"Well, come along," interrupted young Haight. "We"ll all go down to the Luxembourg and have something cold and wet."
"Ah, make it the Imperial instead," objected Vandover. "We may find Flossie."
"Say," cried Geary, "can"t you _live_ without trailing around after some kind of petticoats?"
"You"re right," admitted Vandover, "I can"t," but he persuaded them to go to the Imperial for all that.
At the Imperial, Toby, the red-eyed waiter, came to take their order.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "Haven"t seen you around here for some time."
"No, no," said Geary. "I"ve been too busy. I"ve been working like a dog lately to get into a certain office. You bet I"ll make it all right--all right. Bring me a stringy rabbit and a pint of dog"s-head."
"You bet I"ve been working," he continued after they had settled down to their beer and rabbits, "working like a dog. A man"s got to rustle if he"s going to make a success at law. _I"m_ going to make it go, by George, or I"ll know the reason why. I"ll make my way in this town and my pile. There"s money to be made here and _I_ might just as well make it as the next man. Every man for himself, that"s what _I_ say; that"s the way to get along. It may be selfish, but you"ve got to do it. By G.o.d! it"s human nature. Isn"t that right, hey? Isn"t that right?"
"Oh, that"s right," admitted young Haight, trying to be polite. After this the conversation lagged a little. Young Haight drank his Apollinaris lemonade through a straw, Geary sipped his ale, and Vandover fed himself Welsh rabbit and Spanish olives with the silent enjoyment of a glutton. By and by, when they had finished and had lighted their cigars and cigarettes, they began to talk about the last Cotillon, to which Vandover and Haight belonged.
"Say, Van," said young Haight, tilting his head to one side and shutting one eye to avoid the smoke from his cigar, "say, didn"t I see you dancing with Mrs. Doane after supper?"
"Yes," said Vandover laughing; "all the men were trying to get a dance with her. She had an edge on."
"No?" exclaimed Geary, incredulously.
"That"s a fact," admitted young Haight. "Van is right."
"She was opposite to me at table," said Vandover, "and _I_ saw her empty a whole bottle of champagne."
"Why, I didn"t know they got drunk like that at the Cotillons," said Geary. "I thought they were very swell."
"Well, of course, they don"t as a rule," returned Vandover. "Of course there are girls like--like Henrietta Vance who belong to the Cotillon and make it what it is, and what it ought to be. But there are other girls like Mrs. Doane and Lilly Stannard and the Trafford girls that like their champagne pretty well now, and don"t you forget it! Oh, you know, I wouldn"t call it getting drunk, though."
"Well, why not?" exclaimed young Haight impatiently. "Why not call it "getting drunk?" Why not call things by their right name? You can see just how bad they are then; and I think it"s shameful that such things can go on in an organization that is supposed to contain the very best people in the city. Now, I just want to tell you what I saw at one of these same Cotillons in the first part of the season. Lilly Stannard disappeared after supper and people said she was sick and was going home, but I knew exactly what was the matter, because I had seen her at the supper table. Well, I had gone outside on the steps to get a mouthful of smoke, and my little cousin, Hetty, who has just come out and who is only nineteen, was out there with me because it was so warm inside, and _she_ had seen Lilly Stannard filling up with champagne at supper, and didn"t know what to make of it. Well, we were just talking about it, and I was trying to make her believe too that Lilly Stannard was sick, when here comes Lilly herself out to her carriage. Her maid was supporting her, just about half-carrying her. Lilly"s face was so pale that the powder on it looked like ashes, her hair was all coming down, and she was hiccoughing. Now," continued young Haight, his eyes snapping, and his voice raised so as to make itself heard above the exclamations of his two friends, "now, that"s a _fact_; I give you my word of honour that it actually happened. It"s not hearsay; I saw it myself. It"s fine, isn"t it?" he went on, wrathfully. "It sounds well, don"t it, when it"s told _just as it happened_? The girl was dead drunk.
Oh, she may have made a mistake; it may have been the first time; but the fact remains that she always drinks a lot of champagne at the Cotillons, and other girls have been drunk there, too. Mrs. Doane, that Van tells about, was _drunk_; that"s the word for it. She was dead drunk that night, and there was my little cousin, Hetty, who had never seen even a man the worse for his liquor, standing there and taking it all in. Of course, every one hushed the thing up or else said the poor girl was sick; but Hetty knew, and what effect do you suppose it had upon a little girl like that, who had always been told what nice, irreproachable people went to the Cotillons? Hetty will never be the same little girl now that she was before. Oh, it makes me d.a.m.ned tired."
