Gossip, that imaginative, swift-footed, and altogether disreputable
slave of Hearsay, who runs amuck, distributing his pack of lies
from one telltale tongue to the next eager ear, rich in clever
exaggerations, never at a loss for more--far-reaching as contagion, and
heralding all else but the truth--seldom affects the poor.
In certain congested, poverty-stricken quarters, it is the basis of
their easy, garrulous language, and as current as their slang or
their profanity. Those who are both poor, humble, and meek are seldom
mentioned--since they do nothing to attract attention. They may be
said to be philosophers. Gossip, stealthy as the incoming tide, sweeps
wide; like the sea’s long, feathery fingers, it spreads with a rapidity
that is amazing. Gossip runs riot in a village. It tears down streets,
runs frantically up lanes, and into houses, short-cuts to the next,
flies around corners, climbs stairs, is passed over neighbors’ fences,
seeks out the smallest nooks, is whispered through cracks and keyholes,
and even bawled down cellars--lest there should be any one left below
ground who has not heard the news.
Among those whom riches have thrown laughing into the lap of luxury
and elected to the pinnacles of the most expensive society, women who
move in those fashionable and exclusive circles, where every detail of
their private lives, from their gowns and jewels to their marriages and
divorces, the press so kindly keep the public informed of--over these
gossip hovers like an ill-omened forerunner of scandal.
Scandal is the prime executioner; when scandal strikes it lays the
naked truth bare to the bone--stark, hideous, undeniable. It takes a
brave woman to stand firm in the face of scandal. Some totter and fall
at the first blow; others struggle to their feet and survive. Some hide
themselves.
There is something so frank and open about scandal that it becomes
terrible--merciless and terrifying in its exposure of plain fact
The hum of gossip may be compared to the mosquitoes, whose sting is
trivial; scandal strikes as sudden as a thunderbolt; it shatters the
four walls of a house with a single blow, and turns a search-light on
its victim in the ruins.
That “Handsome Jack” Lamont should have said what he did to pretty Mrs.
Benton as they met by chance coming out of the theatre, and that pretty
Mrs. Benton’s husband, having gone himself to-night in search of his
carriage, discovered it far down the line, signalled to his coachman,
made his way again through the waiting group of women in theatre wraps
and their escorts, and reached his wife’s side at the precise moment
to overhear Lamont’s quick question to her, caught even her smiling,
whispered promise to him--was unfortunate. The attack followed.
Before either were aware of his presence, Benton struck Lamont a
stinging blow from behind, knocking off his hat. As he turned, Benton
struck him again--two very courageous blows for so short a little man,
red with rage and round as a keg. Pretty Mrs. Benton, who was tall
and slim--an exquisite blonde--screamed; so did several women in the
group about them, falling back upon their escorts for protection--but
by this time, Lamont had the enraged little man by the shoulders and
was shaking him like a rat, denouncing his attack as an outrage,
demanding an apology, explaining to him exactly what he said, that
nobody but a fool could have construed it otherwise, that he was making
himself ridiculous. Pretty Mrs. Benton also explaining, and both
being skilful liars in emergency, the dramatic incident closed, to
the satisfaction of the two stalwart policemen, who had strolled up,
swinging their long night-sticks--recognized Benton, the millionaire,
as being too wealthy to arrest, and Lamont as an old friend of their
chief at headquarters--dispersed the crowd with a “G’wan now about
yer business”; waited until the lady and her still furious husband
were safe in their carriage; shouted to the coachman to move on, and
a moment later followed Lamont around the corner, where he explained
the affair even more to their satisfaction. In their plain brogue they
thanked him, and expressed their admiration over the skill with which
he had pinioned the excited arms of the little man; that admiration
which is common among men at prize-fights when the better of the two
antagonists refuses to give the final knockout to the weaker man.
“Sure ye had him from the first!” they both agreed.
It had all happened quickly. By the time Lamont left the two patrolmen
the theatre was dark and the doors locked for the night.
* * * * *
Let us discreetly draw down the dark-blue silk shades of the Benton
equipage upon the scenes that ensued on their way home. Let us refrain
from raising them even an inch to catch sight of the pretty face of the
now thoroughly indignant though tearful lady, or the continued tirade
of her lord and master, as they rumbled over the cobbles.
