The Metropolis

U >> Upton Sinclair >> The Metropolis

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

This eBook was created by Charles Aldarondo (pg@aldarondo.net).

THE METROPOLIS

BY

UPTON SINCLAIR

FIRST PUBLISHED 1908

PRINTED BY OFFSET IN GREAT BRITAIN

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 himself 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 hot see the marblo 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 Prentice bowed here and there as they retired and
took the elevator to the reception-rooms. In the doorway they passed
a stout little man with stubby white moustaches, and the General
stopped, exclaiming, "Hello, Major!" Then he added: "Let me
introduce Mr. Allan Montague. Montague, 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
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 Thorne.

"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 Chancellorsville, when Montague's
father had been a rising young staff-officer, 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 conflict, 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, and into a solid wall of infantry and
artillery. The crash of their volley was blinding--and horses wore
fairly shot to fragments; and the Major's horse, with its lower jaw
torn off, had plunged madly away and left its rider hanging 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 gallant 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
twilight and the night, against charge after charge.--And now to
stand and gaze at this stout and red-nosed little personage, and
realize 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 some one 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 Harbour--name of frightful memory!--and when the enemy had
swarmed out of their intrenchments and swept back the whole line
just beyond him, his battery had stood like 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 Montague'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 some one 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 greatest pleasure had
been to sit with his two boys on his knees and "fight his battles
o'er again." He had collected all the literature of the corps which
he had commanded--a whole librarry 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 him away. He
studied maps of campaigns 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
themselves, and all these scenes and memories crowding upon him in
tumultuous throngs. No wonder 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 eloquence 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 doorway, a smooth, perfectly groomed
gentleman, conspicuous in the uniformed assembly by his evening
dress. The Judge was stout and jovial, and cultivated Dundreary
whiskers and a beaming 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 York 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 caressing 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 gathered. There were stands of battle-flags in the
corners, each one of them a scroll of tragic history, to one like
Montague, who understood. His eye roamed over them while the
secretary was reading minutes of meetings and other routine
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' organization, and to that extent
aristocratic; 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 ot
one of the city's largest banks, and a rich man, even in New York's
understanding of that term.

The presiding officer introduced "Colonel Robert gelden, who will
read the paper of the evening: 'Recollections of Spottsylvania.'"
Montague 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 began to read
his story. He recalled the situation of the Army of the Potomac in
the spring of 1846; 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, and there Lee struck them, and
for three days they groped in a blind 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 realized 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
cupola 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 his breath, as if a spasm of pain had shot through him.

At dawn two brigades had charged and captured 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
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, matter-of-fact voice, you
might see men leaning forward in their chairs, hands clenched, teeth
set. They knew! They knew! Had there ever before 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 canister 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?

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,
having 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 kill
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
delirious; and how, at last, the army marched his way. He ended his
narrative 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 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, perhaps feeling a need of relief after the sombre
recital, the Judge took occasion to apologize 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, every one 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 every one near him laughing. Finally Montague
was moved to tell a story himself--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. 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, "Cultivate him!" The Judge was so willing
to be cultivated, however, that it gave one's conscience little
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 some one produced a bugle and
a couple of drums; then the walls of the place shook, as the whole
company 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 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 summer 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!"

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
beautiful 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 trembling
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 Republic. 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-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 glimpse of whose shining face they had kept
the long night vigils and charged upon the guns in the morning; for
a touch of whose shimmering 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 little to be understood.
There were boyhood memories in Montague's mind, of hours of
consecration, 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 government 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 thoughts of wealth and fame and power--was
the purpose that the men who had died for the Republic should find
him worthy of their trust.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22