Part 13 (2/2)

Joe glared at him. Why in the devil should this fellow be so sadly gay when he was weighted down with sorrow and shame and disgust?

”Come, come now, Hamilton, if you 're sore because I invited myself to take a drink with you, I 'll withdraw the order. I know the heroic thing to say is that I 'll pay for the drinks myself, but I can't screw my courage up to the point of doing so unnatural a thing.”

Young Hamilton hastened to protest. ”Oh, I know you fellows now well enough to know how many drinks to pay for. It ain't that.”

”Well, then, out with it. What is it? Have n't been up to anything, have you?”

The desire came to Joe to tell this man the whole truth, just what was the matter, and so to relieve his heart. On the impulse he did. If he had expected much from Sadness he was disappointed, for not a muscle of the man's face changed during the entire recital.

When it was over, he looked at his companion critically through a wreath of smoke. Then he said: ”For a fellow who has had for a full year the advantage of the education of the New York clubs, you are strangely young. Let me see, you are nineteen or twenty now--yes. Well, that perhaps accounts for it. It 's a pity you were n't born older. It 's a pity most men are n't. They would n't have to take so much time and lose so many good things learning. Now, Mr. Hamilton, let me tell you, and you will pardon me for it, that you are a fool. Your case is n't half as bad as that of nine-tenths of the fellows that hang around here. Now, for instance, my father was hung.”

Joe started and gave a gasp of horror.

”Oh, yes, but it was done with a very good rope and by the best citizens of Texas, so it seems that I really ought to be very grateful to them for the distinction they conferred upon my family, but I am not. I am ungratefully sad. A man must be very high or very low to take the sensible view of life that keeps him from being sad. I must confess that I have aspired to the depths without ever being fully able to reach them.

”Now look around a bit. See that little girl over there? That 's Viola.

Two years ago she wrenched up an iron stool from the floor of a lunch-room, and killed another woman with it. She 's nineteen,--just about your age, by the way. Well, she had friends with a certain amount of pull. She got out of it, and no one thinks the worse of Viola. You see, Hamilton, in this life we are all suffering from fever, and no one edges away from the other because he finds him a little warm. It 's dangerous when you 're not used to it; but once you go through the parching process, you become inoculated against further contagion. Now, there 's Barney over there, as decent a fellow as I know; but he has been indicted twice for pocket-picking. A half-dozen fellows whom you meet here every night have killed their man. Others have done worse things for which you respect them less. Poor Wallace, who is just coming in, and who looks like a jaunty ragpicker, came here about six months ago with about two thousand dollars, the proceeds from the sale of a house his father had left him. He 'll sleep in one of the club chairs to-night, and not from choice. He spent his two thousand learning. But, after all, it was a good investment. It was like buying an annuity. He begins to know already how to live on others as they have lived on him.

The plucked bird's beak is sharpened for other's feathers. From now on Wallace will live, eat, drink, and sleep at the expense of others, and will forget to mourn his lost money. He will go on this way until, broken and useless, the poor-house or the potter's field gets him. Oh, it 's a fine, rich life, my lad. I know you 'll like it. I said you would the first time I saw you. It has plenty of stir in it, and a man never gets lonesome. Only the rich are lonesome. It 's only the independent who depend upon others.”

Sadness laughed a peculiar laugh, and there was a look in his terribly bright eyes that made Joe creep. If he could only have understood all that the man was saying to him, he might even yet have turned back. But he did n't. He ordered another drink. The only effect that the talk of Sadness had upon him was to make him feel wonderfully ”in it.” It gave him a false bravery, and he mentally told himself that now he would not be afraid to face Hattie.

He put out his hand to Sadness with a knowing look. ”Thanks, Sadness,”

he said, ”you 've helped me lots.”

Sadness brushed the proffered hand away and sprung up. ”You lie,” he cried, ”I have n't; I was only fool enough to try;” and he turned hastily away from the table.

Joe looked surprised at first, and then laughed at his friend's retreating form. ”Poor old fellow,” he said, ”drunk again. Must have had something before he came in.”

There was not a lie in all that Sadness had said either as to their crime or their condition. He belonged to a peculiar cla.s.s,--one that grows larger and larger each year in New York and which has imitators in every large city in this country. It is a set which lives, like the leech, upon the blood of others,--that draws its life from the veins of foolish men and immoral women, that prides itself upon its well-dressed idleness and has no shame in its voluntary pauperism. Each member of the cla.s.s knows every other, his methods and his limitations, and their loyalty one to another makes of them a great hulking, fas.h.i.+onably uniformed fraternity of indolence. Some play the races a few months of the year; others, quite as intermittently, gamble at ”shoestring”

politics, and waver from party to party as time or their interests seem to dictate. But mostly they are like the lilies of the field.

It was into this set that Sadness had sarcastically invited Joe, and Joe felt honoured. He found that all of his former feelings had been silly and quite out of place; that all he had learned in his earlier years was false. It was very plain to him now that to want a good reputation was the sign of unpardonable immaturity, and that dishonour was the only real thing worth while. It made him feel better.

He was just rising bravely to swagger out to the theatre when Minty Brown came in with one of the club-men he knew. He bowed and smiled, but she appeared not to notice him at first, and when she did she nudged her companion and laughed.

Suddenly his little courage began to ooze out, and he knew what she must be saying to the fellow at her side, for he looked over at him and grinned. Where now was the philosophy of Sadness? Evidently Minty had not been brought under its educating influences, and thought about the whole matter in the old, ignorant way. He began to think of it too.

Somehow old teachings and old traditions have an annoying way of coming back upon us in the critical moments of life, although one has long ago recognised how much truer and better some newer ways of thinking are.

But Joe would not allow Minty to shatter his dreams by bringing up these old notions. She must be instructed.

He rose and went over to her table.

”Why, Minty,” he said, offering his hand, ”you ain't mad at me, are you?”

”Go on away f'om hyeah,” she said angrily; ”I don't want none o'

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