Finally, he let the coach go on without us, and I heard him laying a bet to drive across Salisbury Plain, in a gig, or dog-cart, and meet it again on the road to Devizes by daybreak next morning. The landlord laughed, and advised him to give up such a mad, “neck-or-nothing” freak; but he swore, and said he always went at everything “neck-or-nothing.”
I can remember to this day nearly every word he uttered, and his manner of saying it. Under any circumstances this might have been the case, for he attracted me, bad as I felt him to be, with his bold, devil-may-care jollity, mixed with a certain English frankness, not unpleasant. He was a small, dark man, hollow-eyed and dissipated looking. His face—no, better not call up his face.
I was persuaded to stay and drink with this man and one or two others—regular topers, as I soon found he was. He appeared poor too; the drinking was to be at my expense. I was very proud to have the honor of entertaining such a clever and agreeable gentleman.
Once, watching him, and listening to his conversation, sudden doubt seized me of what Dallas would think of my new acquaintance, and what he would say, or look—he seldom reproved aloud—were he to walk in, and find me in this present company. And, supper being done, I tried to get away, but this man held me by the shoulders, mocking me, and setting the rest on to mock me as a “milksop.” The good angel fled. From that moment, I believe, the devil entered both into him and me.
I got drunk. It was for the first time in my life, though more than once lately I had been “merry,” but stopped at that stage. This time I stopped at nothing. My blood was at boiling heat, with just enough of conscience left to make me snatch at any means to deaden it.
Of the details of that orgie, or of those who joined in it, except this one person—I have, as was likely, no distinct recollection. They were habitual drinkers; none of them had any pity for me, and I—I was utterly “left to myself,” as I have said. A raw, shy, Scotch lad, I soon became the butt of the company.
The last thing I remember is their trying to force me to tell my name, which, hitherto, I had not done; first, from natural reserve among strangers, and then from an instinctive feeling that I was not in the most creditable of society, and therefore the less I said about myself the better. All I had told, was that I was on my way to France, to join my brother, who was ill. They could not get any more out of me than that: a few taunts—which some English people are rather too ready to use against us Scotch—made me savage, as well as sullen. I might have deserved it, or not—I cannot tell; but the end was, they turned me out—the obstinate, drunken, infuriated lad—into the street.
I staggered through the dark, silent town, into a lane, and fell asleep on the road-side.
The next thing I call to mind is being awakened by the cut of a whip across my shoulders, and seeing a man standing over me. I flew at his throat like a wild creature; for it was he—the “gentleman” who had made me drunk, and mocked me; and whom I seemed then and there to hate with a fury of hatred that would last to my dying day. Through it all, came the thought of Dallas, sick and solitary, half way towards whom I ought to have travelled by now.
How he—the man—soothed me, I do not know, but I think it was by offering to take me towards Dallas; he had a horse and gig standing by, and said if I would mount, he would drive me to the coast, whence I could take boat to France. At least, that is the vague impression my mind retains of what passed between us. He helped me up beside him, and I dozed off to sleep again.