“If I think of it,” said the informer, as he walked leisurely through the doorway with the air and manner of one with nothing to regret.
“All the fire in purgatory wouldn’t clean up that feller’s soul,” said the bartender, as the door closed behind the man.
“That mut ain’t got no soul. ‘Lead, Kindly Light,’ wasn’t wrote for such spawn as him. I guess I’ll take a ride out into the savannahs to get a breath of Gawd’s pure air, for, I’ll tell you what, the stink of this booze joint is gittin’ on my nerves,” said “Blinkey,” in disgust.
On the following day Vere de Vere looked for work, but failed to find it, and at night she went back to the barroom and played, without looking at the drinkers. When her violin solo was finished she sought a remote corner of the balcony and hid herself behind the other players.
“That girl is afraid of us fellers,” said a man, laughing.
“It takes some nerve for a young lady like her to play in a place like this for a bunch of roughnecks like us,” said another man, in a kindly tone.
“Better lookout, girl, you’ll lose your virtue here among us fellers,” said the informer of the night before, in a high-pitched voice. This coarse jest was greeted with roars of laughter.
“Put that mut out!” shouted “Blinkey” to the negro attendants, “an’ if he puts up a kick, call in the ‘spiggotty’ police and tell ’em that he’s a crook, and let ’em put the guy in jail.”
The informer was led to the street, but it was too late. The habitues of “Blinkey’s” place knew that the pretty violinist had led a disreputable life in a low resort in New Orleans. Several of the less hardened didn’t believe the story, and one young business man of Colon was very much in love with her and said that he would marry her; so now it was rumored that there was going to be a wedding, and that free drinks were to be served gratis on that night at “Blinkey’s” place.
The story of Vere de Vere became generally known and was freely discussed, even in that quarter of the city known as “the district.” The rumor reached the ears of a woman of ill-repute who had designs upon Vere de Vere’s lover. Jealousy is a destructive element, when it takes root, in the most respectable bosom, and surely, when in force in the disordered mind of an outcast woman, it must be doubly dangerous. This one, it seems, had known Vere de Vere in New Orleans, and there was an old score that she was anxious to settle, so she circulated a horrible story of the girl’s past, which not only shocked Vere de Vere’s lover, but the hardest characters at “Blinkey’s” place.