"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."