“I cannot stay,” she said. “He has told me that I am to go, and I am in his hands. When you have a wife, Arthur, you will wish her to do your bidding. I hope she will do it for your sake, without the pain I have in doing his. Goodbye, dear friend.”
She put her hand out and he grasped it, and stood for a moment looking at her. Then he seized her in his arms and kissed her brow and her lips. “Oh, Emily, why were you not my wife? My darling, my darling!”
She had hardly extricated herself when the door opened, and Lopez stood in the room. “Mr. Fletcher,” he said, very calmly, “what is the meaning of this?”
“He has come to bid me farewell,” said Emily. “When going on so long a journey one likes to see one’s old friends—perhaps for the last time.” There was something of indifference to his anger in her tone, and something also of scorn.
Lopez looked from one to the other, affecting an air of great displeasure. “You know, sir,” he said, “that you cannot be welcome here.”
“But he has been welcome,” said his wife.
“And I look upon your coming as a base act. You are here with the intention of creating discord between me and my wife.”
“I am here to tell her that she has a friend to trust to if she ever wants a friend,” said Fletcher.
“And you think that such trust as that would be safer than trust in her husband? I cannot turn you out of this house, sir, because it does not belong to me, but I desire you to leave at once the room which is occupied by my wife.” Fletcher paused a moment to say goodbye to the poor woman, while Lopez continued with increased indignation, “If you do not go at once you will force me to desire her to retire. She shall not remain in the same room with you.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Fletcher,” she said, again putting out her hand.
But Lopez struck it up, not violently, so as to hurt her, but still with eager roughness. “Not in my presence,” he said. “Go, sir, when I desire you.”
“God bless you, my friend,” said Arthur Fletcher. “I pray that I may live to see you back in the old country.”
“He was—kissing you,” said Lopez, as soon as the door was shut.
“He was,” said Emily.
“And you tell me so to my face, with such an air as that!”
“What am I to tell you when you ask me? I did not bid him kiss me.”
“But afterwards you took his part as his friend.”
“Why not? I should lie to you if I pretended that I was angry with him for what he did.”
“Perhaps you will tell me that you love him.”
“Of course I love him. There are different kinds of love, Ferdinand. There is that which a woman gives to a man when she would fain mate with him. It is the sweetest love of all, if it would only last. And there is another love—which is not given, but which is won, perhaps through long years, by old friends. I have none older than Arthur Fletcher, and none who are dearer to me.”
“And you think it right that he should take you in his arms and kiss you?”
“On such an occasion I could not blame him.”
“You were ready enough to receive it, perhaps.”
“Well; I was. He has loved me well, and I shall never see him again. He is very dear to me, and I was parting from him forever. It was the first and the last, and I did not grudge it to him. You must remember, Ferdinand, that you are taking me across the world from all my friends.”
“Psha,” he said, “that is all over. You are not going anywhere that I know of—unless it be out into the streets when your father shuts his door on you.” And so saying he left the room without another word.
LX
The Tenway Junction
And thus the knowledge was conveyed to Mrs. Lopez that her fate in life was not to carry her to Guatemala. At the very moment in which she had been summoned to meet Arthur Fletcher she had been busy with her needle preparing that almost endless collection of garments necessary for a journey of many days at sea. And now she was informed, by a chance expression, by a word aside, as it were, that the journey was not to be made. “That is all over,” he had said—and then had left her, telling her nothing further. Of course she stayed her needle. Whether the last word had been true or false, she could not work again, at any rate till it had been contradicted. If it were so, what was to be her fate? One thing was certain to her;—that she could not remain under her father’s roof. It was impossible that an arrangement so utterly distasteful as the present one, both to her father and to herself, should be continued. But where then should they live—and of what nature would her life be if she should be separated from her father?
That evening she saw her father, and he corroborated her husband’s statement. “It is all over now,” he said—“that scheme of his of going to superintend the mines. The mines don’t want him, and won’t have him. I can’t say that I wonder at it.”
“What are we to do, papa?”
“Ah;—that I cannot say. I suppose he will condescend still to honour me with his company. I do not know why he should wish to go to Guatemala
