The Metropolis Part 27

There was a silence; and then the storm broke. Oliver knew his brother well enough to realize just how thoroughly he meant what he said; and so he got the full force of the shock all at once. He raved and swore and wrung his hands, and declaimed at his brother, saying that he had betrayed him, that he was ruining him--dumping himself and the whole family into the ditch. They would be jeered at and insulted--they would be blacklisted and thrown out of Society. Alice's career would be cut short--every door would be closed to her. His own career would die before it was born; he would never get into the clubs--he would be a pariah--he would be bankrupted and penniless. Again and again Oliver went over the situation, naming person after person who would be outraged, and describing what that person would do; there were the Wallings and the Venables and the Havens, the Vandams and the Todds and the Wymans--they were all one regiment, and Montague had flung a bomb into the centre of them!

It was very terrible to him to see his brother's rage and despair; but he had seen his way clear through this matter, and he knew that there was no turning back for him. "It is painful to learn that all one's acquaintances are thieves," he said. "But that does not change my opinion of stealing."

"But my G.o.d!" cried Oliver; "did you come to New York to preach sermons?"

To which the other answered, "I came to practise law. And the lawyer who will not fight injustice is a traitor to his profession."

Oliver threw up his hands in despair. What could one say to a sentiment such as that?

--But then again he came to the charge, pointing out to his brother the position in which he had placed himself with the Wallings. He had accepted their hospitality; they had taken him and Alice in, and done everything in the world for them--things for which no money could ever repay them. And now he had struck them!

But the only effect of that was to make Montague regret that he had ever had anything to do with the Wallings. If they expected to use their friends.h.i.+p to tie his hands in such a matter, they were people he would have left alone.

"But do you realize that it's not merely yourself you're ruining?"

cried Oliver. "Do you know what you're doing to Alice?"

"That is harder yet for me," the other replied. "But I am sure that Alice would not ask me to stop."

Montague was firmly set in his own mind; but it seemed to be quite impossible for his brother to realize that this was the case. He would give up; but then, going back into his own mind, and facing the thought of this person and that, and the impossibility of the situation which would arise, he would return to the attack with new anguish in his voice. He implored and scolded, and even wept; and then he would get himself together again, and come and sit in front of his brother and try to reason with him.

And so it was that in the small hours of the morning, Montague, pale and nervous, but quite unshaken, was sitting and listening while his brother unfolded before him a picture of the Metropolis as he had come to see it. It was a city ruled by mighty forces--money-forces; great families and fortunes, which had held their sway for generations, and regarded the place, with all its swarming millions, as their birthright. They possessed it utterly--they held it in the hollow of their hands. Railroads and telegraphs and telephones--banks and insurance and trust companies--all these they owned; and the political machines and the legislatures, the courts and the newspapers, the churches and the colleges. And their rule was for plunder; all the streams of profit ran into their coffers. The stranger who came to their city succeeded as he helped them in their purposes, and failed if they could not use him. A great editor or bishop was a man who taught their doctrines; a great statesman was a man who made the laws for them; a great lawyer was one who helped them to outwit the public. Any man who dared to oppose them, they would cast out and trample on, they would slander and ridicule and ruin.

And Oliver came down to particulars--he named these powerful men, one after one, and showed what they could do. If his brother would only be a man of the world, and see the thing! Look at all the successful lawyers! Oliver named them, one after one--shrewd devisers of corporation trickery, with incomes of hundreds of thousands a year. He could not name the men who had refused to play the game--for no one had ever heard of them. But it was so evident what would happen in this case! His friends would cast him off; his own client would get his price--whatever it was--and then leave him in the lurch, and laugh at him! "If you can't make up your mind to play the game," cried Oliver, frantically, "at least you can give it up! There are plenty of other ways of getting a living--if you'll let me, I'll take care of you myself, rather than have you disgrace me. Tell me--will you do that?

Will you quit altogether?"

