Tom, half-choked with rage, was for retorting, but Sophia, who had quite broken down and was weeping hysterically, clutched his arm. "Oh, come," she cried piteously, "please come!" And she tried to draw him towards the door.
But the lad resisted. "You'll answer to me for this," he said, scowling at Hawkesworth, who remained in an attitude, eyeing the two with a smile of disdain. "You know where to find me, and I shall be at your service until to-morrow at noon."
"I'll find you when you are grown up," the Irishman answered, with a mocking laugh. "Back to your books, boy, and be whipped for playing truant!"
The taunt stung Tom to fresh fury. With a scream of rage he sprang forward, and, shaking off Wollenhope's grasp, tried to close with his enemy. But Sophia hung on him bravely, imploring him to be calm; and Wollenhope seized him again and held him back, while Mrs. Wollenhope supplied, for assistance, a chorus of shrieks. Between the three he was partly led and partly dragged to the door, and got outside. From the landing he hurled a last threat at the smiling Hawkesworth, now left master of the field; and then, with a little rough persuasion, he was induced to descend.
In the passage he had a fresh fit of stubbornness, and wished to state his wrongs and who he was. But Sophia's heart was pitifully set on escaping from the house--to her a house of bitter shame and humiliation--and the landlord's desire was to see the last of them; and in a moment the two were outside. Wollenhope lost not a moment, but slammed the door on them; they heard the chain put up, and, an instant later, the man's retreating footsteps as he went back to his lodger.
CHAPTER IX
[IN CLARGES BOW]
If Tom had been alone when he was thus ejected, it is probable that his first impulse would have been either to press his forehead against the wall and weep with rage, or to break the offender's windows--eighteen being an age at which the emotions are masters of the man. But the noise of the fracas within, though dulled by the walls, had reached the street. A window here and a window there stood open, and curious eyes, peering through the darkness, were on the two who had been put out. Tom was too angry to heed these on his own account, or care who was witness of his violence; but for Sophia's sake, whose state as she clung to his arm began to appeal to his manhood, he was willing to be gone without more.
After shaking his fist at the door, therefore, and uttering a furious word or two, he pressed the weeping girl's hand to his side. "All right," he said, "we'll go. It'll not be long before I'm back again, and they'll be sorry! A houseful of cheats and bullies! There, there, child, I'll come. Don't cry," he continued, patting her hand with an air that, after the reverse he had suffered, was not without its grandeur. "I'll take care of you, never fear. I've rooms a little way round the corner, taken to-day, and you shall have my bed. It's too late to go to Arlington Street to-night."
Sophia, sobbing and frightened, hung down her head, and did not answer; and Tom, forgetting in his wrath against Hawkesworth the cause he had to be angry with her, said nothing to increase her misery or aggravate her sense of the folly she had committed. His lodgings were in Clarges Row, a little north of Shepherd's Market, and almost within a stone's throw of Mayfair Chapel. Four minutes' walking brought the two to the house, where Tom rapped in a peculiar manner at the window-shutter; when this had been twice repeated, the door was opened grudgingly by a pale-faced, elderly man, bearing a lighted candle-end in his fingers.