Part 6

“Cut it, Bill,” said the best man, and one of the waiters, grinning, went at it with a huge carving knife. He slit it from top to bottom in two places, and as the crust crumbled away half a dozen birds fluttered out, and when the pastry cook’s creation was demolished there was disclosed a young woman rather scantily draped and with a figure worth missing a train for.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, smiling, and then she stepped out.

People who make a study of such things will tell you for every man in the world there is just one woman who belongs to him. They may be thousands of miles apart, and it may so happen that they will never meet, but the fact remains that they were intended for each other just the same. He may marry and she may marry, but there will be no real, true happiness until they live their lives together. When this girl, trim and slim but shapely, stood on the table, the man who was going to be married looked on her and knew then that there was no other woman in the world for him--not even the one whom he had promised to marry. The others stood up and cheered and applauded her, while he sat there staring almost stupidly. Her bronze hair tumbled down over her bare shoulders and her laughing eyes took in the scene.

“And who is the one who is going to be married?” she asked smilingly. “I want to drink with him.”

“Get on your pins, old man, and drink with the lady,” called one, and he obediently arose and held a glass of wine toward her.

“So you are the one?” she asked, looking him over critically. “Well, here is that the woman you marry is as good a fellow as you look to be.”

That was at midnight.

When the clock struck two every guest was still in his place, and seated in the lap of the man at the head of the table--the host, the man who was to marry, become straightened out, and shake the crowd--was the girl. He had one arm around her, and they were drinking out of the same glass. Of course it wasn’t at all proper, but you see everything goes at a bachelor’s dinner, and in view of the fact that this was a last wild fling, apparently, it was all right. It was nobody’s business, anyhow, for a man may do as he likes even if he is on the verge of his own wedding.

“You will surely call,” she was saying between sips.

“Surely,” was the answer, “if you will allow me.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I will call anyhow.”

“Now you’re just the kind of a man I like,” she whispered. “But what are you going to do after you’re married?”

“I don’t think I will marry,” he said; “at least I’ll not marry the girl I intended. You and I are going to talk that over, because----”

“Why, I’ve only known you about two hours.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference if you’d only known me two minutes, it would be just the same.”

“I suppose so, but you see a good many men have talked to me like that, and promised me everything, but it’s always the same in the end. Men say things that they mean at the time, but it doesn’t last.”

He was really in earnest, though he was drunk, and the next afternoon, when he was sober enough to know what he was doing, he wrote a note to his _fiancee_, telling her that he was sorry, but it was all off. There were reasons, of course, but he couldn’t explain, and would she kindly release him from his engagement, which had been entered into too hastily, etc., etc. You know the old story.

In the end he got his freedom in a tear-stained letter, then he went and threw a high-ball under his belt and squared away for the pudding girl.

She was making about $40 a week and living at the rate of about $150, it didn’t take a wise man to see that, and so he was on the moment he looked over the ranch. But it cut no figure with him at all, for he was too well satisfied to be bothered about a trifle like that, especially at the start of the hunt, so he took things as they came and made the best of them.

One night he was there, and they had become confidential.

“Who did it all?” he asked, as he waved his hand to take in the elaborate furnishings of the room.

“So you have reached the curious stage?” she asked. “What do you want to know for?”

“Because I think so well of you that I want to do all this sort of thing myself. Who did it?”

She looked thoughtfully out of the window for a moment, and then, as if she had suddenly made up her mind, she turned and said:

“Would it make any difference to you if you knew?”

“Not a bit.”

“Not even if it was someone whom you knew?”

“Not even then.”

When she told him the name it was that of his best friend, the one who was going to be his best man at the wedding.

Here was a complication.

Now you can see what an apparently harmless dinner did.

It wasn’t very long ago, so it’s only a step down to the present day.

The Hungarian gypsy band in a big cafe uptown was playing its head off, and every table was occupied. Over in one of the corners--a choice position, by the way--at a table on which were half a dozen empty wine bottles, sat two men and a woman. If you will look at them again you will notice that their faces are very familiar. Yes, that’s right, it is the pudding girl, the brewer’s son and the man who was going to be next to the real one at the big show when two were made one and the minister was paid double for working overtime. All three are a bit unsteady, naturally, for the soldiers on the table tell the story, consequently they are well primed for a scene of this kind.

The brewer’s son is talking to the other man, and the girl is playing a listening part, and playing it well.

“You only think you love,” he says, “but all you have done is to spend a few hundred dollars--or thousands, it makes no difference. You’d spend it anyhow in some other way. I’ve broken off my marriage for her, and that’s something. You’re a friend of mine and why don’t you let go?”

