"Much better—won't you be seated?"
Jim, first carefully placing his brown derby hat under the chair, sat where the priest had been the day before.
She felt a certain numbness of emotion as she looked at him, but none of that loathing and disgust without which, as she had come to believe, he could not be in her presence. Doubtless, she reflected, she had exaggerated her dislike for Jim, to justify herself for Stevens.
"Georgia," said Jim slowly, "I didn't act right before. I know it and I'm sorry and ashamed. It was drink that put the devil in me, same as it will for any man that goes against it hard enough........ Some people can drink in moderation—it doesn't seem to hurt them. But I can't. When I got started I tried to drink up all the whiskey in North Clark Street. Well, it can't be done. I'm onto that now. No more moderate drinking for me. From now on I'm going to chop it out altogether."
He paused for a word of encouragement, but she remained silent. A little nodule of memory, which had been lying dormant in her brain, awoke at his words, "from now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." How many times she had heard him say that before—and every time he had thumped his right fist into his left palm, just as he was doing now.
"All I ask from you is another chance," he continued. "You know about the prodigal son. That's me. I've come back repentant. I know I've brought you misery in my time—and plenty of it. So if you stick on your rights and never forgive me, you don't have to. What do you say, Georgia?"
Again he paused, but she did not speak, sitting with her head bent, picking with her fingers at the coverlet.
"It wasn't me that did you the harm," he pleaded, "it was the whiskey in me, and if I keep away from that why the rest of me isn't so bad. You used to think that yourself once, Georgia."
She waited for him to continue, fearing what he would say next, and he said it. "But if you're through with me, I guess the only friend I've got left after all is whiskey. He put me to the bad all right, but he won't go back on me now I'm there. Whatever else you can say about him, he's faithful. He's always got a smile for you when you're blue, and he'll stick to you clear through to the finish."
Yes, that was Jim of old, word for word and motive for motive, who thought the proper remedy for disappointment was drunkenness.