And in spite of all that had come and gone he still did hope that if the need to go were actually there he might even yet get the money from Mr. Wharton. Surely Mr. Wharton would sooner pay such a sum than be troubled at home with such a son-in-law. Should the worst come to the worst, of course he could raise the money by consenting to leave his wife at home. But this was not part of his plan, if he could avoid it. £5,000 would be a very low price at which to sell his wife, and all that he might get from his connection with her. As long as he kept her with him he was in possession at any rate of all that Mr. Wharton would do for her. He had not therefore as yet made his final application to his father-in-law for the money, having found it possible to postpone the payment till the middle of February. His quarrel with Mr. Wharton this morning he regarded as having little or no effect upon his circumstances. Mr. Wharton would not give him the money because he loved him, nor yet from personal respect, nor from any sense of duty as to what he might owe to a son-in-law. It would be simply given as the price by which his absence might be purchased, and his absence would not be the less desirable because of this morning’s quarrel.
But, even yet, he was not quite resolved as to going to Guatemala. Sexty Parker had been sucked nearly dry, and was in truth at this moment so violent with indignation and fear and remorse that Lopez did not dare to show himself in Little Tankard Yard; but still there were, even yet, certain hopes in that direction from which great results might come. If a certain new spirit which had just been concocted from the bark of trees in Central Africa, and which was called Bios, could only be made to go up in the market, everything might be satisfactorily arranged. The hoardings of London were already telling the public that if it wished to get drunk without any of the usual troubles of intoxication it must drink Bios. The public no doubt does read the literature of the hoardings, but then it reads so slowly! This Bios had hardly been twelve months on the boards as yet! But they were now increasing the size of the letters in the advertisements and the jocundity of the pictures—and the thing might be done. There was, too, another hope—another hope of instant moneys by which Guatemala might be staved off, as to which further explanation shall be given in a further chapter.
“I suppose I shall find Dixon a decent sort of a fellow?” said Lopez to the Secretary of the Association in Coleman Street.
“Rough, you know.”
“But honest?”
“Oh, yes;—he’s all that.”
“If he’s honest, and what I call loyal, I don’t care a straw for anything else. One doesn’t expect West-end manners in Guatemala. But I shall have a deal to do with him—and I hate a fellow that you can’t depend on.”
“Mr. Happerton used to think a great deal of Dixon.”
“That’s all right,” said Lopez. Mr. Dixon was the underground manager out at the San Juan mine, and was perhaps as anxious for a loyal and honest colleague as was Mr. Lopez. If so, Mr. Dixon was very much in the way to be disappointed.
Lopez stayed at the office all the day studying the affairs of the San Juan mine, and then went to the Progress for his dinner. Hitherto he had taken no steps whatever as to getting lodgings for himself or for his wife.
LIII
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
