"As to smoking, that is a bad habit, or an art (which you like) I have never yet practised," said George; "but I will join you in a gla.s.s of wine just to toast 'Dr. Seaward and our absent friends in the school.'"

Then the two school friends fell into conversation. Many and many a happy recollection came into their minds, and one long yarn was but the preface to another.

"Come, George, fill up your gla.s.s," said Ashton repeatedly; but George declined.

Two or three hours slipped rapidly away, and then George rose to leave.

"Not a bit of it, George," said Ashton; "we must have some supper and discuss present times yet. I have not heard particulars of what you are doing, or how you are getting on, and you only know I'm here, without any of the history about it."

So George yielded: how could he help it? Harry Ashton had become his bosom-chum during the five years he had been at school, and all the old happy memories of those days were again fresh upon him.

"Now, George, tell your story first, and then mine shall follow." Then George narrated all the leading circ.u.mstances which had attended his life, from the time he left school up to that very evening, and a long story it was.

"Now," said Ashton, "for mine. When you left Folkestone I got up to your place at the head of the school, and there I held on till I left. Six months after you left, the holidays came, and I came up to town. I spent a few days with Mr. Ralston, an old friend of the family, and one of the first engineers and surveyors in London. He took a liking to me, offered to take me into his office, wrote to the governor (I know you don't like that term, though--I mean my father), proposed a sum as premium, arrangements were made; and, instead of returning to school, I came to London and commenced learning the arts and mysteries of a profession. I had only been with Mr. Ralston two or three months, when one morning my father came into the office, out of wind with excitement, and said, 'Harry, I have got sad and joyful, and wonderful news for you! Poor old Mr. Cornish is dead; the will has been opened, and--make up your mind for a surprise--the bulk of his property is left to you.' I was thunderstruck. I knew the old gentleman would leave me something, but I did not know that he had quarrelled with his relatives, and therefore appropriated to me the share originally intended for them. So, you see, I have stepped into luck's way. I am allowed an income now which amounts to something like two hundred a year, as I shall not come into my rights till I am twenty-one, and how I am not nineteen; so I have a long time to wait, you see, which is rather annoying. I took this crib, and have managed to enjoy my existence pretty well, I can a.s.sure you. Sometimes I run down into the country to spend a week or two with the old folks, and sometimes they come up and see me."

"Don't you find it rather dull, living here alone, though?" said George.

"Dull? far from it. I have a good large circle of friends, who like to come round here and spend a quiet evening; and there are no end of amus.e.m.e.nts in this great city, so that no one need never be dull.

Besides, if I am alone, I am not without friends, you see,"--pointing to a well-stocked book case.

"I have been running my eye over them, Harry. There are some very nice books; but your tastes are changed since I knew you last, or you would never waste your time over all this lot here which seem to have been best used. I mean the 'Wandering Jew,' 'Ernest Maltravers,' and the like."

"I won't attempt to defend myself, George; but when I was at school, I did as school-boys did: now I have come to London, I do as the Londoners do. I know there is an absence of anything like reason in this, but I am not much thrown amongst reasoners. But, to change the subject; now you have found me out, George, I do hope you will very often chum with me. I shall enjoy going about with you better than with anybody else; and as we know one another so well, we shall soon have tastes and habits in common again, as we used to have."

Presently the clock struck. George started up in surprise. "What!

twelve o'clock! impossible. It never can be so late as that?"

"It is, though," said Ashton, "but what of that? you don't surely call twelve o'clock bad hours for once in a way?"

"No, not for once in a way," replied George; "but I have never kept my mother up so late before. Good-bye, old fellow. Promise to come and see me some night this week. There is my address." And so saying, George ran out into the street and made his way towards Islington.

That was an anxious night for Mrs. Weston. "What can have happened?" she asked herself a hundred times. Fortunately, Mr. Brunton called, and he a.s.sisted to while away the time.

"George does not often stay out of an evening, does he?" he asked.

"No, never," replied Mrs. Weston; "unless it is with his friend, Charles Hardy, and then I always know where they are, and what they are doing.

But something extraordinary must have happened to-night, and I feel very anxious to know what it is. Not that I think he is anywhere he ought not to be. I feel sure he is not," continued Mrs. Weston confidently; "but what it is that has detained him, I am altogether at a loss to guess."

"Well, I will not leave you till he comes home," said Mr. Brunton.

