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THE MONEYCHANGERS

By Upton Sinclair

New York

1908


To Jack London




CHAPTER I


"I am," said Reggie Mann, "quite beside myself to meet this Lucy
Dupree."

"Who told you about her?" asked Allan Montague.

"Ollie's been telling everybody about her," said Reggie. "It sounds
really wonderful. But I fear he must have exaggerated."

"People seem to develop a tendency to exaggeration," said Montague,
"when they talk about Lucy."

"I am in quite a state about her," said Reggie.

Allan Montague looked at him and smiled. There were no visible signs
of agitation about Reggie. He had come to take Alice to church, and
he was exquisitely groomed and perfumed, and wore a wonderful
scarlet orchid in his buttonhole. Montague, lounging back in a big
leather chair and watching him, smiled to himself at the thought
that Reggie regarded Lucy as a new kind of flower, with which he
might parade down the Avenue and attract attention.

"Is she large or small?" asked Reggie.

"She is about your size," said Montague,--which was very small
indeed.

Alice entered at this moment in a new spring costume. Reggie sprang
to his feet, and greeted her with his inevitable effusiveness.

When he asked, "Do you know her, too?"

"Who? Lucy?" asked Alice. "I went to school with her."

"Judge Dupree's plantation was next to ours," said Montague. "We all
grew up together."

"There was hardly a day that I did not see her until she was
married," said Alice. "She was married at seventeen, you know--to a
man much older than herself."

"We have never seen her since that," added the other. "She has lived
in New Orleans."

"And only twenty-two now," exclaimed Reggie. "All the wisdom of a
widow and the graces of an ingenue!" And he raised his hands with a
gesture of admiration.

"Has she got money?" he asked.

"She had enough for New Orleans," was the reply. "I don't know about
New York."

"Ah well," he said meditatively, "there's plenty of money lying
about."

He took Alice away to her devotions, leaving Montague to the
memories which the mention of Lucy Dupree awakened.

Allan Montague had been in love with Lucy a half a dozen times in
his life; it had begun when she was a babe in arms, and continued
intermittently until her marriage. Lucy was a beauty of the creole
type, with raven-black hair and gorgeous colouring; and Allan
carried with him everywhere the face of joy, with the quick, mobile
features across which tears and laughter chased like April showers
across the sky.

Lucy was a tiny creature, as he had said, but she was a well-spring
of abounding energy. She had been the life of a lonely household
from the first hour, and all who came near her yielded to her spell.
Allan remembered one occasion when he had entered the house and seen
the grave and venerable chief justice of the State down upon his
hands and knees, with Lucy on his back.

She was a born actress, everybody said. When she was no more than
four, she would lie in bed when she should have been asleep, and
tell herself tragic stories to make her weep. Before long she had
discovered several chests full of the clothes which her mother had
worn in the days when she was a belle of the old plantation society;
and then Lucy would have tableaus and theatricals, and would
astonish all beholders in the role of an Oriental princess or a
Queen of the Night.

Her mother had died when she was very young, and she had grown up
with only her father for a companion. Judge Dupree was one of the
rich men of the neighbourhood, and he lavished everything upon his
daughter; but people had said that Lucy would suffer for the lack of
a woman's care, and the prophecy had been tragically fulfilled.
There had come a man, much older than herself, but with a glamour of
romance about him; and the wonder of love had suddenly revealed
itself to Lucy, and swept her away as no emotion had ever done
before.

One day she disappeared, and Montague had never seen her again. He
knew that she had gone to New Orleans to live, and he heard rumours
that she was very unhappy, that her husband was a spendthrift and a
rake. Scarcely a year after her marriage Montague heard the story of
his death by an accident while driving.

He had heard no more until a short time after his coming to New
York, when the home papers had reported the death of Judge Dupree.
And then a week or so ago had come a letter from Lucy, to his
brother, Oliver Montague, saying that she was coming to New York,
perhaps to live permanently