A week or so after the events related in the last chapter.

It is about the hour when the theatres close, and the scene is the interior of the Albion—the well-known tavern near Old Drury, where actors and others of the male sex are wont to sup, after the play and opera are over.

At a table is a man sitting by himself, moodily drinking whisky—which he takes with very little water—and smoking cigar after cigar.

At a glance, you can see that he is a wreck—a gentleman who has become the slave of alcohol. His hand shakes, his eye is fierce and restless, and his three days' beard and unbrushed clothes show that carelessness of appearance which are the early signs of a man's going to the dogs through drink. The recklessness of a man who has lost his self-respect is apparent in his every gesture.

This is Tommy Hudson, but terribly changed. He is not beautiful and refined of features now, but coarse, bloated, spirit-sodden. Not now are the bright, merry eyes, the hopeful buoyancy of manner; but, in their place, sullenness, or the sneers and flippancy born of a gnawing consciousness of degradation and failure.

This man had known a lofty ideal—so was his fall the greater.

The life of the young London barrister is perhaps the most perilous of all for weak natures such as his. Hundreds of promising young lives have fallen victims to its strong temptations. Living in solitary chambers, waiting for work that never comes, desponding at his want of success, the young man is driven out night after night into dissipation—first, by desire of society; lastly, by a morbid restlessness that makes dissipation a necessity.

As long as the man is strong, the whirl of wild amusements may do little harm. He may, in spite of his rackety youth, become a leader of his profession. The lives of many of our greatest judges have been notorious. But, for these few hard ones that do pass through unscathed or slightly wounded, how many fall and perish! How many, in that apprenticeship to the legal profession, play so fiercely in the frequent leisure, that at last, when the work does come, they cannot do it—it is too late! The giants survive—the pigmies are destroyed. Some of these Old Bailey men, we know, have drank deeply in the old-fashioned way, and have thrown themselves into every form of dissipation for forty years and more, and yet are at the top of their branch of the profession. But, young man, before you set out to emulate their ways, and live their lives, remember that they are as one in a hundred, and consider whether you are stronger than ninety-nine men out of a hundred.

It is so easy for a jolly good fellow to degenerate into the drunkard; then to the disreputable drunkard—cut by all his acquaintance; and then to the wreck.

Thus was it with the unfortunate Tommy Hudson. His youth, his beauty, his wit, were all gone; and people now seeing the abject wretch for the first time would never have guessed what he once had been.

No wonder that men, observing such things, carry their gospel of temperance to fanaticism—indeed, no wonder!

And so this nervous wretch stooped there over his drink, casting fierce, furtive glances around him like some hunted animal, as is the way of one on the brink of delirium tremens—ever impressed with an idea that those around were watching him, and talking of him.

Dr. Duncan, who had been spending the evening at a neighbouring theatre, came into the Albion to have some supper before going home.

His passion for Mary and her strange behaviour, when he declared his love to her at his last interview, had disturbed him greatly, so that, contrary to his wont, he had been nightly visiting some theatre or other place of amusement, with the vain hope of distracting his mind from the uneasy misery which oppressed it, and almost unfitted him for work.

Since that interview, she had rather avoided him, and he had held no conversation with her, save of the briefest and most matter-of-fact description, in the course of their respective duties in the hospital.

There was a gloom on the doctor's brow, and his usually keen-glancing eye was dull of expression. As he walked to an unoccupied table in the corner of the room, he took no notice of anything that was going on around him.

On the other hand, the barrister—who was nervously watching all that passed, and followed every movement with his eyes—raised his head from his elbows, and stared at the other with a savage, insolent manner. Then his expression changed—suddenly grew softer, and a puzzled look came to his face. He passed his hand across his forehead; shook his head, as if to throw off some painful idea; looked again; then cried, in a surprised voice that sounded half-timid, the tone of one who had fallen, but not beneath all sense of shame—of one doubtful whether his old friend will acknowledge him.

"Why! Duncan! Duncan! Is that you?"

The doctor started—stared at him, evidently puzzled, and not recognizing the man who addressed him.

The drunken man continued, in melancholy tones: "Am I so altered as all that, then? Why, don't you even remember me?"

The doctor looked at him, and replied, with hesitation: "I do know you. I know your face, but I cannot exactly—."

The barrister interrupted him: "I was once your friend, old man—once—long—long ago." He drawled out these words in a maudlin fashion; then, conscious that he was just on the point of weeping, he pulled himself together, and stretched out his hand to seize his glass, but, in doing so, knocked it off the table, and it broke into pieces.

