“I cannot screen a thief,” was the freezing reply; and the change from flame to ice showed into what commotion his feelings had been thrown.
“Well, then, if it comes to that,” said Wilton, turning sullen, “I’ll tell of you. It’ll all come out; remember it was you who first took me to Dan’s, and that’s not the only thing I could tell of you. O Kenrick, don’t tell, or it will get us all into trouble.”
“This, then, is the creature whom I have suffered to call me friend!” said Kenrick; “for whom I have given up some of the best friends in the school! And this is your gratitude! Why, you worm, Wilton, what do you take me for? Do you think that fear of your disclosures will make me hush up twenty thefts? You enlist the whole strength of my conscience against you, lest I should seem to screen you for my own sake. Faugh! your very touch sickens me!—go!”
“O Kenrick, don’t be so angry; I didn’t mean to say it; I didn’t know what I was saying; I am driven into a corner by shame and misery. I know I have been a mean dog; but even if you tell of me, don’t crush me so with your anger, for indeed, indeed, I have been grateful, and have loved you, Kenrick. But oh, don’t tell, I implore, I entreat you, Ken. How little I thought that I should have to speak to you like this!”
But Kenrick could only say—“You the thief; you, the last fellow of all I should have suspected; you whom I have called friend, O heavens! Yes, I know that I’ve done you harm by bad example, I know that I’ve much to answer for but at any rate I never taught you to be a thief.”
“But one thing comes of another, Ken; it all came of my being so much with those brutes, and going to Dan’s; it all came of that. I shouldn’t have thought myself that I could do it or do half the bad things I have done, two months ago. It all came of that; and you used to go with those fellows, Ken, and you went with me to Dan’s;” and the boy wrung his hands, and wept, and flung himself on his knees. “I must tell all, if you tell of me.”
“Say that again,” said Kenrick, spurning him scornfully away, “say it once again, and I go straight to Dr Lane. Poor worm, you don’t understand me, you don’t seem to have the capability of a high thought in you. I tell you that nothing you can say of me shall shake my purpose. I am going now.”
But before he could get his straw hat Wilton had clasped him by the knees, and in a voice of agony was beseeching him to relent.
“It’s all true, Kenrick; I am base, I know it; I have quenched all honour in me. I won’t say that again, but do, for God’s sake, forgive me this once, and not tell of me. O Kenrick, have you never had to say forgive? Do, do, pity me, as you hope to be forgiven; don’t ruin me, and give me a bad name; I am so young, so young, and have fallen into bad hands from the first.”
He still knelt on the floor, exhausted with the violence of his passion, hanging his head upon his breast, sobbing as if his heart would break. It was sad to see him, a mere child still, who might have been so different, long a little reprobate, and now a convicted thief. His face bathed in tears, his voice choked with sobs, the memory of the past, consciousness that much which he said was only too true, touched Kenrick with compassion; the tears rolled down his own face fast, and he felt that, though personal fear could not influence him, pity would perhaps force him to relent, and wring from him in his weakness a reluctant promise not to disclose Wilton’s discovered guilt.