THE PRIME MINISTER (62 page)

‘I’d had my fust
by that time.’

‘Only nine months, I think, indeed.’

‘Well; I wasn’t very long after that. But I took care to know what it was he was a-doing of in the city long before that time. And I did use to know everything, till –’ She was going to say, till Lopez had come upon the scene. But she did not wish, at any rate as yet, to be harsh to her new friend.

‘I hope it is all right,’ said Emily.

‘Sometimes
he’s as though the Bank of England was all his own. And there’s been more money come into the house; – that I must say. And there isn’t an open-handeder one than Sexty anywhere. He’d like to see me in a silk gown every day of my life; – and as for the children, there’s nothing smart enough for them. Only I’d sooner have a little and safe, than anything ever so fine, and never be sure whether
it wasn’t going to come to an end.’

‘There I agree with you, quite.’

‘I don’t suppose men feels it as we do; but, oh, Mrs Lopez, give me a little safe, so that I may know that I shan’t see my children want. When I thinks what it would be to have them darlings’ little bellies empty, and nothing in the cupboard, I get that low that I’m nigh fit for Bedlam.’

In the meantime the two men outside
the porch were discussing their affairs in somewhat the same spirit. At last Lopez showed his friend Wharton’s letter, and told him of the expected schedule. ‘Schedule be d—d, you know,’ said Lopez. ‘How am I to put down a rise of 12
s
. 6
d.
a ton on Kauri gum in a schedule? But when you come to 2,000 tons it’s £1,250.’

‘He’s very old; – isn’t he?’

‘But as strong as a horse.’

‘He’s got the money?’

‘Yes; – he has got it safe enough. There’s no doubt about the money.’

‘What he talks about is only a will. Now you want the money at once.’

‘Of course I do; – and he talks to me as if I were some old fogy
with an estate of my own. I must concoct a letter and explain my views; and the more I can make him understand how things really are the better. I don’t suppose he wants to see his daughter
come to grief.’

‘Then the sooner you write it the better,’ said Mr Parker.

As they strolled home Lopez told his wife that he had accepted an invitation to dine the next day at the Parkers’ cottage. In doing this his manner was not quite so gentle as when he had asked her to call on them. He had been a little ruffled by what had been said, and now exhibited his temper. ‘I don’t suppose it will be very nice,’ he said, ‘but we
may have to put up with worse things than that’

‘I have made no objection.’

‘But you don’t seem to take to it very cordially.’

‘I had thought that I got on very well with Mrs Parker. If you can eat your dinner with them, I’m sure that I can. You do not seem to like him altogether, and I wish you had got a partner more to your taste.’

‘Taste, indeed! When you come to this kind of thing it isn’t
a matter of taste. The fact is that I am in that fellow’s hands to an extent I don’t like to think of, and don’t see my way out of it unless your father will do as he ought to do. You altogether refuse to help me with your father, and you must, therefore, put up with Sexty Parker and his wife. It is quite on the cards that worse things may come even than Sexty Parker.’ To this she made no immediate
answer, but walked on, increasing her pace, not only unhappy, but also very angry. It was becoming a matter of doubt to her whether she could continue to bear these repeated attacks about her father’s money. ‘I see how it is,’ he continued. ‘You think that a husband should bear all the troubles of life, and that a wife should never be made to hear of them.’

‘Ferdinand,’ she said, ‘I declare I
did not think that any man could be so unfair to a woman as you are to me.’

‘Of course! Because I haven’t got thousands a year to spend on you I am unfair.’

‘I am content to live in any way that you may direct. If you are poor, I am satisfied to be poor. If you are even ruined, I am content to be ruined.’

‘Who is talking about ruin?’

‘If you are in want of everything, I also will be in want
and will never complain. Whatever our joint lot may bring to us I will endure, and will endeavour to endure with cheerfulness. But I will not ask my father for money, either for you or for myself. He knows what he ought to do. I trust him implicitly.’

‘And me not at all.’

‘He is, I know, in communication with you about what should be done. I can only say, – tell him everything.’

‘My dear, that
is a matter in which it may be possible that I understand my own interest best.’

