“I've got to think this out. That was all wrong, boy. That old man, Wood, had a right to his life.”
“He had no right!”
Allen was on his feet, two fingers shaking in the air.
“Quiet, Lolly! Sweeney's in the corridor. I'm not blaming you. Why didn't you come to me? I'd have let you live as you liked. I'm going away to think it out. Never mind. I say, drop it, Lolly! We'll sled together again. I've said it, and you can quit talking.”
Allen clung to his hand.
“You're coming again, Al.”
He felt Alcott's old mastery gripping him again, the same thing that had always been to him the foundation of his existence, and yet always intolerable and smothering. Not being able to live without Alcott, nor yet with him, the four years in Port Argent had seemed a clever solution—not with Alcott, nor yet without him; free of his smothering control, but seeing his face and hearing his voice.
He rattled on half hysterically, while Alcott gripped his hand across the table, and said little.
Gradually the picture took shape in Alcott's mind, and his mental image of the last four years changed form and line of the new demand. He saw Allen going home nights from the Assembly Hall, with his light, jerky step, exulting, hugging himself gleefully. How he had hated Al's enemies! How he had longed to kill Carroll for sneering at Al in choppy paragraphs! How he had hated Marve Wood, whom Al called a “disease”! How he had lurked in the shadow under the gallery of the Assembly Hall! How he had pegged shoes and poured his excitement, in vivid language, into the ears of the east-side loafers in the shoe-shop! How flitted back and forth over the Maple Street bridge, where the drays and trolley cars jangled, where the Muscadine flowed, muddy and muttering, below!
“You've been in Port Argent all this time!” Alcott said at last. “I wouldn't have talked that way if I'd known you were there.”