THE PRIME MINISTER (92 page)

Mrs Parker, when she saw him, got up, and curtsied low, and then sat down again. Old Wharton looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows before he spoke, and then sat opposite to her. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘this is a very sad story that I have heard.’ Mrs Parker again rose, again curtsied, and put her handkerchief to her
face. ‘It is of no use talking any more about it here.’

‘No, sir,’ said Mrs Parker.

‘I and my daughter leave town early to-morrow morning.’

‘Indeed, sir. Mrs Lopez didn’t tell me.’

‘My clerk will be in London, at No. 12, Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, till I come back. Do you think you can find the place? I have written it there.’

‘Yes, sir, I can find it,’ said Mrs Parker, just raising
herself from her chair at every word she spoke.

‘I have written his name, you see. Mr Crumpy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If you will permit me, I will give you two sovereigns now.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And if you can make it convenient to call on Mr Crumpy every Thursday morning about twelve, he will pay you two sovereigns a week till I come back to town. Then I will see about it.’

‘God Almighty bless
you, sir!’

‘And as to the furniture, I will write to my attorney, Mr Walker. You need not trouble yourself by going to him.’

‘No, sir.’

‘If necessary he will send to you, and he will see what can be done. Good night, Mrs Parker.’ Then he walked across the room with two sovereigns which he dropped in her hand. Mrs Parker, with many sobs, bade him farewell, and Mr Wharton stood in the hall immovable
till the front door had been closed behind her. ‘I have settled it,’ he said to Emily. ‘I’ll tell you to-morrow, or some day. Don’t worry yourself now, but go to bed.’ She looked wistfully, – so sadly, up into his face, and then did as he bade her.

But Mr Wharton could not go to his bed without further trouble. It was incumbent on him to write full particulars that very night both to Mr Walker
and to Mr Crumpy. And the odious letters in the writing became very long; – odious because he had to confess in them over and over again that his daughter, the very apple of his eye, had been the wife of a scoundrel. To Mr Walker he had to tell the whole story of the alleged forgery, and in doing so could not abstain from the use of hard words. ‘I don’t suppose that it can be proved, but there is
every reason to believe that it’s true.’ And again – ‘I believe the man to have been as vile a scoundrel as ever was made by the love of money.’ Even to Mr Crumpy he could not be reticent. ‘She is an object of pity,’ he said. ‘Her husband was ruined by the infamous speculations of Mr Lopez.’ Then he betook himself to bed. Oh, how happy would he be to pay the two pounds weekly, – even to add to that
the amount of the forged bill, if by doing so he might be saved from ever again hearing the name of Lopez.

The amount of the bill was ultimately lost by the bankers who had advanced money on it. As for Mrs Sexty Parker, from week to week, and from month to month, and at last from year to year, she and her children, – and probably her husband also, – were supported by the weekly pension of two
sovereigns which she always received on Thursday mornings from the hands of Mr Crumpy himself. In a little time the one excitement of her life was the weekly journey to Mr Crumpy, whom she came to regard as a man appointed by Providence to supply her with 40
s
. on Thursday morning. As to poor Sexty Parker, – it is to be feared that he never again became a prosperous man.

‘You will tell me what
you did for that poor woman, papa,’ said Emily, leaning over her father in the train.

‘I have settled it, my dear.’

‘You said you’d tell me.’

‘Crumpy will pay her two pounds a week till we know more about it.’ Emily pressed her father’s hand, and that was an end. No one ever did know any more about it, and Crumpy continued to pay the money.

