All the rest of that day, Tom went about his work like a wooden thing; he answered questions and handled things that came in his way, but his thoughts were running heavily back and forth over the long dreary years since Mr. Willoughby picked him up in his chaise, and always coming round to the same miserable point at last. How brave and patient he had meant to be, how faithful he had tried to be, through it all, for the sake of those at home, and how he had meant to deserve all the promotion he should ever get, and let the firm feel he had repaid them well for all they did for him. And who had ever taken the slightest notice whether he did or not, who had ever been the wiser for it all? And now that it was almost over, now that he thought such recompense as money could give was just before him, to be shunned and sneered at for a thief!
Who had even noticed? He remembered suddenly what Aleck had said to him, that dark terrible time, about One who always did, and was always ready to help.
“Yes,” he said, “I know it. I lived on that all the next year, and I never felt so much like a man in my life; but since I came here, that, and everything else that had any life in it, seems to have been driven out of me. If I could have hung on to it, it might have helped me through everything. It’s my own fault that I didn’t, I suppose, but after a fellow gets to feeling so horridly as I have from one year’s end to another, he lets go of everything sometimes. If I could only have gone somewhere else! There’s Thorndyke now, he never’ll know what a chance he had there, with Aleck always next to him! But there’s an end to everything, and I’ll—”
But up came once more the thought of “the rest at home.” If he left the store, and went out into the world, how many more years might it be before he could be worth anything to them! And where could he go, and what could he do, if he went out from Fenimore’s with such whisperings as were likely to follow him! And yet, it seemed to him another day there would be worse than a thousand deaths. That day was done, at last, at all events, and Tom, as he passed out into the dark, saw no one, and scarcely knew where he was. But a familiar voice sounded in his ears.
“I say, Haggarty, what a hurry you’re in!”
He turned and saw Davis, his old schoolfellow at the professor’s. He had not seen him from that time, until a few days before. He only knew that he went abroad directly after graduating, and had returned within a fortnight, “for a visit.”
“Why, man alive,” he said, as a gaslight fell on Tom’s face, “what’s the matter with you? How white you are! Are you sick?”
“I wish I were,” said Tom, “and sick enough to have an end come to it all,” and then shocked at having said so much to Davis, he stopped suddenly.