The Palliser Novels (457 page)

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. 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.”

“Yes, indeed.” Emily could not but think how soon she herself had learned that lesson.

“Of course I’d do anything for Sexty, — the father of my bairns, and has always been a good husband to me. You don’t know him, of course, but I do. A right good man at bottom; — but so weak!”

“If he, — if he, — injures his health, shouldn’t you talk to him quietly about it?”

“It isn’t the drink as is the evil, Mrs. Lopez, but that which makes him drink. He’s not one as goes a mucker merely for the pleasure. When things are going right he’ll sit out in our arbour at home, and smoke pipe after pipe, playing with the children, and one glass of gin and water cold will see him to bed. Tobacco, dry, do agree with him, I think. But when he comes to three or four goes of hot toddy, I know it’s not as it should be.”

“You should restrain him, Mrs. Parker.”

“Of course I should; — but how? Am I to walk off with the bottle and disgrace him before the servant girl? Or am I to let the children know as their father takes too much? If I was as much as to make one fight of it, it’d be all over Ponder’s End that he’s a drunkard; — which he ain’t. Restrain him; — oh, yes! If I could restrain that gambling instead of regular business! That’s what I’d like to restrain.”

“Does he gamble?”

“What is it but gambling that he and Mr. Lopez is a-doing together? Of course, ma’am, I don’t know you, and you are different from me. I ain’t foolish enough not to know all that. My father stood in Smithfield and sold hay, and your father is a gentleman as has been high up in the Courts all his life. But it’s your husband is a-doing this.”

“Oh, Mrs. Parker!”

“He is then. And if he brings Sexty and my little ones to the workhouse, what’ll be the good then of his guano and his gum?”

“Is it not all in the fair way of commerce?”

“I’m sure I don’t know about commerce, Mrs. Lopez, because I’m only a woman; but it can’t be fair. They goes and buys things that they haven’t got the money to pay for, and then waits to see if they’ll turn up trumps. Isn’t that gambling?”

“I cannot say. I do not know.” She felt now that her husband had been accused, and that part of the accusation had been levelled at herself. There was something in her manner of saying these few words which the poor complaining woman perceived, feeling immediately that she had been inhospitable and perhaps unjust. She put out her hand softly, touching the other woman’s arm, and looking up into her guest’s face. “If this is so, it is terrible,” said Emily.

“Perhaps I oughtn’t to speak so free.”

“Oh, yes; — for your children, and yourself, and your husband.”

“It’s them, — and him. Of course it’s not your doing, and Mr. Lopez, I’m sure, is a very fine gentleman. And if he gets wrong one way, he’ll get himself right in another.” Upon hearing this Emily shook her head. “Your papa is a rich man, and won’t see you and yours come to want. There’s nothing more to come to me or Sexty let it be ever so.”

“Why does he do it?”

“Why does who do it?”

“Your husband. Why don’t you speak to him as you do to me, and tell him to mind only his proper business?”

“Now you are angry with me.”

“Angry! No; — indeed I am not angry. Every word that you say is good, and true, and just what you ought to say. I am not angry, but I am terrified. I know nothing of my husband’s business. I cannot tell you that you should trust to it. He is very clever,
but — “

“But — what, ma’am?”

“Perhaps I should say that he is ambitious.”

“You mean he wants to get rich too quick, ma’am.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Then it’s just the same with Sexty. He’s ambitious too. But what’s the good of being ambitious, Mrs. Lopez, if you never know whether you’re on your head or your heels? And what’s the good of being ambitious if you’re to get into the workhouse? I know what that means. There’s one or two of them sort of men gets into Parliament, and has houses as big as the Queen’s palace, while hundreds of them has their wives and children in the gutter. Who ever hears of them? Nobody. It don’t become any man to be ambitious who has got a wife and family. If he’s a bachelor, why, of course, he can go to the Colonies. There’s Mary Jane and the two little ones right down on the sea, with their feet in the salt water. Shall we put on our hats, Mrs. Lopez, and go and look after them?” To this proposition Emily assented, and the two ladies went out after the children.

