One more means still one more. Poor old Jam-wagon! It's the blind leading the blind.
Mosher haunts me with his gleaming bald head and his rat-like eyes. He is living with the little ninety-five-pound woman, the one with the mop of hair.
Oh, it is a hades of a life I am steeped in! I drink and I drink. It seems to me I am always drinking. Rarely do I eat. I am one of half a dozen spectacular "live ones." All the camp is talking of us, but it seems to me I lead the bunch in the race to ruin. I wonder what Berna thinks of it all. Was there ever such a sensitive creature? Where did she get that obstinate pride? Child of misfortune! She minded me of a delicate china cup that gets mixed in with the coarse crockery of a hash joint.
Remonstrantly the Prodigal speeds to town.
"Are you crazy?" he cries. "I don't mind you making an ass of yourself, but lushing around all that coin the way you're doing—it's wicked; it makes me sick. Come home at once."
"I won't," I say. "What if I am crazy? Isn't it my money? I've never sown my wild oats yet. I'm trying to catch up, that's all. When the money's done I'll quit. I'm having the time of my life. Don't come spoiling it with your precepts. What a lot of fun I've missed by being good. Come along; 'listen to the last word of human philosophy—have a drink.'"
He goes away shaking his head. There's no fear of him ever breaking loose. He, with his smile of sunshine, would make misfortune pay. He is a rolling stone that gathers no moss, but manages to glue itself to greenbacks at every turn.
I am in a box at the Palace Grand. The place is packed with rowdy men and ribald women. I am at the zenith of my shame. Right and left I am buying wine. Like vultures at a feast they bunch into the box. Like carrion flies they buzz around me. That is what I feel myself to be—carrion.
How I loathe myself! but I think of Berna, and the thought goads me to fresh excesses. I will go on till flesh and blood can stand it no longer, till I drop in my tracks. I realise that somehow I must make her pity me, must awake in her that guardian angel which exists in every woman. Only in that way can I break down the barrier of her pride and arouse the love latent in her heart.