“We expected him back among us the next day; but, to our surprise, the place remained vacant: we saw nothing of him for a whole week; and we really began to think he was going to keep his word. At last, one evening, when we were most of us assembled together again, he entered, silent and grim as a ghost, and would have quietly slipped into his usual seat at my elbow, but we all rose to welcome him, and several voices were raised to ask what he would have, and several hands were busy with bottle and glass to serve him; but I knew a smoking tumbler of brandy-and-water would comfort him best, and had nearly prepared it, when he peevishly pushed it away, saying—
“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.”
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—he 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!’
“ ‘And yet I must! Huntingdon, get me a glass!’
“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 stomach’s sake,’ and, when he was sufficiently reestablished, 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.