Title:  The Moneychangers

Author:  Upton Sinclair

Release Date:  June, 2004 [EBook #5829] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 10, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of the project gutenberg EBOOK, the Moneychangers ***

Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed Proofreading team.

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.