Robin looked a little startled. “It would be a little dishonest of me to think these things without expressing them.”
She went on as if she hadn’t heard. “The kind of control I mean has to go back further than the antrums. All of us have mean, cowardly thoughts from time to time. Apparently the maturity you’re getting is normal enough that you’re developing a man-sized inferiority complex along with it. You are beginning to recognize that Mel is a better man than you’ll ever be, and the only way you can rationalize that is to try to make him small enough to be taking advantage of you.”
“Holy cow,” breathed Robin. “Put down that knout, Peg! I’m not going to make a hobby of taking cracks at Mel Warfield behind his back. I’m just handing it to you straight, the way I see it, for just one reason—to explain why I am discontinuing the course of treatment.”
She was halfway to the door as he spoke, and she brought up sharply as if she had been tied by a ten-foot rope. “Robin! You’re not going to do anything of the kind!”
“I’m going to do exactly that,” said Robin. “I’m not used to lying awake nights worrying about what someone else is likely to do. I’m doing all right. I’ve come as far in this thing as I intend to go. I’m producing more than I ever did in my life before, and I can live adequately on what I’m getting and will get for this music and these patents and plays and poems, to live for the rest of my life if I quit working tomorrow—and I’m not likely to quit working tomorrow.”
“Robin! You’re half hysterical! You don’t know what you’re talking about! In your present condition you can’t depend on the biochemical balance of your glandular system. It can only be kept balanced artificially, until it gradually adjusts itself to operation without the thymus. In addition, the enormous but balanced overdoses of other gland extracts we have had to give you must be equalized as they recede to normalcy. You simply can’t stop now!”
“I simply will stop now,” he said, mimicking her tone. “I took the chance of starting with this treatment, and I’ll take the chance of quitting. Don’t worry; no matter what happens your beloved Mel’s nose is clean, because of that release I signed. I’m not going to sue anybody.”
She looked at him wonderingly. “You’re really trying to be as offensive as you possibly can, aren’t you? I wonder why?”
“It seems the only way for me to put over a point to you,” he said irritably. “If you must know, there’s another reason. The stuff I’m producing now is good, if I can believe what I read in the papers. It has occurred to me that whatever creativeness I have is largely compounded of the very immaturity you are trying to get rid of. Why should I cut off the supply of irrationality that produces a work of art like my musical comedy? Why should I continue a course of treatment that will ultimately lead me to producing nothing creative? I’m putting my art before my course, that’s all.”
“A good pun, Robin,” said Peg stonily, “but a bad time for it. I think we’ll let you stew in your own juice for a while. Watch your diet and your hours, and when you need professional help, get in touch with me and I’ll see what I can do about getting Mel to take you on again.”
“Nice of you. Why bother?”
“Partly sheer stubbornness; you make it so obvious you want nothing of the kind. Partly professional ethics, a thing which I wouldn’t expect a child, however precocious, to understand fully.”
He went slowly past her and opened the door. “Good-by, Dr. Wenzell.”
“Good-by, Robin. And good luck.”
Later, in her office at the hospital, Peg’s phone rang. “Yes?”
“Peg! I’ve just received a note, by messenger, from Robin English.”
“Mel! What did he say?”
“He inclosed a check for just twice what I billed him for, and he says that he won’t be back.”
“Mel, is it safe?”
“Of course it’s not safe! The pituitary reactions are absolutely unpredictable—you know that. I can’t prognosticate anything at all without the seventy-two-hour checkups. He might be all right; I really wouldn’t know. He’s strong and healthy and tremendously resilient. But to stop treatment now is taking unfair advantage of his metabolism. Can’t you do anything about it?”
“Can’t I do anything?”
“He’ll listen to you, Peg. Try, won’t you? I… well, in some ways I’m glad to have him off my neck, frankly. It’s been… but anyway, I’ll lose sleep over it, I know I will. Will you see if you can do anything with him?”
A long pause.
“Hello; Peg—are you still there?”
“Yes, Mel… let him go. It’s what he wants.”
“Peg! You… you mean you won’t see him?”
“N-no, I—can’t, Mel. I won’t. Don’t ask me to.”
“I hardly know what to say. Peg, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter. I won’t see him, that’s all, and if I did it wouldn’t do any good. I don’t care what hap—Oh, Mel, do watch him! Don’t let anything… I mean, he’s got to be all right. Read his stuff, Mel. Go see his plays. You’ll be able to f-find out that way.”
“And if I don’t like the looks of what I find out, what am I supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Call me up whenever you find out anything, Mel.”
“I will, Peg, I’m—sorry. I didn’t realize that you… I mean, I knew it, but I didn’t know you felt so—”
“Good-by, Mel.”
She hung up and sat and cried without hiding her face.
Robin’s first novel was published five months later, while his musical, “Too Humorous To Mention,” was eight weeks old and just at the brilliant beginning of its incredible run, while “The Cellophane Chalice,” his little, forgotten book of verse, went into its sixth printing, and while three new songs from “Too Humorous” were changing places like the shells in the old army game, on the Hit Parade in the one-two-three spots. The title of one of them, “Born Tomorrow,” had been bought at an astonishing figure by Hollywood, and royalties were beginning to roll in for Robin’s self-tapping back-out drill bits.
The novel was a strange and compelling volume called “Festoon.” The ravings of the three critics who were fortunate enough to read it in manuscript made the title hit the top of the best-seller lists and stay there like a masthead. Robin English was made an honorary doctor of law by a college in Iowa, a Kentucky Colonel, a member of the Lambs Club and a technical advisor to the American Society of Basement Inventors. He dazedly declined a projected nomination to the State Senate which was backed by a colossal round robin; wrote a careful letter of thanks to the municipality of Enumclaw, Washington, for the baroque golden key to the city it sent him because of the fact that early in his life he had been born there; was photographed for the “Young Men of the Month” page of Pic, and bought himself a startlingly functional mansion in Westchester County. He wrote a skillful novella which was sold in Boston and banned in Paris, recorded a collection of muezzin calls, won a pie-eating contest at the Bucks County Fair, and made a radio address on the evolution of modern poetry which was called one of the most magnificent compositions in the history of the language. He bought a towboat and had a barge built in the most luxurious pleasure-yacht style and turned them over to the city hospitals for pleasure-cruises to Coney Island for invalid children. Then he disappeared.