A good sport! Oh, yes, Graham answered admirably to that
description,--according to its present-day use. Graham, like Belle, was
suffering from the fact that everything was too easy. His father's
so-called benefactor had taken all the sting of life for that boy.
Fundamentally he had inherited a considerable amount of his father's
grit. He needed the impetus of struggle to use up that sense of
adventure which was deep-rooted in his nature. He was a throw-back. He
had all the stuff in him that was in his ancestors,--those early
pioneers who were momentarily up against the grim facts of life. He was
not cut out for civilization. He needed action, the physical strain and
stress of hunting for his food among primeval surroundings and the
constant exercise of his strength in dangerous positions. He would have
made a fine sailor, a reckless soldier or an excellent flying man. He
was as much out of his element in Wall Street as a sporting dog which is
doomed to pass away its life sitting beside a chauffeur in an elaborate
motor-car. The daring recklessness which would have been an asset to him
as a hunter of big game or a man who attached himself to dangerous
expeditions, found vent, in the heart of civilization, in gambling and
running wild. It was a pity to see such a lad so utterly misplaced and
going to the devil with an alacrity that alarmed even some of his very
loose friends. If his father had continued to be a hard-working doctor
whose income was barely large enough to cover his yearly expenses,
Graham could have used up his superabundant energies in climbing, rung
by rung, any ladder at the bottom of which he had been placed. As it
was, he found himself, through his father's sudden accession to wealth,
beginning where most men leave off, with nothing to fight for--nothing
to put his teeth into--nothing for which to take off his coat. It was
all wrong. He made money and lost it with equal ease--although he lost
more than he won. He was surrounded with luxuries when he should have
been faced daily with the splendid difficulties which go to form
character and mental strength. Somehow or other his innate desire for
adventure had to be used up. With no one to exercise any discipline over
him, with no steady hand to guide him and control, he flung himself
headlong into the vortex of the night life of the great city and was an
easy prey for its rastaquores. At the age of twenty-four he already knew
what it was to be haunted by money-lenders. Already he was up to the
innumerable dodges of the men who borrow from Peter to pay Paul. He was
a well-known figure in gambling clubs and the houses in the red-light
district, and he numbered among his friends men and women who made a
specialty of dealing with boys of his type and who laid their nets with
consummate knowledge of humanity and with the most dastardly
callousness. He was indeed, in the usual inaccurate conception of the
word, a good "sport," and stood every chance of paying for the privilege
with his health, his self-respect and the whole of his future life.
To have seen the nervous way in which he dressed for dinner the next
evening, throwing tie after tie away with irritable cursing, would have
convinced the most casual observer of the fact that he stood in need of
a strong hand. His very appearance,--the dark lines round his eyes, the
unsteadiness of his hand,--denoted plainly enough the sort of life that
he was leading, but the short-sighted eyes of the Doctor in whose house
he lived missed all this, and there was no one except the little mother
to cry "halt" to this poor lad and, in her experience, of what avail was
she?
He drove--after having dined with three other Wall Street men at
Sherry's--to an apartment house on West Fortieth Street, little
imagining that fate had determined to put him to the test. Kenyon had
recommended him to try it. He had heard of it from Captain Fountain's
brother, who had called it "very hot stuff" in one of his letters,--the
headquarters of a so-called "Bohemian" set in which Art and gambling
were combined. It was run by a woman whose name was Russian, whose
instincts were cosmopolitan, and who had been shifted out of most of the
great European cities by the police. "The Papowsky," as she was called,
spoke several languages equally fluently. She was something of a judge
of art. She had an uncanny way of being able to predict success or
failure to new plays. She knew musicians when she saw them and only had
to smell a book to know whether it had excellence or not. Her short,
thin body and yellow skin, her black hair cut in a fringe over her eyes
and short all round like that of a Shakesperian page, her long, dark,
Oriental eyes and her long artistic hands were in themselves far from
attractive. It was her wit and sarcasm however and the brilliant way in
which she summed up people and things which made her the leader of those
odd people--to be found in every great city--who delight in being
unconventional and find excitement in a game of chance.
The apartment in which she held her "receptions" and entertainments was
unique. The principal room was a large and lofty studio, arranged like a
grotto with rocks and curious lights and secluded places where there
were divans. Here there was a dais, at the back of which there was an
organ, and a grand piano stood upon it in a French frame all over
cupids, and it was here that the most extraordinary exhibitions of
dancing were given by the Papowsky hand-maidens and others.
The other people who lived in this apartment house had already begun to
talk about it in whispers, and its reputation had gone out into the
city. One or two feeble complaints had been made to the police, but
without any avail. At the moment when Graham had first entered it, it
was in its second year and was flourishing like the proverbial Bay Tree.
The magnets which drew him to this house of Arabian Nights were the
roulette table in a secluded room at the end of the passage, and one of
the hand-maidens of the Papowsky, whose large, gazelle-like eyes and
soft caressing hands drew him from other haunts, and followed him into
his dreams.