“Why does it all have to fall on me?” he moaned. “I want to be like
other people—I want to live! And instead, I’m like a man with a pack of
hungry wolves prowling round him—that’s what it’s like! It’s like
Nature—hungry and cruel and savage! You think you know what life is; it
seems so beautiful and gentle and pleasant—that’s when you’re on top!
But now I’m down, and I _know_ what it is—it’s a thing like a
nightmare, that reaches out for you to clutch you and crush you! And
you can’t get away from it—you’re helpless as a rat in a corner—you’re
damned—you’re _damned!_” The miserable man’s voice broke in a cry of
despair, and he sank down in a heap in front of Montague, shaking and
sobbing. The other was trembling slightly, and stricken with awe.
There was a long silence, and then the stranger lifted his tear-stained
face, and Montague helped to support him. “Have a little more of the
whisky,” said he.
“No,” the other answered feebly, “I’d better not.”
“—My doctors won’t let me have whisky,” he added, after a while.
“That’s my liver. I’ve so many don’ts, you know, that it takes a
note-book to keep track of them. And all of them together do me no
good! Think of it—I have to live on graham crackers and milk—actually,
not a thing has passed my lips for two years but graham crackers and
milk.”
And then suddenly, with a start, it came to Montague where he had seen
this wrinkled old face before. It was Laura Hegan’s uncle, whom the
Major had pointed out to him in the dining-room of the Millionaires’
Club! Old Henry S. Grimes, who was really only sixty, but looked
eighty; and who owned slum tenements, and evicted more people in a
month than could be crowded into the club-house!
Montague gave no sign, but sat holding the man in his arms. A little
trickle of blood came from under the handkerchief and ran down his
cheek; Montague felt him tremble as he touched this with his ringer.
“Is it much of a cut?” he asked.
“Not much,” said Montague; “two or three stitches, perhaps.”
“Send for my family physician,” the other added. “If I should faint, or
anything, you’ll find his name in my card-case. What’s that?”
There was the sound of voices down the road. “Hello!” Montague shouted;
and a moment later two men in automobile costume came running toward
him. They stopped, staring in dismay at the sight which confronted
them.
At Montague’s suggestion they made haste to find a log by means of
which they lifted the auto sufficiently to drag out the body of the
chauffeur. Montague saw that it was quite cold.
He went back to old Grimes. “Where do you wish to go?” he asked.
The other hesitated. “I was bound for the Harrisons’—” he said.
“The Leslie Harrisons?” asked Montague. (They were people he had met at
the Devons’.)
The other noticed his look of recognition. “Do you know them?” he
asked.
“I do,” said Montague.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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