“Hate you!” cried Luke excitedly. “For G-g-god’s sake! You talk like a fool. We’re only trying to help you, for your own good. Why should we hate you!”
“Yes, you hate me,” Eugene said, “and you’re ashamed to admit it. I don’t know why you should, but you do. You wouldn’t ever admit anything like that, but it’s the truth. You’re afraid of the right words. But it’s been different with you,” he said, turning to Ben. “We’ve been like brothers—and now, you’ve gone over against me.”
“Ah!” Ben muttered, turning away nervously. “You’re crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He lighted a cigarette, holding the match in a hand that trembled.
But although the boy had used a child’s speech of woe and resentment, they knew there was a core of truth in what he had said.
“Children, children!” said Eliza sadly. “We must try to love one another. Let’s try to get along together this Christmas—what time’s left. It may be the last one we’ll ever have together.” She began to weep: “I’ve had such a hard life,” she said, “it’s been strife and turmoil all the way. It does seem I deserve a little peace and happiness now.”
They were touched with the old bitter shame: they dared not look at one another. But they were awed and made quiet by the vast riddle of pain and confusion that scarred their lives.
“No one, ’Gene,” Luke began quietly, “has turned against you. We want to help you—to see you amount to something. You’re the last chance—if booze gets you the way it has the rest of us, you’re done for.”
The boy felt very tired; his voice was flat and low. He began to speak with the bluntness of despair: what he said had undebatable finality.
“And how are you going to keep booze from getting me, Luke?” he said. “By jumping on my back and trying to strangle me? That’s on a level with every other effort you’ve ever made to know me.”
“Oh,” said Luke ironically, “you don’t think we understand you?”
“No,” Eugene said quietly. “I don’t think you do. You know nothing whatever about me. I know nothing about you—or any of you. I have lived here with you for seventeen years and I’m a stranger. In all that time have you ever talked to me like a brother? Have you ever told me anything of yourself? Have you ever tried to be a friend or a companion to me?”
“I don’t know what you want,” Luke answered, “but I thought I was acting for the best. As to telling you about myself, what do you want to know?”
“Well,” said Eugene slowly, “you’re six years older than I am: you’ve been away to school, you’ve worked in big cities, and you are now enlisted in the United States Navy. Why do you always act like God Almighty,” he continued with rankling bitterness. “I know what sailors do! You’re no better than I am! What about liquor? What about women?”
“That’s no way to talk before your mother,” said Luke sternly.
“No, son,” said Eliza in a troubled voice. “I don’t like that way of talking.”
“Then I won’t talk like that,” Eugene said. “But I had expected you to say that. We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we’re willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won’t admit that either, but it’s true. Well, then, Luke, we won’t talk of the ladies, black or white, you may or may not know, because it would make you uncomfortable. Instead, you can keep on being God and I’ll listen to your advice, like a little boy in Sunday School. But I’d rather read the Ten Commandments where it’s written down shorter and better.”
“Son,” said Eliza again with her ancient look of trouble and frustration, “we must try to get on together.”
“No,” he said. “Alone. I have done an apprenticeship here with you for seventeen years, but it is coming to an end. I know now that I shall escape; I know that I have been guilty of no great crime against you, and I am no longer afraid of you.”
“Why, boy!” said Eliza. “We’ve done all we could for you. What crime have we accused you of?”
“Of breathing your air, of eating your food, of living under your roof, of having your life and your blood in my veins, of accepting your sacrifice and privation, and of being ungrateful for it all.”
“We should all be thankful for what we have,” said Luke sententiously. “Many a fellow would give his right eye for the chance you’ve been given.”
“I’ve been given nothing!” said Eugene, his voice mounting with a husky flame of passion. “I’ll go bent over no longer in this house. What chance I have I’ve made for myself in spite of you all, and over your opposition. You sent me away to the university when you could do nothing else, when it would have been a crying disgrace to you among the people in this town if you hadn’t. You sent me off after the Leonards had cried me up for three years, and then you sent me a year too soon—before I was sixteen—with a box of sandwiches, two suits of clothes, and instructions to be a good boy.”
“They sent you some money, too,” said Luke. “Don’t forget that.”
“I’d be the only one who would, if I did,” the boy answered. “For that is really what is behind everything, isn’t it? My crime the other night was not in getting drunk, but
