Reader, do not mistake Tom’s weakness and folly. He was not trying to persuade himself this place was a good one for him to enter; he was not thoughtlessly going in to discover too late that he had better have stayed out. No, Tom—rightly or wrongly—had made up his own mind that this theatre was a bad place, and yet he had a desire to enter in!
Chapter Twelve.
How Tom Drift begins to go downhill.
Time went on, and Tom Drift advanced inch by inch nearer the brink. He slipped, not without many an effort to recover himself, many a pang of self-reproach, many a vague hope of deliverance.
“Be good to Tom Drift!” was ever ringing in my ears. But what could I do? He often neglected me for days. All I could do was to watch and tremble for what was coming.
You who are so ready to call Tom a fool, and hug yourselves that you have more strength of character and resolution than he had, try to realise what were his perils and what were his temptations at that time, before you pass judgment.
The dulness of those lodgings in Grime Street was often almost unbearable. When his work was done, and Tom looked out of the window and saw nothing but carts and cabs and tradesmen, and the dismal houses opposite, what wonder if he sometimes felt miserable? When he heard nothing but pattering footsteps down the pavement, the rumble of wheels and the street cries under his window, what wonder if he felt lonely and friendless? No footsteps stopped at his door, no friendly face lightened his dull study, no cheery laughter brought music to his life. What wonder, I say, if he moped and felt discontented?
What wonder if his thoughts wandered to scenes and places that contrasted forcibly with his dead-alive occupation? What wonder if he hankered after a “little excitement,” to break the monotony of lectures, hard reading, and stupid evenings?