“Bravo, Tom, old man,” cried the delighted Gus. “Do you hear, young prig? walk off, you’re not wanted here.”
Charlie stood for one moment stunned and irresolute. Had there been in Tom’s face the faintest glimmer of regret, or the faintest trace of the old affection, he would have stayed and braved all consequences. But there was neither. The spell that bound Tom Drift, his fear of being thought a milksop, had changed him utterly, and as Charlie’s eyes turned with pleading look to his they met only with menace and confusion.
“Go!” repeated Tom, driven nearly wild by the mocking laugh in which Mortimer and his two companions joined.
This, then, was the end of their friendship—so full of hope on one side, so full of promise on the other.
It was a strange moment in the lives of those two. To one it was the wilful throwing away of the last and best chance of deliverance, to the other it was the cruel extinction of a love and trust that had till now bid fair to stand the wear of years to come.
“Get out, I say!” said Tom Drift, once more goaded to madness by the pitying sneers of Mortimer.
Charlie stayed no longer. Half stunned, and scarcely knowing what he did, with one wild, mute prayer at his heart, he turned without a word and left the room.
Tom’s friends followed his departure with mocking laughter, and watched his slowly retreating figure down the street with many a foul jest, and then returned to congratulate Tom Drift on his deliverance.
“Well,” said Gus, “you are well rid of him, at any rate. What a lucky thing we turned up just when we did! He’d have snivelled you into a shocking condition. Why, what a weak-minded fellow Tom is; ain’t he, Jack?”
“Wathah,” replied Jack, with a laugh.