"Well, I don"t see," said Geary, "why the girls should make such a fuss about the men keeping straight. I daresay now that this Stannard girl would cut us all dead if she knew how drunk we were that night about four months ago--that night that you fellows got thrown out of the Luxembourg."
"No, I don"t believe she would at all," said young Haight.
"She"d think better of you for it," put in Vandover. "Look here," he went on, "all this talk of women demanding the same moral standard for men as men do for women is fine on paper, but how does it work in real life? The women don"t demand it at all. Take the average society girl in a big city like this. The girls that we meet at teas and receptions and functions--don"t you suppose they know the life we men lead? Of course they do. They may not know it in detail, but they know in a general way that we get drunk a good deal and go to disreputable houses and that sort of thing, and do they ever cut us for that? No, sir; not much.
Why, I tell you, they even have a little more respect for us. They like a man to know things, to be experienced. A man that keeps himself straight and clean and never goes around with fast women, they think is ridiculous. Of course, a girl don"t want to know the particulars of a man"s vice; what they want is that a man should have the knowledge of good and evil, yes, and lots of evil. To a large extent I really believe it"s the women"s fault that the men are what they are. If they demanded a higher moral standard the men would come up to it; they encourage a man to go to the devil and then--and then when he"s rotten with disease and ruins his wife and has children--what is it--_"spotted toads"_--_then_ there"s a great cry raised against the men, and women write books and all, when half the time the woman has only encouraged him to be what he is."
"Oh, well now," retorted young Haight, "you know that all the girls are not like that."
"Most of them that you meet in society are."
"But they are the best people, aren"t they?" demanded Geary.
"No," answered Vandover and young Haight in a breath, and young Haight continued:
"No; I believe that very few of what you would call the "best people" go out in society--people like the Ravises, who have good principles, and keep up old-fashioned virtues and all that. You know," he added, "they have family prayers down there every morning after breakfast."
Geary began to smile.
"Well, now, I don"t care," retorted young Haight, "I like that sort of thing."
"So do I," said Vandover. "Up home, now, the governor asks a blessing at each meal, and somehow I wouldn"t like to see him leave it off. But you can"t tell me," he went on, going back to the original subject of their discussion, "you can"t tell me that American society girls, city-bred, and living at the end of the nineteenth century, don"t know about things. Why, man alive, how can they help but know? Look at those that have brothers--don"t you suppose they know, and if they know, why don"t they use their influence to stop it? I tell you if any one were to write up the lives that we young men of the city lead after dark, people wouldn"t believe it. At that party that Henrietta Vance gave last month there were about twenty fellows there and I knew every one, and I was looking around the supper-table and wondering how many of those young fellows had never been inside of a disreputable house, and there was only _one_ beside Dolly Haight!"
Young Haight exclaimed at this, laughing good-naturedly, twirling his thumbs, and casting down his eyes with mock-modesty.
"Well, that"s the truth just the same," Vandover went on. "We young men of the cities are a fine lot. I"m not doing the baby act. I"m not laying the blame on the girls altogether, but I say that in a measure the girls are responsible. They want a man to be a _man_, to be up to date, to be a man of the world and to go in for that sort of vice, but they don"t know, they don"t dream, how rotten and disgusting it is. Oh, I"m not preaching. I know I"m just as bad as the rest, and I"m going to have a good time while I can, but sometimes when you stop and think, and as Dolly says "call things by their right names," why you feel, don"t you know--_queer_."
"I don"t believe, Van," responded young Haight, "that it"s _quite_ as bad as you say. But it"s even wrong, I think, that a good girl should know anything about vice at all."
"Oh, that"s nonsense," broke in Geary; "you can"t expect nowadays that a girl, an American girl, can live twenty years in a city and not know things. Do you think the average modern girl is going to be the absolutely pure and innocent girl of, say, fifty years ago? Not much; they are right on to things to-day. You can"t tell them much. And it"s all right, too; they know how to look out for themselves, then. It"s part of their education; and I think if they haven"t the knowledge of evil, and don"t know what sort of life the average young man leads, that their mothers ought to tell them."
"Well, I don"t agree with you," retorted young Haight. "There"s something revolting in the idea that it"s necessary a young girl should be instructed in that sort of nastiness."
"Why, not at all," answered Geary. "Without it she might be ruined by the first man that came along. It"s a protection to her virtue."
