As for the Sport, he settled down as comfortably as an old buff Cochin-China hen on a dozen eggs, and he made up his mind that he had been missing a good many years of real dyed-in-the-wool happiness while he was traveling The Line with the bunch and throwing all kinds of booze under his belt.
But when the weeks began to add themselves into months he grew a bit restless of nights and it came pretty hard when any of the boys asked him to come along and help them crack a bottle. He took the Mrs. to the show once in a while, but it was always a case of hurry home as soon as the orchestra began to play “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” He didn’t want to take a chance of being caught by any of the Merry-Merrys who were out for the rent and guyed for “marrying decent.” Once or twice he thought he had made a mistake and that the change was too great or too sudden for him, but an hour later when he had his slippers on and was planted in the big armchair in the corner, he knew he wouldn’t make any kind of a change for the world, and he felt that he had lost a good many years out of his life in not getting into this kind of a game sooner. Like an old fire horse, he was all right as long as he didn’t smell fire. But the time was coming, and it was as sure as rent, taxes or death.
It came when he went out one night to be gone not more than a half hour, and when he tried his key in the lock it was 2 A. M., and the girl, her eyes red from crying with the desertion and the loneliness of it all, had fallen asleep, fully dressed, across the foot of the bed. He was very sorry and penitent, but for all that he went out the next night just the same, and after that he was never in. He was back on the old trail, mixing once more, to the great delight of the crowd. The novelty of home had worn off, and when his wife waited up for him she usually found him too drunk to understand what she was saying to him. From one step it is easy to take another, or, as the Chinese say, the creeper always walks in the end. He took to bringing friends home with him at all hours, especially between three and six in the morning, and their arrival was always made apparent by the wild time they had scrambling up the stairs.
Now, in this story—as in real life—always keep your eye on the lady. It doesn’t make any difference where she comes from, whether it’s New York City or Lower Squankum, New Jersey, she is either one of two things, very clever or very dull. There is no medium, for what may seem to you like a medium is only a counterfeit and not the real article. For every ninety-nine dull women there is one clever woman; for every ninety-nine clever women there is one ace who tops the rest as easily as Mont Blanc tops an ant hill. The wife in this case was not one of the dullards, that’s a cinch. If she had been she would have made an idiot of herself and acted the way the rest of them do—which is a great nuisance and annoying to any man. She was a genius, and I ask you to take off your hat to her—as I do.
“I notice,” she remarked to Old Sport one morning, “that you never bring more than one friend home with you when you arrive. Why don’t you bring half a dozen, or three, anyhow? It would be much more companionable.”
He was a bit on his guard at first, but she convinced him that she was serious about it, and then he began to congratulate himself that he had his wife well in hand.
Two nights later he arrived with half a dozen of the hottest hooters that ever held an all-night session in a furnished flat. He let them in with his key, and as they paused at the foot of the stairs, a clock from somewhere chimed out a silvery “three.”
“Come on, boys; open house here; everything goes,” said Old Sport. “My wife says my friends are good enough for her if they’re good enough for me. Come on.”
He, with another, made the start up the stairs, but they hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a brilliant light from the landing somewhere fairly dazzled them.
Directly in front of them, apparently in the act of stepping out of a huge picture frame, was the symmetrical figure of an almost nude woman. The light struck her just right and brought out every detail.