“Will you advance me money?—five pounds—only five pounds, Mr. Plaskwith?”
“Not five shillings! Talk to me in this style!—not the man for it, sir!—highly improper. Come, shut up the shop, and recollect yourself; and, perhaps, when Sir Thomas’s library is done, I may let you go to town. You can’t go to-morrow. All a sham, perhaps; eh, Hannah?”
“Very likely! Consult Plimmins. Better come away now, Mr. P. He looks like a young tiger.”
Mrs. Plaskwith quitted the shop for the parlour. Her husband, putting his hands behind his back, and throwing back his chin, was about to follow her. Philip, who had remained for the last moment mute and white as stone, turned abruptly; and his grief taking rather the tone of rage than supplication, he threw himself before his master, and, laying his hand on his shoulder, said:
“I leave you—do not let it be with a curse. I conjure you, have mercy on me!”
Mr. Plaskwith stopped; and had Philip then taken but a milder tone, all had been well. But, accustomed from childhood to command—all his fierce passions loose within him—despising the very man he thus implored—the boy ruined his own cause. Indignant at the silence of Mr. Plaskwith, and too blinded by his emotions to see that in that silence there was relenting, he suddenly shook the little man with a vehemence that almost overset him, and cried:
“You, who demand for five years my bones and blood—my body and soul—a slave to your vile trade—do you deny me bread for a mother’s lips?”
Trembling with anger, and perhaps fear, Mr. Plaskwith extricated himself from the gripe of Philip, and, hurrying from the shop, said, as he banged the door:
“Beg my pardon for this to-night, or out you go to-morrow, neck and crop! Zounds! a pretty pass the world’s come to! I don’t believe a word about your mother. Baugh!”
Left alone, Philip remained for some moments struggling with his wrath and agony. He then seized his hat, which he had thrown off on entering—pressed it over his brows—turned to quit the shop—when his eye fell upon the till. Plaskwith had left it open, and the gleam of the coin struck his gaze—that deadly smile of the arch tempter. Intellect, reason, conscience—all, in that instant, were confusion and chaos. He cast a hurried glance round the solitary and darkening room—plunged his hand into the drawer, clutched he knew not what—silver or gold, as it came uppermost—and burst into a loud and bitter laugh. The laugh itself startled him—it did not sound like his own. His face fell, and his knees knocked together—his hair bristled—he felt as if the very fiend had uttered that yell of joy over a fallen soul.