luncheon ; it was the rich man's burden, about which com- mon people had no conception whatever. A person with a lot of money was like a barrel of molasses — all the flies in the neighbourhood came buzzing about. It was perfectly incredible, the lengths to which people would go to get in- vited to your house; not only would they write and beg you, they might attack your business Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 161 interests, and even bribe your friends. And on the other hand, when people thought you needed them, the time you had to get them to come ! "Fancy," said Mrs. Robbie, "offering to give a dinner to an English countess, and having her try to charge you for coming !" And incredible as it might seem, some people had actually yielded to her, and the disgusting creature had played the social celebrity for a whole season, and made quite a handsome income out of it. There seemed to be no limit to the abjectness of some of the tuft-hunters in Society. It was instructive to hear Mrs. Robbie de- nounce such evils ; and yet — alas for human frailty — the next time that Montague called, the great lady was blazing with wrath over the tidings that a new foreign prince was coming to America, and that Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden had stolen a march upon her and grabbed him. He was to be under her tutelage the entire time, and all the effulgence of his magnificence would be radiated upon that upstart house. Mrs. Robbie revenged herself by saying as many disagreeable things about Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden as she could think of ; winding up with the declaration that if she behaved with this prince as she had with the Russian grand duke, Mrs. Robbie Walling, for one, would cut her dead. And truly the details which Mrs. Robbie cited were calcu- lated to suggest that her rival's hospitality was a reversion to the customs of primitive savagery. The above is a fair sample of the kind of conversation that one heard whenever one visited any of the Wallings. Perhaps, as Mrs. Robbie Digitized by Microsoft® 162 THE METROPOLIS «aid, it may have been their millions that made necessary their attitude toward other people; certain it was, at any rate, that Montague found them all most disagreeable people to know. There was always some tempest in a teapot over the latest machinations of their enemies. And then there was the whole dead mass of people who sponged upon them and toadied to them ; and finally the oarbarian hordes outside the magic circle of their acquaintance — some specimens of whom came up every day for ridi- cule. They had big feet and false teeth; they ■ate mush and molasses; they wore ready-made ties; they said, "Do you wish that I should do it.?" Their grandfathers had been butchers and pedlers and other abhorrent things. Mon- tague tried his best to like the Wallings, because -of what they were doing for Alice ; but after he had sat at their lunch-table and listened to a conversation such as this, he found himself in need of fresh air. And then he would begin to wonder about his ■own relation to these people. If they talked about everyone else behind their backs, certainly they must talk about him behind his. And why ■did they go out of their way to make him at home, and why were they spending their money to launch Alice in Society .? In the beginning he had assumed that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts; but now that he had looked into their hearts, he rejected the explana- tion. It was not their way to shower princely gifts upon strangers; in general, the attitude of all the Wallings toward a stranger was that of Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 163 the London hooligan — " 'Eave a 'arf a brick at 'im!" They considered themselves especially appointed by Providence to protect Society from the vulgar newly rich who poured into the city, seeking for notoriety and recognition. They prided themselves upon this attitude — they called it their " exclusiveness " ; and the exclu- siveness of the younger generations of Wallings had become a kind of insanity. Nor could the reason be that Alice was beauti- ful and attractive. One could have imagined it if Mrs. Robbie had been like — say, Mrs/VVinnie Duval. It was easy to think of Mrs. Winnie taking a fancy to a girl, and spending half her fortune upon her. But from a hundred little things that he had seen, Montague had come to realise that the Robbie Wallings, ' with all their wealth and power and grandeur, were actually quite stingy. While all the world saw them scattering fortunes in their pathway, in reality they were keeping track of every dollar. And Robbie himself was liable to panic fits of economy, in which he went to the most absurd excesses — Montague once heard him haggling over fifty cents with a cabman. Lavish hosts though they both were, it was the literal truth that they never spent money upon anyone but them- selves — the end and aim of their every action was the power and prestige of the Robbie Wallings. "They do it because they are friends of mine," said Oliver, and evidently wished that to satisfy his brother. But it only shifted the problem and set him to watching Robbie and Digitized by Microsoft® 164 THE METROPOLIS Oliver, and trying to make out the basis of their relationship. There was a very grave question concerned in this. Oliver had come to New York comparatively poor, and now he was rich — or at any rate he lived like a rich man. And his brother, whose scent was growing keener with every day of his stay in New York, had about made up his mind that Oliver got his money from Robbie Walling. Here, again, the problem would have been simple, if it had been another person than Robbie; Montague would have concluded that his brother was a "hanger-on." There were many great families whose establishments were infested with such parasites. Siegfried Harvey, for instance, was a man who had always half a dozen young chaps hanging about him; good- looking and lively fellows, who hunted and played bridge, and amused the married women while their husbands were at work, and who, if ever they dropped a hint that they were hard up, might be reasonably certain of being offered a check. But if the Robbie Wallings were to write checks, it must be for value received. And what could the value be ? "OlHe" was rather a little god among the ultra-swagger; his taste was a kind of inspira- tion. And yet his brother noticed that in such questions he always deferred instantly to the Wallings; and surely the Wallings were not people to be persuaded that they needed any- one to guide them in matters, of taste. Again, Ollie was the very devil of a wit, and people were heartily afraid of him ; and Montague had Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 165 noticed that he never by any chance made fun of Robbie — that the fetiches of the house of Walhng were always treated with respect. So he had wondered if by any chance Robbie was maintaining his brother in princely state for the sake of his ability to make other people un- comfortable. But he realised that the Robbies, in their own view of it, could have no more need of wit than a battle-ship has need of popguns. Oliver's position, when they were about, was rather that of the man who hardly ever dared to be as clever as he might, because of the rest- less jealousy of his friend. It was a mystery; and it made the elder brother very uncomfortable. Alice was young and guileless, and a pleasant person to patronise ; but he was a man of the world, and it was his business to protect her. He had always paid his own way through life, and he was very loath to put himself under obligations to people like the Wallings, whom he did not like, and who, he