The Long Lane's Turning Part 11

Harry smiled without resentment. "The Army might not be so bad; it's an outdoor life at any rate. You'd be better for more of that."

"I believe you," said Chilly lugubriously. "It's getting impossible indoors. Nothing doing but moral lectures nowadays. If it weren't for the d.u.c.h.ess I'd cut it."

"For 'somewhere east of Suez, where a man can raise a thirst'?" quoted the other mildly. "Travel is expensive, Chilly."

"Yes, confound it," was the reply. "So is the thirst. The old man only allows me fifty dollars a month and I've stuck up every bar in town to the limit."

A frown was on Harry's brow. A year ago this youth had confined his daily potations to the club, and his drinking-bouts to that sequestered resort, "The Springs." Now he drank openly in corner saloons--he, the son of a southern gentleman, a member of the Supreme Bench, whose forebears had been courtly and clean-living from the days of the Colony! They had turned into the apartment-building now, and a moment later were in Harry's sitting-room, whose windows opened upon a square musical with lisping leaves and the cool splash of a fountain.

It was an apartment that bespoke a keen though sober artistic taste: grey walls with violet silk curtains at the deep windows and two or three old paintings--among these, set on an easel, a Greuze that he had unearthed in a cobwebbed curio-shop in Italy--a plain desk with a strip of dull-coloured damask whose quaint Russian needle-work set off a few books in tooled leather--a square piano of Circa.s.sian walnut spread with an old brocade, against which a bowl of peonies splashed their fleshy crimson--and deep, comfortable chairs. Into one of these Chilly threw himself.

"Well," he said, "here we are, as per schedule. So trot out your drink."

"It was that I wanted to talk to you about. I think you know I'm your friend, Chilly, and what I say I say as a friend. Whisky is getting the better of you."

"Pshaw!" scoffed Chilly, easily. "You weren't always so mighty particular. When did you climb onto the water-wagon, I'd like to know?"

"When I found I was better off there. I haven't touched liquor for a year. Take my advice, Chilly--it's sound!--and try to cut the drink out. It's doing you harm."

Chilly laughed. "That seems to be the signal all along the line!" he said humorously. "But what's the good? I could knock off any time I chose, just as well as you. But I don't intend to do it yet awhile. I like it."

There was a tentative knock at the door. It opened and a girl's piquant face peered in. "Chisholm Allen!" said Nancy Langham's indignant voice. "Have you forgotten you have an engagement to take me to the kennels this afternoon?"

Chilly sprang forward and seized her small gloved hands. "Come in," he said. "There's n.o.body here but Harry and me. Please do, Nancy."

"Oh, I mustn't!" She turned to the latter. "You see I needed Chilly so _tremendously_, and Echo told me she saw him with you. I expected to meet him on the way. Then I thought I'd just ring and ask for him, only the hall door was open. Chilly, you're outrageously undependable.

You know I wanted to get that dog to-day, because I'm going to leave for home to-morrow, and you do know more about dogs than any one else."

Chilly looked a little shame-faced. "I forgot all about it, Nancy.

Honestly, I did."

She sighed. "That's the fact, no doubt, but it's not one bit complimentary. You're so dreadfully truthful, Chilly! Come along now, or we'll be too late."

"All right," he answered, drawing her inside the door. "Just a minute.

Harry's going to give me a drink. Weren't you, Harry, eh?"

For answer the other pressed a b.u.t.ton and a trim silk-robed j.a.panese came noiselessly from the next room. "Fetch a bottle of Evien, Suzuki," he said, "and some gla.s.ses. Have it cold, please."

Chilly stared. "Mineral water!" he exclaimed with sulky discomfiture.

"My word! This is no signal for the H2O. I'm _dry_!"

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry, but it's a rule of my house."

Chilly shrugged. For an instant a little sneer drew down his lips, irritation fighting with his seldom-failing good-humour. He turned to the square piano, sat down on its stool, and ran his fingers up and down the ivory keys.

"I'll return good for evil," he said. "Before we go I'll give you a little ballad I've just composed. It's bound to make a great hit when it strikes the Barbary Coast. He struck a resounding chord, and with a wink at Harry, began to sing:

"The rounder swore at his barroom score 'Ere he called for a last, long bottle, And proceeded to tint, without any stint, His nose with a mellow mottle.

Then he climbed on a chair and hiccoughed long And loudly he sang this funny old song:

"'Money is dross, Loving is loss, There's never a crown that is worth its cross!

Life is a toss, Dying is moss, But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!'"