When Mr Wharton and his daughter reached Wharton Hall there were at any rate no Fletchers there as yet. Emily, as she was driven from the station to the house, had not dared to ask a question or even to prompt her father to do so. He would probably have told her that on such an occasion there was but little chance that she would find any visitors, and none at all that she
would find Arthur Fletcher. But she was too confused and too ill at ease to think of probabilities, and to the last was in trepidation, specially lest she should meet her lover. She found, however, at Wharton Hall none but Whartons, and she found also to her great relief that this change in the heir relieved her of much of the attention which must otherwise have added to her troubles. At the first
glance her dress and demeanour struck them so forcibly that they could not avoid showing their feeling. Of course they had expected to see her in black, – had expected to see her in widow’s weeds. But, with her, her very face and limbs had so adapted themselves to her crape, that she looked like a monument of bereaved woe. Lady Wharton took the mourner up into her own room, and there made her a
little speech. ‘We have all wept for you,’ she said, ‘and grieve for you still. But excessive grief is wicked, especially in the young. We will do our best to make you happy, and hope we shall succeed. All this about dear Everett ought to be a comfort to you.’ Emily promised that she would do her best, not,
however, taking much immediate comfort from the prospects of dear Everett. Lady Wharton
certainly had never in her life spoken of dear Everett, while the wicked cousin was alive. Then Mary Wharton also made her little speech. ‘Dear Emily, I will do all that I can. Pray try to believe in me.’ But Everett was so much the hero of the hour, that there was not much room for general attention to anyone else.

There was very much room for triumph in regard to Everett. It had already been
ascertained that the Wharton who was now dead had had a child, – but that the child was a daughter. Oh, – what salvation or destruction there may be to an English gentleman in the sex of an infant! This poor baby was now little better than a beggar brat, unless the relatives who were utterly disregardful of its fate, should choose, in their charity, to make some small allowance for its maintenance.
Had it by chance been a boy Everett Wharton would have been nobody; and the child, rescued from the iniquities of his parents, would have been nursed in the best bedroom of Wharton Hall, and cherished with the warmest kisses, and would have been the centre of all the hopes of all the Whartons. But the Wharton lawyer by use of reckless telegrams had certified himself that the infant was a girl,
and Everett was the hero of the day. He found himself to be possessed of a thousand graces, even in his father’s eyesight. It seemed to be taken as a mark of his special good fortune that he had not clung to any business. To have been a banker immersed in the making of money, or even a lawyer attached to his circuit and his court, would have lessened his fitness, or at any rate his readiness, for
the duties which he would have to perform. He would never be a very rich man, but he would have a command of ready money, and of course he would go into Parliament.

In his new position as, – not quite head of his family, but head expectant, – it seemed to him to be his duty to lecture his sister. It might be well that someone should lecture her with more severity than her father used. Undoubtedly
she was succumbing to the wretchedness of her position in a manner that was repugnant to humanity generally. There is no power so useful to man as that capacity of recovering himself after a fall, which belongs especially to those who possess a healthy mind in a healthy body. It is not rare to see one, – generally a woman, – whom a sorrow gradually kills; and there are those among us, who hardly
perhaps envy, but
certainly admire, a spirit so delicate as to be snuffed out by a woe. But it is the weakness of the heart rather than the strength of the feeling which has in such cases most often produced the destruction. Some endurance of fibre has been wanting, which power of endurance is a noble attribute. Everett Wharton saw something of this, and being, now, the heir apparent of the family
took his sister to task. ‘Emily,’ he said, ‘you make us all unhappy when we look at you.’

‘Do I?’ she said. ‘I am sorry for that; – but why should you look at me?’

‘Because you are one of us. Of course we cannot shake you off We would not if we could. We have all been very unhappy because, – because of what has happened. But don’t you think you ought to make some sacrifice to us, – to our father,
I mean, and to Sir Alured and Lady Wharton? When you go on weeping, other people have to weep too. I have an idea that people ought to be happy if it be only for the sake of their neighbours.’

‘What am I to do, Everett?’

‘Talk to people a little, and smile sometimes. Move about quicker. Don’t look when you come into a room as if you were consecrating it to tears. And, if I may venture to say
so, drop something of the heaviness of your mourning.’

‘Do you mean that I am a hypocrite?’

‘No; – I mean nothing of the kind. You know I don’t But you may exert yourself for the benefit of others without being untrue to your own memories. I am sure you know what I mean. Make a struggle and see if you cannot do something.’