felt instinctively, could not like him. But of course there was nothing he could do about it. The date for the great festivity was set ; and the Wallings were affable and friendly, and Alice all a-tremble with excitement. The evening arrived, and with it came the enemies of the Wallings, dressed in their jewels and fine raiment. They had been asked because they were too important to be skipped, and they had come because the Wallings were too powerful to be ignored. They revenged themselves by consuming many courses of elaborate and costly viands; and they shook hands with Alice and Digitized by Microsoft® 166 THE METROPOLIS beamed upon her, and then discussed her be- hind her back as if she were a French doll in a show-case. They decided unanimously that her elder cousin was a "stick," and that the whole family were interlopers and shameless adven- turers; but it was understood that since the Robbie Wallings had seen fit to take them up, it would be necessary to invite them about. At any rate, that was the way it all seemed to Montague, who had been brooding. To Alice it was a splendid festivity, to which ex- quisite people came to take delight in each other's society. There were gorgeous costumes and sparkling gems; there was a symphony of perfumes, intoxicating the senses, and a golden flood of music streaming by ; there were laugh- ing voices and admiring glances, and handsome partners with whom one might dance through the portals of fairyland. — And then, next morn- ing, there were accounts in all the newspapers, with descriptions of one's costume and the names of those present, and even the complete menus of the supper, to assist in preserving the memories of the wonderful occasion. Now they were really in Society. A reporter called to get Alice's photo for the Sunday sup- plement ; and floods of invitations came — and with them all the cares and perplexities about which Mrs. Robbie had told. Some of these invitations had to be declined, and one must know whom it was safe to offend. Also, there was a long letter from a destitute widow, and a proposal from a foreign count. Mrs. Robbie's Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 167 secretary had a list of many hundreds of these professional beggars and blackmailers. Conspicuous at the dance was Mrs. Winnie, in a glorious electric blue silk gown. And she shook her fan at Montague, exclaiming, "You wretched man — you promised to come and see me " I've been out of town," Montague protested. " Well, come to dinner to-morrow night," said Mrs. Winnie. " There'll be some bridge fiends." "You forget I haven't learned to play," he objected. "Well, come anyhow," she replied. "We'll teach you. I'm no player myself, and my hus- band will be there, and he's good-natured; and my brother Dan — he'll have to be whether he likes it or not." So Montague visited the Snow Palace again, and met Winton Duval, the banker, — a tall, military-looking man of about fifty, with a big frey mustache, and bushy eyebrows, and the eaui of a lion. His was one of the city's biggest banking-houses, and in alliance with powerful interests in the Street. At present he was going in for mines in Mexico and South America, and so he was very seldom at home. He was a man of most rigid habits — he would come back unexpectedly after a month's trip, and expect to find everything ready for him, both at home and in his oflSce, as if he had just stepped round the corner. Montague observed that he took his menu-card and jotted down his comments upon each dish, and then sent it down to the chef. Digitized by Microsoft® 168 THE METROPOLIS Other people's dinners he very seldom attended, and when his wife gave her entertainments, he invariably dined at the club. He pleaded a business engagement for the even- ing; and as brother Dan did not appear, Mon- tague did not learn any bridge. The other four guests settled down to the game, and Montague and Mrs. Winnie sat and chatted, basking before the fireplace in the great entrance-hall. " Have you seen Charlie Carter ? " was the first question she asked him. "Not lately," he answered; "I met him at Harvey's." "I know that," said she. "They tell me he got drunk." "I'm afraid he did," said Montague. "Poor boy!" exclaimed Mrs. Winnie. "And Alice saw him ! He must be heartbroken ! " Montague said nothing. "You know," she went on, "Charlie reallv means well. He has honestly an affectionate nature." She paused; and Montague said, vaguely, "I suppose so." 'You don't like him," said the other. "I can see that. And I suppose now Alice will have no use for him, either. And I had it all fixed up for her to reform him !" Montague smiled in spite of himself. "Oh, I know," said she. "It wouldn't have been easy. But you've no idea what a beautiful boy Charlie used to be, until all the women set to work to ruin him." "I can imagine it," said Montague; but he did not warm to the subject. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 169 "You're just like my husband," said Mrs. Winnie, sadly. "You have no use at all for anything that's weak' or unfortunate." There was a pause. "And I suppose," she said finally, "you'll be turning into a business man also — with no time for anybody or any- thing. Have you begun yet.!*" "Not yet," he answered. "I'm still looking round." "I haven't the least idea about business," she confessed. "How does one begin at it.?" "I can't say I know that myself as yet," said Montague, laughing. "Would you like to be a protege of my hus- band's.?" she asked. The proposition was rather sudden, but he answered, with a smile, "I should have no objections. What would he do with me.?" 'I don't know that. But he can do what- ever he wants down town. And he'd show you how to make a lot of money if I asked him to." Then Mrs. Winnie added, quickly, "I mean it — he could do it, really." "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." Digitized by Microsoft® 170 THE METROPOLIS 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," Mon- tague 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 re- sponsibilities. 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 coun- try. 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 re- porters — " "There you are !" said she. "One can never have a beautiful dream, or try to do anything sensible — because of the newspaper report- ers!" If Montague had been meeting Mrs. Winnie Duval for the first time, he would have been impressed by her yearnings for the simple life; Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 171 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 respect- fully 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 172 THE IMETROPOLIS "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 uncom- fortable — 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 Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 173 aristocratic and stately old banker must have, trying to keep his wife out of the papers ! Mrs. Winnie turned on the lights in the foun- tain, 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 Digitized by Microsoft® 17* THE METROPOLIS its stripes shining in the firelight, and its green eyes gleaming. You know that poem — we used to read it in school — ' Tiger, tiger, burn- ing 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 crea- tures 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." Digitized by Microsoft® 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 grate- ful that she did not refuse to enter the pew with him. A most interesting place was St. Cecilia's. Church-going was another of the customs of men and women which Society had taken up, like the Opera, and made into a state function. Here was a magnificent temple, with carved marble and rare woods, and jewels