Part 16 (1/2)
”What you wish to tell me,” evenly. ”Neither more nor less.”
”You have no curiosity?”
Randall made no comment this time, merely waited.
”Very well, then, if you have no curiosity.... I don't know how much to tell you anyway, what you don't already know. As I said when I first came in, I didn't have it in mind to bore you at all, I just wanted to ask your opinion--” The speaker halted and hurriedly lit the cigar he had been holding. ”To jump into the thick of it, I got a little letter from the president to-day, a little--warning.” Armstrong smoked fiercely until the flame lit up his face. ”It's the bitterest humiliation of my life, Harry, the last straw!”
CHAPTER VII
REBELLION
For a moment Harry Randall said nothing, then deliberately he glanced up and met his friend's eyes direct.
”Begin at the beginning and tell me the whole story,” he said soberly. ”I had no idea the thing was really so serious.”
”Well, it is, take that for granted. It's likely to be the end, so far as I am concerned.”
”Cut that out, Steve,” shortly. ”It's melodramatic and cheap. Things can't be so bad if we look at them sanely.” He hesitated, and went on with distinct effort. ”To begin with, I'm going to ask you a question. I hate it, you know that without my telling you, but things have gone too far to mince matters evidently. I've heard a number of times lately that you were drinking. Is it so?”
”Who told you that?” hotly.
”Never mind who. I tell you I never believed a word of it until you mentioned the president's warning. Now--Is it so?”
Armstrong's face went red,--red to the roots of his hair,--then slowly shaded white until it was ghastly pale.
”Yes; it's useless, it seems, to deny it. That others knew, were talking about it, though--It's true, Harry. I admit it.”
Slowly, slowly, Randall knocked the ashes out of the pipe-bowl and put it away in a drawer of the table.
”Very well, Steve. I shan't moralize. None of us men are so good we can afford to begin throwing stones.... Let's go back a bit to the beginning.
There must be one somewhere, a cause. Just what's the trouble, old man?”
”Trouble!” It was the spark to tinder, the lead at last. ”Everything, Harry, everything.” A halt for composure. ”I suppose if I were to pick out one single thing, though, that was worse than another, it's my writing. I think, I know, that's what brought on the whole cursed mess.
Until my last book failed I had hope and the sun shone. When that went down--down like a lump of lead--I haven't been able to do a thing, care for a thing since. My brain simply quit work too. It died, and the best of me died with it.”
”And you began to drink.”
”Yes, like a fish. Why not, since I was dead and it helped me to forget?”
”Steve! I hate to preach, it doesn't become me; but--”
”Preach if you want to; you can't hurt my feelings now.” Armstrong grew calm, for the first time that evening. ”When a fellow has worked as I have worked for years, and hoped against hope, and still hoped on and worked on after failure and failure and failure three times repeated--No, don't worry about hurting my feelings, Harry. Say what you please.”
”I wasn't going to hurt your feelings,” evenly; ”I was only going to preach a little. I merely wanted to take exception to that forgetting business. If you'll just hold hard for a bit you'll forget normally, not artificially. Another six months and you'll be hard at another scheme, developing it; and the way you feel now--It'll be a joke then, a sort of nightmare to laugh over.”
”Never.... Don't get restless; I'm not irresponsible now. I'm merely telling you. I've been asleep and dreaming for a long time, but at last I'm awake. Come what may, and truly as I'm telling you now, I'll never write another novel. I couldn't if I wanted to--I've tried and know; and I wouldn't if I could. There's a limit to everything, and the limit of my patience and endurance is reached. I'm done for now and for all time.”
The voice was not excited now or unnaturally tense, but normal, almost conversational.
”For ten years I've fought the good fight. Every spare hour of that time that I could muster I've worked. I've lain awake night after night and night after night tossing and planning and struggling for a definite end.