“Mix yourself another glass,” said Sexty to his partner.

“I’d rather not. Don’t ask me again. You know I never drink, and I don’t like being pressed.”

“By George! — You are particular.”

“What’s the use of teasing a fellow to do a thing he doesn’t like?”

“You won’t mind me having another?”

“Fifty if you please, so that I’m not forced to join you.”

“Forced! It’s liberty ‘all here, and you can do as you please. Only when a fellow will take a drop with me he’s better company.”

“Then I’m d–––– bad company, and you’d better get somebody else to be jolly with. To tell you the truth, Sexty, I suit you better at business than at this sort of thing. I’m like Shylock, you know.”

“I don’t know about Shylock, but I’m blessed if I think you suit me very well at anything. I’m putting up with a deal of ill-usage, and when I try to be happy with you, you won’t drink, and you tell me about Shylock. He was a Jew, wasn’t he?”

“That is the general idea.”

“Then you ain’t very much like him, for they’re a sort of people that always have money about ‘em.”

“How do you suppose he made his money to begin with? What an ass you are!”

“That’s true. I am. Ever since I began putting my name on the same bit of paper with yours I’ve been an ass.”

“You’ll have to be one a bit longer yet; — unless you mean to throw up everything. At this present moment you are six or seven thousand pounds richer than you were before you first met me.”

“I wish I could see the money.”

“That’s like you. What’s the use of money you can see? How are you to make money out of money by looking at it? I like to know that my money is fructifying.”

“I like to know that it’s all there, — and I did know it before I ever saw you. I’m blessed if I know it now. Go down and join the ladies, will you? You ain’t much of a companion up here.”

Shortly after that Lopez told Mrs. Parker that he had already bade adieu to her husband, and then he took his wife to their own lodgings.

The time spent by Mrs. Lopez at Dovercourt was by no means one of complete happiness. Her husband did not come down very frequently, alleging that his business kept him in town, and that the journey was too long. When he did come he annoyed her either by moroseness and tyranny, or by an affectation of loving good-humour, which was the more disagreeable alternative of the two. She knew that he had no right to be good-humoured, and she was quite able to appreciate the difference between fictitious love and love that was real. He did not while she was at Dovercourt speak to her again directly about her father’s money, — but he gave her to understand that he required from her very close economy. Then again she referred to the brougham which she knew was to be in readiness on her return to London; but he told her that he was the best judge of that. The economy which he demanded was that comfortless heart-rending economy which nips the practiser at every turn, but does not betray itself to the world at large. He would have her save out of her washerwoman and linendraper, and yet have a smart gown and go in a brougham. He begrudged her postage stamps, and stopped the subscription at Mudie’s, though he insisted on a front seat in the Dovercourt church, paying half a guinea more for it than he would for a place at the side. And then before their sojourn at the place had come to an end he left her for awhile absolutely penniless, so that when the butcher and baker called for their money she could not pay them. That was a dreadful calamity to her, and of which she was hardly able to measure the real worth. It had never happened to her before to have to refuse an application for money that was due. In her father’s house such a thing, as far as she knew, had never happened. She had sometimes heard that Everett was impecunious, but that had simply indicated an additional call upon her father. When the butcher came the second time she wrote to her husband in an agony. Should she write to her father for a supply? She was sure that her father would not leave them in actual want. Then he sent her a cheque, enclosed in a very angry letter. Apply to her father! Had she not learned as yet that she was not to lean on her father any longer, but simply on him? And was she such a fool as to suppose that a tradesman could not wait a month for his money?

During all this time she had no friend, — no person to whom she could speak, — except Mrs. Parker. Mrs. Parker was very open and very confidential about the business, really knowing very much more about it than did Mrs. Lopez. There was some sympathy and confidence between her and her husband, though they had latterly been much lessened by Sexty’s conduct. Mrs. Parker talked daily about the business now that her mouth had been opened, and was very clearly of opinion that it was not a good business. “Sexty don’t think it good himself,” she said.