"Are we going to hold these dismal levees all through the night?" I demanded at the fourth house, where I dreaded the repetition of the thrice-told tales.
"It's better in 'Frisco. Must amuse the girls a little bit, y'know. Walk round and wake 'em up. That's Life. You never saw it in India?" was the reply.
"No, thank God, I didn't. A week of this would make me hang myself," I returned, leaning wearily against a door-post. There were very loud sounds of revelry by night here, and the inmates needed no waking up. One of them was recovering from a debauch of three days, and the other was just entering upon the same course. Providence protected me all through. A certain austere beauty of countenance had made every one take me for a doctor or a parson--a qualified parson, I think; and so I was spared many of the more pronounced jokes, and could sit and contemplate the Life that was so sweet. I thought of the Oxonian in _Tom and Jerry_ playing jigs at the spinet,--you seen the old-fashioned plate,--while Corinthian Tom and Corinthian Kate danced a stately saraband in a little carpeted room. The worst of it was, the women were real women and pretty, and like some people I knew, and when they stopped the insensate racket for a while they were well behaved.
"Pass for real ladies anywhere," said my friend. "Aren't these things well managed?"
Then Corinthian Kate began to bellow for more drinks,--it was three in the morning,--and the current of hideous talk recommenced.
They spoke about themselves as "gay." This does not look much on paper. To appreciate the full grimness of the sarcasm hear it from their lips amid their own surroundings. I winked with vigour to show that I appreciated Life and was a real chippy, and that upon me, too, there were no flies. There is an intoxication in company that carries a man to excess of mirth; but when a party of four deliberately sit down to drink and swear, the bottom tumbles out of the amusement somehow, and loathing and boredom follow. A night's reflection has convinced me that there is no hell for these women in another world. They have their own in this Life, and I have been through it a little way. Still carrying the brevet rank of doctor, it was my duty to watch through the night to the dawn a patient--gay, _toujours_ gay, remember--quivering on the verge of a complaint called the "jumps." Corinthian Kate will get hers later on. Her companion, emerging from a heavy drink, was more than enough for me. She was an unmitigated horror, until I lost detestation in genuine pity. The fear of death was upon her for a reason that you shall hear.