The Long Lane's Turning

by Hallie Erminie Rives

CHAPTER XII

A HOSTAGE TO THE BOTTLE

The speech of the day before of which Treadwell had spoken so enthusiastically to Cameron Craig, had indeed given to the crowd, which had been wont on past occasions to gather at the old court-house when he spoke, another revelation of Harry Sevier. It had been impromptu—not the outgrowth of deliberate plan. The non-appearance of a much-heralded speaker had thrust the exigency upon him without warning, and he had acquiesced only in a keen desire to save from blank failure a meeting in whose principles and object he was by his very character deeply interested. The tortuous involutions of local politics had never interested him, but he had thrilled to the stirring beneath the surface of the great forces of good and evil and the present agitation for clean government had found him enrolled, without question, on its side.

As he stepped forward to face the great curtain of faces that stretched outward and upward beyond the footlights, he had not known what he should say. Indeed, while he slowly "felt" his audience in his opening sentences, the sub-conscious part of his mind had been full of a matter foreign to the subject at hand. There had come to him a fleeting recollection of the last time he had spoken in public—the day upon which he had betrayed his client and put a man, of whose innocence an instinct deeper-rooted than reason had convinced him, into the striped habiliments of the convict. The sharp, aching compunction of that thought had never left him. Since that day, though he went daily to his sumptuous office, he had taken no new case. He had gone always with that sin clanking against his conscience and the memory of the trial had focused always in that glimpse, across the mass of faces, of a woman's look of puzzle and hurt. During the months since then that face had hung before his fevered vision as a far, cool oasis to the desert wayfarer. These had been black months of fierce, untiring battle with the appetite to which he had surrendered himself, and which he had sworn to conquer. There had been times when the avid thirst had seized him by the throat, when endurance had almost failed: days when he had sat in his inner office, with door locked and blinds down, fighting desperately with the strenuous impulse that seemed to be dragging him bodily, as if with fleshly hands, to the little wall-cabinet whose door had never been unlocked since the day of that sinister court-recess.

During this prolonged, grappling struggle he had never been to Midfields. He had seen Echo but occasionally, walking or driving on the street, or less frequently at functions from which he could not absent himself without remark. There had been no confidences between them. Never had he leaned to her to whisper: "You see! Do I do well?" Never had her lips said, "I know ... I know, and I am watching!" yet his heart had told him that she was alive to the issue, that she felt the forces conflicting for the mastery. She had not been in the audience on this day, but as the faces pulsed and receded till they wove into a grey blur in the misty blaze of the incandescents, Harry's inner vision had a swift memory of her face as it had looked in that old court-house scene.

And with it, as though it had been a key to the disused mental machinery, strangely and wonderfully there had come back to him, in a sudden flashing illumination like summer lightning, a surging return of the old power, the vivid rush of lambent images in his brain and the burning, insistent phrase to his tongue—the power that he had thought gone forever with that shuddering failure of a year before.

As he felt again the old native ability rising in him, strong and undismayed, and once more his own, without hostage given to the bottle, a stinging delight had swept through him. It was the fruit of victory, and fiercely sweet in proportion to the bitterness of the struggle. Yet in his new sensitiveness the realisation had held a flicker of self-shame. Never in those old days had he employed that talent for the greater good: only for individual ambition, often for the blunt defeating of the clear ends of justice! It was another Harry Sevier who spoke now, one to whom conscience now stood as mentor, to whom principle was become a guiding star. The leashed power and restraint had been bred of that long struggle, and from the fresh mastery of self which he had so hardly gained, flowed forth a subtle magnetic quality that held his listeners mute. In the hush that wrapped the great assemblage the speaker of the day, late by an hour, had entered the back of the stage, to wave back the nonplussed chairman and to seat himself in the rear, enthralled by the white magic that swayed all alike. The speech had held no rodomontade, none of the pyrotechnics that, had lent a flavour of sensation to past court trials. It had been on a higher plane than appeal to superficial feeling or ingrained prejudice. It had brought no accusation, pointed no finger, save backward to old ideals of community respect, and forward to the wave of independent thought that was sweeping over sister states to break in thundering force upon the crags of misrule.

It had closed in a note of hope and of promise, and ended with the hall hushed in that greatest tribute to true oratory—absolute silence.

Next day, wherever men congregated in the little capital, Harry Sevier's name was on every lip. It was flung wide, too, in newspaper headlines until the ripple stirred far borders. Of this he himself could not be unaware. He knew that never in the old days had he spoken as he had spoken then. He was conscious also that in the trial of himself his faculties had been reorganised and renewed, had emerged sounder and truer from the strenuous testing, and that the fire through which he had passed had burned away the rubble and left metal that was more worthy. Nor could he fail to realise that at a single step he had attained to a new and unfamiliar status in the community. He felt this not so much in the multiple congratulations of the many, as in a certain new deference that he distinguished in more reserved greetings.

Beneath all, however, but one opinion profoundly concerned him—Echo's. As he swung along the street this afternoon, the thought of her excluded all others.

Rounding the corner, a voice came to him—a ribald, good-humoured voice, inviting some one to "come and have a drink." He turned abruptly. Chisholm Allen stood a little way from him, before a swing-door through which sifted the clink of glasses and boisterous conversation.

Chilly was decidedly the worse for wear. Much water had run under the bridges since he had tussled with old Nelson, the butler, over the decanter of sherry. His face was pallid and the marks of incorrigible weakness and self-indulgence showed clearly through its habitual good-nature. Chilly's feet were set in the paths of dalliance and he had ceased to care if anybody knew it. He greeted the newcomer, however, with a trace of embarrassment which he dissipated with a laugh, as he said:

"The invitation's for you, if you like, Harry. We'll have one to the silver-tongued orator! What do you say?"

For answer Harry linked an arm in his and turned him down the street—away from the swing-door. "Come up to my rooms, Chilly, it's cool there and we haven't had a talk for a blue moon. No, we'll consider the drink afterward."

Just at the moment a carriage and pair bowled by them. It was drawn by the Allens' bays and Echo was on the rear seat. She had seen the action, had caught its import, and Harry had a flashing glance from her dark eyes that sent the blood coursing to his fingers. Chilly too, however, had seen the swift exchange. He frowned, then laughed again.

"You should join the Salvation Army," he said, satirically. "They've a rescue corps, I believe. I know a pretty ensign, and she shall come and pin a nice little medal on your manly chest!"

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 Duchess 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 Circassian 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 nobody 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 button and a trim silk-robed Japanese came noiselessly from the next room. "Fetch a bottle of Evien, Suzuki," he said, "and some glasses. 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 coarse 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.