This time he laid on the counter the famous lance-wood fishing-rod which Charlie had given him months ago, and which surely ought to have been a reminder to him of better times.
He flung it down, and taking the few shillings the pawnbroker advanced on it, hurried from the shop.
The next time he came some one else was in the shop. A passing flush came over Tom’s face on discovering a witness to his humiliation; but he transacted his business with an assumed swagger which ill accorded with his inward misery. For even yet Tom Drift had this much of hope left in him—that he knew he was fallen, and was miserable at the thought. His self-respect and sensitiveness had been growing less day by day, and he himself growing proportionately hardened; but still he knew what remorse was, and by the very agony of his shame was still held out of the lowest of all depths—the depths of ruthless sin.
The stranger in the shop eyed him keenly, and when he had gone said to the pawnbroker, “He’s a nice article, he is!”
“Not much good, I’m thinking,” observed the pawnbroker, dryly.
“So you may say; I know the beauty. He banged me on the ’ed with a chair once, when he was screwed. Never mind, I know of two or three as is after him.”
And so saying, the disreputable man departed.
After that Tom came daily. Now it was an article of clothing, now some books, now some furniture, that he brought. It was soon evident that not only was he miserable and destitute, but ill too; and when presently for a fortnight he never passed the now well-known door, I knew that the fever had laid him low.
Poor Tom Drift! I wondered who was there now to nurse him in his weakness and comfort him in his wretchedness. He must be untended and unheeded. Well I knew his “friends” (oh, sad perversion of the sacred title!) would keep their distance, or return only in time to quench the first sparks of repentance. If only Charlie could have seen him at this time, with his spirit cowed and his weary heart beating about in vain for peace and hope, how would he not have flown to his bedside, and from those ruins have striven to help him to rise again to purity and honesty.
But no Charlie was there. Since the last appealing letter so scornfully rejected, Tom had heard not a word of him or from him. What wonder indeed if after so many disappointments and insults, the boy should at length leave his old schoolfellow to his fate?