“That’s all right, and I agree to what you say. I haven’t the money I once had, and I don’t think I can keep the pace up much longer, but I don’t want to see Maud go up against it. She’s used to nice things. Suppose the Governor turns on you and cuts you off, what are you going to do then? You won’t have any more chance than I have. I know you’re all right now, but Maud’s got to be taken care of, and if I can do anything to put her on Easy Street I’ll do it.”

He reached for a half empty bottle and refilled his glass. He drank slowly and when he had finished he went on.

“Have you got as much as $10,000?” he asked, abruptly.

“Easy that.”

“I mean ready money?”

“Yes, ready money.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You put $10,000 in the bank in Maud’s name and I’ll quit, but you also got to promise me that you will look after her and do everything for her that she wants. How about that, Maudie, all right?”

As he spoke he patted her caressingly on the shoulder while the brewer’s son, flushed to the roots of his hair with the wine he had drank, dived into an inside pocket for his check book.

“Will you be the best man, Joe?”

“Best man for what?” the girl spoke for the first time.

“For our wedding, of course.”

“Not so you can pay any particular attention to it. You’ll have to chloroform me to get me in front of a minister. I’m no Sunday-school scholar, and no man can own me. I believe every woman should be independent, and when a woman marries she not only sacrifices her freedom, but herself. I like you both, and I’m glad to know that I’m worth $10,000 to you,” and she nodded toward the brewer’s son. “For that I’ll play fair with you, and if we ever agree to disagree we’ll do it like two good fellows. Joe, don’t forget to come around and take dinner with us once in a while, will you?”

P. S.--A story in a daily newspaper published later tells about the son of a wealthy brewer committing suicide by shooting, in his home in a town near New York. The cause for the rash act is not known. Strange that it should be the man who was going to reform, but didn’t, isn’t it?

THE END OF THE ROAD

They call them _demi mondaines_ and _nymphs du pave_ in Paris, and it doesn’t sound so bad, but here a spade is called a spade with coarse brutality and vice doesn’t receive even a very thin coating of veneer.

Take a walk any night along the streets where women congregate--you know the kind of women I mean--and study the faces. Look for weakness, and strength, and character. Look for good and evil. You don’t have to be a mind reader, just a plain, ordinary, everyday sort of a man with average intelligence.

If you look for the outward signs of degradation in the uptown districts you’ll be disappointed; you’ll have to turn your face and your steps Batteryward to find that. Vice has a degrading and demoralizing influence and its victim, in following that unwritten law of nature that governs the universe, is ever on the downward path. In some cases it is a gentle descent, while in others it is simply a series of steps each one lower than the other, and at the last there is nothing but pity for the poor devils of women to whom no man lifts his hat or bows his head, and who cease to live in merely existing.

And for eight out of every ten there are eight men somewhere whose hands gave the push that sent them on the downhill road.

But once in a while--once in a very great while--justice comes to a man as it did in this case, and that’s the story.

Locked up securely in the City Prison like a rat is locked in a trap, or a dangerous beast is fastened behind iron bars, is a pretty little black-eyed French girl.

Julie, her name is, and those who see and talk to her find in her a great charm; a charm, that had she been placed in a different atmosphere or had the lines of her life been cast in different places, would have been so far-reaching as to make her a power. She had such a charming figure that she once posed for a sculptor. Many a woman’s hand has shaped the course of destiny in this world of ours, and the power behind the throne usually wears petticoats.

This Julie takes her imprisonment calmly, because she is a philosopher by force of circumstances. She knows the metal bars can resist her, consequently she doesn’t throw herself against them and there are no tears in her eyes because she can never cry again. She doesn’t know what they will eventually do to her and she doesn’t care. If it is decreed that she shall go forth free, good; then she will go. If it is decreed that for the rest of her life she shall be doomed to wear that narrow blue prison stripe, she will at least be fed and housed and cared for, and on rainy, stormy days she will be under shelter and not compelled to walk the streets with dripping skirts until the gray morning comes over the roof tops.

You see, she has the comforting creed of a fatalist--that what is to be will be, and that one thought is to her like a narcotic--she sleeps at nights.

Because of that she doesn’t hear the moans and sobs of the woman in the next cell, who has the feathery crime of petit larceny hanging over her head instead of murder. A mere trifle which means nothing more than a few weeks--or months at the most--in jail. A rest like the going away from the hot city streets when July comes, as the rich people do, or to the South when winter winds blow. A place where the thermometer always registers about the same and the meals come regularly, which is not a thing to be despised by anyone, much less a woman of the lower half.

