“I told her that you’d be coming,” said Sexty, “and she wanted me to put off my pipe and little drop of drink; but I said that if Mrs. Lopez was the lady I took her to be she wouldn’t begrudge a hardworking fellow his pipe and glass on a holiday.”
There was a soundness of sense in this which mollified any feeling of disgust which Emily might have felt at the man’s vulgarity. “I think you are quite right, Mr. Parker. I should be very sorry if—if—”
“If I was to put my pipe out. Well, I won’t. You’ll take a glass of sherry, Lopez? Though I’m drinking spirits myself, I brought down a hamper of sherry wine. Oh, nonsense;—you must take something. That’s right, Jane. Let us have the stuff and the glasses, and then they can do as they like.” Lopez lit a cigar, and allowed his host to pour out for him a glass of “sherry wine,” while Mrs. Lopez went into the house with Mrs. Parker and the children.
Mrs. Parker opened herself out to her new friend immediately. She hoped that they two might see “a deal of each other;—that is, if you don’t think me too pushing.” Sextus, she said, was so much away, coming down to Dovercourt only every other day! And then, within the half hour which was consumed by Lopez with his cigar, the poor woman got upon the general troubles of her life. Did Mrs. Lopez think that “all this speckelation was just the right thing?”
“I don’t think that I know anything about it, Mrs. Parker.”
“But you ought;—oughtn’t you, now? Don’t you think that a wife ought to know what it is that her husband is after;—specially if there’s children? A good bit of the money was mine, Mrs. Lopez; and though I don’t begrudge it, not one bit, if any good is to come out of it to him or them, a woman doesn’t like what her father has given her should be made ducks and drakes of.”
“But are they making ducks and drakes?”
“When he don’t tell me I’m always afeard. And I’ll tell you what I know just as well as two and two. When he comes home a little flustered, and then takes more than his regular allowance, he’s been at something as don’t quite satisfy him. He’s never that way when he’s done a good day’s work at his regular business. He takes to the children then, and has one glass after his dinner, and tells me all about it—down to the shillings and pence. But it’s very seldom he’s that way now.”
“You may think it very odd, Mrs. Parker, but I don’t in the least know what my husband is—in business.”
“And you never ask?”
“I haven’t been very long married, you know;—only about ten months.”
“I’d had my fust by that time.”
“Only nine months, I think, indeed.”
“Well; I wasn’t very long after that. But I took care to know what it was he was a-doing of in the city long before that time. And I did use to know everything, till—” She was going to say, till Lopez had come upon the scene. But she did not wish, at any rate as yet, to be harsh to her new friend.
“I hope it is all right,” said Emily.
“Sometimes he’s as though the Bank of England was all his own. And there’s been more money come into the house;—that I must say. And there isn’t an open-handeder one than Sexty anywhere. He’d like to see me in a silk gown every day of my life;—and as for the children, there’s nothing smart enough for them. Only I’d sooner have a little and safe, than anything ever so fine, and never be sure whether it wasn’t going to come to an end.”
“There I agree with you, quite.”
“I don’t suppose men feels it as we do; but, oh, Mrs. Lopez, give me a little, safe, so that I may know that I shan’t see my children want. When I thinks what it would be to have them darlings’ little bellies empty, and nothing in the cupboard, I get that low that I’m nigh fit for Bedlam.”
In the meantime the two men outside the porch were discussing their affairs in somewhat the same spirit. At last Lopez showed his friend Wharton’s letter, and told him of the expected schedule. “Schedule be d⸺d, you know,” said Lopez. “How am I to put down a rise of 12s. 6d. a ton on Kauri gum in a schedule? But when you come to 2,000 tons it’s £1,250.”
“He’s very old;—isn’t he?”
“But as strong as a horse.”
“He’s got the money?”
“Yes;—he has got it safe enough. There’s no doubt about the money.”
“What he talks about is only a will. Now you want the money at once.”
“Of course I do;—and he talks to me as if I were some old fogy with an estate of my own. I must concoct a letter and explain my views; and the more I can make him understand how things really are the better. I don’t suppose he wants to see his daughter come to grief.”
“Then the sooner you write it the better,” said Mr. Parker.
XLVI
“He Wants to Get Rich Too Quick”
As they strolled home Lopez told his wife that he had accepted an invitation to dine the next day at the Parkers’ cottage. In doing this his manner was not quite so gentle as when he had asked her to call on them. He had been a little ruffled by what had been said, and now exhibited his temper. “I don’t suppose it will be very nice,” he said, “but we may have to put up with worse things than that.”
“I have made no objection.”
“But you don’t seem to take to it very cordially.”
“I had thought that I got on very well
