The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch

by Talbot Baines Reed

“Ah,” I hear you say, “there are plenty of things he might have done. It was his own fault if he was dull in London. I would have gone to the museums, the libraries, the concerts, the parks, the river, the picture galleries, and other harmless and delightful places of amusement. Why, I could not be dull in London if I tried. Tom Drift was an idiot.”

My dear friend, what a pity Tom Drift had not the advantage of your acquaintance when he was in London! But he had not. He had no friends, as I have said, except the Newcomes, whom he only visited occasionally, and as a matter chiefly of duty, and his anxiety to keep right at first had led him to reject and fight shy of friendships with his fellow-students. Doubtless it was his own fault to a large extent that he allowed himself to get into this dull, dissatisfied condition. If he had had a healthy mind like you, friend, it would not have happened. But instead of utterly scouting him as an idiot, rather thank God you have been spared all his weaknesses and all his temptations.

Was Tom never to learn that there was a way—“The Way, the Truth, and the Life”—better than any he had yet tried, which would lead him straight through the tangled mazes of his London life? Was he never to discover that Friend, truer than all earthly friends, at Whose side he might brave each trial and overcome each temptation?

Poor Tom! he walked in a way of his own? and trusted in no one better than himself; and that was why he fell.

As I have said, he did not fall without an effort. I have known him one day buy a bad, trashy book, and the same evening, in a fit of repentance—for God’s Spirit wonderfully strives with men—take and burn it to ashes in his grate. But I have also known him to buy the same book again the next day. I have known him to walk a mile out of his way to avoid a place of temptation; and yet, before his walk was done, find himself, after all, under the glare of its lamps. The moth hovers in wide circles round the candle before it ventures its wings in the flame. And so it was with Tom; but the catastrophe came at last.

One evening about three weeks before the time fixed for the Easter trip with Charlie, Tom felt in tolerably dull. He had been neglecting his work during several days for novels of the lowest and most sensational type. Over these he had dawdled till his brain had become muddled with their unreal incidents and impure suggestions, and now that they were done he felt fit for nothing. He could not settle down to work, he had no friends to turn to, and so he put his hat on his head and sallied out into the streets to seek there the variety he could not find indoors.

As usual, his steps led him to the low theatre about which he was so curious, and of which he heard so much from his fellow-students. It was half-past seven, and people were beginning to crowd round the door, waiting for it to open. Tom, standing on the other side of the pavement, watched them with a painful fascination.

“Shall I go for once?” he asked himself. Then he strolled up to the playbill and read it.

As he was doing so some one slapped him on the shoulder, and, turning quickly round, he found himself face to face with his old acquaintance Gus Burke and another youth.

Gus, who was still small of stature, though fully nineteen years of age, was arrayed in the height of the fashion. As Tom regarded him he felt his own coat become more shabby and his hat older, and he wished he had brought his dogskin gloves and cane. Gus was smoking, too, a cigarette, and very distinguished and gentlemanly Tom thought it looked. He felt, as he regarded his brilliant and unexpected acquaintance, that he was rather glad those people who were standing at the theatre door should see him accosted in so familiar a way by such a hero. And Gus’s friend was no less imposing—more so, indeed, for he wore an eyeglass.