And Montague suddenly leaped to his feet, and brought his fist down upon the desk with a bang. "No!" he cried; "by G.o.d, no!"

"Let me make you understand me once for all," he rushed on. "You've shown me New York as you see it. I don't believe it's the truth--I don't believe it for one single moment! But let me tell you this, I shall stay here and find out--and if it is true, it won't stop me! I shall stay here and defy those people! I shall stay and fight them till the day I die! They may ruin me,--I'll go and live in a garret if I have to,--but as sure as there's a G.o.d that made me, I'll never stop till I've opened the eyes of the people to what they're doing!"

Montague towered over his brother, white-hot and terrible. Oliver shrank from him--he never had seen such a burst of wrath from him before. "Do you understand me now?" Montague cried; and he answered, in a despairing voice, "Yes, yes."

"I see it's all up," he added weakly. "You and I can't pull together."

"No," exclaimed the other, pa.s.sionately, "we can't. And we might as well give up trying. You have chosen to be a time-server and a lick-spittle, and I don't choose it! Do you think I've learned nothing in the time I've been here? Why, man, you used to be daring and clever--and now you never draw a breath without wondering if these rich sn.o.bs will like the way you do it! And you want Alice to sell herself to them--you want me to sell my career to them!"

There was a long pause. Oliver had turned very pale. And then suddenly his brother caught himself together, and said: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to quarrel, but you've goaded me too much. I'm grateful for what you have tried to do for me, and I'll pay you back as soon as I can.

But I can't go on with this game. I'll quit, and you can disown me to your friends--tell them that I've run amuck, and to forget they ever knew me. They'll hardly blame you for it--they know you too well for that. And as for Alice, I'll talk it out with her to-morrow, and let her decide for herself--if she wants to be a Society queen, she can put herself in your hands, and I'll get out of her way. On the other hand, if she approves of what I'm doing, why we'll both quit, and you won't have to bother with either of us."

That was the basis upon which they parted for the night; but like most resolutions taken at white heat, it was not followed literally. It was very hard for Montague to have to confront Alice with such a choice; and as for Oliver, when he went home and thought it over, he began to discover gleams of hope. He might make it clear to every one that he was not responsible for his brother's business vagaries, and take his chances upon that basis. After all, there were wheels within wheels in Society; and if the Robbie Wallings chose to break with him--why, they had plenty of enemies. There might even be interests which would be benefited by Allan's course, and would take him up.

Montague had resolved to write and break every engagement which he had made, and to sever his connection with Society at one stroke. But the next day his brother came again, with compromises and new protestations. There was no use going to the other extreme: he, Oliver, would have it out with the Wallings, and they might all go on their way as if nothing had happened.

So Montague made his debut in the role of knight-errant. He went with many qualms and misgivings, uncertain how each new person would take it. The next evening he was promised for a theatre-party with Siegfried Harvey; and they had supper in a private room at Delmonico's, and there came Mrs. Winnie, resplendent as an apple tree in early April--and murmuring with bated breath, "Oh, you dreadful man, what have you been doing?"

"Have I been poaching on YOUR preserves?" he asked promptly.

"No, not mine," she said, "but--" and then she hesitated.

"On Mr. Duval's?" he asked.

"No," she said, "not his--but everybody else's! He was telling me about it to-day--there's a most dreadful uproar. He wanted me to try to find out what you were up to, and who was behind it."

Montague listened, wonderingly. Did Mrs. Winnie mean to imply that her husband had asked her to try to worm his business secrets out of him?

That was what she seemed to imply. "I told him I never talked business with my friends," she said. "He can ask you himself, if he chooses. But what DOES it all mean, anyhow?"

Montague smiled at the naive inconsistency.

"It means nothing," said he, "except that I am trying to get justice for a client."

"But can you afford to make so many powerful enemies?" she asked.

"I've taken my chances on that," he replied.

