her brother, she had so far silenced or concealed her misgivings as to express satisfaction at the home she had provided for Sidney; and she even held out hopes of some future when, their probation finished and their independence secured, she might reside with her sons alternately. These hopes redoubled Philip’s assiduity, and he saved every shilling of his weekly stipend; and sighed as he thought that in another week his term of apprenticeship would commence, and the stipend cease.
Mr. Plaskwith could not but be pleased on the whole with the diligence of his assistant, but he was chafed and irritated by the sullenness of his manner. As for Mrs. Plaskwith, poor woman! she positively detested the taciturn and moody boy, who never mingled in the jokes of the circle, nor played with the children, nor complimented her, nor added, in short, anything to the sociability of the house. Mr. Plimmins, who had at first sought to condescend, next sought to bully; but the gaunt frame and savage eye of Philip awed the smirk youth, in spite of himself; and he confessed to Mrs. Plaskwith that he should not like to meet “the gipsy,” alone, on a dark night; to which Mrs. Plaskwith replied, as usual, “that Mr. Plimmins always did say the best things in the world!”
One morning, Philip was sent a few miles into the country, to assist in cataloguing some books in the library of Sir Thomas Champerdown—that gentleman, who was a scholar, having requested that some one acquainted with the Greek character might be sent to him, and Philip being the only one in the shop who possessed such knowledge.
It was evening before he returned. Mr. and Mrs. Plaskwith were both in the shop as he entered—in fact, they had been employed in talking him over.
“I can’t abide him!” cried Mrs. Plaskwith. “If you choose to take him for good, I sha’n’t have an easy moment. I’m sure the ‘prentice that cut his master’s throat at Chatham, last week, was just like him.”
“Pshaw! Mrs. P.,” said the bookseller, taking a huge pinch of snuff, as usual, from his waistcoat pocket. “I myself was reserved when I was young; all reflective people are. I may observe, by the by, that it was the case with Napoleon Buonaparte: still, however, I must own he is a disagreeable youth, though he attends to his business.”
“And how fond of money he is!” remarked Mrs. Plaskwith, “he won’t buy himself a new pair of shoes!—quite disgraceful! And did you see what a look he gave Plimmins, when he joked about his indifference to his sole? Plimmins always does say such good things!”
“He is shabby, certainly,” said the bookseller; “but the value of a book does not always depend on the binding.”
“I hope he is honest!” observed Mrs. Plaskwith;—and here Philip entered.
“Hum,” said Mr. Plaskwith; “you have had a long day’s work: but I suppose it will take a week to finish?”
“I am to go again to-morrow morning, sir: two days more will conclude the task.”
“There’s a letter for you,” cried Mrs. Plaskwith; “you owes me for it.”
“A letter!” It was not his mother’s hand—it was a strange writing—he gasped for breath as he broke the seal. It was the letter of the physician.
His mother, then, was ill—dying—wanting, perhaps, the necessaries of life. She would have concealed from him her illness and her poverty. His quick alarm exaggerated the last into utter want;—he uttered a cry that rang through the shop, and rushed to Mr. Plaskwith.
“Sir, sir! my mother is dying! She is poor, poor, perhaps starving;—money, money!—lend me money!—ten pounds!—five!—I will work for you all my life for nothing, but lend me the money!”
“Hoity-toity!” said Mrs. Plaskwith, nudging her husband—“I told you what would come of it: it will be ‘money or life’ next time.”
Philip did not heed or hear this address; but stood immediately before the bookseller, his hands clasped—wild impatience in his eyes. Mr. Plaskwith, somewhat stupefied, remained silent.
“Do you hear me?—are you human?” exclaimed Philip, his emotion revealing at once all the fire of his character. “I tell you my mother is dying; I must go to her! Shall I go empty-handed? Give me money!”
Mr. Plaskwith was not a bad-hearted man; but he was a formal man, and an irritable one. The tone his shopboy (for so he considered Philip) assumed to him, before his own wife too (examples are very dangerous), rather exasperated than moved him.
“That’s not the way to speak to your master:—you forget yourself, young man!”
“Forget!—But, sir, if she has not necessaries—if she is starving?”
“Fudge!” said Plaskwith. “Mr. Morton writes me word that he has provided for your mother! Does he not, Hannah?”
“More fool he, I’m sure, with such a fine family of his own! Don’t look at me in that way, young man; I won’t take it—that I won’t! I declare my blood friz to see you!”
“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