‘Very likely. I certainly understand nothing, for I do not even know the nature of your business. How can I tell him that he ought to give you money?’

‘You might ask him for your own.’

‘I have got nothing. Did I ever tell you that I had?’

‘You ought to have known.’

‘Do you mean that when you asked me to marry
you I should have refused you because I did not know what money papa would give me? Why did you not ask papa?’

‘Had I known him then as well as I do now you may be quite sure that I should have done so.’

‘Ferdinand, it will be better that we should not speak about my father. I will in all things strive to do as you would have me, but I cannot hear him abused. If you have anything to say, go
to Everett.’

‘Yes; – when he is such a gambler that your father won’t even speak to him. Your father will be found dead in his bed some day, and all his money will have been left to some cursed hospital.’ They were at their own door when this was said, and she, without further answer, went up to her bedroom.

All these bitter things had been said, not because Lopez had thought that he could further
his own views by saying them; – he knew indeed that he was injuring himself by every display of ill-temper; – but she was in his power, and Sexty Parker was rebelling. He thought a good deal that day on the delight he would have in ‘kicking that ill-conditioned cur’, if only he could afford to kick him. But his wife was his own, and she must be taught to endure his will, and must be made to
know that though she was not to be kicked, yet she was to be tormented and ill-used. And it might be possible that he should so cow her spirit as to bring her to act as he should direct. Still, as he walked alone along the sea-shore, he knew that it would be better for him to control his temper.

On that evening he did write to Mr Wharton, – as follows, – and he dated his letter from Little Tankard
Yard, so that Mr Wharton might suppose that that was really his own place of business, and that he was there, at his work:

MY DEAR SIR
,

You have asked for a schedule of my affairs, and I have found it quite impossible to give it. As it was with the merchants whom Shakespeare and the other dramatists described, – so it is with me. My caravels are out at sea,
³
and will not always come home in
time. My property at this moment consists of certain shares of cargoes of jute, Kauri gum, guano, and sulphur, worth altogether at the present moment something over £26,000, of which Mr Parker possesses the half; – but then of this property only a portion is paid for, – perhaps something more than a half. For the other half our bills are in the market. But in February next these articles will probably
be sold for considerably more than £30,000. If I had £5,000 placed to my credit now, I should be worth about £15,000 by the end of next February. I am engaged in sundry other smaller ventures, all returning profits; – but in such a condition of things it is impossible that I should make a schedule.

I am undoubtedly in the condition of a man trading beyond his capital. I have been tempted by fair
offers, and what I think I may call something beyond an average understanding of such matters, to go into ventures beyond my means. I have stretched my arm out too far. In such a position it is not perhaps unnatural that I should ask a wealthy father-in-law to assist me. It is certainly not unnatural that I’ should wish him to do so.

I do not think that I am a mercenary man. When I married your
daughter I raised no question as to her fortune. Being embarked in trade I no doubt thought that her means – whatever they might be – would be joined to my own. I know that a sum of £20,000, with my experience in the use of money, would give us a noble income. But I would not condescend to ask a question which might lead to a supposition that I was marrying her for her money and not because I
loved her.

You now know, I think, all that I can tell you. If there be any other questions I would willingly answer them. It is certainly the case that Emily’s fortune, whatever you may choose to give her, would be of infinitely greater use to me now, – and consequently to her, – than at a future date which I sincerely pray may be very long deferred.

Believe me to be, your affectionate son-in-law,

FERDINAND LOPEZ
.

A. Wharton, Esq.

This letter he himself took up to town on the following day, and there posted, addressing it to Wharton Hall. He did not expect very great results from it. As he read it over, he was painfully aware that all his trash about caravels and cargoes of sulphur would not go far with Mr Wharton. But it might go farther than nothing. He was bound not to neglect Mr Wharton’s
letter to him. When a man is in difficulty about money, even a lie, – even a lie that is sure to be found out to be a lie, – will serve his immediate turn better than silence. There is nothing that the courts hate so much as contempt; – not even perjury. And Lopez felt that Mr Wharton was the judge before whom he was bound to plead.

