THE PRIME MINISTER (49 page)

On the next morning Lopez was at Mr Wharton’s chambers early, – so early that the lawyer had not yet reached them. He had resolved, – not that he would tell everything, for such men never even intend to tell everything, – but that he would tell a good deal. He must, if possible, affect the mind of the old man in two ways. He must ingratiate himself; – and at the same time make it understood that
Emily’s comfort in life would depend very much on her father’s generosity. The first must be first accomplished, if possible, – and then the second, as to which he could certainly produce at any rate belief. He had not married a rich man’s daughter without an intention of getting the rich man’s money! Mr Wharton would understand that If the worst came to the worst, Mr Wharton must of course maintain
his daughter, – and his daughter’s husband! But things had not come to the worst as yet, and he did not intend on the present occasion to represent that view of his affairs to his father-in-law.

Mr Wharton when he entered his chambers found Lopez seated there. He was himself at this moment very unhappy. He had renewed his quarrel with Everett, – or Everett rather had renewed the quarrel with
him. There had been words between them about money lost at cards. Hard words had been used, and Everett had told his father that if either of them were a gambler it was not he. Mr Wharton had resented this bitterly and had driven his son from his presence, – and now the quarrel made him very wretched. He certainly was sorry that he had called his son a gambler, but his son had been, as he thought,
inexcusable in the retort which he had made. He was a man to whom his friends gave credit for much sternness; – but still he was one who certainly had no happiness in the world independent of his children. His daughter had left him, not as he thought under happy auspices, – and he was now, at this moment, soft-hearted and tender in his regards as to her. What was there in the world for him but his
children? And now he felt himself to be alone and destitute. He was already tired of whist at the Eldon. That which had been a delight to him once or twice a week, became almost loathsome when it was renewed from day to day; – and not the less when his son told him that he also was a gambler. ‘So you have come back from Silverbridge?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir; I have come back not exactly triumphant.
A man should not expect to win always.’ Lopez had resolved to pluck up his spirit and carry himself like a man.

‘You seem to have got into some scrape down there, besides losing your election.’

‘Oh; you have seen that in the papers already. I have come to tell you of it As Emily is concerned in it you ought to know.’

‘Emily concerned! How is she concerned?’

Then Lopez told the whole story,
– after his own fashion, and yet with no palpable lie. Fletcher had written to her a letter which he had thought to be very offensive. On hearing this, Mr Wharton looked very grave, and asked for the letter. Lopez said that he had destroyed it, not thinking that such a document should be preserved. Then he went on to explain that it had had reference to the election, and that he had thought it to
be highly improper that Fletcher should write to his wife on that or on any other subject. ‘It depends very much on the letter,’ said the old man.

‘But on any subject, – after what has passed.’

‘They were very old friends.’

‘Of course I will not argue with you, Mr Wharton; but I own that it angered me. It angered me very much, – very much indeed. I took it to be an insult to her, and when he
accosted me in the street down at Silverbridge I told him so. I may not have been very wise, but I did it on her behalf. Surely you can understand that such a letter might make a man angry.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That he would do anything for her sake, – even retire from Silverbridge if his friends would let him.’ Mr Wharton scratched his head, and Lopez saw that he was perplexed. ‘Should he have
offered to do anything for her sake, after what had passed?’

‘I know the man so well,’ said Mr Wharton, ‘that I cannot and do not believe him to have harboured an improper thought in reference to my child.’

‘Perhaps it was an indiscretion only.’

‘Perhaps so. I cannot say. And then they took you before the magistrates?’

‘Yes; – in my anger I had threatened him. Then there was a policeman and
a row. And I had to swear that I would not hurt him. Of course I had no wish to hurt him.’

‘I suppose it ruined your chance at Silverbridge?’

‘I suppose it did.’ This was a lie, as Lopez had retired before the row took place. ‘What I care for most now is that you should not think that I have misbehaved myself.’