If the life of this Julie were to be told year by year it would take a book of many thousands of pages, and the pathos, comedy and tragedy would be about evenly divided. You would have the tale of how she once asked a man if he had change of a $50 bill. Then when he pulled out his money she grabbed the roll, cried out: “Here comes the police,” and dashed into a hallway in the twinkling of an eye. It was a good joke and she spent the proceeds for a new dress, for she was of the kind who make even jokes profitable.

That she was saved from arrest many times was due to the fact that she stood in with the police, and she was considered to be one of the most successful stool pigeons in the business. She was born with the instinct of the hunter, and hunter she was. In her own inner circle, however, she was known as The Slasher, and was feared accordingly.

It came about in this way.

She and another woman of the streets were rivals in many ways. When they first met they took an instinctive dislike to each other. The other one was a blonde, tall and stately--the kind you read about in cheap novels. She was an English girl, and when it came to a knockdown and drag-out argument she was able to deliver the goods in fine shape. Their first quarrel was over nothing, and before it was finished the lady with the golden tresses had taken her French sister by the shoulders and flung her down an area bruising her badly.

The Latin blood in the black-eyed one boiled, and she cried out for revenge, which she proceeded to work up in a truly Latin manner. She made friends with her former enemy, said that she was in the wrong and was sorry for what had happened, and that she wanted to be forgiven. The blonde fell like a farmer before Hungry Joe, and they both went off to celebrate. The celebration consisted in tucking away many cocktails and highballs, and inside of two hours the British lady was a sodden wreck, and so helpless that she had to be carried to her room on the second floor rear of a house of no reputation.

Julie stayed with her long enough to pull out a razor and cut three gashes from the bridge of her nose across one cheek. Then she slipped out and went on her way as though nothing had ever happened to give her a moment’s worry.

That little stunt put the blonde out of business, in that section of the city, at least. It is said she went further downtown, where there is less of a premium on beauty and style.

Like other women of her caste Julie found it necessary to have a protector, and when she first appeared in the role of hunter she cast about for one who would suit--one who would fight her battles and upon whom she could lavish the affection that was not bought, or that still remained unsold.

Being a good looking girl, educated up to a certain point, and with pleasant ways--the kind of ways a man would look for in a girl if he was selecting a wife--she had no trouble in attaching to herself a young fellow who was a good mate for her. She let it be understood at the start that he was to belong to her and that he was to be at her beck and call. She wanted to revel in the joys of complete ownership.

He was willing enough, and in fact it rather suited him, because he came into immediate possession of a wife, a home and income.

It is to be supposed there was some affection in the case, for it wasn’t a cold business proposition. It was bad enough, even from the best side, but she liked him in a way--you can put the word love in here if you like--but I am of the opinion that her feeling was that of a dog-like devotion, and his was one of knowing a good thing when he saw it.

But she was jealous, too.

“If I see you speaking to any of the other girls,” she said to him once, “I will leave you right away.”

That was in the early stages, and now notice how a woman’s affection shifts.

“If you flirt with any of those girls I will kill myself,” she said six months later.

First she would leave him and then she would kill herself.

That brings the tragedy to the last stage.

“I will kill you.”

There are no peaceful lives cast in such a groove as that.

He began to grow a bit tired of her, even though the money did come to him regularly. You see, he had no occupation, and he had to do something with his time, and that something wasn’t good.

Then it was that the quarrels began, a few words at first, but gradually increasing in bitterness until one night he came in half drunk and taking her by the throat almost strangled her. She said afterward that she thought she was gone, because red lights danced before her eyes.

But she was game and didn’t whimper, not even when he struck her in the face with his clinched fist and threw her to the floor. She took her medicine gamely, for she realized intuitively that it was her medicine, and it was a part of the life she was leading.

The strange part of it all was that she never shed a tear.

Her neck hurt her, and when she looked in the mirror she saw the marks of his strong fingers and in that instant she was a changed woman. The flickering flame of her affection turned to a steady glow of hate and from that moment she began to figure on revenge. She stood still and white and cold, and every tick of the clock on the mantel was a stroke of doom for him. There was nothing melodramatic about her at this stage of the game, for her street training served to make her calm at times.

Woman-like, she at once took up with another champion and this time she picked out a man who was peculiarly fitted by force of circumstances to help her. He was to be not so much a companion as stepping-stone, and in that she simply followed out the natural instinct of the average woman who purrs and strikes indiscriminately and who makes merchandise and capital of her favors.

“He beat me,” she told this new one in talking of the one who had been supplanted, “and I want you to help me get even.”

The promise was made on this tainted honeymoon and for one hour every night they went out together looking for their prey in all of the places where he had been known to go.

For two weeks it was a fruitless search, and then the news came to her in an indirect way that he had been seen in the old haunts.

