“I replied that I had no letters to write and no business instructions to leave. The idea of facing my home, passing my mother’s door, and then going to bed as if the world had not turned right round; as if all life, the present and the future, were not revolutionized—this was what I did not, at this moment at least, feel equal to, and I said so.
“‘I would rather go for an hour to the club,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind, and we will have a game of billiards. I don’t feel inclined to go home, and I should not sleep if I went to bed.’
“‘Just as you like,’ he said; ‘but the night is so fine we may as well take a few more turns in the open air. It does one good after those heated rooms.’
“It did me no good. I felt the most miserable man in this miserable world. I would have given any happiness the world could have offered me to undo this night’s work, to be as I was an hour ago, free, guiltless of projected murder or suicide. I repeated to myself that it was not my fault; that I had been gratuitously provoked beyond endurance; that as a gentleman I could not have done otherwise; but these sophistries neither calmed nor strengthened me. Truer voices rose up and answered them in clear and imperious tones that drowned the foolish comforters. Why had I ever entered the society where my position exposed me to such results? What business had I there? What good could it do myself or any one else to have been tolerated, even courted, as I fancied I was, by these fine people, who had nothing of any sort in common with me? I had forsaken my legitimate place, the profession that my mother had made such heavy sacrifices to open to me. I had deliberately frittered away my life, destroyed my prospects of honorable success; and this is what it had brought me to! I was going either to shoot a man who had done me no graver injury than offend my pride and punish my folly, or to be shot down by him—and then? I saw myself brought home to my mother dangerously wounded, dead perhaps. I heard her cry of agony, I saw her mortal despair. I could have cried out loud for pity of her. I could have cursed myself for my folly—for the mad, sinful folly that had rewarded her by such an awakening.
“There is an electric current that runs from mind to mind, communicating almost like an articulate voice the thoughts that are passing within us at certain moments. I had not spoken for several minutes, as we paced up and down Pall Mall, puffing our cigars in the starlight; but this current I speak of had passed from my brain to Hallam’s, and informed him of what my thoughts were busy on.
“‘Don’t let yourself down, old boy,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘No harm may come of it after all; I’ve known a score of duels where both sides came off with no more than a pin-scratch, sometimes with no scratch at all. Not that I suspect you of being faint-hearted—I remember what a dare-devil you were at Oxford—but the bravest of us may be a coward for others.’
“I felt something rise in my throat as if it would choke me. I could not get a word out.
“‘Who knows?’ continued Hallam in his cheeriest tone; ‘you may be bringing down the house to-morrow night, and your mother may be the proudest woman in London, seeing you the king of the company, cheered and complimented by “fair women and brave men!” I feel as sure of it, do you know, as if I saw it in a glass.’
“He spoke in kindness, but the levity of his tone, the utter hollowness of his consolations, were intolerable. They mocked my misery; every word pierced me like a knife. What evil genius had led me across this man’s path? Only a few weeks ago I said it was the work of an angel, a good fairy, or some absurdity of the sort. It was more likely a demon that had done it. If I had never met him, I said to myself, I would never have known this hour; I should have been an innocent and a happy man. But this would not do either. I was neither innocent nor happy when I met him. I was false to my duty, wasting my life, and sick to death of both; only longing for the opportunity which Hallam had brought me. If I had not met him, I should have met or sought out some other tempter, and bitten greedily at the bait when it was offered. Still, I felt embittered toward Hallam. I accused him, as if he had been the sole author of my misfortune; as if I had been a baby or an idiot without free-will or responsibility.