“Has he ever done it before?” she said. “Yes, he has done it before—he has done it a dozen times since he has been here, only to-night he was madder than usual and got away from his servant. What is it? It is opium when it isn’t whiskey, and whiskey when it isn’t opium, and oftenest it is both together. He is the worst of a bad lot, and if you haven’t understood that miserable angry boy before you may understand him now. His mother died of a broken heart when he was twelve years old, and he watched her die of it and knew what killed her, and is proud enough to feel the shame that rests upon him. That’s as much as I care to say, and yet it isn’t the half.”
When those bearing the Colonel to his room turned into the corridor leading to it they encountered his son, who met them with a white-lipped rage, startling to every man of them in its incongruous contrast to the boyish face and figure.
“What?” he said, panting. “You’ve got him, have you?”
“Yes,” responded the Colonel hilariously; “’ve got me safe ’nuff; pick me up ad’ car’ me. If man won’t go out, tote ’m out.”
They carried him into his rooms and laid him down, and more than one among them turned curiously to the boy as he stood near the bed looking down at the dishevelled, incoherent, gibbering object upon it.
“Damn him,” he said in a sudden outburst; “damn him.”
“Hello, youngster,” said one of the party, “that’s not the thing exactly.”
“Go to the devil,” roared the lad, livid with wrath and shame. “Do you think I’ll not say what I please? A nice one he is for a fellow to have for a father—to be tied to and dragged about by—drinking himself mad and disgracing himself after his palaver and sentiment and playing the gentleman. He ought to be a gentleman—he’s got a gentleman’s name, and”—choking a little—“all the rest of it. I hate him! He makes me sick. I wish he was dead. He’s a liar and a bully and a fool. I’d kill him if he wasn’t my father. I should like to kill him for being my father!”
Suddenly his voice faltered and his face turned white. He walked to the other side of the room, turning his back to them all, and, flinging himself into a chair, dropped his curly head on his arm on the window-sill and sobbed aloud with a weakness and broken-down fury pitiful to see.
The Colonel burst into a frantic shriek of laughter.