Mr. Hartlepod
When the time came at which Lopez should have left Manchester Square
he was still there. Mr. Wharton, in discussing the matter with his
daughter,--when wishing to persuade her that she might remain in his
house even in opposition to her husband,--had not told her that he
had actually desired Lopez to leave it. He had then felt sure that
the man would go and would take his wife with him, but he did not
even yet know the obduracy and the cleverness and the impregnability
of his son-in-law. When the time came, when he saw his daughter in
the morning after the notice had been given, he could not bring
himself even yet to say to her that he had issued an order for
his banishment. Days went by and Lopez was still there, and the
old barrister said no further word on the subject. The two men
never met;--or met simply in the hall or passages. Wharton himself
studiously avoided such meetings, thus denying himself the commonest
uses of his own house. At last Emily told him that her husband had
fixed the day for her departure. The next Indian mail-packet by which
they would leave England would start from Southampton on the 2nd of
April, and she was to be ready to go on that day. "How is it to be
till then?" the father asked in a low, uncertain voice.
"I suppose I may remain with you."
"And your husband?"
"He will be here too,--I suppose."
"Such a misery,--such a destruction of everything no man ever
heard of before!" said Mr. Wharton. To this she made no reply,
but continued working at some necessary preparation for her final
departure. "Emily," he said, "I will make any sacrifice to prevent
it. What can be done? Short of injuring Everett's interests I will do
anything."
"I do not know," she said.
"You must understand something of his affairs."
"Nothing whatever. He has told me nothing of them. In earlier
days,--soon after our marriage,--he bade me get money from you."
"When you wrote to me for money from Italy?"
"And after that. I have refused to do anything;--to say a word. I
told him that it must be between you and him. What else could I say?
And now he tells me nothing."
"I cannot think that he should want you to go with him." Then there
was again a pause. "Is it because he loves you?"
"Not that, papa."
"Why then should he burden himself with a companion? His money,
whatever he has, would go further without such impediment."
"Perhaps he thinks, papa, that while I am with him he has a hold upon
you."
"He shall have a stronger hold by leaving you. What is he to gain? If
I could only know his price."
"Ask him, papa."
"I do not even know how I am to speak to him again."
Then again there was a pause. "Papa," she said after a while, "I have
done it myself. Let me go. You will still have Everett. And it may be
that after a time I shall come back to you. He will not kill me, and
it may be that I shall not die."
"By God!" said Mr. Wharton, rising from his chair suddenly, "if there
were money to be made by it, I believe that he would murder you
without scruple." Thus it was that within eighteen months of her
marriage the father spoke to his daughter of her husband.
"What am I to take with me?" she said to her husband a few days
later.
"You had better ask your father."
"Why should I ask him, Ferdinand? How should he know?"
"And how should I?"
"I should have thought that you would interest yourself about it."
"Upon my word I have enough to interest me just at present, without
thinking of your finery. I suppose you mean what clothes you should
have?"
"I was not thinking of myself only."
"You need think of nothing else. Ask him what he pleases to allow you
to spend, and then I will tell you what to get."
"I will never ask him for anything, Ferdinand."
"Then you may go without anything. You might as well do it at once,
for you will have to do it sooner or later. Or, if you please, go
to his tradesmen and say nothing to him about it. They will give
you credit. You see how it is, my dear. He has cheated me in a most
rascally manner. He has allowed me to marry his daughter, and because
I did not make a bargain with him as another man would have done, he
denies me the fortune I had a right to expect with you. You know that
the Israelites despoiled the Egyptians, and it was taken as a merit
on their part. Your father is an Egyptian to me, and I will despoil
him. You can tell him that I say so if you please."
And so the days went on till the first week of February had passed,
and Parliament had met. Both Lopez and his wife were still living in
Manchester Square. Not another word had been said as to that notice
to quit, nor an allusion made to it. It was supposed to be a settled
thing that Lopez was to start with his wife for Guatemala in the
first week in April. Mr. Wharton had himself felt that difficulty
as to his daughter's outfit, and had told her that she might get
whatever it pleased her on his credit. "For yourself, my dear."
"Papa, I will get nothing till he bids me."
"But you can't go across the world without anything. What are you to
do in such a place as that unless you have the things you want?"
"What do poor people do who have to go? What should I do if you had
cast me off because of my disobedience?"
"But I have not cast you off."
"Tell him that you will give him so much, and then, if he bids me, I
will spend it."
"Let it be so. I will tell him."
Upon that Mr. Wharton did speak to his son-in-law;--coming upon him
suddenly one morning in the dining-room. "Emily will want an outfit
if she is to go to this place."
"Like other people she wants many things that she cannot get."
"I will tell my tradesmen to furnish her with what she wants, up
to,--well,--suppose I say £200. I have spoken to her and she wants
your sanction."
