Needless to say, too, that the unfortunate lady did not write the note the next morning; she became prostrated and lay in a darkened room, and could see no one by her physician’s orders—not even her enraged husband.
Let us pass over the heartrending details which ensued—of her return to her mother; of their long talks of a separation, providing it could be obtained without pecuniary loss to the injured daughter. Both of them, you may be sure, held Benton wholly responsible—or, rather, irresponsible, being unfit for any woman to live with, owing to his ungovernable jealousy.
Poor Phyllis! She was born much too beautiful, with her delicate skin like a tea-rose, and her fine, blond hair, that reached nearly to her knees, and when up and undulated left little stray wisps at the nape of her graceful, white neck. She should never have married a man like Benton—round like his dollars. What a stunning pair she and Jack Lamont would have made! But what a dance he would have led her! Lucky he was to have the wife he had, who forgave him everything and paid his debts and lived her own life, which was eminently respectable, firm in her devotion to her charities, and as set in her opinions at her women’s clubs—a small, pale woman with large, dark eyes—a woman whom he seldom saw, never breakfasted with, and rarely lunched or dined with at home, since he came and went as he pleased; now and then they met at a reception, now and then at a tea, his cheery “Hello, Nelly,” forcing from her a “Hello, Jack,” that convinced every one around them they were still the best of friends. Even the account of this latest affair of his in the papers did not surprise her. For a day or two she was annoyed by reporters, but her butler handled them cleverly, and they went away, no wiser for having come. Not a word of reproach to her husband passed Mrs. Lamont’s lips. If there was any money needed over the affair, she knew Jack would come to her; further than that, she refused to let the matter trouble her.
Nothing could have been more convincing than Lamont’s side of the affair in the afternoon papers. This remarkable document from the pen of a close club friend of his—a talented journalist—was satisfactory in the extreme. It not only evoked public sympathy for the injured lady, but put her insanely jealous husband in the light of a man who was not responsible for his actions, and should not be allowed to walk abroad, unless under the care of an attendant. As for Mr. Lamont, he had done nothing or said a word that might have been misconstrued to warrant so scandalous an attack. The same thing might have happened to any gentleman whom common courtesy had led to speak to a woman of his acquaintance on leaving the theatre, and further went on to state that “Mr. Lamont’s many virtues were vouched for by his host of friends; his fairness as a sportsman, and his popularity in society being too widely known to need further comment.” Lamont remained sober until he had read it; then he went on the worst spree in ten years.
It is erroneous to suppose that men of birth and breeding seek luxurious places to amuse themselves in. They often seek the lowest. To a worldly and imaginative mind like Lamont’s nothing in his own strata of society amused him at a time like this. A gentleman may become a vagabond for days and still remain a gentleman. Men are complex animals. The animal is simpler, wholly sincere; it possesses but one nature; man has two—his intellectual and his savage side—distinct one from the other, as black from white. Women have but one nature; the ensemble of their character changes only in rare exceptions. They are what they are born to be, and remain so. That this nature “goes wrong” is erroneous. Psychologically, it goes right. It reverts to its true nature at the first real opportunity. Birth and breeding have very little to do with it. Environment may often be likened to a jail, and since it is the nature born of some women to crave to escape—they do. A woman who is fundamentally saintly remains a saint. She has no desire to be otherwise. Temptation leaves the really good alone.
Lamont, however, was a man, and a worldly man at that, a man whose eyes were accustomed to gaze calmly at those illusive jewels called pleasure, with their variegated facets of light, and to choose the one whose rays most pleased him. Strange, is it not, that red has always stood for evil?
This worst spree in ten years of his should rightly have begun with him at Harry Hill’s, at Crosby and Houston Streets, for he had been a familiar figure there, and a keen enthusiast over the boxing. Hill’s white front screening the old room, with its boxes, its women, its old bar down-stairs and its prize-ring above, had been closed by the police. Such places, however, as Donovan’s, Dempsey’s, and Regan’s were still wide open to receive him. Of the three he preferred Regan’s, and, indeed, nearly the whole of his five days’ spree was spent there, down in that sordid basement, with its steep iron stairs, its bouncer, its famous banjo player, accompanied by a small Sunday-school melodeon; its women, its whiskey, and its smoke. Not a breath of scandal ever entered the place, save when it was permanently closed at last for a murder. Gentlemanly deportment was rigorously exacted, and the first signs of trouble meant a throw-out. It was a fine place to be forgotten in and to forget the World above ground. This place, like Bill Monahan’s, had its small virtues; Bill Monahan himself never touched liquor, his clean pot of tea, which he drank from liberally, being always simmering within his reach.
Lamont had not a single enemy at Regan’s. He spent his money freely to the twang of one of the best banjo players the world has ever known. That a gentleman of so much innate refinement should have chosen a dive to amuse himself in—a place that reeked with the odor of evil, and through whose heat, and smoke, and glaring lights the faces of so many lost souls stared at one like spectres—seems incredible. Where would you have him go? Back into his own dull environment? Free and drunk as he was? Nonsense! He would have become conspicuous. No one was ever conspicuous at Regan’s. Hell has no favorites. The place had not sunk so low as to have clean sawdust on its floors. It was run rigorously for coin. Its waiters, silent, experienced, and attentive; its women, confidential in the extreme; and the eye of the bouncer on and over them all. The bartender, the melodeon, and the banjo player did the rest. It was they who kept up its esprit—changed an old hard-luck story into new luck, tears into laughter, and desperation into a faint glimmer of hope. In the lower world everything is so well understood, there are no novelties—stale love—stale beer—stale everything.