Was she not lovely and convincing in her grief--and--and purely in
the right? How preposterous to think otherwise! To disagree with an
angel! Heavens! Was she not blond and adorable? Bah! How silly husbands
are! What a tempest in a teapot they make of nothing--to misconstrue
the simplest and most innocent of questions and the most natural of
whispered replies into high treason! Did not Benton owe Mr. Lamont the
most abject of apologies? Of course. He owed a still deeper apology to
Mrs. Benton for “mortifying her beyond words.” Innocence in the hands
of a brute! A lily in the grip of a brigand! She who had given all to
him--her love--her devotion--could he doubt her for an instant? Had he
ever doubted _her_? Had she ever been jealous of _him_? How lucky he
was to have a wife like her. Henceforth he could go to the theatre
alone--forever--nightly--as long as he lived--and stay there until he
died.
Passionately, with a sharp cry of contempt, she slipped off her
marriage ring, and flung it away forever on the floor of the
brougham, where he groped for it out of breath, and returned it to
her imploringly, seizing her clenched hand and begging her to let him
restore it to its rightful finger. That he restored it finally came as
a reward for a score of humble promises, including his entire belief
in her innocence, and the meekest of confessions that his undying love
for her alone had been responsible for his uncontrollable jealousy. Her
slim, satin-slippered foot still kept tapping in unison to her beating
heart, but victory was hers. It shone in her large blue eyes, in the
warm glow overspreading her delicate cheeks, her lovely throat and
neck. Her whole mind exulted as she thought of “Jack.” How she would
pour out to him in a long letter all of her pent-up heart. She could
hardly wait for morning to come in which to write it, upon the faintly
scented paper he loved, and which he could detect in his box at the
club among a dozen others by its violet hue.
After all, what had Lamont said to have raised all this tragic row? To
have been struck like a common ruffian in the public street, before the
eyes of people he knew, and several of whom he had dined with--or hoped
to--and for what?
Nine of the simplest words, all told, were what Benton had overheard,
and not a syllable more. Lamont’s quick question, “At three, then?” and
her smiling, whispered promise: “No--at three-thirty, impatient child.”
What could have been more innocent? Has a gentleman no right to
hurriedly ask the time--and be sweetly chided for his impatience?
Far better had he refrained and discreetly sent her a note by some
trusted servant to her dressmaker’s (for he kept tally of her
“fittings”)--far better--one of those brief notes, whose very telltale
briefness reads in volumes. They are always typical of serious affairs.
Alas! the affair had only begun. The two patrolmen recounted the
incident on their return from their “beat” to the sergeant at the desk,
interspersing their narrative with good-humored laughter and some
unprintable profanity.
“’Twas _him_,” they said, referring to Benton. They expatiated on his
riches and the good looks of his wife, emphasized their own magnanimity
in refusing to arrest, and covered Lamont’s level, handsome head with a
wreath of glory--all to the delight of a young reporter hanging around
for an instalment, and eager to “make good” with his night editor.
In little less than two hours the whole story was on the press--that
most powerful gossiper in the world! Needless to say, it printed the
story to a nicely--a giant high-speed press, capable of thousands
of copies an hour. It even took the trouble to fold them in great
packages, which were carried on the shoulders of men and thrown into
wagons, that dashed off to waiting trains, which in turn rushed them to
distant cities.
It made the young reporter’s reputation, but it nearly ruined pretty
Mrs. Benton’s, and brought Jack Lamont before the public eye by a
wide-spread publicity he had never dreamed of.
Needless to say, too, that the unfortunate lady did not write the note
the next morning; she became prostrated and lay in a darkened room,
and could see no one by her physician’s orders--not even her enraged
husband.
Let us pass over the heartrending details which ensued--of her return
to her mother; of their long talks of a separation, providing it could
be obtained without pecuniary loss to the injured daughter. Both of
them, you may be sure, held Benton wholly responsible--or, rather,
irresponsible, being unfit for any woman to live with, owing to his
ungovernable jealousy.