It was one o'clock before George arrived; it was too late to get an omnibus, and a cab, he thought, was altogether out of the question; therefore he had to walk the whole distance--or rather run, for he was as anxious now to get home as they were to see him.

He was very much surprised, and, if it must be confessed, rather vexed on some accounts, to find Mr. Brunton waiting up for him with his mother.

His explanation of what had happened, told in his merry, ingenuous way, at once dissipated any anxiety they had felt.

"I recollect Harry Ashton well," said Mrs. Weston. "Dr. Seaward pointed him out to me, the first time I went to see you at Folkestone, as being one of his best scholars; and he came home once with you in the holidays to spend a day or two with us, did he not?"

"That is the same, mother, and a better-hearted fellow it would be hard to find."

"There is only one disadvantage that I see in your having him as an intimate friend," said Uncle Brunton, "and that is, he is now very differently situated in position to you as regards wealth, and you might find him a companion more liable to lead you into expense than any of your other friends, because I know what a proud fellow you are, George," he said, laughingly, "you like to do as your friends do, and would not let them incur expense on your account unless you could return their compliment. But I will not commence a moral discourse to-night--it is time all good folks should be in bed."

All the next day George was thinking over the events of the previous evening; he was pleased to have found out Harry Ashton, and thought he would be just the young man he wanted for a companion. Then he compared their different modes of life--Ashton living in luxuriant circ.u.mstances, without anybody or anything to interfere with his enjoyment, and he, obliged to live very humbly and carefully in order to make both ends meet; and then came a new feeling, that of restraint.

"There is Ashton," he thought, "can go out when he likes and where he likes, without its being necessary to say where he is going or what he is going to do, and he can come in at night without being obliged to account for all his actions like a child. If I happen to stay out, there is Uncle Brunton and my mother in a great state of excitement about me, which I don't think is right. I really do not wonder that the clerks have made me a laughing-stock. All this while I have lived in London I have seen nothing; have not been to any of the places of amus.e.m.e.nt; and have not been a bit like the young men with whom I get thrown into contact. I think Ashton is right, after all, in saying that when he was at school he did as school-boys did, and when he came to London he did as the Londoners do. Far be it from me to be undutiful to those who care for me; but I think, as a young man, I do owe a duty to myself, different altogether from that which belonged to me as a schoolboy."

These were all new thoughts to George: he had never felt or even thought of restraint before; he had never even expressed a wish to do as other young men did, in wasting precious time on useless amus.e.m.e.nts; he had always looked forward to an evening at home with pleasure, and had never felt the least inclination to wander forth in search of recreation elsewhere. Nay, he had always condemned it; and when Lawson or Williams, or any of the other clerks, had proposed such a thing to him, he never minded bearing their ridicule in declining.

And here was George's danger. He was upon his guard with his fellow-clerks, and was able to keep his resolution not to adopt their ideas, nor fall into their ways and habits; but when those very evils he condemned in them were presented to him in a different form by Harry Ashton, his old friend and school-fellow--leaving the principle the same, and only the practice a little altered--he was off his guard; and the habits he regarded with dislike in Williams and Lawson, he was beginning secretly to admire in Ashton.

As he walked home that evening with Hardy he gave him a long description of his meeting with Ashton, and all that happened during his interview and upon his return home.

"Now, Hardy," said George, "which do you think is really preferable--Harry Ashton's life or ours? We never go out anywhere; and, for the matter of that, might as well be living in monasteries, as far as knowing what is going on in the world is concerned."

"For my own part, Weston," said Hardy, "I would rather be as I am. Your friend is surrounded with infinitely greater temptations than we are, from the fact of his living as he does without any control. He is evidently free from his parents, and although he is old enough to take care of himself, still there is a certain restraint felt under a parent's roof which is very desirable."

"Quite true," said George; "but that involves a point which has been perplexing me all day. Should we, after we have arrived at a certain age, acknowledge a parent's control as we did when we were mere school-boys? I do not mean are we to cease to honour them, because that we cannot do while G.o.d's commandment lasts; but are we, as Williams says, always to go in leading-strings, or are we at liberty to think and act for ourselves?"

"That depends a good deal on the way in which we wish to think and act.

For instance, my parents object to Sunday travelling and Sunday visiting. Now, while I am living with them, I feel it would not be right for me to do either of these things--even though as a matter of principle I might not see any positive wrong in them--because it would bring me into opposition with my parents. So, in spending evenings away from home, I know it would be contrary to their wish, and it is right to try and prevent our opinions clashing."

