When the two men were alone together after dinner, Mr. Wharton used a different tone. “If you are to come,” he said, “you might as well do it as soon as possible.”
“A day or two will be enough for us.”
“There are one or two things you should understand. I shall be very happy to see your friends at any time, but I shall like to know when they are coming before they come.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I dine out a good deal.”
“At the club,” suggested Lopez.
“Well;—at the club or elsewhere. It doesn’t matter. There will always be dinner here for you and Emily, just as though I were at home. I say this, so that there need be no questionings or doubts about it hereafter. And don’t let there ever be any question of money between us.”
“Certainly not.”
“Everett has an allowance, and this will be tantamount to an allowance to Emily. You have also had £3,500. I hope it has been well expended;—except the £500 at that election, which has, of course, been thrown away.”
“The other was brought into the business.”
“I don’t know what the business is. But you and Emily must understand that the money has been given as her fortune.”
“Oh, quite so;—part of it, you mean.”
“I mean just what I say.”
“I call it part of it, because, as you observed just now, our living here will be the same as though you made Emily an allowance.”
“Ah;—well; you can look at it in that light if you please. John has the key of the cellar. He’s a man I can trust. As a rule I have port and sherry at table every day. If you like claret I will get some a little cheaper than what I use when friends are here.”
“What wine I have is quite indifferent to me.”
“I like it good, and I have it good. I always breakfast at 9:30. You can have yours earlier if you please. I don’t know that there’s anything else to be said. I hope we shall get into the way of understanding each other, and being mutually comfortable. Shall we go upstairs to Emily and Mrs. Roby?” And so it was determined that Emily was to come back to her old house about eight months after her marriage.
Mr. Wharton himself sat late into the night, all alone, thinking about it. What he had done, he had done in a morose way, and he was aware that it was so. He had not beamed with smiles, and opened his arms lovingly, and, bidding God bless his dearest children, told them that if they would only come and sit round his hearth he should be the happiest old man in London. He had said little or nothing of his own affection even for his daughter, but had spoken of the matter as one of which the pecuniary aspect alone was important. He had found out that the saving so effected would be material to Lopez, and had resolved that there should be no shirking of the truth in what he was prepared to do. He had been almost asked to take the young married couple in, and feed them—so that they might live free of expense. He was willing to do it—but was not willing that there should be any soft-worded, high-toned false pretension. He almost read Lopez to the bottom—not, however, giving the man credit for dishonesty so deep or cleverness so great as he possessed. But as regarded Emily, he was also actuated by a personal desire to have her back again as an element of happiness to himself. He had pined for her since he had been left alone, hardly knowing what it was that he had wanted. And now as he thought of it all, he was angry with himself that he had not been more loving and softer in his manner to her. She at any rate was honest. No doubt of that crossed his mind. And now he had been bitter to her—bitter in his manner—simply because he had not wished to appear to have been taken in by her husband. Thinking of all this, he got up, and went to his desk, and wrote her a note, which she would receive on the following morning after her husband had left her. It was very short.
Dearest E.
I am so overjoyed that you are coming back to me.
He had judged her quite rightly. The manner in which the thing had been arranged had made her very wretched. There had been no love in it;—nothing apparently but assertions on one side that much was being given, and on the other acknowledgments that much was to be received. She was aware that in this her father had condemned her husband. She also had condemned him;—and felt, alas, that she also had been condemned. But this little letter took away that sting. She could read in her father’s note all the action of his mind. He had known that he was bound to acquit her, and he had done so with one of the old long-valued expressions of his love.
XLI
The Value of a Thick Skin
Sir Orlando Drought must have felt bitterly the quiescence with which he sank into obscurity on the second bench on the opposite side of the House. One great occasion he had on which it was his privilege to explain to four or five hundred gentlemen the insuperable reasons which caused him to break away from those right honourable friends to act with whom had been his comfort and his duty, his great joy and his unalloyed satisfaction. Then he occupied
