“No,” said Tom, “or at least, not much; it is worse than that! Those fellows seemed to be friends, they wanted me with them, and I wanted friends so much! They never let me see any harm, and it always seemed so light-hearted and gay when they were; but I knew there was harm, and I ought to have loathed it all, as I really did in my soul all the time! They wanted me to forge Fenimore & Co.’s name for them; that was all their friendliness was aimed at from the beginning, I suppose. They did not get it, thank Heaven, but they came too near it, nearer than I ever dreamed they could. And now, if they’ve got into trouble themselves, and my name is going to be whispered along with theirs, who is ever going to know how far I went with them? Who’s going to believe that they kept me half-blinded till the last moment, and that then I had determined to refuse what they wanted, though I couldn’t see a bright spot before me for half my life in any other track!”
“Oh why didn’t you come to me?” cried Thorndyke bitterly, and then, with a sudden check upon himself—“but, Tom, you never would have turned to friends like these if you hadn’t been in trouble to begin with. Something has gone wrong with you longer than that, for I have seen it.”
Tom looked in his face with a troubled cry.
“Hal Fenimore drove me desperate!” he said. “Of course he wouldn’t have dared if I had had the man in me the rest of you had. I suppose I hadn’t. I don’t know, but I had to stand up like one, and try to fill my father’s place, and he never could say I didn’t before; but now he will know this, and all the rest of the world will hear it from him.”
“How will he know this?” said Thorndyke, a sharp look of pain passing over his face. “Do you think I would tell him or any other one on the face of the earth?”
“You wont?” and Tom looked wonderingly but still drearily at him.
“Get into that easy chair,” said Thorndyke. “Don’t stand leaning against the wall as if a blow had struck you.”
Tom stepped mechanically towards the chair, and sat down in it. Thorndyke stood before him a moment, and then came closer and put his arms round his shoulders with a yearning tenderness that sent another thrill through Tom’s heart.
“Tom,” he said, “Come into my store to-morrow! I want you, and have wanted you a long time, but I couldn’t say so before. I’ve seen how things were going with you and Hal, and have longed to put something between you, if I only could. Of course I couldn’t, so long as you were with him, but it is time for you to leave there now. Come to me, and you shall find out whether you are a man! I tell you, Tom, there isn’t one in a thousand who would have stuck to the ship, and fought as you have, all these years; and not one in all the thousands I know who could help me as you can. I need you, and the Fenimores have enough without you. It will be hard for you to begin all over again, but if you learn as fast as you did at the professor’s, you shall have your share in the business at the end of the year. And I’ll see that you have all you need to keep things easy at home, from the day you come. Only Tom, why, oh why, couldn’t you have trusted me long ago?”
Changes seem very rapid to passers who only give a glance now and then, as they hurry by, and the customers at Halliday’s remarked that “the young people seemed to be rushing things a little,” as they saw Aleck less and less in the store and Tom behind the counter; then Aleck sent sometimes in Dr. Thorndyke’s place to a patient, and at last the name of “Dr. Halliday” making its appearance just below the bell handle over which “Dr. Thorndyke” had been read so long, and the sign of Halliday & Thorndyke, which they still considered new, coming down to make room for “Halliday, Thorndyke & Co.”