No More Learning

With
a gesture of impatience, the wanderer passed into a bye-street
comparatively deserted. Down this, some quarter of a mile long, he
rushed with an activity I could not have dreamed of seeing in one so
aged, and which put me to much trouble in pursuit. A few minutes brought
us to a large and busy bazaar, with the localities of which the stranger
appeared well acquainted, and where his original demeanor again became
apparent, as he forced his way to and fro, without aim, among the host
of buyers and sellers.

During the hour and a half, or thereabouts, which we passed in this
place, it required much caution on my part to keep him within reach
without attracting his observation. Luckily I wore a pair of caoutchouc
over-shoes, and could move about in perfect silence. At no moment did
he see that I watched him. He entered shop after shop, priced nothing,
spoke no word, and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare.
I was now utterly amazed at his behavior, and firmly resolved that we
should not part until I had satisfied myself in some measure respecting
him.

A loud-toned clock struck eleven, and the company were fast deserting
the bazaar. A shop-keeper, in putting up a shutter, jostled the old
man, and at the instant I saw a strong shudder come over his frame. He
hurried into the street, looked anxiously around him for an instant, and
then ran with incredible swiftness through many crooked and people-less
lanes, until we emerged once more upon the great thoroughfare whence we
had started--the street of the D---- Hotel. It no longer wore, however,
the same aspect. It was still brilliant with gas; but the rain fell
fiercely, and there were few persons to be seen. The stranger grew pale.
He walked moodily some paces up the once populous avenue, then, with a
heavy sigh, turned in the direction of the river, and, plunging through
a great variety of devious ways, came out, at length, in view of one of
the principal theatres.
It was about being closed, and the audience were
thronging from the doors. I saw the old man gasp as if for breath while
he threw himself amid the crowd; but I thought that the intense agony of
his countenance had, in some measure, abated. His head again fell upon
his breast; he appeared as I had seen him at first. I observed that
he now took the course in which had gone the greater number of the
audience--but, upon the whole, I was at a loss to comprehend the
waywardness of his actions.

As he proceeded, the company grew more scattered, and his old uneasiness
and vacillation were resumed. For some time he followed closely a
party of some ten or twelve roisterers; but from this number one by one
dropped off, until three only remained together, in a narrow and gloomy
lane little frequented. The stranger paused, and, for a moment, seemed
lost in thought; then, with every mark of agitation, pursued rapidly
a route which brought us to the verge of the city, amid regions very
different from those we had hitherto traversed. It was the most noisome
quarter of London, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most
deplorable poverty, and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light
of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were
seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious that
scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them.
The paving-stones lay at random, displaced from their beds by the
rankly-growing grass. Horrible filth festered in the dammed-up gutters.
The whole atmosphere teemed with desolation. Yet, as we proceeded, the
sounds of human life revived by sure degrees, and at length large bands
of the most abandoned of a London populace were seen reeling to and fro.
The spirits of the old man again flickered up, as a lamp which is near
its death hour. Once more he strode onward with elastic tread. Suddenly
a corner was turned, a blaze of light burst upon our sight, and we stood
before one of the huge suburban temples of Intemperance--one of the
palaces of the fiend, Gin.