He returned to Dovercourt on that day, and he and his wife dined
with the Parkers. No woman of her age had known better what were the manners of ladies and gentlemen than Emily Wharton. She had thoroughly understood that when in Herefordshire she was surrounded by people of that class, and that when she was with her aunt, Mrs Roby, she was not quite so happily placed. No doubt she had been terribly deceived by her husband, – but the deceit had come from the
fact that his manners gave no indication of his character. When she found herself in Mrs Parker’s little sitting-room, with Mr Parker making florid speeches to her, she knew that she had fallen among people for whose society she had not been intended. But this was a part, and only a very trifling part, of the
punishment which she felt that she deserved. If that, and things like that, were all,
she would bear them without a murmur.

‘Now I call Dovercourt a dooced nice little place,’ said Mr Parker, as he helped her to the ’bit of fish’, which he told her he had brought down with him from London.

‘It is very healthy, I should think.’

‘Just the thing for the children, ma’am. You’ve none of your own, Mrs Lopez, but there’s a good time coming.
⁴
You were up to-day, weren’t you, Lopez?
Any news?’

‘Things seemed to be very quiet in the city.’

‘Too quiet, I’m afraid. I hate having ’em quiet. You must come and see me in Little Tankard Yard some of these days, Mrs Lopez. We can give you a glass of cham. and the wing of a chicken; – can’t we, Lopez?’

‘I don’t know. It’s more than you ever gave me,’ said Lopez, trying to look good-humoured.

‘But you ain’t a lady.’

‘Or me,’ said
Mrs Parker.

‘You’re only a wife. If Mrs Lopez will make a day of it we’ll treat her well in the city; – won’t we, Ferdinand?’ A black cloud came across ‘Ferdinand’s’ face, but he said nothing. Emily of a sudden drew herself up, unconsciously, – and then at once relaxed her features and smiled. If her husband chose that it should be so, she would make no objection.

‘Upon my honour, Sexty, you
are very familiar,’ said Mrs Parker.

‘It’s a way we have in the city,’ said Sexty. Sexty knew what he was about. His partner called him Sexty, and why shouldn’t he call his partner Ferdinand?

‘He’ll call you Emily before long,’ said Lopez.

‘When you call my wife Jane I shall, – and I’ve no objection in life. I don’t see why people ain’t to call each other by their Christian names. Take a glass
of champagne, Mrs Lopez. I brought down half-a-dozen to-day so that we might be jolly. Care killed a cat. Whatever we call each other, I’m very glad to see you here, Mrs Lopez, and I hope it’s the first of a great many. Here’s your health.’

It was all his ordering, and if he bade her dine with a crossing-sweeper she would do it. But she could not but remember that not long since he had told her
that his partner was not a person with
whom she could fitly associate; and she did not fail to perceive that he must be going down in the world to admit such association for her after he had so spoken. And as she sipped the mixture which Sexty called champagne, she thought of Herefordshire and the banks of the Wye, and – alas, alas, – she thought of Arthur Fletcher. Nevertheless, come what might,
she would do her duty, even though it might call upon her to sit at dinner with Mr Parker three days in the week. Lopez was her husband, and would be the father of her child, and she would make herself one with him. It mattered not what people might call him, – or even her. She had acted on her own judgment in marrying him, and had been a fool; and now she would bear the punishment without complaint.

When dinner was over Mrs Parker helped the servant to remove the dinner things from the single sitting-room, and the two men went out to smoke their cigars in the covered porch. Mrs Parker herself took out the whisky and hot water, and sugar and lemons, and then returned to have a little matronly discourse with her guest. ‘Does Mr Lopez ever take a drop too much?’ she asked.

‘Never,’ said Mrs
Lopez.

‘Perhaps it don’t affect him as it do Sexty. He ain’t a drinker, – certainly not. And he’s one that works hard every day of his life. But he’s getting fond of it these last twelve months, and though he don’t take very much it hurries him and flurries him. If I speaks at night he gets cross; – and in the morning when he gets up, which he always do regular, though it’s ever so bad with him,
then I haven’t the heart to scold him. It’s very hard sometimes for a wife to know what to do, Mrs Lopez.’