Windy McPherson's Son eBook

the country on fast trains, sitting for hours in silence looking out of the window at the passing country and wondering at his endurance of the life he led.  For some months he carried with him a young man whom he called a secretary and paid a large salary for his ability to tell stories and sing clever songs, only to discharge him suddenly for telling a foul tale that reminded Sam of another tale told by the stoop-shouldered old man in the office of Ed’s hotel in the Illinois town.

From being silent and taciturn, as during the months of his wanderings, Sam became morose and combative.  Staying on and on in the empty, aimless way of life he had adopted he yet felt that there was for him a right way of living and wondered at his continued inability to find it.  He lost his native energy, grew fat and coarse of body, was pleased for hours by little things, read no books, lay for hours in bed drunk and talking nonsense to himself, ran about the streets swearing vilely, grew habitually coarse in thought and speech, sought constantly a lower and more vulgar set of companions, was brutal and ugly with attendants about hotels and clubs where he lived, hated life, but ran like a coward to sanitariums and health resorts at the wagging of a doctor’s head.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

One afternoon in early September Sam got on a westward-bound train intending to visit his sister on the farm near Caxton.  For years he had heard nothing from Kate, but she had, he knew, two daughters, and he thought he would do something for them.

“I will put them on the Virginia farm and make a will leaving them my money,” he thought.  “Perhaps I shall be able to make them happy by setting them up in life and giving them beautiful clothes to wear.”

At St. Louis he got off the train, thinking vaguely that he would see an attorney and make arrangements about the will, and for several days stayed about the Planters Hotel with a set of drinking companions he had picked up.  One afternoon he began going from place to place drinking and gathering companions.  An ugly light was in his eyes and he looked at men and women passing in the streets, feeling that he was in the midst of enemies, and that for him the peace, contentment, and good cheer that shone out of the eyes of others was beyond getting.

In the late afternoon, followed by a troop of roistering companions, he came out upon a street flanked with small, brick warehouses facing the river, where steamboats lay tied to floating docks.

“I want a boat to take me and my crowd for a cruise up and down the river,” he announced, approaching the captain of one of the boats.  “Take us up and down the river until we are tired of it.  I will pay what it costs.”

It was one of the days when drink would not take hold of him, and he went among his companions, buying drinks and thinking himself a fool to continue furnishing entertainment for the vile crew that sat about him on the deck of the boat.  He began shouting and ordering them about.