The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch Part 18

"Yes, I do; but, for all that, I'll back your old turnip to keep as good time as it."

"It's always gone well, the old one. I'm glad you like it, Tom."

"I always liked it, you know."

"Why?"

"Well, I've known it as long as I've known you, and if it hadn't been for it things might have been different."

"Yes," said Charlie, "it was the cause of all the row three years ago."

"And if it hadn't been for that row I should have gone to the bad long ago. That was a lucky row for me, Charlie, thanks to you."

"Don't say that, old man, because it's a cram."

"I say, Tom," added Charlie nervously, coming to his point, "will you do me a favour?"

"Anything in the world. What is it?"

"Take my old watch, Tom. It's not worth much, you know, but it may be useful, and it will help to remind you of old days. Will you, Tom?"

Tom's lips quivered as he took me from Charlie's outstretched hand.

"Old boy," said he, "I'd sooner have this than anything else in the world. Somehow I feel I can't go wrong as long as I have it."

Charlie was beyond measure delighted to find his present accepted with so little difficulty.

"Oh, Tom," he said, "I am glad to think you'll have it, and I know you'll think of me when you use it."

"Won't I?" said Tom. "I say, Charlie, I wish you were coming to London with me."

"So do I. Never mind, we'll often write, and you'll promise to let me know how you are getting on, won't you?"

"Yes."

"And you'll call and see my father pretty often, won't you?"

"Yes."

"And you'll keep yourself free for a week's jaunt at Easter?"

"Yes."

They had much more talk that evening, which lasted till late. What they talked about it is not for me to repeat, and if it were it would probably not interest my reader. He would perhaps be disappointed to find that a considerable part of it related to a new suit of Tom's, just arrived from the tailor's, and that another part had reference to Tom's intention to prevail on his landlady in London to allow him to support a bull-dog puppy on her premises. These subjects, deeply interesting to the two friends, would not improve with repet.i.tion; and neither would the rest of their talk, which was chiefly a going over of old times, and a laying of many a wondrous scheme for the future. Suffice it to say, on this last evening the two boys unbosomed themselves to one another, and if Tom Drift went off to bed in a sober and serious frame of mind, it was because he and Charlie both had thought and felt a great deal more than they had spoken during the interview. The packing went on at the same time as the talk, and then the two friends separated, only to meet once more on the morrow for a hurried farewell.

"Let's have a last look at him," said Charlie, as Tom was getting into the cab to go.

Tom took me out and handed me to him. Long and tenderly my dear young master looked at me, then, patting me gently with his hand as if I were a child, he said,--

"Good-bye, and be good to Tom Drift; do you hear?"

If a tick could express anything, my reply at that moment must have satisfied him his parting wish would not be forgotten. Then returning me to my new master, he said,--

"Good-bye, old boy; joy go with you. We'll hear of you at the head of your profession before Jim and I have left school."

"Not quite so soon," replied Tom, laughing.

Then came a last good-bye, and the cab drove off. As it turned the corner of the drive Tom leaned out of the window and held me out in his hand.

Long shall I remember that parting glimpse. He was standing on the steps with Jim waving his hands. The sun shone full on him, lighting up his bright face and curly head. I thought as I looked, "Where could one find his equal?"--_Sans peur et sans reproche_--"matchless for gentleness, honesty, and courage," and felt, as the vision faded from me, that I should never see another like him. And I never did.

Little, however, did I dream in what strange way I was next to meet Charlie Newcome.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

HOW TOM DRIFT MADE ONE START IN LONDON, AND PREPARED TO MAKE ANOTHER.

The two months that followed my departure from Randlebury were melancholy and tedious.

It was hard for me, after the boisterous surroundings of a public school, to settle down to the heavy monotony of a dull lodging in a back street of London; and it was harder still, after being the pride and favourite of a boy like Charlie Newcome, to find myself the property of Tom Drift.

Not that Tom used me badly at first. He wound me up regularly, and for the sake of his absent friend honoured me with a considerable share of his affection.

Indeed, for the first week or so he was quite gus.h.i.+ng, scarcely letting me out of his sight, and sometimes even dropping a tear over me. And I, remembering Charlie's last words, "Be good to Tom Drift," felt glad to be able to remind my new master of old times, and keep fresh the hopes and resolutions with which Charlie had done so much to inspire him. But Tom Drift, I could not help feeling, was not a safe man.

There was something lacking in him, and that something was ballast. No one, perhaps, ever had a greater theoretical desire to be all that was right and good, but that was not in itself enough.

In quiet, easy times, and with a guiding friend to help him, Tom Drift did well enough; but left to himself amid currents and storms he could hardly fail to come to grief, as we shall presently see.

For the first two months he stuck hard to his work he was regular at lectures, and attentive when there; he spent his spare time well in study bearing upon the profession for which he was preparing; he wrote and heard once a week from Charlie; he kept clear of the more rackety of his fellow-students; he spent his Sundays at Mr Newcome's house, and he took plenty of healthy exercise both for body and mind.

With many examples about him of industry and success he determined to make the most of his time as a student, and spoke of the life and sphere of a country doctor, for which he was training, with the enthusiasm of one whose heart is in his work.

"The more I think of it," he once wrote to his mother, who was residing abroad for her health, "the more I take to it. A good doctor is the best-liked man in his parish. Everybody comes to him in their trouble.

He gets into the best society, and yet makes himself loved by the poorest. In four or five years at least I ought to get through my course here, and then there is nothing to prevent my settling down at once. By that time I hope you'll be well enough to come and keep house for me, for all country doctors, you know, are bachelors," and so on.

All this was very well, and, as one of Tom's friends, I rejoiced to see him thus setting himself in earnest to the duties of his calling. But I rejoiced with trembling. Although he kept clear, for the most part, of his fellow-students, choosing his friends charily and shyly, I could yet see that he had no objection to contemplate from a distance the humours and festivities of his more high-spirited companions. He was not one of those impulsive fellows who shut their eyes and take a header into the midst of a new good-fellows.h.i.+p, only to discover too late their error, and repent their rashness at leisure.

No, Tom had his eyes open. He saw the evil as well as the good, and, alas for him, having seen it, he looked still!

The students of Saint Elizabeth's Hospital were not on the whole a bad set. On Tom's arrival in London, however, he had the firm impression in his mind that all medical students were bad characters, and this foolish notion did him much harm. If two or three of them were to go off for a spree, his imagination would at once picture them in scenes and places such as no respectable man would like to frequent, whereas, if the truth were known, these misjudged young men had committed no greater crime than that of taking a boat up the river, or a drive in a dog-cart. If a group of them should be seen by him laughing and talking, he instinctively concluded their topic must be ribaldry, whereas they would perhaps be only joking at the expense of some eccentric professor, or else chaffing one of their own number. And so it happened that Tom failed in time to distinguish between the really bad and such as he only imagined to be bad; and from his habit of looking on at them and their doings from a studied distance, their presence began gradually and insensibly to exercise a very considerable influence over his mind.

"After all," he would sometimes say to himself, "these fellows get on.

They pa.s.s their exams, they pay their bills, they gain the confidence of their professors, and at the same time they manage to enjoy themselves.

Perhaps I am a fool to take so much pains about the first three of these things, and to deny myself the fourth. Perhaps, after all, these fellows are not so bad as I have fancied, or perhaps I am prudish."