His aunt, a shallow though well-meaning woman, devoted to church work, gossip, and her pet poodle, considering Winn an unfortunate addition to her cares, held but scant influence over him. She furnished him a home to sleep and eat in without cost, urged him to attend church with her, cautioned him against evil associates; but beyond that she could not and did not go. So Winn drifted. He saved a little money, realizing that he must, or be forever helpless and dependent; he learned the slang of the town and its ways, and forgot for a time the wholesome lessons of his early life. He also grew more mercurial, and, worse than that, he grew cynical.
On all sides, and go where he would, the arrogance of wealth seemed to hedge him about and force upon him the realization that he was but a poorly paid bookkeeper, and not likely to become aught else. And then a worse mishap befell him—he met and became attached to Jack Nickerson.
There is in every club, and in every walk in life, wherever a young man's feet may stray, some one it were better he never met—a Mephistopheles in male garb, whose wit and ways of pleasure-taking are alluring, whose manners are perfect, whose pockets are well filled; and alas, whose morals are a matter of convenience.
That Winn, honest and wholesome-minded country-born fellow that he was, should be attracted by this product of fast city life is not strange. It is the attraction that allures the moth toward the flame, the good toward evil. Follow Nickerson in that course, Winn would not and did not; he merely admired him for his wit, felt half tempted to emulate his vices, absorbed his scepticism—for Jack Nickerson in addition to his vices was a cynic of the most implacable sort. With him all religion was hypocrisy, all virtue a folly, and all truth a farce. He had income sufficient to live well upon, gambled for a pastime, was at the race tracks whenever chance offered, was cheek by jowl with the sporting fraternity, a man about town and hail fellow well met with all.
Per contra, he was generous to a fault, laughed most when he uttered his sharpest sneers, was polished and refined in his tastes and a gentleman always.
One distinguished novelist has deified such a man, and made him a hero of her numerous tales.
To Winn he appealed more as a fascinating, world-wise sceptic, whose shafts of satire were gospel truths, and whose Sybarite sort of existence was worthy of emulation, if one only had the money to follow it.
Then, as if to cap the climax and Winn's cynical education, he fell in love with Ethel Sherman, a beauty and a natural-born flirt, whose ideas of life and maternal training had convinced her that marriage was a matter of business, and a means by which to obtain position and wealth.
Her family were people of moderate means, living near neighbors to Winn's aunt and attending the same church. She had an elder sister, Grace, who had, in her estimation, wrecked her life by marrying a poor man. And when Winn Hardy, young, handsome and callow, first met her, she was just home from boarding-school, ready to spread her social wings, and ripe for conquest.
Winn's aunt was also somewhat to blame in the matter, for she, like many good women, loved to dabble in match-making, and in her simple mind fancied it a wise move to bring one about between Ethel and Winn.