“What can I say, Mrs. Parker;—what can I do?”
“Where is he?”
“He is not here. He is dining at his club.”
“Where is that? I will go there and shame him before them all. Don’t you feel no shame? Because you’ve got things comfortable here, I suppose it’s all nothing to you. You don’t care, though my children were starving in the gutter—as they will do.”
“If you knew me, Mrs. Parker, you wouldn’t speak to me like that.”
“Know you! Of course I know you. You’re a lady, and your father’s a rich man, and your husband thinks no end of himself. And we’re poor people, so it don’t matter whether we’re robbed and ruined or not. That’s about it.”
“If I had anything, I’d give you all that I had.”
“And he’s taken to drinking that hard that he’s never rightly sober from morning to night.” As she told this story of her husband’s disgrace, the poor woman burst into tears. “Who’s to trust him with business now? He’s that brokenhearted that he don’t know which way to turn—only to the bottle. And Lopez has done it all—done it all! I haven’t got a father, ma’am, who has got a house over his head for me and my babies. Only think if you was turned out into the street with your babby, as I am like to be.”
“I have no baby,” said the wretched woman through her tears and sobs.
“Haven’t you, Mrs. Lopez? Oh dear!” exclaimed the softhearted woman, reduced at once to pity. “How was it then?”
“He died, Mrs. Parker—just a few days after he was born.”
“Did he now? Well, well. We all have our troubles, I suppose.”
“I have mine, I know,” said Emily, “and very, very heavy they are. I cannot tell you what I have to suffer.”
“Isn’t he good to you?”
“I cannot talk about it, Mrs. Parker. What you tell me about yourself has added greatly to my sorrows. My husband is talking of going away—to live out of England.”
“Yes, at a place they call—I forget what they call it, but I heard it.”
“Guatemala—in America.”
“I know. Sexty told me. He has no business to go anywhere, while he owes Sexty such a lot of money. He has taken everything, and now he’s going to Kattymaly!” At this moment Mr. Wharton knocked at the door and entered the room. As he did so Mrs. Parker got up and curtseyed.
“This is my father, Mrs. Parker,” said Emily. “Papa, this is Mrs. Parker. She is the wife of Mr. Parker, who was Ferdinand’s partner. She has come here with bad news.”
“Very bad news indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Parker, curtseying again. Mr. Wharton frowned, not as being angry with the woman, but feeling that some further horror was to be told him of his son-in-law. “I can’t help coming, sir,” continued Mrs. Parker. “Where am I to go if I don’t come? Mr. Lopez, sir, has ruined us root and branch—root and branch.”
“That at any rate is not my fault,” said Mr. Wharton.
“But she is his wife, sir. Where am I to go if not to where he lives? Am I to put up with everything gone, and my poor husband in the right way to go to Bedlam, and not to say a word about it to the grand relations of him who did it all?”
“He is a bad man,” said Mr. Wharton. “I cannot make him otherwise.”
“Will he do nothing for us?”
“I will tell you all I know about him.” Then Mr. Wharton did tell her all that he knew, as to the appointment at Guatemala and the amount of salary which was to be attached to it. “Whether he will do anything for you, I cannot say;—I should think not, unless he be forced. I should advise you to go to the offices of the Company in Coleman Street and try to make some terms there. But I fear—I fear it will be all useless.”
“Then we may starve.”
“It is not her fault,” said Mr. Wharton, pointing to his daughter. “She has had no hand in it. She knows less of it all than you do.”
“It is my fault,” said Emily, bursting out into self-reproach—“my fault that I married him.”
“Whether married or single he would have preyed upon Mr. Parker to the same extent.”
“Like enough,” said the poor wife. “He’d prey upon anybody as he could get a-hold of. And so, Mr. Wharton, you think that you can do nothing for me.”
“If your want be immediate I can relieve it,” said the barrister. Mrs. Parker did not like the idea of accepting direct charity, but, nevertheless, on going away did take the five sovereigns which Mr. Wharton offered to her.
After such an interview as that the dinner between the father and the daughter was not very happy. She was eaten up by remorse. Gradually she had learned how frightful was the thing she had done in giving herself to a man of whom she had known nothing. And it was not only that she had degraded herself by loving such a man, but that she had been persistent in clinging to him though her father and all his friends had told her of the danger which she was running. And now it seemed that she had destroyed her father as well as herself! All that she could do was to be persistent in her prayer that he would let her go. “I have done it,” she said that night, “and I could bear it better, if you would let me bear it alone.” But he only kissed her, and sobbed over her, and held her close to his heart with his clinging arms—in a manner in which he had never held her in their old happy days.
He took himself to his own rooms before Lopez returned, but she of course had to bear her husband’s presence. As she had declared to her father more than once, she was not afraid of
