`No, love,' replied he, laughing immoderately at the recollection of the whole affair, `he would have done so,--and perhaps spoilt my face, too, but providentially, this forest of curls' (taking off his hat and showing his luxuriant chestnut locks) `saved my skull, and prevented the glass from breaking till it reached the table.'
`After that,' he continued, `Lowborough kept aloof from us a week or two longer. I used to meet him occasionally in the town; and then, as I was too good-natured to resent his unmannerly conduct, and he bore no malice against me,--he was never unwilling to talk to me; on the contrary, he would cling to me and follow me anywhere,--but to the club, and the gaminghouses, and such like dangerous places of resort--he was so weary of his own moping, melancholy mind. At last, I got him to come in with me to the club, on condition that I would not tempt him to drink; and for some time, he continued to look in upon us pretty regularly of an evening,--still abstaining, with wonderful perseverance, from the `rank poison' he had so bravely forsworn. But some of our members protested against this conduct.
They did not like to have him sitting there like a skeleton at a feast,6 instead of contributing his quota to the general amusement, casting a cloud over all, and watching, with greedy eyes, every drop they carried to their lips, they vowed it was not fair: and some of them maintained that he should either be compelled to do as others did or expelled from the society, and swore that, next time he showed himself, they would tell him as much, and, if he did not take the warning, proceed to active measures. However, I befriended him on this occasion, and recommended them to let him be for a while, intimating that, with a little patience on our parts, he would soon come round again--But, to be sure, it was rather provoking; for though he refused to drink like an honest Christian, it was well known to me, that he kept a private bottle of laudanum about him, which he was continually soaking at--or rather, holding off and on with, abstaining one day and exceeding the next, just like the spirits.
`One night, however, during one of our orgies--one of our high festivals, I mean be glided in, like the ghost in Macbeth, and seated himself, as usual, a little back from the table, in the chair we always placed for `the spectre,' whether it chose to fill it or not. I saw by his face that he was suffering from the effects of an overdose of his insidious comforter; but nobody spoke to him, and he spoke to nobody. A few sidelong glances, and a whispered observation that `the ghost was come,' was all the notice he drew by his appearance, and we went on with our merry carousals as before, till he startled us all by suddenly drawing in his chair and leaning forward with his elbows on the table, and exclaiming with portentous solemnity,--`Well! it puzzles me what you can find to be so merry about. What you see in life I don't know--I see only the blackness of darkness and a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation!'
`All the company simultaneously pushed up their glasses to him, and I set them before him in a semicircle, and, tenderly patting him on the back, bid him drink and he would soon see as bright a prospect as any of us; but he pushed them back, muttering,--`Take them away! I won't taste it, I tell you--I won't--I won't!'
So I handed them down again to the owners; but I saw that he followed them with a glare of hungry regret as they de+parted. Then, he clasped his hands before his eyes to shut out the sight, and two minutes after, lifted his head again, and said, in a hoarse but vehement whisper,--`And yet I must! Huntingdon, get me a glass.!'
`Take the bottle, man! said I, thrusting the brandy-bottle into his hand--but stop, I'm telling too much,' muttered the narrator, startled at the look I turned upon him. `But no matter,' he recklessly added, and thus continued his relation--`In his desperate eagerness, he seized the bottle and sucked away, till he suddenly dropped from his chair, disappearing under the table amid a tempest of applause. The consequence of this imprudence was something like an apoplectic fit, followed by a rather severe brain fever--'
`And what did you think of yourself, sir?' said I, quickly.
`Of course, I was very penitent,' he replied. `I went to see him once or twice--nay, twice or thrice--or, by'r Lady, some four times,--and when he got better, I tenderly brought him back to the fold.'
`What do you mean?'
`I mean, I restored him to the bosom of the club, and compassionating the feebleness of his health and extreme lowness of his spirits, I recommended him to `take a little wine for his stomachs sake,' and, when he was sufficiently re-established, to embrace the media-via, ni-jamais-ni-toujours plan--not to kill himself like a fool, and not to abstain like a ninny--in a word, to enjoy himself like a rational creature, and do as I did;--for don't think, Helen, that I'm a tippler; I'm nothing at all of the kind, and never was, and never shall be. I value my comfort far too much. I see that a man Cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other;--besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single propensity--and moreover, drinking spoils one's good looks,' he concluded, with a most conceited smile that ought to have provoked me more than it did.
`And did Lord Lowborough profit by your advice?' I asked.