Poor Phyllis! She was born much too beautiful, with her delicate skin
like a tea-rose, and her fine, blond hair, that reached nearly to her
knees, and when up and undulated left little stray wisps at the nape
of her graceful, white neck. She should never have married a man like
Benton--round like his dollars. What a stunning pair she and Jack
Lamont would have made! But what a dance he would have led her! Lucky
he was to have the wife he had, who forgave him everything and paid
his debts and lived her own life, which was eminently respectable,
firm in her devotion to her charities, and as set in her opinions at
her women’s clubs--a small, pale woman with large, dark eyes--a woman
whom he seldom saw, never breakfasted with, and rarely lunched or dined
with at home, since he came and went as he pleased; now and then they
met at a reception, now and then at a tea, his cheery “Hello, Nelly,”
forcing from her a “Hello, Jack,” that convinced every one around them
they were still the best of friends. Even the account of this latest
affair of his in the papers did not surprise her. For a day or two she
was annoyed by reporters, but her butler handled them cleverly, and
they went away, no wiser for having come. Not a word of reproach to her
husband passed Mrs. Lamont’s lips. If there was any money needed over
the affair, she knew Jack would come to her; further than that, she
refused to let the matter trouble her.
Nothing could have been more convincing than Lamont’s side of the
affair in the afternoon papers. This remarkable document from the pen
of a close club friend of his--a talented journalist--was satisfactory
in the extreme. It not only evoked public sympathy for the injured
lady, but put her insanely jealous husband in the light of a man who
was not responsible for his actions, and should not be allowed to walk
abroad, unless under the care of an attendant. As for Mr. Lamont, he
had done nothing or said a word that might have been misconstrued to
warrant so scandalous an attack. The same thing might have happened to
any gentleman whom common courtesy had led to speak to a woman of his
acquaintance on leaving the theatre, and further went on to state that
“Mr. Lamont’s many virtues were vouched for by his host of friends; his
fairness as a sportsman, and his popularity in society being too widely
known to need further comment.” Lamont remained sober until he had read
it; then he went on the worst spree in ten years.
* * * * *
It is erroneous to suppose that men of birth and breeding seek
luxurious places to amuse themselves in. They often seek the lowest. To
a worldly and imaginative mind like Lamont’s nothing in his own strata
of society amused him at a time like this. A gentleman may become
a vagabond for days and still remain a gentleman. Men are complex
animals. The animal is simpler, wholly sincere; it possesses but one
nature; man has two--his intellectual and his savage side--distinct
one from the other, as black from white. Women have but one nature;
the ensemble of their character changes only in rare exceptions. They
are what they are born to be, and remain so. That this nature “goes
wrong” is erroneous. Psychologically, it goes right. It reverts to its
true nature at the first real opportunity. Birth and breeding have
very little to do with it. Environment may often be likened to a jail,
and since it is the nature born of some women to crave to escape--they
do. A woman who is fundamentally saintly remains a saint. She has no
_desire_ to be otherwise. Temptation leaves the really good alone.
Lamont, however, was a man, and a worldly man at that, a man whose
eyes were accustomed to gaze calmly at those illusive jewels called
pleasure, with their variegated facets of light, and to choose the one
whose rays most pleased him. Strange, is it not, that red has always
stood for evil?
This worst spree in ten years of his should rightly have begun with
him at Harry Hill’s, at Crosby and Houston Streets, for he had been a
familiar figure there, and a keen enthusiast over the boxing. Hill’s
white front screening the old room, with its boxes, its women, its
old bar down-stairs and its prize-ring above, had been closed by the
police. Such places, however, as Donovan’s, Dempsey’s, and Regan’s were
still wide open to receive him. Of the three he preferred Regan’s, and,
indeed, nearly the whole of his five days’ spree was spent there, down
in that sordid basement, with its steep iron stairs, its bouncer, its
famous banjo player, accompanied by a small Sunday-school melodeon; its
women, its whiskey, and its smoke. Not a breath of scandal ever entered
the place, save when it was permanently closed at last for a murder.
Gentlemanly deportment was rigorously exacted, and the first signs of
trouble meant a throw-out. It was a fine place to be forgotten in and
to forget the World above ground. This place, like Bill Monahan’s,
had its small virtues; Bill Monahan himself never touched liquor, his
clean pot of tea, which he drank from liberally, being always simmering
within his reach.
Lamont had not a single enemy at Regan’s. He spent his money freely to
the twang of one of the best banjo players the world has ever known.
