"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.
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!