gleamingdeco- rously in a dim religious light. At the door of this edifice would halt the carriages of Society, and its wives and daughters would alight, rustling with new silk petticoats and starched and per- fumed linen, each one a picture, exquisitely gowned and bonneted and gloved, and carrying a demure little prayer-book. Behind them fol- lowed the patient men, all in new frock coats and shiny silk hats ; the men of Society were always newly washed and shaved, newly groomed and gloved, but now they seemed to be more so — 175 , Digitized by Microsoft® 176 THE METROPOLIS they were full of the atmosphere of Sunday. Alas for those unregenerate ones, the infidels and the heathen who scoff in outer darkness, and know not the delicious feeling of Sunday — the joy of being washed and starched and perfumed, and made to be clean and comfortable and good, after all the really dreadful wickedness of six days of fashionable life ! And afterward the parade upon the Avenue, with the congregations of several score additional churches, and such a show of stylish costumes that half the city came to see ! Amid this exquisite assemblage at St. Cecilia's, the revolutionary doctrines of the Christian reli- gion produced neither perplexity nor alarm. The chance investigator might have listened in dismay to solemn pronouncements of everlasting damnation, to statements about rich men and the eyes of needles, and the lilies of the field which did not spin. But the congregation of St. Ce- cilia's understood that these things were to be taken in a quixotic sense ; sharing the view of the French marquis that the Almighty would think twice before damning a gentleman like him. One had heard these phrtises ever since child- hood, and one accepted them as a matter of course. After all, these doctrines had come from the lips of a divine being, whom it would be pre- sumptuous in a mere mortal to attempt to imitate. Such points one could but leave to those whose business it was to interpret them — the doctors and dignitaries of the church; and when one met them, one's heart was set at rest — for they were not iconoclasts and alarmists, but gentlemen Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 177 of culture and tact. The bishop who presided in this metropolitan district was a stately personage, who moved in the best Society and belonged to the most exclusive clubs. The pews in St. Cecilia's were rented, and they were always in great demand ; it was one of the customs of those who hung upon the fringe of Society to come every Sunday, and bow and smile> and hope against hope for some chance opening. The stranger who came was dependent upon hos- pitality; but there were soft-footed and tactful ushers, who would find one a seat, if one were a presentable person. The contingency of an un- presentable person seldom arose, for the proleta- riat did not swarm at the gates of St. Cecilia's. Out of its liberal income the church maintained a "mission" upon the East Side, where young- curates wrestled with the natural depravity of the lower classes — meantime cultivating a soul- stirring tone, and waiting until they should be promoted to a real church. Society was becom- ingly deferential to its religious guides, and would have been quite shocked at the idea that it exerted any pressure upon them ; but the young curates were painfully aware of a process of unnatural selection, whereby those whose manner and cut of coat were not pleasing were left a long time in the slums. — On one occasion there had been an amusing blunder; a beautiful new church was built at Newport, and an eloquent young minis- ter was installed, and all Society attended the opening service — and sat and listened in con- sternation to an arraignment of its own follies and vices ! The next Sunday, needless to say. Digitized by Microsoft® 178 THE METROPOLIS Society was not present ; and within half a year the church was stranded, and had to be dismantled and sold ! They had elaborate music at St. Cecilia's, so beautiful that Alice felt uncomfortable, and thought that it was perilously "high." At this Mrs. Winnie laughed, offering to take her to an afternoon service around the comer, where they had a full orchestra, and a harp, and opera music, and incense and genuflexions and confessionals. There were people, it seemed, who like to thrill themselves by dallying" with the wickedness of ■"Romanism"; somewhat as a small boy tries to see how near he can walk to the edge of a cliff. The "father" at this church had a jewelled robe with a train so many yards long, and which had •cost some incredible number of thousands of dollars; and every now and then he marched in a stately procession through the aisles, so that all the spectators might have a good look at it. There was a fierce controversy about these things in the church, and libraries of pamphlets were written, and intrigues and social wars were fought over them. But Montague and Alice did not attend this service — they had promised themselves the very plebeian diversion of a ride in the subway ; for so far they had not seen this feature of the city. People who lived in Society saw Madison and Fifth avenues, where their homes were, with the churches and hotels scattered along them; and the shopping district just below, and the theatre •district at one side, and the park to the north. Unless one went automobiling, that was all of Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 179 the city one need ever see. When visitors asked about the Aquarium, and the Stock Exchange, and the Museum of Art, and Tammany Hall, and Ellis Island, where the immigrants came, the old New Yorkers would look perplexed, and say: " Dear me, do you really want to see those things ? Why, I have been here all my life, and have never seen them !" For the hordes of sightseers there had been pro- vided a special contrivance, a huge automobile omnibus which seated thirty or forty people, and went from the Battery to Harlem with a young man shouting through a megaphone a descrip- tion of the sights. The irreverent had nick- named this the " yap- wagon " ; and jestingly said that one of these concerns maintained an " opium-joint " in Chinatown, and a " dive " in the Bowery, and hired tough-looking individuals to sit and be stared at by excursionists from Oklahoma and Kalamazoo. Of course it would never have done for people who had just been gassed into Society to climb upon a" yap- wagon " ; ut they were permitted to get into the subway, and were whirled with a deafening clatter through a long tunnel of steel and stone. And then they got out and climbed a steep hill like any common mortals, and stood and gazed at Grant's tomb : a huge white marble edifice upon a point over- looking the Hudson. Architecturally it was not a beautiful structure — but one was consoled by reflecting that the hero himself would not have cared about that. It might have been described as a soap-box with a cheese-box on top of it; and these homely and familiar articles were per- Digitized by Microsoft® 180 THE METROPOLIS haps not altogether out of keeping with the character of the humblest great man who ever lived. The view up the river was magnificent, quite the finest which the city had to offer ; but it was ruined by a hideous gas-tank, placed squarely in the middle of it. And this, again, was not in- appropriate — it was typical of all the ways of the city. It was a city which had grown up by acci- dent, with nobody to care about it or to help it; it was huge and ungainly, crude, uncomfortable, and grotesque. There was nowhere in it a beau- tiful sight upon which a man could rest his eyes, without having them tortured by something ugly near by. At the foot of the slope of the River Drive ran a hideous freight-railroad ; and across the river the beautiful Palisades were being blown to pieces to make paving stone — and meantime were covered with advertisements of land-companies. And if there was a beautiful building, there was sure to be a tobacco adver- tisement beside it ; if there was a beautiful avenue, there were trucks and overworked horses toiling in the harness ; if there was a beautiful park, it was filled with wretched, outcast men. No- where was any order or system — everything was struggling for itself, and jarring and clashing with everything else; and this broke the spell of power which the Titan city would otherwise have produced. It seemed like a monstrous heap of wasted energies ; a mountain in perpetual labour, and producing an endless series of abor- tions. The men and women in it were wearing themselves out with toil; but there was a spell Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 181 laid upon them, so that, struggle as they might, they accomplished nothing. Coming out of the church, Montague had met Judge Ellis; and the Judge had said, "I shall soon have something to talk over with you." So Montague gave him his address, and a day or two later came an invitation to lunch with him at his club. The Judge's club took up a Fifth Avenue block, and was stately and imposing. It had been formed in the stress of the Civil War days ; lean and hungry heroes had come home from battle and gone into business, and those who had suc- ceeded had settled down here to rest. To see them now, dozing in huge leather-cushioned arm- chairs, you would have nad a hard time to guess that they had ever been lean and hungry heroes. They were diplomats and statesmen, bishops and lawyers, great merchants and financiers — the men who had made the city's ruling-class for a century. Everything here was decorous and grave, and the waiters stole about with noiseless feet. Montague talked with the Judge about New York and what he had seen of it, and the people he had met ; and about his father, and the war ; and about the recent election and the business outlook. And meantime they ordered luncheon ; and when they had got to the cigars, the Judge coughed and said, "And now I have a matter of business to talk over with you." Montague settled himself to Usten. "I have a friend,' the Judge explained — "a very good Digitized by Microsoft® 182 THE METROPOLIS friend, who has asked me to find him a lawyer to undertake an important case. I talked the matter over with General Prentice, and he agreed with me that it would be a good idea to lay the matter before you." "I am very much obliged to you," said Mon- tague. The matter is a delicate one," continued the other. "It has to do with life insurance. Are you familiar with the insurance business .'* " "Not at all." " I had supposed not," said the Judge. " There are some conditions which are not generally known about, but which I may say, to put it mildly, are not altogether satisfactory. My friend is a large policy-holder in several compa- nies, and he is not satisfied with the management of them. The dehcacy of the situation, so far as I am concerned, is that the company with which Ije has the most fault to find is one in which I myself am a director. You under- stand?" "Perfectly," said Montague. "What com- pany is it.!*" "The Fidelity," replied the other — and his companion thought in a flash of Freddie Van- dam, whom he had met at Castle Havens I For the Fidelity was Freddie's company. " The first thing that I have to ask you," con- tinued the Judge, " is that, whether you care to take the case or not, you will consider my own intervention in the matter absolutely entre nous. My position is simply this : I have protested at the meetings of the directors of the company Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 183 against what I consider an unwise policy — and my protests have been ignored. And when my friend asked me for advice, I gave it to him ; but at the same time I am not in a position to be publicly quoted in connection with the matter. You follow me?" "Perfectly," said the other. "I will agree to what you ask." "Very good. Now then, the condition is, in brief, this: the companies are accumulating an enormous surplus, which, under the law, belongs to the policy-holders; but the administrations of the various companies are withholding these dividends, for the sake of the banking-power which these accumulated funds afford to them and their associates. This is, as I hold, a very nianifest injustice, and a most dangerous condi- tion of affairs." " I should say so !" responded Montague. He was amazed at such a statement, coming from such a source. "How could this continue .p" he asked. "It has continued for a long time," the Judge answered. "But why is it not known.?" " It is perfectly well known to everyone in the insurance business," was the answer. "The matter has never been taken up or published, simply because the interests involved have such enormous and widely extended power that no one has ever dared to attack them." Montague sat forward, with his eyes riveted upon the Judge. " Go on," he said. "The situation is simply this," said the other. Digitized by Microsoft® 184 THE METROPOLIS " My friend, Mr. Hasbrook, wishes to bring a suit against the FideHty Company to compel it to pay to him his proper share of its surplus. He wishes the suit pressed, and followed to the court of last resort." "And do you mean to tell me," asked Mon- tague, " that you would have any difficulty to find a lawyer in New York to undertake such a case ? " " No," said the other, " not exactly that. There are lawyers in New York who would undertake anything. But to find a lawyer of standing who would take it, and withstand all the pressure that would be brought to bear upon him — that might take some time." "You astonish me, Judge." "Financial interests in this city are pretty closely tied together, Mr. Montague. Of course there are law firms which are identified with interests opposed to those who control the com- pany. It would be very easy to get them to take the case, but you can see that in that event my friend would be accused of bringing the suit in their interest; whereas he wishes it to appear, as it really is, a suit of an independent person, seeking the rights of the vast body of the policy- holders. For that reason, he wished to find a lawyer who was identified with no interest of any sort, and who was free to give his undivided atten- tion to the issue. So I thought of you." "I will take the case," said Montague, in- stantly. " It is my duty to warn you," said the Judge, gravely, "that you will be taking a very serious step. You must be prepared to face powerful, Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 185 and, I am afraid, unscrupulous, enemies. You may find that you have made it impossible for other and very desirable clients to deal with you. You may find your business interests, if you have any, embarrassed — your credit impaired, and so on. You must be prepared to have your char- acter assailed, and your motives impugned in the public press. You may find that social pressure will be brought to bear on you. So it is a step from which most young men who have their careers to make would shrink." Montague's face had turned a shade paler as he Ustened. "I am assuming," he said, "that the facts are as you have stated them to me — that an unjust condition exists." "You may assume that." "Very well." And Montague clenched his hand, and put it down upon the table. "I will take the case," he said. For a few moments they sat in silence. "I will arrange," said the Judge, at last, "for you and Mr. Hasbrook to meet. I must explain to you, as a matter of fairness, that he is a rich man, and will be able to pay you for