That a gentleman of so much innate refinement should have chosen a dive
to amuse himself in--a place that reeked with the odor of evil, and
through whose heat, and smoke, and glaring lights the faces of so many
lost souls stared at one like spectres--seems incredible. Where would
you have him go? Back into his own dull environment? Free and drunk as
he was? Nonsense! He would have become conspicuous. No one was ever
conspicuous at Regan’s. Hell has no favorites. The place had not sunk
so low as to have clean sawdust on its floors. It was run rigorously
for coin. Its waiters, silent, experienced, and attentive; its women,
confidential in the extreme; and the eye of the bouncer on and over
them all. The bartender, the melodeon, and the banjo player did the
rest. It was they who kept up its _esprit_--changed an old hard-luck
story into new luck, tears into laughter, and desperation into a faint
glimmer of hope. In the lower world everything is so well understood,
there are no novelties--stale love--stale beer--stale everything.
* * * * *
The last we saw of Ebner Ford was when he glanced at the extra
announcing the scandal. He who rarely bought a paper, bought this. He
handed the newsboy a nickel, waited impatiently for his change, and
leaped up the Elevated stairs, reading the account.
He read as he ran, glancing at Lamont’s portrait framed in an oval of
yacht pennants and polo-mallets, with a horseshoe for luck crowning
them all. He threw another nickel on the worn sill of the ticket
window, received a coupon from a haggard ticket-seller, and kept on
reading while he waited on the drafty station at Fulton Street for an
up-town train. Nothing could have happened to better further his idea.
Was not his friend Lamont in trouble? What better excuse to call on him
and express his sympathy? He began as he boarded the train to frame up
what he would say to him. “Sympathy first and business afterward,” he
said to himself. How he would come to him gallantly as a friend--slap
him on the back and cheer him up. “Help him ferget--all them little
worries”--and having gotten him sufficiently cheered, talk to him man
to man over his little scheme. He told himself that there was not a
chance in a thousand of its failing; that Lamont could not very well
refuse him. “Takin’ all things considered,” he mused, as he hung to
a strap--“dead stuck on girlie, that’s certain--one of them little
bargains that a feller like him will snap at.”
He began to wish that it was _he_ instead of Lamont who had gotten
into so much free print. “Wouldn’t have cost me a cent,” he reasoned,
“and given me more solid advertisement than I could have bought fer a
thousand dollars. Ain’t nothin’ like publicity to bring a feller into
the public eye.”
All New York was reading the account. Thousands of others would read
it all over the country, he declared. He decided he had better go to
Lamont’s club first, in the hope of finding him, and failing in this,
to his house. Then he thought he had “better go home first and see
Emma, and brush up a little,” and with this in view left the train at
9th Street and walked rapidly across town to Waverly Place.
* * * * *
In the meantime Enoch had left his office; he, too, had bought a
paper, which he read grimly, with mingled anger and disgust. Later
came Lamont’s side of the affair in the afternoon edition. This Enoch
read, taking it for precisely what it was worth, his anger rising as
he thought of Sue and of her acquaintance with a scoundrel. After all
said and done, the incident that had happened before the theatre was of
slight interest to the public; thousands of them kindled their kitchen
fires with the whole of it the next day, and having cooked breakfast
over the cheerful flames, forgot that the unfortunate incident had ever
happened.
A few women of Lamont’s acquaintance still gossiped over it to their
intimate friends at tea and along Fifth Avenue--and forgave him. The
butler at Lamont’s residence opened the door wide as usual, grave as
the statue of an illustrious citizen, and as for Mrs. Lamont, she
resumed her philosophic life as well.
“Handsome Jack” was drinking heavily somewhere--no one knew where;
all they knew was that he had not returned; whom he hobnobbed with he
had only a vague idea of himself. The mornings were the worst, the
afternoons grew better, and he really only began to live steadily at
midnight and beyond into those stale hours of the morning, until the
chill of gray daylight sent the best banjo player’s best banjo into its
worn leather case, closed the little Sunday-school melodeon, locked
it, and sent its tired player to bed for the day, sent the scrub-woman
to her knees, and gave the bouncer a well-earned rest with the rising
sun. Possibly the only woman who knew where Lamont was was “Diamond”
May, a large blonde, whose language was as refined as she could make it
for the occasion, and whose quick, gray eyes were those of a retired
thief’s.
