"The slander has died out?" I said.
"The slander is as active as ever. But when it follows me here, it will
come too late."
"You will have left the place?"
"No, Mr. Blake--I shall be dead. For ten years past I have suffered from
an incurable internal complaint. I don't disguise from you that I should
have let the agony of it kill me long since, but for one last interest
in life, which makes my existence of some importance to me still. I want
to provide for a person--very dear to me--whom I shall never see again.
My own little patrimony is hardly sufficient to make her independent of
the world. The hope, if I could only live long enough, of increasing
it to a certain sum, has impelled me to resist the disease by such
palliative means as I could devise. The one effectual palliative in my
case, is--opium. To that all-potent and all-merciful drug I am indebted
for a respite of many years from my sentence of death. But even the
virtues of opium have their limit. The progress of the disease has
gradually forced me from the use of opium to the abuse of it. I am
feeling the penalty at last. My nervous system is shattered; my nights
are nights of horror. The end is not far off now. Let it come--I have
not lived and worked in vain. The little sum is nearly made up; and I
have the means of completing it, if my last reserves of life fail me
sooner than I expect. I hardly know how I have wandered into telling you
this. I don't think I am mean enough to appeal to your pity. Perhaps, I
fancy you may be all the readier to believe me, if you know that what I
have said to you, I have said with the certain knowledge in me that I am
a dying man. There is no disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me.
I have attempted to make my poor friend's loss of memory the means of
bettering my acquaintance with you. I have speculated on the chance of
your feeling a passing curiosity about what he wanted to say, and of my
being able to satisfy it. Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on
you? Perhaps there is some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived
has his bitter moments when he ponders over human destiny. You have
youth, health, riches, a place in the world, a prospect before you. You,
and such as you, show me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me
with the world that I am leaving, before I go. However this talk between
us may end, I shall not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing
that. It rests with you, sir, to say what you proposed saying, or to
wish me good morning."