What spirit of infatuation possessed Tom Drift, that he did not spring for very life at the proffered help, that he did not besiege this friend, however blunt and outspoken, and compel his timely aid? Alas, for his blindness and folly!
Scowling round at the speaker, he muttered an oath, and said, “What on earth concern is it of yours who my friends are and where I go? Mind your own business.”
And so, thrusting rudely away the hand that might, by God’s grace, have saved him, he swept farther and farther out towards the dark waters.
One final and great hope was still reserved for him, and that was Charlie’s visit. But to Tom that prospect was becoming day by day mere distasteful. As the days wore on, and Tom sunk deeper and deeper into the snare prepared for him, the thought of a week in the society of one so upright and pure as Charlie became positively odious. The effort to conceal his new condition would be almost impossible, and yet to admit it to him would be, he felt, to shatter for ever the only friendship he really prized. He racked his brain for expedients and excuses to avert the visit, but without avail. If he pleaded illness Charlie would be the first to rush to his bedside; if he pleaded hard work Charlie would insist on sharing it, or improving its few intervals of rest; if he pleaded disinclination Charlie would devise a hundred other plans to please him. In short, Charlie’s visit was inevitable, and as he looked forward to it he writhed in misgiving and anxiety.
His visits to the music-hall were meanwhile continuing, and his circle of acquaintance at that evil haunt enlarging. He was duly installed as one of the “fast set” at Saint Elizabeth’s, and under its auspices had already made his début at other scenes and places than that of his first transgression. He was known by sight to a score of billiard-markers, potmen, blacklegs, and lower characters still, and was on nodding terms with fully half of them. He had lost considerably more than he had gained at billiards, and was still further emptying his purse at cards. Quick work for a few weeks! So quickly and fatally, alas! Will the infection, once admitted, spread, especially in a patient whose moral constitution has undergone so long a course of slow preparation as Tom’s had.
The day came at last. Tom had carefully hidden away his worst books and his spirits; he had bathed his face half a dozen times, to remove the traces of last night’s intemperance he had gathered together from the corners where they had for so long lain neglected the books and relics of his Randlebury days, and restored them to their old places; he had brightened me up, and he had taken pains to purify his room from the smell of rank tobacco; and then he sauntered down to the station.
How my heart beat as the train came into the platform! His head was out of the window, and his hand was waving to us a hundred yards off; and the next minute he had burst from the carriage, and seized Tom by the hands.
“How are you, old Tom? I thought we’d never get here; how glad I am to set eyes on you! Isn’t this a spree?” And not waiting for Tom’s answer he hauled his traps out of the carriage in a transport of delight.
Still the same jovial, honest, fine-hearted boy.
“Hi! here! some of you,” he shouted to a porter, “look after these things, will you, and get us a cab. I tell you what, Tom, you’ve got to come up home with me first, and we can have dinner there; then I’ll come on to your den, and we can pack our knapsacks and sleep, and then start by the five train to-morrow morning.”