She called him “Jack”--but mostly “deary,” “listen” and “deary”
occurring as frequently in her vocabulary as “and” or “the.” Jack swore
by her after midnight. She was proud of him, being a gentleman. She was
proud, too, of being in the presence of his money and his crest ring,
which to her vouched for both their respectabilities.
Luck comes to a man without the slightest warning. Strangely enough, it
is the result after repeated failure. Luck arrives when least expected.
It is as elusive as quicksilver and full of surprises. Neither the
toiler nor the gambler can by long study control it; as for the latter,
all his pet systems of play break down, unless luck is with him. He
spends all his life trying to beat the game, and in the long run the
game invariably beats him. And as luck can never be a steady companion,
few gamblers die rich. The game itself impoverishes both the proprietor
and his clients. There are some who acquire the habit of gambling;
others are born gamblers, and Jack Lamont was one of these.
Had Ebner Ford found him to-night, he would have discovered him winning
heavily in one of the best-known gambling-houses in town. Here, also,
he was known as “Jack,” and any check he signed for was accepted. The
old negro at the door, sliding back the small grated panel, knew him
instantly on the dark, high stoop, opened the door immediately, bowed
low in his brass-buttoned livery, and called him “Mr. L.”
Up-stairs, in the shadow of the shades casting their bright light over
the long, green roulette table, others knew him as “Jack” Lamont. The
faro dealer, with his precise, pale hands, knew him, too, but contented
himself with a friendly nod of greeting--omitting his name.
The proprietor was an honest man--a man who never did an unkind act
or said an unkind thing to man, woman, or child in his life. This man
had rare virtues--he never drank, he never smoked, he never swore; he
loved his wife and children; he stood at the elbows of the riffraff of
weak humanity in his house, and yet, apart from them all. He possessed
the manners of a prince and the heart of a gentleman, for he did kind
things nightly. The college youth who lost, and whom he knew could
not at all afford it, he would approach in a way that even the youth,
heated with drink and gaming, could not take offense at. Little by
little, as the boy lost, he would persuade him to stop. He would
explain to him “that he had struck a run of bad luck; that the same
thing had happened to him a score of times in his life--suppose you let
me take your last hand?”
This over a game of poker in the small room up-stairs on the third
floor. Then somehow he managed to lose to the boy, lose all he had won
from him, gave him a free supper of jellied quail and champagne, and
saw that he reached his college train in time, with what he had entered
his gambling-house with safe in his pocket.
“You have one of those peculiar streaks of bad luck on,” he’d repeat.
“Leave the game alone for six months, son; I never knew luck to change
in less.”
There was something lovable in his character, in his gentle,
well-modulated voice, in the gleam of his honest blue eyes, brilliant
in a face exceedingly pale, crowned by fair hair silvered at the
temples. Tall and slim he was, a straight and graceful man, with a
clean-cut profile, a blond mustache, and clothes that were positively
immaculate: The white silk ascot tie, with its single pearl, the long
gray Prince Albert coat and trousers, the trim patent-leather shoes.
And his hands! What wonderful hands he had--pale, ringless hands, yet
denoting strength and character. And his spotless white cuffs, and
the plain gold links his wife had given him. This tall, pale man, who
rang true as gold, he, too, was a born gambler, but he played like a
gentleman, and could go to bed at daylight owing no man a grudge, and
with the sincere belief that that which he had won he had won honestly.
Lamont played on--played on as he had luckily the night before, and the
night before that. Flushed with his luck, when he finished this morning
at five, he had over six thousand dollars of the house’s money. The old
negro saw him out with a smile, and he handed him a five-dollar bill
for his trouble.
He still had sense enough left not to go back to his old haunts. The
only wise thing to do he did--went to a respectable hotel, locked his
door, and slept until his bank opened for depositors. With his great
good luck, his old, sordid haunts had lost their glamour, somehow. His
thoughts turned to sweeter things.
He longed to see Sue. He was very much in the same condition of mind
as many a man has been before--and who, having bathed, shaved, and
dressed, goes out and buys a clean, fresh rosebud for his buttonhole.