“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 £1,000 a year as dividend on the profit of those shares.”
“That will be twenty percent.”
“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 £5,000 to invest in the undertaking before I can start.”
“Well!”
“Now I have not got £5,000 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. £5,000 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 £5,000 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 tomorrow? How am I to know that you will go at all? Do you think it probable that I will give you £5,000 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 £5,000—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 today, 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 £5,000 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 barefaced, 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 £5,000; 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
