"How are you getting on at the bar?"

"Badly, very badly. I wish to G.o.d I had never taken up such a profession. I was never cut out for a lawyer."

"But I see your name in the papers sometimes--"

"_Sometimes!_ but it's a struggling, miserable sort of a practice. I wish I had become a leech like you, Duncan. I might have done something then. Now, _you_ were cut out for a barrister."

"How do you make that out?"

"Because you are steady--not a volatile a.s.s like I am. It is this idleness, this waiting for briefs, that ruins a weak man. You see, Duncan, I'm a restless being that must be doing something, and doing it hard. I can work hard when I get the work, but when I can't get it, then I must be playing hard."

"Dissipating hard, I suppose you mean," said the doctor with a smile.

"Well, that's about it."

"You ought to have sown your wild oats by this time, my boy. To begin with, what makes you drink such a precious lot of whisky. If I had taken half as many gla.s.ses as you have to-night, I shouldn't be fit for much work to-morrow morning."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of going much too far in that line. I can foresee that my fate is rather to be driven to the dogs by the women," replied Hudson.

"That is very probable, judging from the reports that are current about you," said the doctor.

"Yes, Duncan," continued the barrister, "I don't mind confessing myself to an old friend like you. It _is_ the women--and I seem to be becoming a greater idiot every year. My mind's always distracted by some intrigue or other, generally with some actress who chucks me up as soon as I have spent upon her all the money I can raise by every means known to the Gentiles. There's nothing that so unsettles a man's mind, so unfits him for work, and is so certain to ruin him as such a life. I know all this, but I can't pull myself together and reform. In short, I'm a confounded fool."

"Some wise man said that no man ever does any good in the world till he gets women altogether out of his mind," said the doctor.

"And how on earth does that same wise man propose to bring about that happy consummation?" asked Hudson.

"I suppose the wise man meant that as long as a man pa.s.sed a large portion of his life in a sort of restless fever, worrying about one fancy after another, always full of anxiety and uncertainty over some new intrigue, he was in too unsettled a condition to concentrate himself on really good work. The remedy, I suppose, is to marry."

"Marriage is certainly often a good settler," replied Hudson; "but it's all very well to say marry--the question is how and to whom? You are clever at diagnozing, doctor. You don't tell me where to get the medicine."

"That, of course, I can't," replied his friend with a laugh. "But seriously, old man, you must take care what you are about. You are drifting. I know your temperament. You are living here alone in chambers; I know the life--too much leisure, unlimited temptations, little society. It is not to be wondered at that so many of you young barristers go to the dogs.

"I knew a man, as clever, as good a fellow as ever lived. He was a good deal my senior. He is a barrister, a briefless barrister, with a considerable private income. By the very loneliness of his life, for he too did not care about going into society, he was driven out for mere companionship's sake into vicious ways. He was of an uxorious nature, not sensual, but to be in love with some woman was a necessity of his life. His idleness, of course, intensified the necessity.

"His were not cold and heartless attachments. As long as it lasted, his was a generous fierce love enough, G.o.d knows. Women adored him; but a woman could twist him round her little finger; a bad, clever woman could ruin him. But he was not ruined, in the ordinary sense of the word, by women; but ruined morally he has been, utterly. A morbid restless craving for excitement grew on him. When not with women he was generally half-drunk. A good woman could have saved that weak generous affectionate nature, and made his a n.o.ble and useful life. But he never came across a really good woman, so what happened? As he grew older, sentiment, idealism, became dull. His intrigues were no longer poetical.

His illusions vanished, but women of course became more than ever a necessity to him. He became the cold sensualist, the miserable being that has worn out all power of love, but yet is devoured by a desire which seeks all sorts of abnormal means for its gratification.

"He knew what a degraded wretch he had become, what an unhappy slave to vices that tortured without giving joy. Sometimes, for a week or so at a time, his conscience would wake up, and would present so terrible a picture to him, that to avoid madness he would drink--drink deeply, moody, sulky, and silent all the time, looking like a wild beast.

"I have seen him during one of these long spells of despairing agony, and the expression of his face was such as I could never forget. h.e.l.l must be full of such faces. Hudson, I saw that man to-day, I left him just before I came here."

Dr. Duncan paused and seemed rather overcome by emotion; he mixed himself another gla.s.s of grog, and after swallowing some continued:

"I was called to see him in his present lodgings off the Strand, with the object of signing a certificate of his lunacy."

Hudson, whose face had a.s.sumed a thoughtful and gloomy expression during this narrative, shivered perceptibly and put his gla.s.s to his lips but returned it to the table untasted, and said in a low voice:

"Ay, Duncan, I am afraid that same story will be told of me some day.

Even now, I sometimes think it is too late--too late.... But, dash it all! let's have no more of this ghastly discourse. I am going to give myself a stiff gla.s.s of grog to drive away the blues you have conjured up to me."

"It is getting late. I have to be up early, to-morrow, and I must be off," said the doctor, and he rose and seized Hudson by the hand. "I hope I have not riled you, old man, with my sermonizing. Sermonizing isn't much in my line; but you know you are a very old friend of mine, and I take real interest in you."

