“Oh, Ferdinand, are they not too grand?” said Emily.
“Perhaps they are a little more than we quite want just at present,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, sir, just how it has happened. A man I know wanted to let them for one year, just as they are, and offered them to me for £450—if I could pay the money in advance, at the moment. And so I paid it.”
“You have taken them, then?” said Mr. Wharton.
“Is it all settled?” said Emily, almost with disappointment.
“I have paid the money, and I have so far taken them. But it is by no means settled. You have only to say you don’t like them, and you shall never be asked to put your foot in them again.”
“But I do like them,” she whispered to him.
“The truth is, sir, that there is not the slightest difficulty in parting with them. So that when the chance came in my way I thought it best to secure the thing. It had all to be done, so to say, in an hour. My friend—as far as he was a friend, for I don’t know much about him—wanted the money and wanted to be off. So here they are, and Emily can do as she likes.” Of course the rooms were regarded from that moment as the home for the next twelve months of Mr. and Mrs. Ferdinand Lopez.
And then they were married. The marriage was by no means a gay affair, the chief management of it falling into the hands of Mrs. Dick Roby. Mrs. Dick indeed provided not only the breakfast—or saw rather that it was provided, for of course Mr. Wharton paid the bill—but the four bridesmaids also, and all the company. They were married in the church in Vere Street, then went back to the house in Manchester Square, and within a couple of hours were on their road to Dover. Through it all not a word was said about money. At the last moment—when he was free from fear as to any questions about his own affairs—Lopez had hoped that the old man would say something. “You will find so many thousand pounds at your bankers’;”—or, “You may look to me for so many hundreds a year.” But there was not a word. The girl had come to him without the assurance of a single shilling. In his great endeavour to get her he had been successful. As he thought of this in the carriage, he pressed his arm close round her waist. If the worst were to come to the worst, he would fight the world for her. But if this old man should be stubborn, closefisted, and absolutely resolved to bestow all his money upon his son because of this marriage—ah!—how should he be able to bear such a wrong as that?
Half-a-dozen times during that journey to Dover he resolved to think nothing further about it, at any rate for a fortnight; and yet, before he reached Dover, he had said a word to her. “I wonder what your father means to do about money? He never told you?”
“Not a word.”
“It is very odd that he should never have said anything.”
“Does it matter, dear?”
“Not in the least. But of course I have to talk about everything to you;—and it is odd.”
XXV
The Beginning of the Honeymoon
On the morning of his marriage, before he went to the altar, Lopez made one or two resolutions as to his future conduct. The first was that he would give himself a fortnight from his marriage day in which he would not even think of money. He had made certain arrangements, in the course of which he had caused Sextus Parker to stare with surprise and to sweat with dismay, but which nevertheless were successfully concluded. Bills were drawn to run over to February, and ready money to a moderate extent was forthcoming, and fiscal tranquillity was insured for a certain short period. The confidence which Sextus Parker had once felt in his friend’s own resources was somewhat on the decline, but he still believed in his friend’s skill and genius, and, after due inquiry, he believed entirely in his friend’s father-in-law. Sextus Parker still thought that things would come round. Ferdinand—he always now called his friend by his Christian name—Ferdinand was beautifully, seraphically confident. And Sexty, who had been in a manner magnetised by Ferdinand, was confident too—at certain periods of the day. He was very confident when he had had his two or three glasses of sherry at luncheon, and he was often delightfully confident with his cigar and brandy-and-water at night. But there were periods in the morning in which he would shake with fear and sweat with dismay.
But Lopez himself, having with his friend’s assistance arranged his affairs comfortably for a month or two, had, as a first resolution, promised himself a fortnight’s freedom from all carking cares. His second resolution had been that at the end of the fortnight he would commence his operations on Mr. Wharton. Up to the last moment he had hoped—had almost expected—that a sum of money would have been paid to him. Even a couple of thousand pounds for the time would have been of great use to him;—but no tender of any kind had been made. Not a word
