THE PRIME MINISTER (72 page)

‘I have much to say, and
I will go on. You are a rich man, and I am your son-in-law.’ Mr Wharton put his left hand up to his forehead, brushing the few hairs back from his head, but he said nothing. ‘Had I received from you during the last most vital year that assistance which I think I had a right to expect, I also might have been a rich man now. It is no good going back to that.’ Then he paused, but still Mr Wharton said
nothing. ‘Now you know what has come to me and to your daughter. We are to be expatriated.’

‘Is that my fault?’

‘I think it is, but I mean to say nothing further of that. This Company which is sending me out, and which will probably be the most thriving thing of the kind which has come up within these twenty years, is to pay me a salary of £1,000 a year as resident manager at San Juan.’

‘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 per cent.’

‘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 to-morrow? 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 to-day, 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 storeys 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 my son-in-law.’

‘He has mentioned your name to us, Mr Wharton, before
now.’

‘And he is going out to Guatemala?’

‘Oh yes; – he’s going out. Has he not told you as much himself?’

‘Certainly, sir. And he has told me that he is desirous of buying certain shares in the Company before he starts.’

‘Probably, Mr Wharton.’

‘Indeed, I believe he cannot go, unless he buys them.’

‘That may be so, Mr Wharton. No doubt he has told you all that himself.’

‘The fact is, Mr
Hartlepod, I am willing, under certain stipulations, to advance him the money.’ Mr Hartlepod bowed. ‘I need not trouble you with private affairs between myself and my son-in-law.’ Again the Secretary bowed. ‘But it seems to be for his interest that he should go.’

‘A very great opening indeed, Mr Wharton. I don’t see how a man is to have a better opening. A fine salary! His expenses out paid!
One of the very best things that has come up for many years! And as for the capital he is to embark in the affair, he is as safe to get twenty per cent on it, – as safe, – as safe as the Bank of England.’

‘He’ll have the shares?’

‘Oh yes; – the scrip will be handed to him at once.’

‘And, – and –’

‘If you mean about the mine, Mr Wharton, you may take my word that it’s all real. It’s not one
of those sham things that melt away like snow and leave the shareholders nowhere. There’s the prospectus, Mr Wharton. Perhaps you have not seen that before. Take it away and cast your eye over it at your leisure.’ Mr Wharton put the somewhat lengthy pamphlet into his pocket. ‘Look at the list of Directors. We’ve three members of Parliament, a baronet, and one or two City names that are as good, –
as good as the Bank of England. If that prospectus won’t make a man confident I don’t know what will. Why, Mr Wharton, you don’t think that your son-in-law would get those fifty shares at par unless he was going out as our general local manager. The shares ain’t to be had. It’s a large concern as far as capital goes. You’ll see if you look. About a quarter of a million paid up. But it’s all in a
box as one may say. It’s among ourselves. The shares ain’t in the market. Of course it’s not for me to say what should be done between you and your son-in-law. Lopez is a friend of mine, and a man I esteem, and all that. Nevertheless I shouldn’t think of advising you to do this or that, – or not to do it. But when you talk of safety, Mr Wharton, – why, Mr Wharton, I don’t scruple to tell you as a
man who knows what these things are, that this is an opportunity that doesn’t come in a man’s way perhaps twice in his life.’

Mr Wharton found that he had nothing more to say, and went back to Lincoln’s Inn. He knew very well that Mr Hartlepod’s assurances were not worth much. Mr Hartlepod himself and his
belongings, the clerks in his office, the look of the rooms, and the very nature of the
praises which he had sung, all of them inspired anything but confidence. Mr Wharton was a man of the world; and, though he knew nothing of City ways, was quite aware that no man in his senses would lay out £5,000 on the mere word of Mr Hartlepod. But still he was inclined to make the payment. If only he could secure the absence of Lopez, – if he could be sure that Lopez would in truth go to Guatemala,
and if also he could induce the man to go without his wife, he would risk the money. The money would, of course, be thrown away, – but he would throw it away. Lopez no doubt had declared that he would not go without his wife, even though the money were paid for him. But the money was an alluring sum! As the pressure upon the man became greater, Mr Wharton thought he would probably consent to
leave his wife behind him.

In his emergency the barrister went to his attorney and told him everything. The two lawyers were closeted together for an hour, and Mr Wharton’s last words to his old friend were as follows: – ‘I will risk the money, Walker, or rather I will consent absolutely to throw it away, – as it will be thrown away, – if it can be managed that he shall in truth go to this place
without his wife.’

