Chapter XX: Surrender

The next morning Georgia sent for Jim.

Before he came she wrote to Stevens:

_Dear Mason--I am going to take my husband back. I have been here now for nearly a month, and I have had plenty of time to think things over, you may be sure. What I am going to do is best for both of us--for all three of us. There is no doubt of that in my mind. I know it._

_Please don't answer or try to see me. That would simply make things harder for us, but not change my plans._

_It is my religion that has done it, Mason. Do you remember that I once told you, when it came to the big things I didn't believe I would dare disobey? I was right in this respect that I can't bring myself to disobey, but it is not so much from fear as I thought it would be. It is a sense of "ought." That is the only way I can put it. I have a feeling, tremendously strong, but hard to define in words, that I ought not, that I must not go on with what we planned._

_This feeling is stronger than I am, Mason. That is all I can say about it._

_So good-bye. May God bless you and make you prosperous and happy in this life and the next one. This is my prayer, my dear._

_Georgia._

The nurse took the letter to the mail box in the office and when she returned, looked at her patient curiously, saying, "Your husband is waiting downstairs to see you."

"Do you mind asking him to come up, nurse?"

Jim, who had now been in the city for a month, had lost some of his open-air tan and regained a portion of his banished poundage, but still he looked far better than Georgia had seen him for years. He made a favorable impression upon her from the instant he crossed the threshold. He was the Jim of the earlier rather than of the later years of their married life. His aspect seemed to confirm the truth of the revelation which she had received concerning him.

"How do you do," she asked formally.

"Very well, thank you," he replied. "How do you do?"

"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.

"Oh, Jim," she cried, "why did you say that?"

He misunderstood her completely. He felt that he was making a most effective threat. "I said it because it's true," he answered roughly, "that's why. You've showed me where I stand--you've given me my answer just as loud as if you'd been shouting it. Good-bye. Likely I'll be laying up in a barrel house on the river front pretty soon, and pretty soon after that they'll be taking me out to Dunning and planting me in the ground with just a little stick and a number on it, or else--" a catch came into his voice as the pathetic picture swam vividly before his eyes, for like most drunkards he possessed something of the artistic temperament, "or else maybe they'll cut me up to show the young internes and the trained nurses which side the heart's on."

Yes, he was doing the baby act again, making excuses and threatening suicide. He might have deceived Al and Father Hervey for a month or more with his "reform," but he couldn't deceive her for ten consecutive minutes. She had seen into the core of his nature, that it was weak and unstable as ever. Sooner or later he would relapse. What had been would be again.

He arose as if to leave, then hesitated to give her one last chance to relent.

"S'long," he said, slowly opening the door.

"You can come home, Jim--if you want."

"If I want!" He went to her quickly and took her in his arms and pressed his lips to her cold ones until she shuddered in his embrace.

When at last he left her she looked to the picture of the Sacred Heart as if for approval, and whispered, "Not my will, but Thine, be done."