“You’re young, you see,” said the other. “You have health—everybody has health, except me! And everybody hates me—I haven’t got a friend in the world!”
Montague was quite taken aback by the suddenness of this outburst. He tried to stop it, for he felt almost indecent in listening—it was not fair to take a man off his guard like this. But the stranger could not be stopped—he was completely unstrung, and his voice grew louder and louder.
“It’s every word of it true,” he exclaimed wildly. “And I can’t stand it any more. I can’t stand anything any more. I was young and strong once—I could take care of myself; and I said: I’ll make money, I’ll be master of other men! But I was a fool—I forgot my health. And now all the money on earth can’t do me any good! I’d give ten million dollars to-day for a body like any other man’s—and this—this is what I have!”
He struck his hands against his bosom. “Look at it!” he cried, hysterically. “This is what I’ve got to live in! It won’t digest any food, and I can’t keep it warm—there’s nothing right with it! How would you like to lie awake at night and say to yourself that your teeth were decaying and you couldn’t help it—your hair was falling out, and nobody could stop it? You’re old and worn out—falling to pieces; and everybody hates you—everybody’s waiting for you to die, so that they can get you out of the way. The doctors come, and they’re all humbugs! They shake their heads and use long words—they know they can’t do you any good, but they want their big fees! And all they do is to frighten you worse, and make you sicker than ever!”
There was nothing that Montague could do save to sit and listen to this outburst of wretchedness. His attempts to soothe the old man only had the effect of exciting him more.
“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!