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 didn’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 haven’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 class—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 class knows every other, his methods and his limitations, and their loyalty one to another makes of them a great hulking, fashionably 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 worthwhile. 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 clubmen 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’ thievin’ Berry Hamilton’s fambly to speak to me.”
“Why, you were all right this evening.”
“Yes, but jest out o’ pity, an’ you was nice ’cause you was afraid I’d tell on you. Go on now.”
“Go on now,” said Minty’s young man; and he looked menacing.
Joe, what little self-respect he had gone, slunk out of the room and needed several whiskeys in a neighbouring saloon to give him courage to go to the theatre and wait for Hattie, who was playing in vaudeville houses pending the opening of her company.
The closing act was just over when he reached the stage door. He was there but a short time, when Hattie tripped out and took his arm. Her face was bright and smiling, and there was no suggestion of disgust in the dancing eyes she turned up to him. Evidently she had not heard, but the thought gave him no particular pleasure, as it left him in suspense as to how she would act when she should hear.
“Let’s go somewhere and get some supper,” she said; “I’m as hungry as I can be. What are you looking so cut up about?”
“Oh, I ain’t feelin’ so very good.”
“I hope you ain’t lettin’ that long-tongued Brown woman bother your head, are you?”
His heart seemed to stand still. She did know, then.
“Do you know all about it?”
“Why, of course I do. You might know she’d come to me first with her story.”
“And you still keep on speaking to me?”
“Now look here, Joe, if you’ve been drinking, I’ll forgive you; if you ain’t, you go on and leave me. Say, what do you take me for? Do you think I’d throw down a friend because somebody else talked about him? Well, you don’t know Hat Sterling. When Minty told me that story, she was back in my dressing room, and I sent her out o’ there a-flying, and with a tongue-lashing that she won’t forget for
