“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?” 127
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.” 128
“And you began to drink.”