Timidly I approached a barman at leisure and asked for a cocktail of a brand for which I used to have a liking. I carried it off to a table placed inconspicuously behind the door leading to and from the hotel. Putting it on the table, I stared at its amber reflections.
I had come back to the same old place at last. It was curious; but there I was. All my struggling, all my wandering, all my up-hill work, all my days and nights in the trenches, all my suffering, all my love—everything had combined together to land me just here, where, so to speak, I had begun. It was the old story of dragging up the cliff, only to fall over the precipice. It seemed to be my fate. There was no escaping it.
I might not take more than that one drink during that afternoon; but I knew it would be a beginning. I should come back again; and I should come back again after that. Another type of man would do nothing of the kind; but I was my own type.
Very deliberately I said good-by to the world I had known for the past three years and more. I said good-by to work, to ambition, to salvation, to country, to love. Back, far back in my mind I was saying the same deliberate good-by to God. I shouldn’t rest now till everything was gone.
The glass was still untasted on the table. I was taking my time. The farewells on which I was engaged couldn’t be hurried. The fate in store for me would wait.
Then the door behind which I sat began to open. It opened slowly, timidly, stealthily, as if the person entering was afraid to come in. The action stirred the curiosity, and I watched.
Before I saw a face I saw a hand. Rather, I saw four fingers from the knuckles to the nails, as if some one was steadying himself by the sheer force of holding on. They were old, thin, twisted fingers, and I knew at a glance I had seen them before.
The door continued to open, stealthily, timidly, slowly; and then, looking like a spirit rather than a man—a neat, respectable spirit wearing a silver star in his buttonhole, with trembling hands and a woeful quiver to the corner of his lower lip—Lovey stood in the barroom.
He stood as if he had never been in any such place before. He was like a visitant from some other sphere—dazed, diaphanous, unearthly.