Mrs. Winnie answered nothing, but looked at him with wondering admiration in her eyes. "You arc different from the men about you," she remarked, after a while-and her tone gave Montague to understand that there was one person who meant to stand by him.

But Mrs. Winnie Duval was not all Society. Montague was amused to notice with what suddenness the stream of invitations slacked up; it was necessary for Alice to give her calling list many revisions.

Freddie Vandam had promised to invite them to his place on Long Island, and of course that invitation would never come; likewise they would never again see the palace of the Lester Todds, upon the Jersey mountain-top.

Oliver put in the next few days in calling upon people to explain his embarra.s.sing situation. He washed his hands of his brother's affairs, he said; and his friends might do the same, if they saw fit. With the Robbie Wallings he had a stormy half hour, about which he thought it best to say little to the rest of the family. Robbie did not break with him utterly, because of their Wall Street Alliance; but Mrs. Robbie's feeling was so bitter, he said, that it would be best if Alice saw nothing of her for a while. He had a long talk with Alice, and explained the situation. The girl was utterly dumbfounded, for she was deeply grateful to Mrs. Robbie, and fond of her as well; and she could not believe that a friend could be so cruelly unjust to her.

The upshot of the whole situation was a very painful episode. A few days later Alice met Mrs. Robbie at a reception; and she took the lady aside, and tried to tell her how distressed and helpless she was. And the result was that Mrs. Robbie flew into a pa.s.sion and railed at her, declaring in the presence of several people that she had sponged upon her and abused her hospitality! And so poor Alice came home, weeping and half hysterical.

All of which, of course, was like oil upon a fire; the heavens were lighted up with the conflagration. The next development was a paragraph in Society's scandal-sheet--telling with infinite gusto how a certain ultra-fas.h.i.+onable matron had taken up a family of stranded waifs from a far State, and introduced them into the best circles, and even gone so far as to give a magnificent dance in their honour; and how the discovery had been made that the head of the family had been secretly preparing an attack upon their business interests; and of the tearing of hair and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth which had followed--and the violent quarrel in a public place. The paragraph concluded with the prediction that the strangers would find themselves the centre of a merry social war.

Oliver was the first to show them this paper. But lest by any chance they should miss it, half a dozen unknown friends were good enough to mail them copies, carefully marked.--And then came Reggie Mann, who as free-lance and gossip-gatherer sat on the fence and watched the fun; Reggie wore a thin veil of sympathy over his naked glee, and brought them the latest reports from all portions of the battle-ground. Thus they were able to know exactly what everybody was saying about them--who was amused and who was outraged, and who proposed to drop them and who to take them up.

Montague listened for a while, but then he got tired of it, and went for a walk to escape it--but only to run into another trap. It was dark, and he was strolling down the Avenue, when out of a brilliantly lighted jewellery shop came Mrs. Billy Alden to her carriage. And she hailed him with an exclamation.

"You man," she cried, "what have you been doing?"

He tried to laugh it off and escape, but she took him by the arm, commanding, "Get in here and tell me about it."

So he found himself moving with the slow stream of vehicles on the Avenue, and with Mrs. Billy gazing at him quizzically and asking him if he did not feel like a hippopotamus in a frog-pond.

He replied to her raillery by asking her under which flag she stood.

But there was little need to ask that, for anyone who was fighting a Walling became ipso facto a friend of Mrs. Billy's. She told Montague that if he felt his social position was imperilled, all he had to do was to come to her. She would gird on her armour and take the field.

"But tell me how you came to do it," she said.

He answered that there was very little to tell. He had taken up a case which was obviously just, but having no idea what a storm it would raise.

Then he noticed that his companion was looking at him sharply. "Do you really mean that's all there is to it?" she asked.

"Of course I do," said he, perplexed.

"Do you know," was her unexpected response, "I hardly know what to make of you. I'm afraid to trust you, on account of your brother."

Montague was embarra.s.sed. "I don't know what you mean," he said.