At the Banner he took a seat by himself, and, ordering a cocktail, sat glowering at the few other lonely members who had happened to drop in. There were not many of them, and the contagion of unsociability had taken possession of the house. The people sat scattered around at different tables, perfectly unmindful of the bartender, who cursed them under his breath for not “getting together.”
Joe’s mind was filled with bitter thoughts. How long had he been away from home? he asked himself. Nearly a year. Nearly a year passed in New York, and he had come to be what he so much desired—a part of its fast life—and now in a moment an old woman’s stubbornness had destroyed all that he had builded.
What would Thomas say when he heard it? What would the other fellows think? And Hattie? It was plain that she would never notice him again. He had no doubt but that the malice of Minty Brown would prompt her to seek out all of his friends and make the story known. Why had he not tried to placate her by disavowing sympathy with his mother? He would have had no compunction about doing so, but he had thought of it too late. He sat brooding over his trouble until the bartender called with respectful sarcasm to ask if he wanted to lease the glass he had.
He gave back a silly laugh, gulped the rest of the liquor down, and was ordering another when Sadness came in. He came up directly to Joe and sat down beside him. “Mr. Hamilton says ‘Make it two, Jack,’ ” he said with easy familiarity. “Well, what’s the matter, old man? You’re looking glum.”
“I feel glum.”
“The divine Hattie hasn’t been cutting any capers, has she? The dear old girl hasn’t been getting hysterical at her age? Let us hope not.”
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? Haven’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 weren’t born older. It’s a pity most men aren’t. They wouldn’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 isn’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 lunchroom, 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 tonight, 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.