The good pot-hunter never really hunts--he lures the game to the decoy--and because she had been years upon the trail she at once corrected her first mistake and sent a letter as bait--a tender missive full of regrets and endearing terms; such a letter as only a woman could write--a letter like a silken bandage to blind the eyes and shut out the real view of things.

It came to his hand as she had expected it would, and when the time arrived he hurried to the rendezvous to heal the breach and once more place himself on friendly terms with his income.

There are enough facts in this story to carry it, but it is not an absolutely correct recital. There are reasons why it should be changed and so I have changed it, but not enough to destroy its identity.

On that street at night, with people hurrying to and fro, they came face to face, but before he could speak to her, the other man stepped out and seized him.

“Come with me, I want you,” he said roughly, and he wheeled him around with a deft movement. There was no other word spoken and only for an instant was there a brief struggle.

All the while the woman had been fumbling at her bosom before she drew out a pistol.

Her time had arrived.

She levelled it at the retreating back of the held man and pulled the trigger. A child couldn’t have missed a shot like that, and the bullet bored into his back, throwing him forward slightly.

It had been her intention to shoot but once and make that one shot do the work, but when she saw that he was hit the lust of blood came on her and she pulled the trigger twice more, each bullet finding its mark, before a policeman ran up and threw one arm around her neck and with the free hand took hold of the still smoking weapon. It was the old trick of the force taught to probationers before they are considered fit to go forth and guard the public interests.

While her victim was slipping slowly downward to the pavement she screamed, with as clear an intonation as if she wanted to be sure it would be a matter of record:

“And now he will never beat me again.”

Half a dozen men carried the limp dead body into a store and she was taken there, too, and such was her ferocity that she tried to kick the corpse of her quarry.

“He beat me, he beat me,” she shouted, “and now he will never beat me again. If I had not killed him he would have killed me.”

THE THROWBACK

One of the greatest schools in the world is Little Old New York, where anyone can learn anything and anyone can do anything--or do anybody if they should happen to have but a modicum of brains and native shrewdness.

It is the haunt as well as the home of the crook; the respectable trickster; the lady who works and the lady who doesn’t. The amalgamation of many races and many creeds has tended to produce cleverness and wit to a high degree.

One of the greatest of financiers comes from Russian peasant blood on one side and poverty-stricken French on the other. In the blood of a Tenderloin queen there is Irish and Spanish, and it is hard to tell which side has contributed the most beauty. The combination of races is the chrysalis--the female product is the moth.

In the squalid tenements of the East Side there is beauty in embryo and the figures of Venus are barely hidden by cheap calico wrappers.

Where the Poles are settled, voluptuous women are wedded to weak, undersized men, and the result is either very good or very bad, according to the domination of the sex. Very beautiful flowers often grow and bloom in loathsome places, and many a handsome woman who rides in state along the avenue wouldn’t care to have her antecedents known to the world.

There is such a thing as pre-natal influence, and a throwback, taking on the good or bad characteristics of a previous generation, is an accepted fact.

And now we will introduce the lady as she sits in the courtroom, smiling as though she hadn’t a care or responsibility in the world. She has the innocent face of a child and the manner of a cherub, if you know what that is. If an artist were to paint her portrait in one of her moments of relaxation he might be justified if he called it “Innocence.”

“She’s a peach, all right,” remarks a court officer, and that means a lot when it comes from such a source.

She has the blonde hair and the fair complexion of the Teuton, and the black eyes of the Slav--a rare combination, if you’ll take my word for it. She’s coy, and winning and demure, but with a brain so active that nothing to her is impossible.

Two generations ago a dashing, handsome young lieutenant of the German army fell in love with a sloe-eyed girl who had been born of Slav blood.

He was brilliant but discreditable.

His romances and intrigues were many, and his expenses were about four times what his income warranted. One day he forged a check, and when he skipped over the border to escape arrest he left the woman and a baby girl in a cheap room with not enough money to keep them a week. He forgot them as utterly as if they had never existed, so in the course of time she who gave up honor added to that her life.

She died in the hospital of a disease that is not mentioned in the medical books, and the youngster was shipped to a charitable institution. At the age of nineteen this waif, orphaned, and stolid of character, with not even good looks to recommend her, had by dint of hard work and frugal living, saved up enough money to take a ship for America, the land of gold, where fortunes were made by simply wishing for them.

Half way across the sea she came to the notice of an Irish sailor, and by some strange turn in the inexorable wheel of fate, they fell in love with each other; he with his brogue, and she with knowledge of no language except that of the Fatherland.

Their courtship was over a rugged road, but it came to a happy conclusion, for before the ship sailed on her return voyage they were married with the aid of an obliging minister assisted by a Castle Garden interpreter, and Connell--that was the sailor’s name--was looking for a job alongshore.