your services. He is asking a great deal of you, and he should expect to pay for it." Montague sat in thought. "I have not really had time to get my bearings in New York," he said at last. "I think I had best leave it to you to say what I should charge him." "If I were in your position," the Judge an- swered, "I think that I should ask a retaining fee of fifty thousand dollars. I believe he will expect to pay at least that." Digitized by Microsoft® 186 THE METROPOLIS Montague could scarcely repress a start. Fifty thousand dollars ! The words made his head whirl round. But then, all of a sudden, he recalled his half-jesting resolve to play the game of business sternly. So he nodded his head gravely, and said, "Very well; I am much obliged to you." After a pause, he added, "I hope that I may prove able to handle the case to your friend's satisfaction." "Your ability remains for you to prove," said the Judge. "1 have only been in position to assure him of your character." "He must understand, of course," said Mon- tague, "that I am a stranger, and that it will take me a while to study the situation." "Of course he knows that. But you will find that Mr. Hasbrook knows a good deal about the law himself. And he has already had a lot of work done. You must understand that it is very easy to get legal advice about such a matter — what is sought is someone to take the conduct of the case." " I see," said Montague ; and the Judge added, with a smile, " Someone to get up on horseback, and draw the fire of the enemy !" And then the great man was, as usual, reminded of a story; and then of more stories; until at last they rose from the table, and shook hands upon their bargain, and parted. Fifty thousand dollars ! Fifty thousand dol- lars! It was all Montague could do to keep from exclaiming it aloud on the street. He could hardly believe that it was a reality — if it had Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 187 been a less-known person than Judge Ellis, he would have suspected that someone must be playing a joke upon him. Fifty thousand dollars was more than many a lawyer made at home in a lifetime ; and simply as a retaining fee in one case ! The problem of a living had weighed on his soul ever since the first day in the city, and now suddenly it wds solved ; all in a few minutes, the way had been swept clear before him. He walked home as if upon air. And then there was the excitement of telling the family about it. He had an idea that his brother might be alarmed if he were told about the seriousness of the case; and so he simply said that the Judge had brought him a rich client, and that it was an insurance case. Oliver, who knew and cared nothing about law, asked no questions, and contented himself with saying, I told you how easy it was to make money in New York, if only you knew the right people !" As for Alice, she had known all along that her cousin was a great man, and that clients would come to him as soon as he hung out his sign. His sign was not out yet, by the way ; that was the next thing to be attended to. He must get himself an office at once, and some books, and begin to read up insurance law ; and so, bright and early the next morning, he took the subway down town. And here, for the first time, Montague saw the real New York. All the rest was mere shadow — the rest was where men slept and played, but here was where they fought out the battle of their Digitized by Microsoft® 188 THE METROPOLIS lives. Here the fierce intensity of it smote him in the face — he saw the cruel waste and ruin of it, the wreckage of the blind, haphazard strife. It was a city caught in a trap. It was pent in at one end of a narrow little island. It had been no one's business to foresee that it must some day outgrow this space; now men were digging a score of tunnels to set it free, but they had not begun these until the pressure had become un- endurable, and now it had reached its climax. In the financial district, land had been sold for as much as four dollars a square inch. Huge blocks of buildings shot up to the sky in a few months — fifteen, twenty, twenty-five stories of them, and with half a dozen stories hewn out of the solid rock beneath ; there was to be one build- ing of forty-two stories, six hundred and fifty feet in height. And between them were narrow chasms of streets, where the hurrying crowds overflowed the sidewalks. Yet other streets were filled with trucks and heavy vehicles, with electric cars creeping slowly along, and little swirls and eddies of people darting across here and there. These huge buildings were like beehives, swarming with life and activity, with scores of elevators shooting through them at bewildering speed. Everywhere was the atmosphere of rush ; the spirit of it seized hold of one, and he began to hurry, even though he had no place to go. The man who walked slowly and looked about him was in the way — he was jostled here and there, and people eyed him with suspicion and annoyance. Elsewhere on the island men did the work of Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 189 the city; here they did the work of the world. Each room in these endless mazes of buildings was a cell in a mighty brain ; the telephone wires were nerves, and by the whole huge organism the thinking and willing of a continent were done. It was a noisy place to the physical ear ; but to the ear of the mind it roared with the roaring of a thousand Niagaras. Here was the Stock Ex- change, where the scales of trade were held be- fore the eyes of the country. Here was the clear- ing-house, where hundreds of millions of dollars were exchanged every day. Here were the great banks, the reservoirs into which the streams of the country's wealth were poured. Here were the brains of the great railroad systems, of the telegraph and telephone systems, of mines and mUls and factories. Here were the centres of the country's trade; in one place the shipping trade, in another the jewellery trade, the grocery trade, the leather trade. A little farther up town was the clothing district, where one might see the signs of more Hebrews than all Jerusalem had ever held; in yet other districts were the newspaper offices, and the centre of the magazine and book-publishing business of the whole coun- try. One might climb to the top of one of the great "sky-scrapers," and gaze down upon a wilderness of houses, with roofs as innumerable as tree-tops, and people looking like tiny insects below. Or one might go out into the harbour late upon a winter afternoon, and see it as a city of a million lights, rising like an incantation from the sea. Round about it was an unbroken ring of docks, with ferry-boats and tugs darting Digitized by Microsoft® 190 THE METROPOLIS everywhere, and vessels which had come from every port in the world, emptying their cargoes into the huge maw of the Metropolis. And of all this, nothing had been planned! All lay just as it had fallen, and men Dore the confusion and the waste as best they could. Here were huge steel vaults, in which lay many billions of dollars' worth of securities, the control of the finances of the country ; and a block or two in one direction were warehouses and gin-mills, and in another direction cheap lodging-houses and sweating-dens. And at a certain hour all this huge machine would come to a halt, and its millions of human units would make a blind rush for their homes. Then at the entrances to bridges and ferries and trains, would be seen sights of madness and terror; throngs of men and women swept hither and thither, pushing and struggling, snouting, curs- ing — fighting, now and then, in sudden panic fear. All decency was forgotten here — peo- ple would be mashed into cars like foot-ball players in a heap, and guards and policemen would jam the gates tight — or like as not be swept away themselves in the pushing, grunting, writning mass of human beings. Women would faint and be trampled; men would come out with clothing torn to shreds, and sometimes with broken arms or ribs. And thinking people would gaze at the sight and shudder, wondering how long a city could hold together, when the masses of its population were thus forced back, day after day, habitually, upon the elemental brute within them. Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 191 In this vast business district Montague would have felt utterly lost and helpless, if it had not been for that fifty thousand dollars, and the sense of mastery which it gave him. He sought out General Prentice, and under his guidance se- lected his suite of rooms, and got his furniture and books in readiness. And a day or two later, by appointment, came Mr. Hasbrook. He was a wiry, nervous little man, who did not impress one as much of a personality; but he had the insurance situation at his fingers' ends — his grievance had evidently wrought upon him. Certainly, if half of what he alleged were true, it was time that the courts took hold of the affair. Montague spent the whole day in consultation, going over every aspect of the case, and laying out his course of procedure. And then, at the end, Mr. HasbrooK remarked that it would be necessary for them to make some financial ar- rangement. And the other set his teeth together, and took a tight grip upon himself, and said, " Considering the importance of the case, and all the circumstances, I think I should have a re- tainer of fifty thousand dollars." And the little man never turned a hair ! " That will be perfectly satisfactory," he said. "I will attefld to it at once." And the other's heart gave a great leap. And sure enough, the next morning's mail brought the money, in the shape of a cashier's check from one of the big banks. Montague deposited it to his own account, and felt that the city was his ! Digitized by Microsoft® 192 THE METROPOLIS And so he flung himself into the work. He went to his office every day, and he shut himself up in his own rooms in the evening. Mrs. Win- nie was in despair because he would not come and learn bridge, and Mrs. Vivie Patton sought him in vain for a week-end party. He could not exactly say that while the others slept he was toiling upward in the night, for the others did not sleep in the night; but he could say that while they were feasting and dancing, he was delving into insurance law. Oliver argued in vain to make him realise that he could not live for ever upon one client; and that it was as important for a lawyer to be a social light as to win his first big case. Montague was so absorbed that he even failed to be thrilled when one morning he opened an invitation envelope, and read the fate- ful legend: "Mrs. Devon requests the honour of your company" — telling nim that he had "passed "on that critical examination morning, and that he was definitely and irrevocably in Society ! Digitized by Microsoft® CHAPTER XII MONTAGUE was now a capitalist, and there- fore a keeper of the gates of opportunity. It seemed as though the seekers for admission must have had some occult way of finding it out ; almost immediately they began to lay siege to him. About a week after his check arrived, Major Thorne, whom he had met the first evening at the Loyal Legion, called him up and asked to see him; and he came to Montague's room that evening, and after chatting awhile about old times, proceeded to unfold a business proposition. It seemed that the Major had a grandson, a young mechanical engineer, who had been labouring for a couple of years at a very impor- tant invention, a aevice for loading coal upon steamships and weighing it automatically in the process. It was a very complicated problem, needless to say, but it had been solved success- fully, and patents had been applied for, and a working model constructed. But it had proved unexpectedly diflScult to interest the officials of the great steamship companies in the device. There was no doubt about the practicability of the machine, or the economies it would effect; but the officials raised trivial objections, and caused delays, and offered prices that were ridicu- lously inadequate. So the young inventor had 193 Digitized by Microsoft® 194 THE METROPOLIS conceived the idea of organising a company to manufacture the machines, and rent them upon a royalty. "I didn't know whether you would have any money," said Major Thorne, " — but I thought you might be in touch with others who could be got to look into the matter. There is a fortune in it for those who take it up." Montague was interested, and he looked over the plans and descriptions which his friend had brought, and said that he would see the working model, and talk the proposition over with others. And so the Major took his departure. The first person Montague spoke to about it was Oliver, with whom he chanced to be lunch- ing, at the latter 's club. This was the "All Night" club, a meeting-place of fast young so- ciety men and millionaire bohemians, who made a practice of going to bed at daylight, and had taken for their motto the words of Tennyson — "For men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever." It was not a proper club for his bi'other to join, Oliver considered; Montague's "game "was the heavy respectable, and the per- son to put him up was General Prentice. But he was permitted to lunch there with his brother to chaperon him — and also Reggie Mann, who happened in, fresh from talking over the itiner- ary of the foreign prince with Mrs. Ridgley- Clieveden, and bringing a diverting account of how Mrs. R.-C. had had a fisticuffs with her maid. Montague mentioned the invention casually, and with no idea that his brother would have an opinion one way or the other. But Oliver had Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 195 quite a vigorous opinion: "Good God, Allan, you aren't going to let yourself be persuaded into a thing like that !" "But what do you know about it?" asked the other. "It may be a tremendous thing." "Of course!" cried Oliver. "But what can you tell about it ? You'll be like a child in other people's hands, and they'll be certain to rob you. And why in the world do you want to take risks when you don't have to ?" "I have to put my money somewhere," said Montague. "His first fee is burning a hole in his pocket !" put in Reggie Mann, with a chuckle. 'Turn it over to me, Mr. Montague, and let me spend it in a gorgeous entertainment for Alice; and the prestige of it will bring you more cases than you can handle in a lifetime !" "He had much better spend it all for soda water than buy a lot of coal chutes with it," said Oliver. "Wait awhile, and let me find you some place to put your money, and you'll see that you don't have to take any risks." "I had no idea of taking it up until I'd made certain of it," replied the other. "And those whose judgment I took would, of course, go in also." The younger man thought for a moment. "You are going to dine with Major Venable to-night, aren't you ? " he asked ; and when the other answered in the affirmative, he continued, "Very well, then, ask him. The Major's been a capitalist for forty years, and if you can get him to take it up, why, you'll know you're safe." Digitized by Microsoft® 196 THE METROPOLIS Major Venable had taken quite a fancy to Montague — perhaps the old gentleman liked to have somebody to gossip with, to whom all his anecdotes were new. He had seconded Mon- tague's name at the "Millionaires'," where he lived, and had asked him there to make the ac- quaintance of some of the other members. Be- fore Montague parted with his