"Like that glass, sir," he continued, "like that glass, I'm broken—broken altogether."

Then he hung down his head, and laughed to himself in a foolish manner. Suddenly he raised it again, and cried out, in a savage voice: "Duncan! Damn it, man! Don't you know me, or are you going to cut me, like all the rest of them? Eh?"

His friend recognized him at last. "Why, it is Hudson!" he exclaimed much shocked at the fearful change that had come over his once intimate friend. "Hudson! my dear old boy, I am so glad to see you again. What has become of you all this time?"

"How many years is it since you saw me last, Duncan?" asked the barrister in a sulky voice.

"Between three and four years, I think," was the reply.

"Don't you think you might have taken the trouble to look your old friend up all that time? Eh?"

"So I have," replied the doctor, "several times. But I never found you in. I have written to you too, don't you remember? You never replied to my letters though. I began to think you wanted to cut me, old fellow."

"Yes! now I do remember," said his friend sadly. "It's just like me—just like me; and now I turn round and reproach you. I'm an ass, an ungrateful blackguard. Drink, drink—that's what does it, Duncan. It dulls all the good feeling in a man. Look at me! you are my old chum. I get your kind letters and invitations, I never reply to them. I am drunk and chuck them aside. I neglect and quarrel with all my old—my true friends; I have no friends now, a few harpies only around me who drink and laugh with me, as long as my pocket gives out a clinking sound. Forgive me, Duncan."

The doctor took a chair and sat down opposite his friend.

The barrister continued after a pause, "How many years did you say it was since you saw me last, Duncan?"

"About three."

"And I have changed so much in that time that you didn't know me. Pooh! what do I care? It's all over. No good crying over spilt milk. Have a drink, my boy. What will you take?"

"Nothing now, thanks; I am going to sup."

"Nonsense! Waiter, two brandies. If you won't name your poison yourself I must do it for you. Let's look at you, Duncan. You look fit enough—not much older. I've heard of you—got all the best appointments at your hospital—lucky man!"

The brandies came. The doctor observed that Hudson drank his neat this time, and then commenced to become quite sober again—a dangerous symptom.

"Hudson," said the doctor, "excuse me, old man, but what on earth is the meaning of all this? You don't look the man you were. You are twenty years older."

"Well! I am older, old man," Hudson replied, flippantly.

"Yes, but only by three years or so. What a fellow you were then, and now you look as if you were going to the dogs."

"Going! gone, you mean," the barrister exclaimed with a bitter laugh. "But do I look so very much worse then, Duncan?"

"Much worse! Why, man, I should not know you for the old Hudson of Caius, our stroke, our scholar, our rowdy, jolly, clever, healthy Tommy Hudson. Oh, my dear boy, if you could but see what you were and what you are. You must put on the brake. You'll have to come and live with me, and you'll soon be your old self again."

Hudson shook his head. "Never! No! no! It's too late—too late now, old man, you don't know all. I've chucked up the sponge."

"Nonsense, man. It's not too late."

Hudson sat up in his chair and appeared quite sober as he replied:

"It's too late. You don't know what a weak fool I am. It is no good my making resolutions. No, my boy, 'It's all up with poor Tommy now,' as that music-hall man sings—and I don't care. I used to try and reform once. It was no good—Ha! ha! Why it was only three months back, that I made my last attempt. I actually had resolution enough to live one whole week of the most abject virtue; think of that! but it was all the worse afterwards. I've gone a long way further down the hill these last three months."

He paused for some time, resting his head on his hand, as he tried to collect his scattered ideas, then he continued:

