"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.
"I say, you say you come from India. Do you know anything about cholera?"
"A little," I answered. The voice of the questioner was cracked and quavering. A long pause.
"I say, Doctor, what are the symptoms of cholera? A woman died just over the street there last week."
"This is pleasant," I thought. "But I must remember that it is Life."
"She died last week—cholera. My God, I tell you she was dead in six hours! I guess I'll get cholera, too. I can't, though. Can I? I thought I had it two days ago. It hurt me terribly. I can't get it, can I? It never attacks people twice, does it? Oh, say it doesn't and be damned to you. Doctor, what are the symptoms of cholera?"
I waited till she had detailed her own attack, assured her that these and no others were the symptoms, and—may this be set to my credit—that cholera never attacked twice. This soothed her for ten minutes. Then she sprang up with an oath and shrieked:—
"I won't be buried in Hong–Kong. That frightens me. When I die—of cholera—take me to 'Frisco and bury me there. In 'Frisco—Lone Mountain 'Frisco—you hear, Doctor?"
I heard and promised. Outside the birds were beginning to twitter and the dawn was pencilling the shutters.
"I say, Doctor, did you ever know Cora Pearl?"
"'Knew of her." I wondered whether she was going to walk round the room to all eternity with her eyes glaring at the ceiling and her hands twisting and untwisting one within the other.
"Well," she began, in an impressive whisper, "it was young Duval shot himself on her mat and made a bloody mess there. I mean real bloody. You don't carry a pistol, Doctor? Savile did. You didn't know Savile. He was my husband in the States. But I'm English, pure English. That's what I am. Let's have a bottle of wine, I'm so nervous. Not good for me? What the—No, you're a doctor. You know what's good against cholera. Tell me! Tell me."
She crossed to the shutters and stared out, her hand upon the bolt, and the bolt clacked against the wood because of the tremulous hand.
"I tell you Corinthian Kate's drunk—full as she can hold. She's always drinking. Did you ever see my shoulder—these two marks on it? They were given me by a man—a gentleman—the night before last. I didn't fall against any furniture. He struck me with his cane twice, the beast, the beast, the beast! If I had been full, I'd have knocked the dust out of him. The beast! But I only went into the verandah and cried fit to break my heart. Oh, the beast!"
She paced the room, chafing her shoulder and crooning over it as though it were an animal. Then she swore at the man. Then she fell into a sort of stupor, but moaned and swore at the man in her sleep, and wailed for her amah to come and dress her shoulder.
Asleep she was not unlovely, but the mouth twitched and the body was shaken with shiverings, and there was no peace in her at all. Daylight showed her purple–eyed, slack–cheeked, and staring, racked with a headache and the nervous twitches. Indeed I was seeing Life; but it did not amuse me, for I felt that I, though I only made capital of her extreme woe, was guilty equally with the rest of my kind that had brought her here.
Then she told lies. At least I was informed that they were lies later on by the real man of the world. They related to herself and her people, and if untrue must have been motiveless, for all was sordid and sorrowful, though she tried to gild the page with a book of photos which linked her to her past. Not being a man of the world, I prefer to believe that the tales were true, and thank her for the honour she did me in the telling.
I had fancied that the house had nothing sadder to show me than her face. Here was I wrong. Corinthian Kate had really been drinking, and rose up reeling drunk, which is an awful thing to witness, and makes one's head ache sympathetically. Something had gone wrong in the slatternly menage where the plated tea–services were mixed with cheap China; and the household was being called to account. I watched her clutching the mosquito net for support, a horror and an offence in the eye of the guiltless day. I heard her swear in a thick, sodden voice as I have never yet heard a man swear, and I marvelled that the house did not thunder in on our heads. Her companion interposed, but was borne down by a torrent of blasphemy, and the half a dozen little dogs that infested the room removed themselves beyond reach of Corinthian Kate's hand or foot. That she was a handsome woman only made the matter worse. The companion collapsed shivering on one of the couches, and Kate swayed to and fro and cursed God and man and earth and heaven with puffed lips. If Alma Tadema could have painted her,—an arrangement in white, black hair, flashing eyes, and bare feet,—we should have seen the true likeness of the Eternal Priestess of Humanity. Or she would have been better drawn when the passion was over, tottering across the room, a champagne glass held high above her head, shouting, at ten o'clock in the morning, for some more of the infamous brewage that was even then poisoning the air of the whole house. She got her liquor, and the two women sat down to share it together. That was their breakfast.