“What have you done to yourself?
You walk as if you are lame.”
He laughed idiotically at sight of her troubled face and prodded her.
“Whah — whah!
I got torpedoed by a submarine,” he said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he added modestly. “I gave a little skin to help out a fellow in the electrical school.”
“What!” Eliza screamed.
“How much did you give?”
“Oh, only a little six-inch strip,” he said carelessly.
“The boy was badly burned: a bunch of us got together and chipped in with a little hide.”
“Mercy!” said Eliza.
“You’ll be lame for life.
It’s a wonder you can walk.”
“He always thinks of others — that boy!” said Gant proudly.
“He’d give you his heart’s-blood.”
The sailor had secured an extra valise, and stocked it on the way home with a great variety of beverages for his father. There were several bottles of Scotch and rye whiskies, two of gin, one of rum, and one each of port and sherry wine.
Every one grew mildly convivial before the evening meal.
“Let’s give the poor kid a drink,” said Helen.
“It won’t hurt him.”
“What!
My ba-a-by!
Why, son, you wouldn’t drink, would you?” Eliza said playfully.
“Wouldn’t he!” said Helen, prodding him.
“Ho! ho! ho!”
She poured him out a stiff draught of Scotch whiskey.
“There!” she said cheerfully.
“That’s not going to hurt him.”
“Son,” said Eliza gravely, balancing her wine-glass,
“I don’t want you ever to acquire a taste for it.”
She was still loyal to the doctrine of the good Major.
“No,” said Gant.
“It’ll ruin you quicker than anything in the world, if you do.”
“You’re a goner, boy, if that stuff ever gets you,” said Luke.
“Take a fool’s advice.”
They lavished fair warnings on him as he lifted his glass.
He choked as the fiery stuff caught in his young throat, stopping his breath for a moment and making him tearful.
He had drunk a few times before — minute quantities that his sister had given him at Woodson Street.
Once, with Jim Trivett, he had fancied himself tipsy.
When they had eaten, they drank again.
He was allowed a small one.
Then they all departed for town to complete their belated shopping.
He was left alone in the house.
What he had drunk beat pleasantly through his veins in warm pulses, bathing the tips of ragged nerves, giving to him a feeling of power and tranquillity he had never known.
Presently, he went to the pantry where the liquor was stored.
He took a water tumbler and filled it experimentally with equal portions of whiskey, gin, and rum.
Then, seating himself at the kitchen table, he began to drink the mixture slowly.
The terrible draught smote him with the speed and power of a man’s fist.
He was made instantly drunken, and he knew instantly why men drank.
It was, he knew, one of the great moments in his life — he lay, greedily watching the mastery of the grape over his virgin flesh, like a girl for the first time in the embrace of her lover.
And suddenly, he knew how completely he was his father’s son — how completely, and with what added power and exquisite refinement of sensation, was he Gantian.