"My sanction for spending your money? She can have that very
quickly."
"You can tell her so;--or I will do so."
Upon that Mr. Wharton was going, but Lopez stopped him. It was now
essential that the money for the shares in the San Juan mine should
be paid up, and his father-in-law's pocket was still the source from
which the enterprising son-in-law hoped to procure it. Lopez had
fully made up his mind to demand it, and thought that the time had
now come. And he was resolved that he would not ask it as a favour on
bended knee. He was beginning to feel his own power, and trusted that
he might prevail by other means than begging. "Mr. Wharton," he said,
"you and I have not been very good friends lately."
"No, indeed."
"There was a time,--a very short time,--during which I thought that
we might hit it off together, and I did my best. You do not, I fancy,
like men of my class."
"Well;--well! You had better go on if there be anything to say."
"I have much to say, and I will go on. You are a rich man, and I am
your son-in-law." Mr. Wharton put his left hand up to his forehead,
brushing the few hairs back from his head, but he said nothing. "Had
I received from you during the last most vital year that assistance
which I think I had a right to expect, I also might have been a rich
man now. It is no good going back to that." Then he paused, but still
Mr. Wharton said nothing. "Now you know what has come to me and to
your daughter. We are to be expatriated."
"Is that my fault?"
"I think it is, but I mean to say nothing further of that. This
Company which is sending me out, and which will probably be the most
thriving thing of the kind which has come up within these twenty
years, is to pay me a salary of £1000 a year as resident manager at
San Juan."
"So I understand."
"The salary alone would be a beggarly thing. Guatemala, I take it, is
not the cheapest country in the world in which a man can live. But I
am to go out as the owner of fifty shares on which £100 each must be
paid up, and I am entitled to draw another £1000 a year as dividend
on the profit of those shares."
"That will be twenty per cent."
"Exactly."
"And will double your salary."
"Just so. But there is one little ceremony to be perfected before I
can be allowed to enter upon so halcyon a state of existence. The
£100 a share must be paid up." Mr. Wharton simply stared at him. "I
must have the £5000 to invest in the undertaking before I can start."
"Well!"
"Now I have not got £5000 myself, nor any part of it. You do not
wish, I suppose, to see either me or your daughter starve. And as
for me, I hardly flatter myself when I say that you are very anxious
to be rid of me. £5000 is not very much for me to ask of you, as I
regard it."
"Such consummate impudence I never met in my life before!"
"Nor perhaps so much unprevaricating downright truth. At any rate
such is the condition of my affairs. If I am to go the money must be
paid this week. I have, perhaps foolishly, put off mentioning the
matter till I was sure that I could not raise the sum elsewhere.
Though I feel my claim on you to be good, Mr. Wharton, it is not
pleasant to me to make it."
"You are asking me for £5000 down!"
"Certainly I am."
"What security am I to have?"
"Security?"
"Yes;--that if I pay it I shall not be troubled again by the meanest
scoundrel that it has ever been my misfortune to meet. How am I to
know that you will not come back to-morrow? How am I to know that you
will go at all? Do you think it probable that I will give you £5000
on your own simple word?"
"Then the scoundrel will stay in England,--and will generally find it
convenient to live in Manchester Square."
"I'll be d----d if he does. Look here, sir. Between you and me
there can be a bargain, and nothing but a bargain. I will pay the
£5000,--on certain conditions."
"I didn't doubt at all that you would pay it."
"I will go with you to the office of this Company, and will pay for
the shares if I can receive assurance there that the matter is as you
say, and that the shares will not be placed in your power before you
have reached Guatemala."
"You can come to-day, sir, and receive all that assurance."
"And I must have a written undertaking from you,--a document which my
daughter can show if it be necessary,--that you will never claim her
society again or trouble her with any application."
"You mistake me, Mr. Wharton. My wife goes with me to Guatemala."
"Then I will not pay one penny. Why should I? What is your presence
or absence to me except as it concerns her? Do you think that I care
for your threats of remaining here? The police will set that right."
"Wherever I go, my wife goes."
"We'll see to that too. If you want the money, you must leave her.
Good morning."
Mr. Wharton as he went to his chambers thought the matter over. He
was certainly willing to risk the £5000 demanded if he could rid
himself and his daughter of this terrible incubus, even if it were
only for a time. If Lopez would but once go to Guatemala, leaving his
wife behind him, it would be comparatively easy to keep them apart
should he ever return. The difficulty now was not in him but in her.
The man's conduct had been so outrageous, so bare-faced, so cruel,
that the lawyer did not doubt but that he could turn the husband
out of his house, and keep the wife, even now, were it not that she
was determined to obey the man whom she, in opposition to all her
friends, had taken as her master. "I have done it myself, and I will
bear it," was all the answer she would make when her father strove
to persuade her to separate herself from her husband. "You have got
Everett," she would say. "When a girl is married she is divided from
her family;--and I am divided." But she would willingly stay if Lopez
would bid her stay. It now seemed that he could not go without the
£5000; and, when the pressure came upon him, surely he would go and
leave his wife.
