You haven't been sober for three weeks. You've been soaking the whole time; and
yet you pretend you're better than me!"
"What d'you mean?" said Dick.
"Mean! You'll see when Mr. Torpenhow comes back."
It was not long to wait. Torpenhow met Bessie on the staircase without a sign
of feeling. He had news that was more to him than many Bessies, and the Keneu
and the Nilghai were trampling behind him, calling for Dick.
"Drinking like a fish," Bessie whispered. "He's been at it for nearly a month."
She followed the men stealthily to hear judgment done.
They came into the studio, rejoicing, to be welcomed over effusively by a
drawn, lined, shrunken, haggard wreck,--unshaven, blue-white about the
nostrils, stooping in the shoulders, and peering under his eyebrows nervously.
The drink had been at work as steadily as Dick.
"Is this you?" said Torpenhow.
"All that's left of me. Sit down. Binkie's quite well, and I've been doing some
good work." He reeled where he stood.
"You've done some of the worst work you've ever done in your life. Man alive,
you're----"
Torpenhow turned to his companions appealingly, and they left the room to find
lunch elsewhere. Then he spoke; but, since the reproof of a friend is much too
sacred and intimate a thing to be printed, and since Torpenhow used figures and
metaphors which were unseemly, and contempt untranslatable, it will never be
known what was actually said to Dick, who blinked and winked and picked at his
hands.
Pages:
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036