Madeleine had forced herself to eat a light dinner, and a few minutes
before eleven she drank a cup of strong coffee; but when she entered
upon the sights and sounds and stenches of Worth Street she nearly
fainted.
The night was hot. The narrow crooked streets of the Five Points were
lit with gas that shone dimly through the grimy panes of the lamp posts
or through the open doors of groggeries and fetid shops. The gutter was
a sewer. Probably not one of those dehumanized creatures ever bathed.
Some of the children were naked and all looked as if they had been
dipped in the gutters and tossed out to dry. The streets swarmed with
them; and with men and women between the ages of sixteen and forty. One
rarely lived longer than that in the Five Points. Some were shrieking
and fighting, others were horribly quiet. Men and women lay drunk in
the streets or hunched against the dripping walls, their mouths with
black teeth or no teeth hanging loosely, their faces purple or pallid.
Screams came from one of the tenements, but neither of the two
detectives escorting the party turned his head.
Madeleine had imagined nothing like this. Her only acquaintance with
vice had been in the dens and dives of San Francisco, and she had
pictured something of the same sort intensified. But there was hardly a
point of resemblance. San Francisco has always had a genius for making
vice picturesque. The outcasts of the rest of the world do their worst
and let it go at that. Moreover, in San Francisco she had never seen
poverty. There was work for all, there were no beggars, no hungry
tattered children, no congested districts. Vice might be an agreeable
resource but it was forced on no one; and always the atmosphere of its
indulgence was gay. She had witnessed scenes of riotous drunkenness,
but there was something debonair about even those bent upon
extermination, either of an antagonist or the chandeliers and
glass-ware, and she had never seen men sodden save on the water front.
Even then they were often grinning.
But this looked like plain Hell to Madeleine, or worse. The Hell of the
Bible and Dante had a lively accompaniment of writhing flames and was
presumably clean. This might be an underground race condemned to a
sordid filthy and living death for unimaginable crimes of a previous
existence. Even the children looked as if they had come back to Earth
with the sins of threescore and ten stamped upon their weary wicked
faces. Madeleine's strong soul faltered, and she grasped Holt's arm.
"Well, you see for yourself," he said unsympathetically. "Better go
back and let me bring him to you. One of our men can easily knock him
out--"
"I'm here and I shall go on. I'll stay all night if necessary."
Lacey looked at her with open adoration; he had fallen truculently in
love with her. If Masters no longer loved her he felt quite equal to
killing him, although with no dreams for himself. He hoped that if
Masters were too far gone for redemption she would recognize the fact
at once, forget him, and find happiness somewhere. He was glad on the
whole that she had come to Five Points.
"What's the program?" asked one of the detectives, kicking a sprawling
form out of the way. "Do you know where he hangs out?"
"No," said Lacey. "He seems to go where fancy leads. We'll have to go
from one groggery to another, and then try the dance houses, unless
they pass the word in time. The police are supposed to have closed
them, you know."
"Yes, they have!" The man's hearty Irish laugh startled these wretched
creatures, unused to laughter, and they forsook their apathy or
belligerence for a moment to stare. "They simply moved to the back, or
to the cellar. They know we believe in lettin' 'em go to the devil
their own way. Might as well turn in here."
They entered one of the groggeries. It was a large room. The ceiling
was low. The walls were foul with the accumulations of many years, it
was long since the tables had been washed. The bar, dripping and slimy,
looked as if about to fall to pieces, and the drinks were served in
cracked mugs. The bar-tender was evidently an ex-prize-fighter, but the
loose skin, empty of muscle, hung from his bare arms in folds. The air
was dense with vile tobacco smoke, adding to the choice assortment of
stenches imported from without and conferred by Time within. Men and
women, boys and girls, sat at the tables drinking, or lay on the floor.
There they would remain until their drunken stupor wore off, when they
would stagger home to begin a new day. A cracked fiddle was playing.
The younger people and some of the older were singing in various keys.
Many were drinking solemnly as if drinking were a ritual. Others were
grinning with evident enjoyment and a few were hilarious.