In the course of that day Mr. Wharton went to the offices of the
San Juan mine and asked to see the Director. He was shown up into
a half-furnished room, two stories high, in Coleman Street, where
he found two clerks sitting upon stools;--and when he asked for the
Director was shown into the back room in which sat the Secretary. The
Secretary was a dark, plump little man with a greasy face, who had
the gift of assuming an air of great importance as he twisted his
chair round to face visitors who came to inquire about the San Juan
Mining Company. His name was Hartlepod; and if the San Juan mine
"turned out trumps," as he intended that it should, Mr. Hartlepod
meant to be a great man in the City. To Mr. Hartlepod Mr. Wharton,
with considerable embarrassment, explained as much of the joint
history of himself and Lopez as he found to be absolutely necessary.
"He has only left the office about half-an-hour," said Mr. Hartlepod.
"Of course you understand that he is my son-in-law."
"He has mentioned your name to us, Mr. Wharton, before now."
"And he is going out to Guatemala?"
"Oh yes;--he's going out. Has he not told you as much himself?"
"Certainly, sir. And he has told me that he is desirous of buying
certain shares in the Company before he starts."
"Probably, Mr. Wharton."
"Indeed, I believe he cannot go unless he buys them."
"That may be so, Mr. Wharton. No doubt he has told you all that
himself."
"The fact is, Mr. Hartlepod, I am willing, under certain
stipulations, to advance him the money." Mr. Hartlepod bowed. "I
need not trouble you with private affairs between myself and my
son-in-law." Again the Secretary bowed. "But it seems to be for his
interest that he should go."
"A very great opening indeed, Mr. Wharton. I don't see how a man is
to have a better opening. A fine salary! His expenses out paid! One
of the very best things that has come up for many years! And as for
the capital he is to embark in the affair, he is as safe to get 20
per cent. on it,--as safe,--as safe as the Bank of England."
"He'll have the shares?"
"Oh yes;--the scrip will be handed to him at once."
"And,--and--"
"If you mean about the mine, Mr. Wharton, you may take my word that
it's all real. It's not one of those sham things that melt away like
snow and leave the shareholders nowhere. There's the prospectus, Mr.
Wharton. Perhaps you have not seen that before. Take it away and
cast your eye over it at your leisure." Mr. Wharton put the somewhat
lengthy pamphlet into his pocket. "Look at the list of Directors.
We've three members of Parliament, a baronet, and one or two City
names that are as good--as good as the Bank of England. If that
prospectus won't make a man confident I don't know what will. Why,
Mr. Wharton, you don't think that your son-in-law would get those
fifty shares at par unless he was going out as our general local
manager. The shares ain't to be had. It's a large concern as far as
capital goes. You'll see if you look. About a quarter of a million
paid up. But it's all in a box as one may say. It's among ourselves.
The shares ain't in the market. Of course it's not for me to say what
should be done between you and your son-in-law. Lopez is a friend
of mine, and a man I esteem, and all that. Nevertheless I shouldn't
think of advising you to do this or that,--or not to do it. But when
you talk of safety, Mr. Wharton,--why, Mr. Wharton, I don't scruple
to tell you as a man who knows what these things are, that this is
an opportunity that doesn't come in a man's way perhaps twice in his
life."
Mr. Wharton found that he had nothing more to say, and went back to
Lincoln's Inn. He knew very well that Mr. Hartlepod's assurances
were not worth much. Mr. Hartlepod himself and his belongings, the
clerks in his office, the look of the rooms, and the very nature of
the praises which he had sung, all of them inspired anything but
confidence. Mr. Wharton was a man of the world; and, though he knew
nothing of City ways, was quite aware that no man in his senses would
lay out £5000 on the mere word of Mr. Hartlepod. But still he was
inclined to make the payment. If only he could secure the absence
of Lopez,--if he could be sure that Lopez would in truth go to
Guatemala, and if also he could induce the man to go without his
wife, he would risk the money. The money would, of course, be thrown
away,--but he would throw it away. Lopez no doubt had declared that
he would not go without his wife, even though the money were paid
for him. But the money was an alluring sum! As the pressure upon the
man became greater, Mr. Wharton thought he would probably consent to
leave his wife behind him.
In his emergency the barrister went to his attorney and told him
everything. The two lawyers were closeted together for an hour, and
Mr. Wharton's last words to his old friend were as follows:--"I will
risk the money, Walker, or rather I will consent absolutely to throw
it away,--as it will be thrown away,--if it can be managed that he
shall in truth go to this place without his wife."