You ask, "Had he a home?" He had, indeed, a home, where all that was good and pure was daily practised—loving, warm-hearted sisters, and a fond trusting mother had not the power to drag him back from the tempting gulf of dissipation and allurement. But we will not say that their prayers were lost. There was yet a small, still voice, that would intrude itself upon the young man, and despite his attempts to silence it forever, would steal upon him in the silent hour of midnight, and haunt him in the noisy abodes of revelry and carousal. It even forces itself upon him now as he sits planning a scheme to outwit his rival. The voice is repeating over and over again the words "Lawson is a good young man," and they are re-echoed until Hubert Tracy raises his head and glances around as if to convince himself of the reality. "A good young man," he murmurs bitterly; "I was one myself—in the past."
A bitter groan escaped the lips of the speaker as he uttered the sentence, and his face became stone-like in expression.
"It is of no use; I must not give up. The fellow is good; but what is that to me now? If he win the day, I am lost forever—for it is only through her I will be a better man—and surely, with Lawson's nature, he would willingly make the sacrifice. But here I am, moralizing like a preacher," cried the young man, as he arose and began pacing up and down the floor in an excited manner. "By heaven! it won't do to give up! If I ever expect to be a better man I must first fall still lower!"
A strange method of reasoning indeed! But a striking illustration of the fact that degenerate natures have always some loop-hole to crawl through in order to shield themselves from just reproach.
Hubert Tracy had not sufficient moral courage to take upon himself the responsibility of his actions. He had not faith to strike out on the path of right, and with a sense of his own helplessness, turn to Providence for his guide. Oh no, he could not see ahead of him with an honest hopefulness; but instead "an ever-during dark surrounds him," and he, with all the cowardice of his nature, consoles himself with the thought that the nobility of Phillip Lawson is apology for his base actions.
It was after such reverie that Hubert Tracy bethought himself of an engagement he had made to join a number of acquaintances at a whist party. He straightened himself up and cast a glance in the mirror opposite to see if he would "pass muster" in a crowd. "Guess I'm all right," he exclaimed, stroking his fingers through the masses of chestnut curls that clung so prettily around his well-shaped head.
"Halloo, Tracy, not going so soon? The night's young yet, boy! Come, sit down and have some of the 'rosy,'" shouted a rubicund-faced youth, with a generous proportion of carrotty hair crowning his low flat forehead.
"Sit down Tracy," exclaimed another, slapping him on the back by way of accompaniment to the words: "We'll not go home till morning," which song the whole company began to roar in a style more forcible than artistic.
When the last strains of music had spent its force and a general interchange of silly speeches had been made, the young man once more rose to go, but a youth with broad Scotch accent seized him by the arm exclaiming: "Don't go yet, Tracy dear; for if ye do, ye need'nt come back here."
"A poet of the first water," cried a voice from behind, at which all joined in another roar of laughter, which reached its climax when a feminine-looking youth exclaimed, "What a pity the government have not discovered such talent! they would surely have him for poet laureate."