"Oh, pshaw! I don"t believe it at all," cried young Haight, impatiently. "I believe that a girl is born with a natural intuitive purity that will lead her to protect her virtue just as instinctively as she would dodge a blow; if she wants to go wrong she will have to make an effort herself to overcome that instinct."
"And if she don"t," cried Vandover eagerly, "if she don"t--if she don"t protect her virtue, I say a man has a right to go as far with her as he can."
"If _he_ don"t, some one else will," said Geary.
"Ah, you can"t get around it that way," answered young Haight, smiling.
"It"s a man"s duty to protect a girl, even if he has to protect her against herself."
When he got home that night Vandover thought over this remark of young Haight"s and in its light reviewed what had occurred in the room at the Imperial. He felt aroused, nervous, miserably anxious. At length he tried to dismiss the subject from his mind; he woke up his drowsing grate fire, punching it with the poker, talking to it, saying, "Wake up there, you!" When he was undressed, he sat down before it in his bathrobe, absorbing its heat luxuriously, musing into the coals, scratching himself as was his custom. But for all that he fretted nervously and did not sleep well that night.
Next morning he took his bath. Vandover enjoyed his bath and usually spent two or three hours over it. When the water was very warm he got into it with his novel on a rack in front of him and a box of chocolates conveniently near. Here he stayed, for over an hour, eating and reading, and occasionally smoking a cigarette, until at length the enervating heat of the steam gradually overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.
On this particular morning between nine and ten Geary called, and as was his custom came right up to Vandover"s room. Mr. Corkle, lying on the wolfskin in the bay window, jumped up with a gruff bark, but, recognizing him, came up wiggling his short tail. Geary saw Vandover"s clothes thrown about the floor and the closed door of the bathroom.
"Hey, Van!" he called. "It"s Charlie Geary. Are you taking a bath?"
"h.e.l.lo! What? Who is it?" came from behind the door. "Oh, is that you, Charlie? h.e.l.lo! how are you? Yes, I"m taking a bath. I must have been asleep. Wait a minute; I"ll be out."
"No, I can"t stop," answered Geary. "I"ve an appointment downtown; overslept myself, and had to go without my breakfast; makes me feel all broke up. I"ll get something at the Grillroom about eleven; a steak, I guess. But that isn"t what I came to say. Ida Wade has killed herself!
Isn"t it fearful? I thought I"d drop in on my way downtown and speak to you about it. It"s dreadful! It"s all in the morning papers. She must have been out of her head."
"What is it--what has she done?" came back Vandover"s voice. "Papers--I haven"t seen--what has she done? Tell me--what has she done?"
"Why, she committed suicide last night by taking laudanum," answered Geary, "and n.o.body knows why. She didn"t leave any message or letter or anything of the kind. It"s a fearful thing to happen so suddenly, but it seems she has been very despondent and broke up about something or other for a week or two. They found her in her room last night about ten o"clock lying across her table with only her wrapper on. She was unconscious then, and between one and two she died. She was unconscious all the time. Well, I can"t stop any longer, Van; I"ve an appointment downtown. I was just going past the house and I thought I would run up and speak to you about Ida. I"ll see you again pretty soon and we"ll talk this over."
Mr. Corkle politely attended Geary to the head of the stairs, then went back to Vandover"s room, and after blowing under the crack of the bathroom door to see if his master was still there returned to the wolfskin and sat down on his short tail and yawned. He was impatient to see Vandover and thought he stayed in his bath an unnecessarily long time. He went up to the door again and listened. It was very still inside; he could not hear the slightest sound, and he wondered again what could keep Vandover in there so long. He had too much self-respect to whine, so he went back to the wolfskin and curled up in the sun, but did not go to sleep.
By and by, after a very long time, the bathroom door swung open, and Vandover came out. He had not dried himself and was naked and wet. He went directly to the table in the centre of the room and picked up the morning paper, looking for the article of which Geary had spoken. At first he could not find it, and then it suddenly jumped into prominence from out the gray blur of the print on an inside page beside an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a charity concert for the benefit of a home for incurable children. There was a picture of Ida taken from a photograph like one that she had given him, and which even then was thrust between the frame and gla.s.s of his mirror. He read the article through; it sketched her life and character and the circ.u.mstances of her death with the relentless terseness of the writer cramped for s.p.a.ce. According to this view, the causes of her death were unknown. It had been remarked that she had of late been despondent and in ill health.