The Cockaynes in Paris | Page 6

and to be ashamed of myself; and I want a little help through it, and it's for you to give it me, and give it me YOU SHALL."
Mr. Charles held out his left hand, and slapped its open palm vehemently with his right--pantomime to indicate the exact whereabouts he had selected for the reception of Mrs. Rowe's money.
"I told you I had no money. You'll drive me from this house by bringing disgrace upon it."
"That's very good," Mr. Charles said, with a cruel laugh. "That's a capital joke."
Jane entered with coffee. "That's right," she whispered, encouragingly to Mr. Charles; "laugh and be cheerful, Mr. Charles, and make haste with your coffee."
The face of Mr. Charles blackened to night. He turned like a tiger upon the servant. "Laugh and be cheerful?" he roared; and then he raised a hoarse mock laugh, that moved Mrs. Rowe, in her agony of fear, to turn the key in the lock of her desk.
Shaking her hands wildly in the air, Jane left the room, and shut the door.
"You are an arrant coward, Charles," Mrs. Rowe hissed, leaning across the table and shaking her head violently.
Mr. Charles imitated her gesture, answering--"I am what heartless people have made me. I have been dragged up under a cloud; made the scape-goat. How often in the course of your hypocritical days have you wished me dead? You hear I've a cough; but I cannot promise you it's a churchyard one. I'm a nuisance; but I suppose I'm not responsible for my existence, Mrs. Rowe. I was not consulted."
"Viper!"
"And devil too, when needful: remember that." Mr. Charles moved round the table in the direction of the desk.
"Stand where you are. I would rather give you the clothes from my back than touch you." Mrs. Rowe, as she stood still turning the lock of the bureau, and keeping her angry eyes fixed upon the man, was the picture of all the hate she expressed.
She never took her eyes off him, nor did he quail, while she fumbled in the drawer in which she kept money. The musical rattle of the gold smote upon the ear of Mr. Charles.
"Pretty sound," he said, with a smile of hate in his face; "but there is crisp paper sounds sweeter. Mrs. Rowe, I'm not here for a couple of yellow-boys. Do you hear that?" He banged the table, and advanced a step.
"You can't bleed a stone, miscreant."
"Nay, but you can break it, Mrs. Rowe. I mean business to-day. The rarer I make my visits the better for both of us."
"I am quite of that opinion."
"Then make it as long as you like; you know how."
"Is this ever to end? Have you no shame? Charles, you will end with some tragedy. A man who can play the part you are playing, must be ready for crime!"
Mr. Charles shook his head in impatient rage, and made another step towards Mrs. Rowe.
"Move nearer, and I wake the house, come what may." Mrs. Rowe's face looked like one cut in grey stone.
"What! and wake the Dean and his lady! What! affright the Reverend Horace Mohun who counts Mrs. Rowe among the milk-white sheep of his flock! No; Mrs. Rowe is too prudent a woman--Now." As he ended, she drew forth a roll of notes. He made a clutch at them--and she started back.
"Charles, it has come to that! Robber! It will be murder some day."
"This day--by----"
Mr. Charles looked the man to make his word good.
Mrs. Rowe was amazed and terrified by the fiend she had conjured up in the man. He seized the table, and looked a giant in the mighty expression of his iron will.
"Lay that roll upon the table--or I'll shiver it into a thousand pieces--and then--and then----Am I to say more?"
Mrs. Rowe fell into a chair. Mr. Charles was at her in an instant, and had possession of the notes. The poor woman had swooned.
He rang the bell--Jane appeared.
"Look after her," said Mr. Charles, his eyes flaming, as they fell on the unconscious figure of Mrs. Rowe. "But let me out, first."
"You'll kill me with fright, that you will. What have you done to your own----"
"Mind your own business. A smell of salts'll put her right enough."
Mr. Charles was gone.
"And what a sweet gentleman he can be, when he likes," said Jane.
CHAPTER III.
MRS. ROWE'S COMPANY.
I must be permitted to tell the rambling stories that ran parallel during my experiences of Mrs. Rowe's establishment in my own manner--filling up with what I guessed, all I heard from Lucy, or saw for myself. Mr. Charles was a visitor at intervals who always arrived when the house was quiet; and after whose visits Mrs. Rowe regularly took to her room for the day, leaving the accounts and the keys wholly to Lucy, and the kitchen to Jane--with strict injunctions