The bartender again met Mr. Lefferts, with protestations of distinguished pleasure.
Elmer and Jim Lefferts retired to a table to nourish the long, rich, chocolate strains suitable to drunken melody. Actually, they sang very well. Jim had a resolute tenor, and as to Elmer Gantry, even more than his bulk, his thick black hair, his venturesome black eyes, you remembered that arousing barytone. He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously. He could make “Good morning” seem profound as Kant, welcoming as a brass band, and uplifting as a cathedral organ. It was a ’cello, his voice, and in the enchantment of it you did not hear his slang, his boasting, his smut, and the dreadful violence which (at this period) he performed on singulars and plurals.
Luxuriously as a wayfarer drinking cool beer they caressed the phrases in linked sweetness long drawn out:
Strolling through the shaaaaady lanes, with your baby-mine,
You hold her hand and she holds yours, and that’s a very good sign
That she’s your tootsey-wootsey in the good old summer time.
Elmer wept a little, and blubbered, “Lez go out and start a scrap. You’re lil squirt, Jim. You get somebody to pick on you, and I’ll come along and knock his block off. I’ll show ’em!” His voice flared up. He was furious at the wrong about to be suffered. He arched his paws with longing to grasp the non-existent scoundrel. “By God, I’ll knock the tar out of um! Nobody can touch my roommate! Know who I am? Elmer Gantry! Thash me! I’ll show um!”
The bartender was shuffling toward them, amiably ready for homicide.
“Shut up, Hell-cat. What you need is ’nother drink. I’ll get ’nother drink,” soothed Jim, and Elmer slid into tears, weeping over the ancient tragic sorrows of one whom he remembered as Jim Lefferts.
Instantly, by some tricky sort of magic, there were two glasses in front of him. He tasted one, and murmured foolishly, “ ’Scuse me.” It was the chaser, the water. But they couldn’t fool him! The whisky would certainly be in that other lil sawed-off glass. And it was. He was right, as always. With a smirk of self-admiration he sucked in the raw Bourbon. It tickled his throat and made him feel powerful, and at peace with every one save that fellow—he could not recall who, but it was some one whom he would shortly chastise, and after that float into an Elysium of benevolence.