"I agree with you, partly, Hardy; but only partly. We must study our parents' opinions in the main, but not in points of detail. Suppose I want to attend a course of lectures, for example, which would take me from home sometimes in the evening; and my mother objects to my spending evenings from home, although the study might be advantageous to me--then I think I should be at liberty to adhere to my own opinion; if not, I should be under the same restraint I was as a child. It is right and natural that parents should feel desirous to know what a.s.sociations their sons are forming, and what are their habits, and all that sort of thing; but I am inclined to think it is not right for a parent to exercise so strong a control as to say, 'So-and-so shall be your companion;' and, 'You may go to this place, but you may not go to that.'"

"Well, Weston, your digestion must be out of order, or you are a little bilious, or something; for I never heard you talk like this before. I have told you, confidentially sometimes, that I have wanted to rebel against the wishes of my parents on some points, and you have always counselled me, like a sage, grey-headed father, to give up my desire.

But now you turn right round, and place me in the position of the parent, and you the rebellious son. I recommend, therefore, that you take two pills, for I am sure bile is at the bottom of this; and then I will feel your pulse upon this point again."

Mrs. Weston noticed a difference in George that evening. He seemed as if he had got something upon his mind which was perplexing him. He was not so cheerful and merry as usual, but his mother attributed it partly to his late hours, followed by a hard day's work, and therefore she said nothing to him about it.

A day or two elapsed, and George was still brooding upon the same subject. He did not know that the great tempter was weaving a subtle net around him, to lure him into the broad road which leadeth to destruction. He tried a hundred times to fight against the strange influence he felt upon him; but he did not fight with the right weapons, and therefore he failed. Had the tempter suggested to him that, as he was a young man, he should do as his fellow-clerks, or even Ashton did, and have his way in all things, he would have seen the temptation; but it came altogether in a different way. The evil voice said, "You are under restraint. Ask any young man of your own age, and he will tell you so. It is high time you should unloose yourself from ap.r.o.n-strings." And this idea of restraint was preying upon him, and he could not throw it off. George was anxious to do the right, but did not know how to fight against the wrong. Conscience whispered to him, "Do you remember that motto your dying father gave you, 'For me to live is Christ?'" George replied, "Yes, I remember it; and it is still my desire to follow it."

Conscience said again, "Do you recollect that sermon you heard, and the resolutions you made, 'My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not?'" And he answered, "I remember it well; but I am not aware that any are endeavouring to entice me."

This was the effect of the unconscious influence of Harry Ashton. He had unknowingly fanned a latent spark into a flame, which, unless checked, would consume all those high and praiseworthy resolutions which George had formed, and carefully kept for years. He had cast a shadow over the landscape of his friend's well-being, which made the sign-posts pointing "upward and onward" almost indistinct. He had breathed into the atmosphere a subtle malaria, and George had caught the disease. The little leaven was now mixed with his life, which would leaven the whole.

The genus of that moral consumption, which, unless cured by the Great Physician, ends in death, had been sown, and were now taking root.

George was unconscious of any foreign influence working upon him--he could not see that Ashton had in any way exerted a power over him; nor in the new and undefined feelings which had taken possession of him could he recognise the presence of evil. He had consulted conscience, and, he fancied, had satisfactorily met the warnings of its voice.

But he had _not_ gone to that high and sure source of strength which can alone make a way of escape from all temptations; he had _not_ obtained that armour of righteousness which is the only defence against the fiery darts of the wicked one; he had _not_ that faith, in the power of which alone Satan can be resisted; and therefore his eyes were holden so that he could not see the snares which the subtle foe was laying around him, nor could he, in his own strength, bear up against the strong tide which was threatening to overwhelm him.

CHAPTER V.

A FARCE.

Harry Ashton kept his promise, and went one evening that week to see George at Islington. Hardy had been invited to meet him; and the three friends, as they kept up a perfect rattle of conversation, interspersed with many crossfired jokes, made the merriest and happiest little party that could be imagined.

Mrs. Weston was very much pleased with Ashton--his refined thought and gentlemanly address, joined with an open-hearted candour and a fund of humour which sparkled in every sentence, made it impossible for any one not to like him. Charles Hardy thought he had never met a more entertaining companion than Ashton; Ashton thought Hardy was an intelligent, agreeable fellow; and George declared to his mother that, if he had had the pick of all the young men in London, he could not have found two nicer fellows.