Felix looked at the huge drink with an involuntary gesture of dismay.
“’S all right,” said Eddie Silver. “Nas’y stuff, I know! But you take it ’n’ you’ll feel better right away!”
Felix had never been drunk. He had never wanted to be drunk. But it occurred to him that now was the proper time to have that experience.
He looked about the room. All these half dozen people were in that state, so eloquently described by the poets, of being “perplexed no more with human and divine.”
One of them was telling an incoherent story, and two others were laughing in the wrong place and being told indignantly that that wasn’t the point at all. Another was singing to himself, and not doing it very well. Poor devil! he probably wanted to sing and nobody would let him except when he was drunk. And still another was arguing with Eddie Silver, who paid no attention to him whatever, about somebody named John. “John means well,” he explained, with the air of one who understands all and forgives all. “John just don’t know how, that’s all! But he means well.”
Felix considered. Did he really wish to join them in that state, so merely ridiculous when viewed from the outside? Yet they were doubtless happy, in some way which he, in his inexperience, knew nothing about. Well, he would try it. He would get drunk.
And he might as well do it quickly.
He drank half the glassful down, choked, and was slapped on the back. He waited.
He was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find that it had no further effect than the same gentle exhilaration he had experienced from an evening’s slow sipping of his friend Tom Alden’s Rhine wine. That was not what he wanted. That was not enough. He braced himself, and drank the rest of the glassful.
Some hours later he was awakened from a deep and peaceful sleep on the floor of the bathroom by two of his companions, and walked out of the house.... He felt refreshed by the night air, and remembered a discussion about Chicago, and of slapping somebody’s face. He did not remember being knocked down—several times, they said. By a man named Smith. He did not remember Smith.