He walked out of the room quite gaily. A casual passer-by, if he had met him, would at that moment have thought of him as a happy man.
And yet, although Sprague and Purvis did not know it, Leicester had entered the smoking-room of the club that night with a strong inclination to refuse the invitation to John Castlemaine's house. He had been ashamed of making a woman the subject of a wager, and more, he had for several days been fighting against the craving for alcohol. He realised more than any man the mastery which it had gained over him, and he knew that unless he conquered the habit, he would soon be a slave to it, body and soul. An evening spent in the society of a good woman, moreover, had aroused his latent manhood, and he felt that he could not degrade himself by standing by the challenge he had made. He knew as well as they that it was made under the influence of whisky, and that no man of honour should stand by it.
During the days he had been fighting his craving for drink, the thought of what he had done became more and more repugnant, and when he entered the room where Sprague and Purvis were, he intended telling them that nothing more must be said about it.
It seemed, however, that the fates were against him. He was in a nervous, irritable mood, caused by his abstention from the poison which had become almost a necessity to him, and the significant glances of the two men maddened him. Had they met him in the right spirit, it is possible that the affair, which did not reflect credit upon any of them, might have been dismissed as an idle joke. As we have seen, however, they had taunted him, they had aroused him to anger; these men whom he regarded as his inferiors had assumed an air of superiority, and this in the present state of his nerves was more than he could bear. He had ordered whisky, and after that his good resolutions went by the board. Radford Leicester would have died rather than have confessed himself beaten. Thus do great issues often rest upon unimportant events.
After he had gone a silence fell between the two young men for some time.
"I wish we hadn't been such fools, Sprague," said Purvis presently.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that we are as bad as he is, perhaps worse. We at least were sober."
"Yes, I know; but who would have thought that he would stand by his guns?"
"We know what he is. I believe if we had been wise to-night he might have been led to give it up. But now nothing will move him."