He presented the anomaly of a man scrupulously honorable in regard to
his own sex, and absolutely codeless in regard to the other. He was what
modern nomenclature calls a "contemporaneous varietist." He was, in
brief, an offensive type of libertine. Woman, first and foremost, was
his game. Every woman attracted him. No woman held him. Any new woman,
however plain, immediately eclipsed her predecessor, however beautiful.
The fact that amorous interests took precedence over all others was
quite enough to make him vaguely unpopular with men. But as in addition,
he was a physical type which many women find interesting, it is likely
that an instinctive sex-jealousy, unformulated but inevitable, biassed
their judgment. He was a typical business man; but in appearance he
represented the conventional idea of an artist. Tall, muscular,
graceful, hair thick and a little wavy, beard pointed and golden-brown,
eyes liquid and long-lashed, women called him "interesting." There was,
moreover, always a slight touch of the picturesque in his clothes; he
was master of the small amatory ruses which delight flirtatious women.
In brief, men were always divided in their own minds in regard to Ralph
Addington. They knew that, constantly, he broke every canon of that
mysterious flexible, half-developed code which governs their relations
with women. But no law of that code compelled them to punish him for
ungenerous treatment of somebody's else wife or sister. Had he been
dishonorable with them, had he once borrowed without paying, had he once
cheated at cards, they would have ostracized him forever. He had done
none of these things, of course.
"By jiminy!" exclaimed Honey Smith, "how I hate the unfamiliar air of
everything. I'd like to put my lamps on something I know. A ranch and a
round-up would look pretty good to me at this moment. Or a New England
farmhouse with the cows coming home. That would set me up quicker than a
highball."
"The University campus would seem like heaven to me," Frank Merrill
confessed drearily, "and I'd got so the very sight of it nearly drove me
insane."
"The Great White Way for mine," said Pete Murphy, "at night - all the
corset and whisky signs flashing, the streets jammed with
benzine-buggies, the sidewalks crowded with boobs, and every lobster
palace filled to the roof with chorus girls."
"Say," Billy Fairfax burst out suddenly; and for the first time since
the shipwreck a voice among them carried a clear business-like note of
curiosity. "You fellows troubled with your eyes? As sure as shooting,
I'm seeing things. Out in the west there - black spots - any of the rest
of you get them?"