satisfy or subdue the energies which revolt against repression. Prudence warns in vain, the blood flows hotly, and the brain works feverishly, and the swimmer who has drifted into one of the still pools of the stream of life, cannot bear to lie floating, but must strike out again into the torrent, though he well knows that his expected boat is yet far away, and that the current must whirl him along to perdition. Fortunate is the man on whom Nature at such an hour lays her restraining hand, and throws upon a bed of sickness, but this is a good fortune which, though it occurs with felicitous precision to the heroes of fiction, seldom occurs so opportunely in actual life. It came not to Ernest Adair, who, in full health and vigour, found himself suddenly doomed to tormenting inactivity, among those who were incapable of supplying him with society, and at whom he scoffed, perhaps instinctively rather than with malice, when exchanging with him the common-place civilities of their home, and of his hiding-place.
A fourth day passed, and Adair’s loneliness, far more depressing than actual solitude would have been, became unbearable. On the night that Haureau had accosted him, Ernest had spent a couple of hours with a strange and coarse gang to whom the former had introduced him, and though Adair’s dislike for such associates had made his conversation that evening one long sneer, except when in a sort of humorous despair, he had sought the applause of his companions by some wild outbreak of ribaldry, or worse, avenged on himself the next instant by a bitter self-loathing, even such society was better than none at all, or than the enduring the harmless platitudes of his new neighbours. He determined once more to visit the river-side haunt to which Haureau had taken him.
It was nearly dark when he summoned his landlady, informed her that business of importance took him into the city, and charged her to take the utmost care of any letter that might arrive.
“It’s late hours for the city, sir, isn’t it?” said the woman. “I thought that city gentlemen shut up early.”
“Theatrical gentlemen do not, you know, Mrs. Wallis, and we must call on business men in the hours of business, talk business, and go about our business, that they may have time to attend to their business, as I see you have stuck up in your parlour.”
“Well, to think that you should notice that, sir, and have a memory for it, too,” replied Mrs. Wallis. “I do believe a memory is the gift of God.”
“Do you?” said Adair. “Some people believe in an exactly opposite direction, but never mind that.”
“No, sir, and I am sure I beg your pardon for taking the liberty of naming it. But would you mind taking the latch-key?”
“Not a bit, if you don’t mind trusting me with it?”
“Oh, sir, anybody could see that you are a gentleman to be trusted, though, to speak the truth, we used to be set against mustaches, having been sufferers by the same, but everybody wears them now, and if persons were not intended to wear them, I suppose they wouldn’t have been given. I tell my husband so, when he makes a piece of work if he can’t find the halfpence to go round and be shaved, for shaving himself is what he never could and never did do, but he laughs, and says that the hair comes to help the barber to live, and so it does, if one looks at it in that way.”
“Well, I am glad you look at mine in a favourable way, Mrs. Wallis, and I hope Mr. Wallis will not be jealous.”
The good-natured woman laughed very heartily, had no doubt but that there was a younger and a prettier lady to think about Mr. Hyde’s moustaches, gave him the latch-key, and promised that a candle should be left burning for him in the passage.
The candle burned out, but it outlasted the life of him for whom it was lighted.
Ernest Adair left the house, and, turning into one of the large thoroughfares, mounted upon an omnibus that was making its slow night progress towards the city. The vehicle was nearly empty, and proceeded at a funereal pace which once or twice elicited an imprecation from the only outside passenger. Yet, had he known it, his progress was fast enough for him. If there are intelligences, commissioned or volunteering to watch over the separate destiny of a mortal, and who have marked all his wanderings and circuitous journeyings in the world, seen him press eagerly forward when he should have tarried, and sit down, wearied, when a few vigorous steps would have given him the object of his blind quest, we may imagine them moved, either in pity or in mockery, when, for the last time, he exerts his boasted free-will, and addresses himself to the moral or the physical effort which is to carry him over one edge of the waiting grave. Is there a flutter of phantom wings, and a gaze of increased interest, as the spirits note the beginning of the end, or is the thought but one of the dreams which are to be scared from each and all of us when the hour of waking comes?
Late into the night was prolonged the orgy in the haunt by the river. The room was long and low, and heavy beams upheld the house above it. The old-fashioned windows, strongly made and fitted with small panes, told that several generations had drunk under the beams, and had, each in its turn, been pityingly spoken of by enlightened successors, the newest series of whom was then pitying its fathers, and hastening to be pitied by its children. But there was no special feature that distinguished the dingy room from many another in the neighbourhood. Its dented tables and sawdusted floor were like those of a score of hostelries within reach, nor was it a special haunt of evil-doers. Very good and jolly fellows, mostly connected in some way with shipping, or with the commerce that creates it, had passed many jovial and blameless hours there, kind and honest greetings had been exchanged in homely language over the liquors of the place, many a good voyage on the sea had been honestly wished, and many a loved and loving woman, wife or sweetheart, had
