That afternoon Holt called on Dr. Talbot in his office. Half an hour
later, looking flushed and angry, he strolled frowning down Bush
street, then turned abruptly and walked in the direction of South Park.
He did not know Mrs. McLane but he believed she would see him.
He called at midnight--and on many succeeding nights--for Madeleine and
took her to several of the dives that seemed to afford her amusement.
He noticed that she drank little, and had a glimmering of the truth.
Newspaper men have several extra senses. It was also apparent that the
life she had led had not made her callous. As he insisted upon
"treating" her she would have none of champagne but ordered ponies of
brandy.
Now that she had a cavalier she was stared at more than formerly, and
there was some audible ribald comment which Holt did his best to
ignore; but as time wore on those bent on hilarity or stupor ceased to
notice two people uninterestingly sober.
Holt talked of Masters constantly, relating every incident of his
sojourn in San Francisco he could recall, and of his past that had come
to his knowledge; expatiating bitterly upon his wasted gifts and
blasted life. The more Madeleine winced the further he drove in the
knife.
One night they were sitting on a balcony in Chinatown. In the
restaurant behind them a banquet was being given by a party of Chinese
merchants, and Holt had thought the scene might amuse her. The round
table was covered with dishes no larger than those played with in
childhood and the portions were as minute. The sleek merchants wore
gorgeously embroidered costumes, and behind them were women of their
own race, dressed plainly in the national garb, their stiff oiled hair
stuck with long pins lobed with glass. They were evidently an
orchestra, for they sang, or rather chanted, in high monotonous voices,
as mournful as their gray expressionless faces. In two recesses,
extended on teakwood couches, were Chinamen presumably of the same
class as the diners, but wearing their daily blue silk unadorned and
leisurely smoking the opium pipe. The room was heavily gilded and
decorated and on the third floor as befitted its rank. Chinamen of
humbler status dined on the floor below, and the ground restaurant
accommodated the coolies.
On the little balcony, their chairs wedged between large vases of
growing plants, Madeleine could watch the function without attracting
attention; or lean over the railing and look down upon the narrow
street hung with gay paper lanterns above the open doors of shops that
flaunted the wares of the Orient under strange gilt signs. There were
many little balconies high above the street and they were as
brilliantly lit as for a festival. From several came the sound of
raucous instrumental music or that same thin chant as of lost souls
wandering in outer darkness. The street was thronged with Chinamen of
the lower caste in dark blue cotton smocks, pendent pigtails, and round
coolie hats.
It was eight o'clock, but it was Holt's "night off" and as he had told
her that morning he could get a pass for the dinner, and that it was
time she "changed her bill," she had risen early and met him at her
door.
It was apparent that she took a lively interest in this bit of Shanghai
but a step out of the Occident, for her face had lost its heavy
brooding and she asked him many questions. It was an hour before
Masters' name was mentioned, and then she said abruptly:
"You tell me much of his life out here and before he came, but you
hardly ever say anything about the present."
"That sort of life is much of a muchness."
"How do you hear?"
"One of the _Bulletin_ men--Tom Lacey--went East just after Masters
did. He is on the _Times_. Several of us correspond with him."
"Has--has he ever been--literally, I mean--in the gutter?"
"Probably. He was in a hospital for a time and when he came out several
of his friends tried to buck him up. But it was no use. He did work on
one of the newspapers--the _Tribune_, I believe--about half sober until
he had paid his hospital bill with something to spare. Then he went to
work in the same old steady painstaking way to drink himself to death."
"Wh--why did he go to the hospital? Was he very ill?"
"Busted the crust of a policeman and got his own busted at the same
time."
"How is it you spared me this before?"
He pretended not to see her tears, or her working hands.
"Didn't want to give you too heavy doses at once, but you are so much
stronger that I chanced it. He's been in more than one spectacular
affair. One night, in front of the City Prison, he tossed the driver
off a van as if the man had been a dead leaf, and before the guard had
time to jump to his seat he was on the box and had lashed the horses.
He drove like mad all over New York for hours, the prisoners inside
yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs. They thought it was a
new and devilishly ingenious mode of punishment. When the horses
dropped he left the van where it stood and went home. There was a
frightful row over the affair. Masters was arrested, of course, but
bailed out. He has friends still and some of them are influential. The
trial was postponed a few times and then dropped. His rows are too
numerous to mention. When he was here and sober he betrayed anger only
in his eyes, which looked like steel blades run through fire, and with
the most caustic tongue ever put in a man's head. But when he's in
certain stages of insobriety his fighting instincts appear to take
their own sweet way. At other times, Lacey writes, he is as interesting
as ever and men sit round eagerly and listen to him talk. At others he
simply disappears. Did I tell you he had come into a little money--just
recently?"
"No, you did not. Why doesn't he start a newspaper?"
"He's probably forgotten he ever wanted one--no, I don't fancy he ever
forgets anything. Only death will destroy that brain no matter how he
may obfuscate it. And I guess there are times when he can't, poor
devil. But he couldn't start a newspaper on what he's got. It's just
enough to buy him all he wants without the necessity for work."
"How did he get it?"
"His elder brother--only remaining member of the immediate family--died
and left him the old plantation in Virgina--what there is left of it;
and a small income from two or three old houses in Richmond. Masters
told me once that when the war left them high and dry he agreed to
waive his share in the estate provided his brother would take care of
his mother and the old place. The estate comes to him now, but in
trust. At his death, without legal heir, it goes to a cousin."
"Oh, take me home, please. I can't stand those wailing women any
longer."