drunk. I suppose you were the first gentleman who had
ever crossed my threshold, and I remember wondering what on earth
you'd come for! You didn't lecture me, and you didn't preach. You
came and sat down and smoked one of my cigars, and talked just as
though we were friends, and tried to make me see what a fool I was. It
didn't do much good in the end--but I never forgot it. You shook hands
with me when you left, and for once in my life I was ashamed of
myself."

"I am sorry," Matravers said with an effort, "that I did not go to see
you oftener."

Drage shook his head.

"It was too late then! I was done for,--done for as far as Oxford was
concerned. But that was only the beginning. I might easily have picked
up if I'd had the pluck! The dad forgave me, and made me a partner in
the business before he died. I was a rich man, and I might have been
a millionaire; instead of that I was a damned fool! I can't help
swearing! you mustn't mind, sir! Remember what I am! I don't swear
when Freddy's in the room, if I can help it. I went the pace, drank,
kept women, and all the rest of it. My wife found me out and went
away. I ain't saying a word against her. She was a good woman, and I
was a bad man, and she left me! She was right enough! I wasn't fit for
a decent woman to live with. All the same, I missed her; and it was
another kick down Hellward for me when she went. I got desperate then;
I took to drink worse than ever, and I began to let my business go and
speculate. You wouldn't know anything of the city, sir; but I can
tell you this, when a cool chap with all his wits about him starts
speculating outside his business, it's touch and go with him; when a
chap in the state I was in goes for it, you can spell the result in
four letters! It's RUIN, ruin! That's what it meant for me. I lost two
hundred thousand pounds in three years, and my business went to pot
too. Then I had this cursed stroke, and here I am! I may stick on for
years, but I shall never be able to earn a penny again. Where Freddy's
schooling is to come from, or how we are to live, I don't know!"

"I am very sorry," Matravers said gently. "Have you no friends then,
or relations who will help you?"

"Not a damned one," growled the man on the couch. "I had plenty of
pals once, only too glad to count themselves John Drage's friends;
but where they are now I don't know. They seem to have melted away.
There's never a one comes near me. I could do without their m