Mastering Flame; A Novel (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III NICHOLAS WAYNE was a man who had fallen into the habit of getting his own way: Secretary of State, it did not require much effort; as Randal Wayne's uncle, on the contrary, he found that it required a good deal. In his position, acknowledged head of an imposing Alabama family, the Secretary felt bound to "keep an eye on" Randal; if he did not, the Family were psychologically certain to twit him about it?at the next Thanksgiving dinner or twentieth reunion, or whatever it happened to be. For his own part, Nicholas Wayne liked "Randy"; but he believed in every gentleman's right to go to the devil if he wanted to; provided he did it unobtrusively and with finish. And this was what "they said" Randal had been giving undivided attention to, ever since he went to college. The family as a whole deplored it: they said it showed such a lack. And no doubt it did. But rumor had been singularly quiet about Randal the last nine years; it seemed as though all but his name (that immortal possession of the house of Wayne) had vanished?demate- rialized into a vague, expurgated memory such as replaces the well known truths of those souls that have actually separated themselves into another space. People in Mobile spoke of him as "poor Randal Wayne,"and had even ceased to inquire about him; the Family, since he had never done anything which the newspapers had considered worth five thousand miles of transmission, had settled back with a sigh, and turned his uncertainties over to Nicholas. To the Family he had become a shape; to Nicholas, however, he had become the essence of a disturbing quality?a thing without flesh and blood, and yet more definitely indissoluble than the most stolid body. It was obstinacy that Randal Wayne meant to his uncle, obstinacy of the most baffling, intangib...