brother, he prom- ised that he would talk the matter over with the Major. The Millionaires' was the show club of the city, the one which the ineffably rich had set apart for themselves. It was up by the park, in a magnificent white marble palace which had cost a million dollars. Montague felt that he had never really known the Major until he saw him here. The Major was excellent at all times and places, but in this club he became an edition de luxe of himself. He made his headquarters here, keeping his suite of rooms all the year round; and the atmosphere and surroundings of the place seemed to be a part of him. Montague thought that the Major's face grew redder every day, and the purple veins in it purpler ; or was it that the old gentleman's shirt bosom gleamed more brightly in the glare of the lights ? The Major met him in the stately en- trance hall, fifty feet square and all of Numidian marble, with a ceiling of gold, and a great bronze stairway leading to the gallery above. He apologised for his velvet slippers and for his hobbling walk — he was gettmg his accursed gout again. But he limped around and intro- duced his friend to the other millionaires — Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 197 and then told scandal about them behind their backs. The Major was the very type of a blue-blooded old aristocrat ; he was all noblesse oblige to those within the magic circle of his intimacy — but alas for those outside it ! Montague had never heard anyone bully servants as the Major did. "Here you!" he would cry, when something went wrong at the table. "Don't you know any better than to bring me a dish like that .J* Go and send me somebody who knows how to set a table !" And, strange to say, the servants all acknowledged his perfect right to bully them, and flew with terrified alacrity to do his bidding. Montague noticed that the whole staff of the club leaped into activity whenever the Major appeared; and when he was seated at the table, he led off in this fashion — "Now I want two dry Mar- tinis. And I want them at once — do you understand me? Don't stop to get me any butter plates or finger-bowls — I want two cock- tails, just as quick as you can carry them !" Dinner was an important event to Major Venable — the most important in life. The younger man humbly declined to make any sug- gestions, and sat and watched while his friend did all the ordering. They had some very small oysters, and an onion soup, and a grouse and asparagus, with some wine from the Major's own private store, and then a romaine salad. Concerning each one of these courses, the Major gave special injunctions, and through- out his conversation he scattered comments upon them: "This is good thick soup — lots Digitized by Microsoft® 198 THE METROPOLIS of nourishment in onion soup. Have the rest of this ? — I think the Burgundy is too cold. Sixty-five is as cold as Burgundy ought ever to be. I don't mind sherry as low as sixty. — They always cook a bird too much — Robbie Walling's chef is the only person I know who never makes a mistake with game." All this, of course, was between comments upon the assembled millionaires. There was Hawkins, the corporation lawyer; a shrewd fellow, cold as a corpse. He was named for an ambassadorship — a very efficient man. Used to be old Wyman's confidential adviser and buy aldermen for him. And the man at table with him was Harrison, publisher of the Star; ad- ministration newspaper, sound and conservative. Harrison was training for a cabinet position. He was a nice little man, and would make a fine splurge in Washington. And that tall man coming in was Clarke, the steel magnate; and over there was Adams, a big lawyer also — prominent reformer — civic righteousness and all that sort of stuff. Represented the Oil Trust secretly, and went down to Trenton to argue against some reform measure, and took along fifty thousand dollars in bills in his valise. "A friend of mine got wind of what he was doing, and taxed him with it," said the Major, and laughed gleefully over the great lawyer's reply — " How did I know but I might have to pay for my own lunch?" And the fat man with him — that was Jimmie Featherstone, the chap who had inherited the big estate. "Poor Jimmie's going all to pieces," the Major de- Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 199 Glared. "Goes down town to board meetings now and then — they tell a hair-raising story about him and old Dan Waterman. He had got up and started a long argument, when Waterman broke in, 'But at the earlier meeting you argued directly to the contrary, Mr. Feather- stone ! ' ' Did I .'' ' said Jimmie, looking be- wildered. 'I wonder why I did that.?' 'Well, Mr. Featherstone, since you ask me, I'll tell you,' said old Dan — he's savage as a wild boar, you know, and won't be delayed at meet- ings. 'The reason is that the last time you were drunker than you are now. If you would adopt a uniform standard of intoxication for the directors' meetings of this roa,d, it would ex- pedite matters considerably.'" They had got as far as the romaine salad. The waiter came with a bowl of dressing — and at the sight of it, the old gentleman foi^ot Jimmie Featherstone. "Why are you bringing me that stuff.?" he cried. '^I don't want that ! Take it away and get me some vinegar and oil." The waiter fled in dismay, while the Major went on growling under his breath. Then from behind him came a voice: "What's the matter with you this evening, Venable ? You're peevish !" The Major looked up. "Hello, you old cor- morant," said he. "How do you do these days.?" The old cormorant replied that he did very well. He was a pudgy Uttle man, with a pursed- up, wrinkled face. 'My friend Mr, Montague — Mr. Symmes/' said the Major. Digitized by Microsoft® 200 THE METROPOLIS "I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Mon- tague," said Mr. Symmes, peering over his spectacles. "And what are you doing with yourself these days.?" asked the Major. The other smiled genially. "Nothing much," said he. "Seducing my friends' wives, as usual." "And who's the latest?" "Read the newspapers, and you'll find out," laughed Mr. Symmes. "I'm told I'm being shadowed." He passed on down the room, chuckling to himself; and the Major said, "That's Maltby Symmes. Have you heard of him?" "No," said Montague. "He gets into the papers a good deal. He was up in supplementary proceedings the other day — couldn't pay his liquor bill." "A member of the Millionaires'?" laughed Montague. "Yes, the papers made quite a joke out of it," said the other. "But you see he's run through a couple of fortunes; the last was his mother's — eleven millions, I believe. He's been a pretty lively old boy in his time." The vinegar and oil had now arrived, and the Major set to work to dress the salad. This was quite a ceremony, and Montague took it in with amused interest. The Major first gathered all the necessary articles together, and looked them all over and grumbled at them. Then he mixed the vinegar and the pepper and salt, a tablespoonful at a time, and poured it over the Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 201 salad. Then very slowly and carefully the oil had to be poured on, the salad being poked and turned about so that it would be all absorbed. Perhaps it was because he was so busy narrating the escapades of Maltby Symmes that the old gentleman kneaded it about so long; all the time fussing over it like a hen-partridge with her chicks, and interrupting himself every sen- tence or two: "It was Lenore, the opera star, and he gave her about two hundred thou- sand dollars' worth of railroad shares. (Really, you know, romaine ought not to be served in a bowl at all, but in a square, flat dish, so that one could keep the ends quite dry.) And