She did make a struggle, and she did do something. No one, not well
versed in the mysteries of feminine dress, could say very accurately what it was that she had done; but everyone felt that something of the weight was reduced. At first, as her brother’s words came upon her ear, and as she felt the blows which they inflicted on her, she accused him in her heart of cruelty. They were very hard to bear. There was a moment in which she was almost tempted to turn upon
him and tell him that he knew nothing of her sorrows. But she restrained herself, and when she was alone she acknowledged to herself that he had spoken the truth. No one has a right to go about the world as a Niobe,
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damping all joys with selfish tears. What did she not owe to her father, who had warned her so often against the
evil she had contemplated, and had then, from the first moment after
the fault was done, forgiven her the doing of it? She had at any rate learned from her misfortunes the infinite tenderness of his heart, which in the days of their unalloyed prosperity he had never felt the necessity of exposing to her. So she struggled and did do something. She pressed Lady Wharton’s hand, and kissed her cousin Mary, and throwing herself into her father’s arms when they were
alone, whispered to him that she would try. ‘What you told me, Everett, was quite right,’ she said afterwards to her brother.

‘I didn’t mean to be savage,’ he answered with a smile.

‘It was quite right, and I have thought of it, and I will do my best. I will keep it to myself if I can. It is not quite, perhaps, what you think it is, but I will keep it to myself.’z She fancied that they did not
understand her, and perhaps she was right. It was not only that he had died and left her a young widow; – nor even that his end had been so harsh a tragedy and so foul a disgrace! It was not only that her love had been misbestowed, – not only that she had made so grievous an error in the one great act of her life which she had chosen to perform on her own judgment! Perhaps the most crushing memory
of all was that which told her that she, who had through all her youth been regarded as a bright star in the family, had been the one person to bring a reproach upon the name of all these people who were so good to her. How shall a person conscious of disgrace, with a mind capable of feeling the crushing weight of personal disgrace, move and look and speak as though that disgrace had been washed
away? But she made the struggle, and did not altogether fail.

As regarded Sir Alured, in spite of this poor widow’s crape, he was very happy at this time, and his joy did in some degree communicate itself to the old barrister. Everett was taken round to every tenant and introduced as the heir. Mr Wharton had already declared his purpose of abdicating any possible possession of the property. Should
he outlive Sir Alured he must be the baronet; but when that sad event should take place, whether Mr Wharton should then be alive or no, Everett should at once be the possessor of Wharton Hall. Sir Alured, under these circumstances, discussed his own death with extreme satisfaction, and insisted on having it discussed by the others. That he should have gone and left everything at the mercy of
the spendthrift had been terrible to his old heart; – but now, the man
coming to the property would have £60,000 with which to support and foster Wharton, with which to mend, as it were, the crevices, and stop up the holes of the estate. He seemed to be almost impatient for Everett’s ownership, giving many hints as to what should be done when he himself was gone. He must surely have thought that
he would return to Wharton as a spirit, and take a ghostly share in the prosperity of the farms. ‘You will find John Griffith a very good man,’ said the baronet. John Griffith had been a tenant on the estate for the last half-century, and was an older man than his landlord; but the baronet spoke of all this as though he himself were about to leave Wharton for ever in the course of the next week.
‘John Griffith has been a good man, and if not always quite ready with his rent, has never been much behind. You won’t be hard on John Griffith?’

‘I hope I mayn’t have the opportunity, sir.’

‘Well; – well; – well; that’s as may be. But I don’t quite know what to say about young John. The farm has gone from father to son, and there’s never been a word of a lease.’

‘Is there anything wrong about
the young man?’

‘He’s a little given to poaching.’

‘Oh dear!’

‘I’ve always got him off for his father’s sake. They say he’s going to marry Sally Jones. That may take it out of him. I do like the farms to go from father to son, Everett. It’s the way that everything should go. Of course there’s no right’

‘Nothing of that kind, I suppose,’ said Everett, who was in his way a reformer, and had
radical notions with which he would not for worlds have disturbed the baronet at present.

‘No; – nothing of that kind. God in his mercy forbid that a landlord in England should ever be robbed after that fashion.’ Sir Alured, when he was uttering this prayer, was thinking of what he had heard of an Irish land bill,
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the details of which, however, had been altogether incomprehensible to him. ‘But
I have a feeling about it, Everett; and I hope you will share it. It is good that things should go from father to son. I never make a promise; but the tenants know what I think about it, and then the father works for the son. Why should he work for a stranger? Sally Jones is a very good young woman, and perhaps young John will do better.’ There was not a
field or a fence that he did not show to
his heir, – hardly a tree which he left without a word. ‘That bit of woodland coming in there, – they call it Barnton Spinnies, – doesn’t belong to the estate at all.’ This he said in a melancholy tone.