"Duncan, I am the most miserable of men—I am the slave of half-a-dozen vices. I have drunk them all to the dregs, yet I am not blasÉ; I wish to God I were. No, I still love the world, love my vices more than ever, but cannot enjoy them—and in that is the hell of it. I hate respectability; I hate work. I love dissipation, and can't dissipate. I look at steady fellows grinding away for little incomes and I hate them, I hate myself. No one can pity me—it's all my own fault. I feel sick and mad sometimes with regret, almost to killing myself—yes, with regret, and what for? I'll tell you—listen—regret that I cannot fly about, as I used to before health and coin and all had taken wings. Not regret for the wasting of any good there might have been in me—not a bit of it, I am too far gone to envy and admire good. Who can pity a man who suffers from so selfish and ignoble a grief? and yet, dear Duncan, I believe that such a suffering is as bitter as any the human soul is capable of—all the bitterer because it can meet no sympathy, no pity. God help me!—The other day I heard a theatre-girl ask of another about me, 'Who is that bloated-looking old masher? Doesn't he look an old beast?' Yes, women have come to talk about me like that; you don't know, old man, you with your steady mind, what a hell I am in. Despised where I loved. I gave up all for pleasure.—She is a hard mistress, not only does she jilt one—chuck one over with a heartless laugh when she has wrung all the good out of one—but she leaves one without the possibility of ever getting another mistress. Ambition will not come to the old rake—Fortune, mind, constitution all gone.—Well, it can't be helped—Damn it! I can still drink anyhow. Bring me a shilling's worth of brandy, waiter. What for you, dear boy?"

"Nothing for me, old man, and don't you have any more just now.—Look here, Hudson, come along with me—to my diggings—we'll have a drink and a chat there. It will remind us of old times. I can give you a shake-down for the night."

The barrister smiled with that knowing and suspicious smile that is peculiar to drunkards. "Not to be caught, doctor," he cried, "none of that gammon for me.—I know your game—but I'm not so drunk as all that. You are right, quite right, old man; I'm going to hell—but I'll go there my own way—damn it! the sooner the better."

"Hush, man!" said his friend. "Those two men at that table are listening to our conversation. We'll clear out of this. We can talk much better in my rooms, or your's if you prefer it as they are nearer."

Hudson glared at the men in question, rose a little from his chair, so that the doctor feared he was about to engage in a quarrel with them, but then altered his mind, drunk some of his brandy—neat again—sobered down, and continued in more subdued tones:

"No! no! doctor; don't think I am as bad as I appear. I'm a flabby idiot, but I'm never as far gone as I am to-night. But I've been upset to-day, Duncan. I saw a girl to-day—for the first time for three years. She passed me in Oxford Street—a girl that I knew when I was a different man. She was beautiful then as I had never seen woman before, and now she is more so. O God! I loved her then; I have often thought of her since; and to-day I saw her again.... I felt mad to see her beauty; and I, shabby, bloated drunkard, dared not speak to her, dared not contaminate her by my companionship. She did not recognize me, I passed by her, and I have been mad ever since.—Oh, mad! to love and know that it is too late—too late—to think what might have been. Oh, dear old friend, pity me, do pity me a little—no one loves, no one pities me now."

There were tears in his eyes and his voice trembled—he was becoming maudlin again.

"Pity you! of course I pity you, old friend. I know poor human nature too well to do otherwise. Who am I to judge other's weakness? Good Heavens! I have been lately on the edge of a precipice myself, and I know how easy it is for a mind to lose its balance. Come with me, old man. I too am a miserable wretch even as you are. We will comfort each other. There is comfort in comforting one's fellows. I will help you and you will help me. Come along, Hudson," and he rose from his seat, anxious to get his friend quietly out of the place.

Hudson looked softened, then he smiled—an inscrutable smile: perhaps it had no meaning. He swallowed his brandy and got up from his chair. He was quite sober now and calm, but with an ominous glitter in his eyes that the doctor understood. He rose and said quietly, "Good night, Duncan; I can't come with you to-night, but I'll look you up in a day or two."

He then paid the waiter, carefully counted the change, and walked out of the Albion with the manner of a perfectly sober man.

But the doctor knew that the poor wretch was on the very verge of delirium tremens, and that a paroxysm might occur at any moment, so followed him close.

Once out of the Albion, the madman—before his friend could seize his arm—leaped back a few yards, laughed a discordant laugh in the doctor's face, and ran like a deer down the street.

Dr. Duncan ran after him; but the barrister's veins were full of fire! his nerves tingled with the poison of alcohol, and he ran as only one in such a state of fearful exaltation of all the faculties can run; not to the right or to the left, but straight on, careless whither he rushed, unconscious of effort—feeling light as the wind, and as if impelled by spirits. The doctor soon lost sight of him, good runner though he was, and returned home with a heart heavier than ever. How dark all life seemed just then to this successful and prosperous man!

Deep was his compassion for his unfortunate friend—for he knew now that it would not have taken so much to have seen himself on the same downward career to destruction.

His passion for Mary had revealed to him how weak his nature too was, how circumstances may overset the balance even of the strongest mind.