The story had been told very well, and Mr Wharton was almost disposed to sympathize
with his son-in-law. That Arthur Fletcher had meant nothing that could be regarded as offensive to his daughter he was quite sure; – but it might be that in making an offer intended to be generous he had used language which the condition of the persons concerned made indiscreet. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that you spent a lot of money at Silverbridge?’ This gave Lopez the opening that he wanted, and
he described the manner in which the £500 had been extracted from him. ‘You can’t play that game for nothing,’ said Mr Wharton.

‘And just at present I could very ill afford it. I should not have done it had I not felt it a pity to neglect such a chance of rising in the world. After all, a seat in the British House of Commons is an honour.’

‘Yes; – yes; – yes.’

‘And the Duchess, when she spoke
to me about it, was so certain.’

‘I will pay the £500,’ said Mr Wharton.

‘Oh, sir, that is generous!’ Then he got up and took the old man’s hands. ‘Some day, when you are at liberty, I hope that you will allow me to explain to you the exact state of my affairs. When I wrote to you from Como I told you that I would wish to do so. You do not object?’

‘No;’ said the lawyer, – but with infinite
hesitation in his voice. ‘No; I don’t object. But I do not know how I could serve them. I shall be busy just now, but I will give you the cheque. And if you and Emily have nothing better to do, come and dine to-morrow.’ Lopez with real tears in his eyes took the cheque, and promised to come on the morrow. ‘And in the meantime I wish you would see Everett’ Of course he promised that he would see Everett.

Again he was exalted, on this occasion not so much by the acquisition of the money as by the growing conviction that his father-in-law was a cow capable of being milked. And the quarrel between Everett and his father might clearly be useful to him. He might either serve the old man by reducing Everett to proper
submission, or he might manage to creep into the empty space which the son’s defection
would make in the father’s heart and the father’s life. He might at any rate make himself necessary to the old man, and become such a part of the household in Manchester Square as to be indispensable. Then the old man would every day become older and more in want of assistance. He thought that he saw the way to worm himself into confidence, and, so on into possession. The old man was not a man
of iron as he had feared, but quite human, and if properly managed, soft and malleable.

He saw Sexty Parker in the city that day, and used his cheque for £5oo in some triumphant way, partly cajoling and partly bullying his poor victim. To Sexty also he had to tell his own story about the row down at Silverbridge. He had threatened to thrash the fellow in the street, and the fellow had not dared
to come out of his house without a policeman. Yes; – he had lost his election. The swindling of those fellows at Silverbridge had been too much for him. But he flattered himself that he had got the better of Master Fletcher. That was the tone in which he told the story to his friend in the city.

Then, before dinner, he found Everett at the club. Everett Wharton was to be found there now almost
every day. His excuse to himself lay in the political character of the institution. The club intended to do great things, – to find Liberal candidates for all the boroughs and counties in England which were not hitherto furnished, and then to supply the candidates with money. Such was the great purpose of the Progress. It had not as yet sent out many candidates or collected much money. As yet it
was, politically, almost quiescent. And therefore Everett Wharton, whose sense of duty took him there, spent his afternoons either in the whist-room or at the billiard-table.

The story of the Silverbridge row had to be told again, and was told nearly with the same incidents as had been narrated to the father. He could of course abuse Arthur Fletcher more roundly, and be more confident in his
assertion that Fletcher had insulted his wife. But he came as quickly as he could to the task which he had on hand. ‘What’s all this between you and your father?’

‘Simply this. I sometimes play a game of whist, and therefore he called me a gambler. Then I reminded him that he also sometimes played a game of whist, and I asked him what deduction was to be drawn.’

‘He is awfully angry with you.’

‘Of course I was a fool. My father has the whip-hand of me, because he has money and I have none, and it was simply kicking against the pricks
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to speak as I did. And then too there isn’t a fellow in London has a higher respect for his father than I have, nor yet a warmer affection. But it is hard to be driven in that way. Gambler is a nasty word.’

‘Yes, it is; very nasty. But I suppose a man
does gamble when he loses so much money that he has to ask his father to pay it for him.’

