Chapter Thirteen.
How Tom Drift, still going downhill, met my old master.
When Tom reached his lodgings that night he found a jubilant letter from Charlie awaiting him.
“Just fancy,” he said, “it’s only three weeks more, old man, and then to Jericho with books, and test-tubes, and anatomy! I’ll drag you out of your study by the scruff of your neck, see if I don’t; I’ll clap a knapsack on your back, and haul you by sheer force down into Kent. There you shall snuff the ozone, and hold your hat on your head with both hands on the cliff top. I’ll hound you through old castles, and worry you up hills. If I catch so much as a leaflet on chemistry in your hands, I’ll tear it up and send it flying after the sea-gulls. In short, I shouldn’t like to say what I won’t do, I’m so wild at the prospect of a week with you. Of course, the dear old people growl at me for leaving them in the lurch; but they are glad for us to get the blow; indeed, my pater insists on paying the piper, which is handsome of him. I expect I shall get a day in London on my way, either going or returning; and if you can put me up at your diggings for the night, we’ll have a jolly evening, and you can show me all your haunts.”
Tom gasped as he got so far; and well he might.
“I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I suppose, by your not writing, you are saving yours up for me. Ta, ta, old boy, and au revoir in twenty-one days! Hurrah! Yours ever,—C.N.”
Tom, in his misery, crushed the letter up in his fingers and flung it from him. If a passing pang shot through his breast, it was followed almost instantly by other feelings of vexation and shame. One moment he was ready to sink to the floor in a passion of penitence and remorse—the next, he was ready to resent Charlie’s influence over him even at a distance, and to sneer, as Gus and his friend had done, at the boy’s expense. His brain was too muddled with the excitement and the strange emotions of that evening to reason with himself; his head ached, and his mind was poisoned.
“What right has the fellow always to be following me up in this way?” he asked. “I’m a fool to stand it. Why can’t I do as I choose without his pulling a long face?”
Thus Tom questioned, and thus he proved that it was Charlie’s influence more than his letter that worried him; for what had the latter said, either in the way of exhortation or reproof?