It cannot be supposed that Ferdinand Lopez at this time was a very happy man. He had, at any rate, once loved his wife, and would have loved her still could he have trained her to think as he thought, to share his wishes, and ‘to put herself into the same boat with him’, – as he was wont to describe the unison and sympathy which he required from her. To give him his due, he did
not know that he was’ a villain. When he was exhorting her to ‘get round her father’ he was not aware that he was giving her lessons which must shock a well-conditioned girl. He did not understand that everything that she had discovered of his moral disposition since her marriage was of a
nature to disgust her. And, not understanding all this, he conceived that he was grievously wronged by her,
in that she adhered to her father rather than to him. This made him unhappy, and doubly disappointed him. He had neither got the wife that he had expected nor the fortune. But he still thought that the fortune must come if he would only hold on to the wife which he had got.

And then everything had gone badly with him since his marriage. He was apt, when thinking over his affairs, to attribute
all this to the fears and hesitation and parsimony of Sexty Parker. None of his late ventures with Sexty Parker had been successful. And now Sexty was in a bad condition, very violent, drinking hard, declaring himself to be a ruined man, and swearing that if this and that were not done he would have bitter revenge. Sexty still believed in the wealth of his partner’s father-in-law, and still had some
hope of salvation from that source. Lopez would declare to him, and up to this very time persevered in protesting, that salvation was to be found in Bios. If Sexty would only risk two or three thousand pounds more upon Bios, – or his credit to that amount failing, the immediate money, – things might still be right. ‘Bios be d—d,’ said Sexty, uttering a string of heavy imprecations. On that morning
he had been trusting to native produce rather than to the new African spirit. But now, as the Guatemala scheme really took form and loomed on Lopez’s eyesight as a thing that might be real, he endeavoured to keep out of Sexty’s way. But in vain. Sexty too had heard of Guatemala, and in his misery hunted Lopez about the city. ‘By G—, I believe you’re afraid to come to Little Tankard Yard,’ he
said one day, having caught his victim under the equestrian statue in front of the Exchange.

‘What is the good of my coming when you will do nothing when I am there?’

‘I’ll tell you what it is, Lopez, – you’re not going out of the country about this mining business, if I know it’

‘Who said I was?’

‘I’ll put a spoke in your wheel there, my man. I’ll give a written account of all the dealings
between us to the Directors. By G—, they shall know their man.’

‘You’re an ass, Sexty, and always were. Look here. If I can carry on as though I were going to this place, I can draw £5,000 from old
Wharton. He has already offered it. He has treated me with a stinginess that I never knew equalled. Had he done what I had a right to expect, you and I would have been rich men now. But at last I have
got a hold upon him up to £5,000. As you and I stand, pretty nearly the whole of that will go to you. But don’t you spoil it all by making an ass of yourself.’

Sexty, who was three parts drunk, looked up into his face for a few seconds, and then made his reply. ‘I’m d—d if I believe a word of it’ Upon this Lopez affected to laugh, and then made his escape.

All this, as I have said, did not tend
to make his life happy. Though he had impudence enough, and callousness of conscience enough, to get his bills paid by Mr Wharton as often as he could, he was not quite easy in his mind while doing so. His ambition had never been high, but it had soared higher than that He had had great hopes. He had lived with some high people. He had dined with lords and ladies. He had been the guest of a Duchess.
He had married the daughter of a gentleman. He had nearly been a member of Parliament. He still belonged to what he considered to be a first-rate club. From a great altitude he looked down upon Sexty Parker and men of Sexty’s class, because of his social successes, and because he knew how to talk and to look like a gentleman. It was unpleasant to him, therefore, to be driven to the life he
was now living. And the idea of going out to Guatemala and burying himself in a mine in Central America was not to him a happy idea. In spite of all that he had done he had still some hope that he might avoid that banishment He had spoken the truth to Sexty Parker in saying that he intended to get the £5,000 from Mr Wharton without that terrible personal sacrifice, though he had hardly spoken the
truth when he assured his friend that the greater portion of that money would go to him. There were many schemes fluctuating through his brain, and all accompanied by many doubts. If he could get Mr Wharton’s money by giving up his wife, should he consent to give her up? In either case should he stay or should he go? Should he run one further great chance with Bios, – and if so, by whose assistance?
And if he should at last decide that he would do so by the aid of a certain friend that was yet left to him, should he throw himself at that friend’s feet, the friend being a lady, and propose to desert his wife and begin the world again with her? For the lady in question was a lady in
possession, as he believed, of very large means. Or should he cut his throat and have done at once with all his
troubles, acknowledging to himself that his career had been a failure, and that, therefore, it might be brought with advantage to an end? ‘After all,’ said he to himself, ‘that may be the best way of winding up a bankrupt concern.’