“There’s a brother, Lopez—isn’t there?”
“Yes—there’s a brother; but Wharton has enough for two; and if he were to put either out of his will it wouldn’t be my wife. Old men don’t like parting with their money, and he’s like other old men. If it were not so I shouldn’t bother myself coming into the city at all.”
“Has he enough for that, Lopez?”
“I suppose he’s worth a quarter of a million.”
“By Jove! And where did he get it?”
“Perseverance, sir. Put by a shilling a day, and let it have its natural increase, and see what it will come to at the end of fifty years. I suppose old Wharton has been putting by two or three thousand out of his professional income, at any rate for the last thirty years, and never for a moment forgetting its natural increase. That’s one way to make a fortune.”
“It ain’t rapid enough for you and me, Lopez.”
“No. That was the old-fashioned way, and the most sure. But, as you say, it is not rapid enough; and it robs a man of the power of enjoying his money when he has made it. But it’s a very good thing to be closely connected with a man who has already done that kind of thing. There’s no doubt about the money when it is there. It does not take to itself wings and fly away.”
“But the man who has it sticks to it uncommon hard.”
“Of course he does;—but he can’t take it away with him.”
“He can leave it to hospitals, Lopez. That’s the devil!”
“Sexty, my boy, I see you have taken an outlook into human life which does you credit. Yes, he can leave it to hospitals. But why does he leave it to hospitals?”
“Something of being afraid about his soul, I suppose.”
“No; I don’t believe in that. Such a man as this, who has been hard-fisted all his life, and who has had his eyes thoroughly open, who has made his own money in the sharp intercourse of man to man, and who keeps it to the last gasp—he doesn’t believe that he’ll do his soul any good by giving it to hospitals when he can’t keep it himself any longer. His mind has freed itself from those cobwebs long since. He gives his money to hospitals because the last pleasure of which he is capable is that of spiting his relations. And it is a great pleasure to an old man, when his relations have been disgusted with him for being old and loving his money. I rather think I should do it myself.”
“I’d give myself a chance of going to heaven, I think,” said Parker.
“Don’t you know that men will rob and cheat on their deathbeds, and say their prayers all the time? Old Wharton won’t leave his money to hospitals if he’s well handled by those about him.”
“And you’ll handle him well;—eh, Lopez?”
“I won’t quarrel with him, or tell him that he’s a curmudgeon because he doesn’t do all that I want him. He’s over seventy, and he can’t carry his money with him.”
All this left so vivid an impression of the wisdom of his friend on the mind of Sextus Parker, that in spite of the harrowing fears by which he had been tormented on more than one occasion already, he allowed himself to be persuaded into certain fiscal arrangements, by which Lopez would find himself put at ease with reference to money at any rate for the next four months. He had at once told himself that this election would cost him £1,000. When various sums were mentioned in reference to such an affair, safety could alone be found in taking the outside sum;—perhaps might generally be more surely found by adding fifty percent to that. He knew that he was wrong about the election, but he assured himself that he had had no alternative. The misfortune had been that the Duke should have made his proclamation about the borough immediately after the offer made by the Duchess. He had been almost forced to send the agent down to inquire;—and the agent, when making his inquiries, had compromised him. He must go on with it now. Perhaps some idea of the pleasantness of increased intimacy with the Duchess of Omnium encouraged him in this way of thinking. The Duchess was up in town in February, and Lopez left a card in Carlton Terrace. On the very next day the card of the Duchess was left for Mrs. Lopez at the Belgrave Mansions.
Lopez went into the city every day, leaving home at about eleven o’clock, and not returning much before dinner. The young wife at first found that she hardly knew what to do with her time. Her aunt, Mrs. Roby, was distasteful to her. She had already learned from her husband that he had but little respect for Mrs. Roby. “You remember the sapphire brooch,” he had said once. “That was part of the price I had to pay for being allowed to approach you.” He was sitting at the time with his arm round her waist, looking out on beautiful scenery and talking of his old difficulties. She could not find it in her heart to be angry with him, but the idea brought to her mind was disagreeable to her. And she was thoroughly angry with Mrs. Roby. Of course in these days Mrs. Roby came to see her, and of course when she was up in Manchester Square, she went to the house round the corner—but there was no close intimacy between the aunt and the niece. And many of her father’s friends—whom she regarded as the Herefordshire set—were very cold to her. She had not made herself a glory to Herefordshire, and—as all these people said—had broken the heart of the best Herefordshire young man of the day. This made a great falling-off in her acquaintance,