The party attracted little general attention. Investigating travellers,
escorted by detectives, had visited the Five Points more than once,
curious to see in what way it justified its reputation for supremacy
over the East End of London and the Montmartre of Paris; and although
pockets usually were picked, no violence was offered if the detectives
maintained a bland air of detachment. They did not even resent the
cologne-drenched handkerchiefs the visitors invariably held to their
noses. As evil odors meant nothing to them, they probably mistook the
gesture for modesty.
Madeleine preferred her smelling salts, and at Holt's suggestion had
wrapped her handkerchief about the gold and crystal bottle. But she
forgot the horrible atmosphere as she peered into the face of every man
who might be Masters. She wore a plain black dress and a small black
hat, but her beauty was difficult to obscure. Her cheeks were white and
her brown eyes had lost their sparkle long since, but men not too drunk
to notice a lovely woman or her manifest close scrutiny, not only
leered up into her face but would have jerked her down beside them had
it not been for their jealous partners and the presence of the
detectives. There was a rumor abroad that the new City Administration
intended to seek approval if not fame by cleaning out the Five Points,
tearing down the wretched tenements and groggeries, and scattering its
denizens; and none was too reckless not to be on his guard against a
calamity which would deprive him not only of all he knew of pleasure
but of an almost impregnable refuge after crime.
The women, bloated, emaciated with disease, few with any pretension to
looks or finery, made insulting remarks as Madeleine examined their
partners, or stared at her in a sort of terrible wonder. She had no
eyes for them. When she reached the end of the room, looking down into
the faces of the men she was forced to step over, she turned and
methodically continued her pilgrimage up another lane between the
tables.
"Good God!" exclaimed Holt to Lacey. "There he is! I hoped we should
have to visit at least twenty of these hells, and that she'd faint or
give up."
"How on earth can you distinguish any one in this infernal smoke?"
"Got the eyes of a cat. There he is--in that corner by the door. God!
What a female thing he's got with him."
"Hope it'll cure her--and that we can get out of this pretty soon.
Strange things are happening within me."
There was an uproar on the other side of the room. One man had made up
his mind to follow this fair visitor, and his woman was beating him in
the face, shrieking her curses.
A party of drunken sailors staggered in, singing uproariously, and
almost fell over the bar.
But not a sound had penetrated Madeleine's unheeding ears. She had seen
Masters.
His drab had not taken his invitation to bedeck herself too literally,
nor had she ventured into Broadway. But after returning with the rum
she had gone as far as Fell Street and bought herself all the tawdry
finery her funds would command. She wore it with tipsy pride: a pink
frock of slazy silk with as full a flowing skirt as any on Fifth Avenue
during the hour of promenade, a green silk mantle, and a hat as flat as
a plate trimmed with faded roses, soiled streamers hanging down over
her impudent chignon. She was attracting far more attention than the
simply dressed lady from the upper world. The eyes of the women in her
vicinity were redder with envy than with liquor and they cursed her
shrilly. One of the younger women, carried away by a sudden dictation
of femininity, made a dart for the fringed mantle with obvious intent
to appropriate it by force. She received a blow in the face from the
dauntless owner that sent her sprawling, while the others mingled jeers
with their curses.
Masters was leaning on the table, supporting his head with his hands
and laughing. He had passed the stage where he wanted to talk, but it
would be morning before his brain would be completely befuddled.
Madeleine's body became so stiff that her heels left the floor and she
stood on her toes. Holt and Lacey grasped her arms, but she did not
sway; she stood staring at the man she had come for. There was little
semblance of the polished, groomed, haughty man who had won her. His
face was not swollen but it was a dark uniform red and the lines cut it
to the bone. The slight frown he had always worn had deepened to an
ugly scowl. His eyes were injected and dull, his hair was turning gray.
His mouth that he had held in such firm curves was loose and his teeth
stained. She remembered how his teeth had flashed when he smiled, the
extraordinary brilliancy of his gray eyes.... The groggery vanished ...
they were sitting before the fire in the Occidental Hotel....
The daze and the vision lasted only a moment. She disengaged herself
from her escorts and walked rapidly toward the table.