‘If he does so often, he gambles. I never asked him for money to pay what I had lost before in my life.’

‘I wonder you told him.’

‘I never lie to him, and he ought to know that. But he is just the man to be harder to his own son than to anybody else in the world. What does he want me to do now?’

‘I don’t
know that he wants you to do anything,’ said Lopez.

‘Did he send you to me?’

‘Well; – no; I can’t say that he did. I told him I should see you as a matter of course, and he said something rough, – about your being an ass.’

‘I dare say he did.’

‘But if you ask me,’ said Lopez, ‘I think he would take it kindly of you if you were to go and see him. Come and dine to-day, just as if nothing had
happened.’

‘I could not do that, – unless he asked me.’

‘I can’t say that he asked you, Everett. I would say so, in spite of its being a lie, if I didn’t fear that your father might say something unkind, so that the lie would be detected by both of you.’

‘And yet you ask me to go and dine there!’

‘Yes, I do. It’s only going away if he does cut up rough. And if he takes it well, – why then,
– the whole thing is done.’

‘If he wants me, he can ask me.’

‘You talk about it, my boy, just as if a father were the same as anybody else. If I had a father with a lot of money, by George he should knock me about with his stick if he liked, and I would be just the same the next day.’

‘Unfortunately I am of a stiffer nature,’ said Everett, taking some
pride to himself for his stiffness, and
being perhaps as little ‘stiff’ as any young man of his day.

That evening, after dinner in Manchester Square, the conversation between the father-in-law and the son-in-law turned almost exclusively on the son and brother-in-law. Little or nothing was said about the election, and the name of Arthur Fletcher was not mentioned. But out of his full heart the father spoke. He was wretched about Everett.
Did Everett mean to cut him?

‘He wants you to withdraw some name you called him,’ said Lopez.

‘Withdraw some name, – as he might ask some hot-headed fellow to do, of his own age, like himself; some fellow that he had quarrelled with! Does he expect his father to send him a written apology? He had been gambling, and I told him that he was a gambler. Is that too much for a father to say?’ Lopez
shrugged his shoulders, and declared it was a pity. ‘He will break my heart if he goes on like this,’ said the old man.

‘I asked him to come and dine to-day, but he didn’t seem to like it’

‘Like it! No. He likes nothing but that infernal club.’

When the evening was over Lopez felt that he had done a good stroke of work. He had not exactly made up his mind to keep the father and son apart That
was not a part of his strategy, – at any rate as yet. But he did intend to make himself necessary to the old man, – to become the old man’s son, and if possible the favourite son. And now he thought that he had already done much towards the achievement of his object.

There was great triumph at Longbarns when the news of Arthur’s victory reached the place; – and when he arrived there himself with his friend, Mr Gresham, he was received as a conquering hero. But of course the tidings of ‘the row’ had gone before him, and it was
necessary that both he and Mr Gresham should tell the story; – nor could it be told privately. Sir Alured
Wharton was there, and Mrs Fletcher. The old lady had heard of the row, and of course required to be told all the particulars. This was not pleasant to the hero, as in talking of the man it was impossible for them not to talk of the man’s wife. ‘What a terrible misfortune for poor Mr Wharton,’ said the old lady, nodding her head at Sir Alured. Sir Alured sighed and said nothing. Certainly a terrible
misfortune, and one which affected more or less the whole family of Whartons!

‘Do you mean to say that he was going to attack Arthur with a whip?’ asked John Fletcher.

‘I only know that he was standing there with a whip in his hand,’ said Mr Gresham.

‘I think he would have had the worst of that.’

‘You would have laughed,’ said Arthur, ‘to see me walking majestically along the High Street with
a cudgel which Gresham had just bought for me as being of the proper medium size. I don’t doubt he meant to have a fight. And then you should have seen the policeman sloping over and putting himself in the way. I never quite understood where that policeman came from.’

‘They are very well off for policemen in Silverbridge,’ said Gresham. ‘They’ve always got them going about.’