“That was a low-down trick,” said Hank. “You knowed I always made my brags that I'd never jined a church and never would. You knowed I was proud of that. You knowed it was my glory to tell it, and that I set a heap of store by it, in every way. And now you've gone and took that away from me! You've gone and jined me to the church! You never fought it out fair and square, man strivin' to outlast man, like we done with the pledge, but you sneaked it on to me when I wasn't lookin'!”
And Hank always thought he had been baptized binding and regular. And he sorrowed and grieved over it, and got grouchier and meaner and drunkener. No pledge nor no Prohibition could hold Hank. He was a worse man in every way after that night in the cistern, and took to licking me harder and harder.
ACCURSED HAT
I request of you a razor, and you present me with this implement! A safety razor! One cannot gash oneself with your invention. Do you think I rush to your apartment with the desire to barber myself? No, milles diables, no! I 'ave embrace you for my friend, and you mock at my despair. This tool may safely abolish the 'air from the lip of the drummer when the train 'ave to wiggle, but it will not gash the jugular; it will not release the bluest blood of France that courses through one's veins.
Oui, I will restrain myself. I will 'ave a drink. Merci! I will make myself of a calmness. I will explain.
Yes, it is a woman. What else? At the insides of all despair it is a woman ever. That is always the—the—w'at you call 'im?—the one best bet.
Listen. I love 'er. She own the 'ouse of which I am one of the lodgers, in'abiting the chamber beneath the skylight. She is a widow, and I love 'er. Of such a roundness is she!—and she 'ave the restaurant beyond the street. Of such a beauty!—and 'er 'usband, who was a Monsieur Flanagan, 'e leave 'er w'at you call well fix with life-insurance. So well fix, so large, so brilliant of the complexion, so merry of the smile, so competent of the ménage, of such a plumpness! 'Ow should it be that one did not love 'er?
But she? Does she smile on the 'andsome Frenchman who in'abit 'er skylight chamber and paint and paint and paint all day long, and sell, oh, so little of 'is paintings? Hélas! She scarcely know that 'e exist! She 'ave scarcely notice 'im. 'Ow is genius of avail? W'at is wit, w'at is gallantry, w'at is manner—w'at is all these things w'en one does not possess the—the—w'at you call 'im?—the front? Hélas! I love, but I 'ave not the front! My trousers are all of a fringe at the bottom, and my collars are all of a frowsiness at the top. My sleeves are of such a shine! And my 'at——