"On fait ce qu'on peut," said Cavendish, with a shrug. "Orders are orders, John. If the orders of the editor don't go, the orders on the cashier don't come. That's about all there is to it. It would be rather futile to attempt the Don Quixote act, if only for the reason that one would never get into print. One can't do more than follow instructions. The reporter's best policy is his paper's best honesty."
"Honesty?" repeated the Lieutenant-Governor. "Where does the honesty come in? Of course I understand your position. In a way, it is identical with mine—subservience to a principle that you despise, acquiescence in methods that you know to be utterly false and wrong! How sick I am of it all! It's the old experience, all over again, which I used to have as a child with the Tom Smith paper crackers. You are fascinated by the tinsel, and the colored paper, and the gaudy label. You think that when you've dissected one, and pulled it all to pieces, you'll find a bugle and a gold crown inside—because that's what it says on the box. But, the first thing you know, you'll find yourself blowing on a tin whistle and wearing a fool's cap of green paper! Lord! how the press of Kenton City needs a man—a man with the courage and the power to show up the scoundrels who are responsible for all this—McGrath and his associates, I mean. I'm sick and tired of reporters whose rascality is self-evident, of editors who are bought and sold like chattels, of a state of affairs, in general, so infamous as to surpass expression! You have my sympathy, Spencer—the sympathy of a fellow-victim. To be a reporter on a newspaper which dictates dishonesty; to be the lieutenant of a Governor who enjoins duplicity—it's all just about one and the same thing!"
"It's curious," commented Cavendish, "that it wasn't until about a week after—after that night, that I knew you were Lieutenant-Governor. Then, your name happened to be mentioned in the office, and somebody asked me if I knew you."
"Whereupon," said Barclay, conquering the tie at last, and turning from the mirror, "you had the inexpressible privilege of saying that you knew me intimately."
"Whereupon," repeated Cavendish, in that so singular tone which had lain heavy upon the other's memory, "I had the inexpressible privilege of saying that I used to know you, but that we had quarreled, and were now—strangers."
"Why?" demanded the Lieutenant-Governor, wheeling abruptly upon him. "What possessed you to say such a silly thing as that?"
Cavendish leaned forward in his chair, with his elbows on his knees, and his forehead against his interlaced fingers, staring at the floor.
"I'm glad, in a way, to have you ask that question," he said slowly. "We are wary of mock heroics, or even real heroics, men like you and me. And yet there are things which must be explained, things not easy to explain, because they come so close at times to melodrama. I've always had a horror of emotional situations; and, from what I know of you, I'm sure you have, as well. I'd avoid this explanation, if I could—indeed, I've deliberately avoided it, thus far. Yet if I were a Romanist in the presence of my priest, I think I should feel more at liberty to evade confession than I do now. For both our sakes, I'll try to be as brief, as simple, as lucid, as I can. And I'll trust you to understand, as well as may be. Don't think there's any pose, any aim at effect, in what I'm going to say. You've asked me a question, and I'm going to answer it, that's all! I don't think, in my present frame of mind, I could bear to have you entertain the suspicion that the answer was affected or lacking in candor. Allons! Already I'm growing too verbose!"
He looked up with a wan smile.
"Let's get down to facts. You ask me why I told my questioner that we no longer knew each other. Well, then, let's have at it! It was because, John Barclay, there is likely—no, there is sure—to come a time when you won't care to acknowledge me as your friend. Oh, wait!" he added, as the Lieutenant-Governor held up his hand in protest. "Hear me out. You say I talked like an ass, that first night. Perhaps. But the fact remains that I've been a drunkard—and that I'm bound to be one again! I've been fighting against temptation for several weeks. It hasn't been very strong, for some reason, and so I've managed to ground it so far. But you remember the chap with whom old Hercules wrestled? Every time he touched earth his strength was multiplied. Well, that's the way with drink. I can throw the temptation for a while, but every time I do so it rises, stronger many-fold. Sooner or later, I'm forced to give in. I know it, as I know I'm sitting here. I'm doing my best now, because, in the future, when the wrong that for a time you've righted goes wrong again, I want you to remember that I made the effort—for you—and for her—for the Fairy Princess. The end is as plain as day! It was born in me, this. I think I've never told you that my father died of it, but that's the truth. And the next time I drop, it will be for good and all. I shall never make another effort to conquer the inevitable. If I can't do it now, with the hope of redemption thus made plain, with a new start, and a fresh chance, and—thanks to you, John—the past wiped off the slate and a new sum set to solve, with the incentive of your friendship and confidence, and the interest, so undeserved, of the Fairy Princess, into the bargain,—if I can't do it now, I say, why surely I can never do it. John, you can't know what I've been through. You, who've never had the temptation, can't conceive of what it means. It's a living actuality, this lust for drink. When your nerves go wrong, even at the end of a day, or a week, or a year, during which you've kept straight, when you're tired, discouraged, and, above all, alone!—then it comes at you like a live thing,—speaks—grips your arm—drags you wherever it wills! I've laughed at it, scoffed at it, in its absence, tried to make myself believe it a fragment of an otherwise forgotten dream, many and many and many a time. But it always came back! Oh, John Barclay, you others will never understand! A man has to have been through it, in order to know, and that not once, but, as I have, a hundred times."