when they quarrelled, she found the old scamp had fooled her — the shares had never been trans- ferred. (One is not supposed to use a fork at all, you know.) But she sued him, and he settled with her for about half the value. (If this dressing were done properly, there ought not to be any oil in the bottom of the dish at all.)" This last remark meant that the process had reached its climax — that the long, crisp leaves were receiving their final affectionate overturn- ings. While the waiter stood at respectful at- tention, two or three pieces at a time were laid carefully upon the little silver plate intended for Montague. "And now," said the trium- phant host, " try it ! If it's good, it ought to be neither sweet nor bitter, but just right. ' — And he watched anxiously while Montague tasted it, saying, "If it's the least bit bitter, say so, and we'll send it out. I've told them about it often enough before." Digitized by Microsoft® 202 THE METROPOLIS But it was not bitter, and so the Major pro- ceeded to help himself, after which the waiter whisked the bowl away. "I'm told that salad is the one vegetable we have from the Romans," said the old boy, as he munched at the crisp freen leaves. "It's mentioned by Horace, you now. As I was saying, all that was in Symmes's early days. But since his son's been grown up, he's married another chorus-girl. He told me once he'd had over five hundred women in his lifetime!" After the salad the Major had another cock- tail. In the beginning Montague had noticed that his hands shook and his eyes were watery; but now, after these copious libations, he was vigorous, and, if possible, more full of anecdotes than ever. Montague thought that it would be a good time to broach his inquiry, and so when the coffee had been served, he asked, "Have you any objections to talking business after dinner.''" "Not with you," said the Major. "Why? What is it.?" And then Montague told him about his friend's proposition, and described the inven- tion. The other listened attentively to the end; and then, after a pause, Montague asked him, " What do you think of it ? " "The invention's no good," said the Major, promptly. "How do you know.?" asked the other. " Because, if it had been, the companies would have taken it long ago, without paying him a cent." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 20S "But he has it patented," said Montague. " Patented, hell ! " replied the other. "What's a patent to lawyers of concerns of that size ? They'd have taken it and had it in use from Maine to Texas ; and when he sued, they'd have tied the case up in so many technicalities and quibbles that he couldn't have got to the end of it in ten years — and he'd have been ruined ten times over in the process." " Is that really done ?" asked Montamie. "Done!" exclaimed the Major. "It's done so often you might say it's the only thing that's done. The people are probably trying to take you in with a fake." "That couldn't possibly be so," responded the other. " The man is a friend — " "I've found it an excellent rule never to do business with friends," said the Major, grimly. "But listen," said Montague; and he argued long enough to convince his companion that that could not be the true explanation. Then the Major sat for a minute or two and pondered ; and suddenly he exclaimed, " I have it ! I see why they won't touch it !" "What is it.?" "It's the coal companies! They're giving^ the steamships short weight, and they don't want the coal weighed truly!" "But there's no sense in that," said Mon- tague. "It's the steamship companies that won't take the machine." "Yes," said the Major; "naturally, their officers are sharing the graft." And he laughed heartily at Montague's look of perplexity. Digitized by Microsoft® 204 THE METROPOLIS "Do you know anything about the business ?" Montague asked. "Nothing whatever," said the Major. "I am like the- German who shut himself up in his inner consciousness and deduced the shape of an elephant from first principles. I know the game of big business from A to Z, and I'm tell- ing you that if the invention is good and the companies won't take it, that's the reason; and I'll lay you a wager that if you were to make an investigation, some such thing as that is what you'd find ! Last winter I went South on a steamer, and when we got near port, I saw them dumping a ton or two of good food over- board; and I made inquiries, and learned that one of the oflBcials of the company ran a farm, and furnished the stuff — and the orders were to get rid of so much every trip !" Montague's jaw had fallen. "What could Major Thorne do against such a combination.?" lie asked. "I don't know," said the Major, shrugging his shoulders. "It's a case to take to a lawyer — one who knows the ropes. Hawkins over there would know what to tell you. I should imagine the thing he'd advise would be to call a strike of the men who handle the coal, and tie up the companies and bring them to terms." "You're joking now!" exclaimed the other. "Not at all," said the Major, laughing again. **It's done all the time. There's a building trust in this city, and the way it put all its rivals out of business was by having strikes called on their jobs." Digitized by Microsoft® THE METROPOLIS 205 "But how could it do that?" "Easiest thing in the world. A labour leader is a man with a great deal of power, and a very small salary to live on. And even if he won't sell out — there are other ways. I could intro- duce you to a man right in this room who had a big strike on at an inconvenient time, and he had the president of the union trapped in a hotel with a woman, and the poor fellow gave in and called off the strike." "I should think the strikers might sometimes get out of hand," said Montague. "Sometimes they do," smiled the other. "There is a regular procedure for that case, also. Then you hire detectives and start vio- lence, and call out the militia and put the strike leaders into jail." Montague could think of nothing to say to that. The programme seemed to be complete. "You see," the Major continued, earnestly, "I'm advising you as a friend, and I'm taking the point of view of a man who has money in his pocket. I've had some there always, but I've had to work hard to keep it there. All my life I've been surrounded by people who wanted to do me good ; and the way they wanted to do it was to exchange nay real money for pieces of paper which they d had printed with fancy scroll- work and eagles and flags. Of course, if you want to look at the thing from the other side, why, then the invention is most ingenious, and trade is booming just now, and this is a great country, and merit is all you need in it — and everything else is just as it ought to be. It Digitized by Microsoft® £06 THE METROPOLIS makes all the difference in the world, you know, whether a man is buying a horse or selling him!" Montague had observed with perplexity that such incendiary talk as this was one of the characteristics of people in these lofty altitudes. It was one of the liberties accorded to their station. Editors and bishops and statesmen and aU the rest of their retainers had to believe in the respectabilities, even in the privacy of their clubs — the people's ears were getting terribly sharp these days! But among the real giants of business- you might have thought your- self in a society of revolutionists; they would tear up the mountain tops and hurl them at €ach other. Wlien one of these old warr horses once got started, he would tell tales of deviltry to appall the soul of the hardiest muck-rake man. It was always the other fellow, of course; but then, if you pinned your man down, and if he thought > that he could trust you — he would acknowledge that he had sometimes fought the