There was something of whimsical fun, yet of bitter recklessness in the spectacle. Without technical training, Chilly had music in his finger-tips and a fair baritone voice. The fingers wavered now and then and the voice was shaken a little, but it was full of magnetism, as, swaying lightly on the stool, he rolled out the slangy doggerel with all the unction of a music-hall artist:

"Then the mixer laughed till the cat went daft And the roof clanged all its gutters, While the loungers yelled with mirth unquelled Till they shook the very shutters; And a sweet-faced devil peeped over the steins And merrily carolled the lilting lines:

"'Money is dross, Loving is loss, There's never a crown that is worth its cross.

Life is a toss, Dying is moss, But booze--Oh, bully old booze, is boss!"

Harry's nerves were on edge. It was not the cheap vulgarity of the jingle nor the patent swagger of the performer, but the under-suggestion of the picture. The edge of this qualm had touched him on the street, with the odour of Chilly's breath and the moist tang of hops that had floated through the swinging-door. Now he felt a sudden anger that the coa.r.s.e picturing and the tinkling keys had power to call up, even for an instant, the old slinking, craving ache in his throat.

Chilly swung round and got up laughing. "Pretty good, eh, what?" he said. "Come along, Nancy; we'll go and pick out that dog! So long, Harry."

Harry opened the door for them. He did not trust himself to speak. As Nancy's hand lay an instant in his on the threshold, a wave of sudden pity engulfed him. Her cheeks were mist-pale and her girlish lips were trembling.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HEART OF A MAN

An hour later Harry sat in the same pleasant room, looking out where curdled clouds set their silver sails in the pale shimmer of sky. A light breeze fluttered the figured-silk curtains, a blue-bottle buzzed tentatively to and fro outside, and birds were fluting in the trees of the small park and splashing joyously in the fountain.

The encounter with Chilly had broken into his mood, which had been occupied with more inviting things. Now, alone, the thought of what this day held for him absorbed him. "One year!" he had said to himself on the day of that old court-house trial. "That is the test I will give myself. It is enough. If I can beat the brandy for a year, I can beat it forever!" To-day was an anniversary; this afternoon the year was up. The period had called up all his courage, had searched out with prying fingers every crevice of weakness, explored insistently each avenue of uncontrol. But he had won the long battle, and the resurgence of the old power that had come to him in his yesterday's speech had crowned the victory with confidence. Yesterday he would have died sooner than to have wrung from his lips what he should say to her--to Echo--to-day!

When the tall old clock in the corner next chimed he rose and called, "Suzuki!"

The j.a.panese servant of spotless raiment entered with noiseless footsteps.

"Tell Aunt Judy I sha'n't want dinner to-night," said Sevier; "I'll dine at the club. You can take the night off, if you like; I'll let myself in."

"_Hai-e!_" Suzuki sucked in his breath and his oval eyes allowed themselves a gleam of satisfaction. As he brought his master's hat and stick Harry looked at him meditatively, wondering, as he had wondered a thousand times, what lay behind that secret-keeping, brown face with its perpetual, half-smiling gravity. He had picked him up a half-dozen years before in his travels, a shabby and abject adventurer with an English dialect that was fearfully and wonderfully made; and the youthful flotsam had speedily and without apparent tuition blossomed forth into that inestimable jewel, a perfect valet. With Aunt Judy the cook, who had been a servant of his father's, Bob the chauffeur who was her son, and Suzuki, Harry's bachelor _menage_ in the city stood a model of its kind, and the despair of his a.s.sociates.

Harry walked slowly along the street clanging with cars, on pavements busy and sunny at first and giving place gradually to wedges of lawn and stretches of deserted foliaged flagging as he approached the suburbs. At the big gate of Midfields he lifted his eyes. Mrs. Allen was just stepping from her electric at the curb, cool and statuesque and smiling.

"A penny for your thoughts!" she said. "I really believe you were counting the flag-stones. I hope you were coming in--you've been shamefully oblivious of our pleasure this season!"

"I've been oblivious of my own," he countered, opening the gate for her. "But I'm going to make amends in future."

They walked leisurely up the drive under the acacias, chatting. She had often wondered, in the old days, whether there were not some understanding between him and Echo, and his long absence had puzzled her. But he had apparently gone nowhere else, and she welcomed his return. He was a distinctly eligible _parti_, and Echo had reached a point where the future was a pertinent thing. There had never been between the mother and daughter that close _rapport_ which existed between daughter and father; Mrs. Allen had never felt that she understood Echo. She had never known for her, even as a child, the fierce and excluding yearning which she had lavished on Chisholm, and which had grown even stronger with the latter's increasing years and delinquencies. But she had Echo's interests thoroughly at heart, and Harry Sevier--particularly since his speech at the Opera House--had attained to importance in her worldly estimation.

"I haven't congratulated you," she said presently. "Your speech! It was a masterly thing."

"You were there? I'm glad I didn't know it. It would have deepened the blueness of my funk."