"I know that," replied the barrister, giving his friend a warm grip of the hand.

"Well, good-night, old man; I'll look you up again soon."

After Dr. Duncan had gone, Hudson opened the window, and leaning on the sill, stayed there motionless, and thinking of many things as he looked out on the beautiful court, with its splashing fountain, and across the green to the Thames beyond, and the distant Surrey sh.o.r.e.

This is one of the most delightful views in London, and on such a quiet summer night as this was, with a clear sky filled with stars above it, I doubt whether any of the great cities of Europe could produce a more impressive scene than this oasis in the great desert of bricks and mortar, this quiet old-fashioned garden between the quaint buildings--all, too, so full of memories and a.s.sociations.

What memories of his thoughtless childhood, of his clever and flattered boyhood with its high hopes, and of his utterly wasted manhood, succeeded each other in crowds in the young man's mind, as he gazed out upon that peaceful scene!

"Ay!" he thought, "I'm nearly thirty now--and what have I done?--nothing--and I'm becoming weaker and more idiotic every day, drifting--yes, Duncan is quite right--I _am_ drifting. It will soon be too late to travel back, too."

Oppressed by his melancholy reflections he closed the window with a slam, and returning to the table mixed himself a stiff gla.s.s of grog.

After drinking it he mixed himself another, and by the time he had finished that one he felt more comfortable. His melancholy mood departed and was succeeded by a very sanguine one. He became brave and hopeful once again, and he said to himself, "It it not too late; I will do something yet, and astonish all these sober dunces who shake their heads and whisper to each other that poor Tommy has gone to the dogs. I have ten times more ability than they have, and I will show them what I can do when I like. I will knock off this silly trifling and buckle to without delay."

And he made a great many very n.o.ble plans and resolutions of reform under the genial influence of his hot spirits and water, as he had done dozens of times before--plans and resolutions that would evaporate from his brain as quickly as the alcoholic fumes that begat them, to be replaced by nerveless despair and sullen recklessness.

CHAPTER III.

THE SECRET SOCIETY.

Those secret societies, Nihilist or whatever else they may be called, whose aim is the subversion of all existing inst.i.tutions, find their recruits chiefly among the discontented, those whose hopes have been dashed to the ground, whose lives have been failures. If to this quality of conscious failure be added a nature enthusiastic and dreamy, the very readiest material for the dangerous conspirator is presented. There are many men of this cla.s.s in every civilized nation, and the ranks of the fraternities are full of them. As education spreads there will be still more; for the means of satisfying the ambitions and wants that education brings cannot increase in anything like proportion to those ever-multiplying wants.

And if this be so with men, how much more is it so with women? women the dependant, whose happiness in life so much hangs on marriage, and of whom so many must be condemned to lives of single misery--women the dreamers, the emotional, and for whose ambitions there is no field.

How many tens of thousands there must be that gnaw out their hearts in lives wasted and objectless, despised of men and happier sisters?

Such women are ready to follow any crazed visionary.

It is a necessity of a woman's nature to cling to the companionship of a Man, to lean on the stronger s.e.x. Woman too must have a G.o.d, a religion. Without these her womanhood has not been perfected.

A Man can stand alone, self-reliant. He can know no G.o.d, have no religion and yet not be over bad and certainly not unhappy. His life-work is enough religion for him. But a woman who has no religion, is on the way to becoming a fiend; she is an unnatural monster. Weak, unstable, she has no strength, no honour, no goodness by herself.

Woman's goodness is as a delicate flower which, when brought into the foul air of the city, withers and dies at once. Man's goodness is of hardier growth. The Soul of Man can be soiled and yet remain half-angelic; but the Angel in Woman spreads its wings and goes off altogether when contamination comes, and straightway she is possessed of a devil.

For these reasons the Woman that has no G.o.d, no love for which to sacrifice herself, is better than a man for the purpose of a secret society.

Again, a Woman is more thorough-going than a Man. If she throws herself into a conspiracy, she throws her whole self. Weaker in nature than Man she is yet stronger, for the whole of that nature is concentrated on one object. The larger nature of a Man is divided among many objects. He has a mind that grasps many things together. If he is a lover he is not _wholly_ a lover as a Woman would be. He still thinks of his business, of a hundred matters. He is selfish and wise; but a Woman in her love or hate is possessed by the emotion and can think of nothing else. As a conspirator a Man is not _wholly_ a conspirator; he weighs the result to himself, to his family; he looks far ahead and around and behind; he reasons, so is more timid than the Woman. She as a conspirator is nothing else; she cannot consider all sides of a question; if she be won over by some wild Nihilistic theory or other mad scheme, she becomes a monomaniac; no arguments unfavourable to it can in the least prevail with her. She is blind to obstacles, reckless of consequences; so she is braver and more ready to act than Man, crueller more ruthless in the execution of her schemes.

In Paris in revolution time, when the people come down to the streets, it is the Women that urge on the men to their mad excesses; it will ever be so.

Those who know Woman best, who know what G.o.dlessness and lovelessness and failure combined can make of her, will not be much surprised that so many were found to join the Sisterhood, a meeting of which I am about to describe, although its objects were so horrible.