“Yes. I am a reporter on the paper now; I may be managing editor next year. I have been elected to several organizations,” he went on eagerly, glad of the rare chance to speak to one of them about his life. But when he looked up again, his father’s stare was fixed sadly in the fire. The boy stopped in confusion, pierced with a bitter pain.
“That’s good,” said Gant, hearing him speak no more. “Be a good boy, son. We’re proud of you.”
Ben came home two days before Christmas: he prowled through the house like a familiar ghost. He had left the town early in the autumn, after his return from Baltimore. For three months he had wandered alone through the South, selling to the merchants in small towns space for advertisements upon laundry cards. How well this curious business succeeded he did not say: he was scrupulously neat, but threadbare and haggard, and more fiercely secretive than ever. He had found employment at length upon a newspaper in a rich tobacco town of the Piedmont. He was going there after Christmas.
He had come to them, as always, bearing gifts.
Luke came in from the naval school at Newport, on Christmas eve. They heard his sonorous tenor shouting greetings to people in the street; he entered the house upon a blast of air. Everyone began to grin.
“Well, here we are! The Admiral’s back! Papa, how’s the boy! Well, for God’s sake!” he cried, embracing Gant, and slapping his back. “I thought I was coming to see a sick man! You’re looking like the flowers that bloom in the Spring.”
“Pretty well, my boy. How are you?” said Gant, with a pleased grin.
“Couldn’t be better, Colonel. ’Gene, how are you, Old Scout? Good!” he said, without waiting for an answer. “Well, well, if it isn’t Old Baldy,” he cried, pumping Ben’s hand. “I didn’t know whether you’d be here or not. Mama, old girl,” he said, as he embraced her, “how’re they going? Still hitting on all six. Fine!” he yelled, before anyone could reply to anything.
“Why, son—what on earth!” cried Eliza, stepping back to look at him. “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.
Everyone 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 wineglass, “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. He exulted in the great length of his limbs and his body, through which the mighty liquor could better work its wizardry. In all the earth there was no other like him, no other fitted to be so sublimely and magnificently drunken. It was greater than all the music he had ever heard; it was as great as the highest poetry. Why had he never been told? Why had no one ever written adequately about it? Why, when it was possible to buy a god in a bottle, and drink him off, and become a god oneself, were men not forever drunken?
He had a moment of great wonder—the magnificent wonder with which we discover the simple and unspeakable things that lie buried and known,
