Two years had passed since we last saw him in his Temple chambers, and in that time Tommy Hudson had travelled a long way down the hill. He had considerably degenerated. He had drifted into hard drinking, and his once-refined features indicated the habit too clearly. His practice at the bar had nearly melted away; solicitors could no longer rely on the drunkard.
Feeling his degradation, stricken by remorse, he would make resolutions of reform which his nature, originally weak and unsteady and ever further sinking, was unable to carry out.
His friends shunned him. He had become one in whose company men were ashamed to be seen. He had recently been black-balled when put up for election at a small legal club in the neighbourhood of the Law Courts; and this last disgrace more than anything else hurried on his descent by driving him to despair and recklessness.
However, he was still far from being irreclaimably lost, and it was only occasionally that his condition was demonstratively disgraceful.
His originally strong tendency for adventure with the fair sex was much exaggerated by his chronic alcoholism, and was becoming with him a sort of monomania. A diseased brain made him restless and fearful of solitude, so that the company of some strange woman or other grew to be a constant necessity.
As decent men would not associate with him now—as he was still too proud to make friends of the loafers, unprincipled, broken-down gentlemen, and other rats of society who would have gladly welcomed him among them—he was perforce driven into the at any rate far less degrading companionship of the free-living members of the other sex.
But at the end of these two years an event happened that turned the current of his life for a time. A relative died and left him a few thousand pounds.
This brought Hudson to his senses. He made up his mind to live a more cleanly life. He suddenly abandoned his drinking habits, and really struggled hard to retrace his steps to respectability.
He knew that his practice would not return to him at once; so, in order to occupy his time, he determined to take to literature—he had dabbled in it before, and was not unknown to the editors of the magazines. He resumed a novel that he had commenced and put aside years back, and felt a great delight in finding that he had not to any great extent lost his power for steady work.
He had been living this reformed life for a fortnight, when he bethought him to take a holiday one fine afternoon and visit the academy. One who had seen him only two weeks before would scarcely have recognized him, as he walked with a light step along the streets. He was a man once more. He held his head erect, and there was a happy smile about his mouth, that spoke of high hope and ambition. He felt a lightness of heart, an exultation of spirit, he had not known for years. Once more he had an honest pride in himself, once more the future looked bright with glorious dreams.