He might either serve the old man by reducing Everett to proper submission, or he might manage to creep into the empty space which his son's defection would make in the father's heart and the father's life.He might at any rate make himself necessary to the old man, and become such a part of the household in Manchester Square as to be indispensable.Then the old man would every day become older and more in want of assistance.He thought that he saw the way to worm himself into confidence, and, so on into possession.The old man was not a man of iron as he had feared, but quite human, and if properly managed, soft and malleable.
He saw Sexty Parker in the city that day, and used his cheque for 500 pounds in some triumphant way, partly cajoling and partly bullying his poor victim.To Sexty also he had to tell his own story about the row down at Silverbridge.He had threatened to thrash the fellow in the street, and the fellow had not dared to come out of his house without a policeman.Yes;--he had lost his election.The swindling of those fellows at Silverbridge had been too much for him.But he flattered himself that he had got the better of Master Fletcher.That was the tone in which he told the story to his friend in the city.
Then, before dinner, he found Everett at the club.Everett Wharton was to be found there now almost every day.His excuse to himself lay in the political character of the institution.
The club intended to do great things,--to find Liberal candidates for all the boroughs and counties in England which had not hitherto been furnished, and then to supply the candidates with money.Such was the great purpose of the Progress.It had not as yet sent out many candidates or collected much money.And yet it was, politically, almost quiescent.And therefore Everett Wharton, whose sense of duty took him there, spent his afternoons either in the whist-room or at the billiard-table.
The story of Silverbridge had to be told yet again, and was told nearly with the same incidents as had been narrated to the father.He could of course abuse Arthur Fletcher more roundly, and be more confident in the assertion that Fletcher had insulted his wife.But he came as quickly as he could to the task which he had on hand.'What's all this between you and your father?'
'Simply this.I sometimes play a game of whist, and therefore he called me a gambler.Then I reminded him that he also sometimes played a game of whist, and I asked him what deduction was to be drawn.'
'He is awfully angry with you.'
'Of course I was a fool.My father has the whip-hand of me, because he has money and I have none, and it was simply kicking against the pricks to speak as I did.And then too there isn't a fellow in London has a higher respect for his father than I have, not yet a warmer affection.But it is hard to be driven in that way.Gambler is a nasty word.'
'Yes, it is very nasty.But I suppose a man does gamble when he loses so much money that he has to ask his father to pay it for him.'
'If he does so often, he gambles.I never asked him for money to pay what I had lost before in my life.'
'I wonder you told him.'
'I never lie to him, and he ought to know that.But he is just the man to be harder to his own son than to anybody else in the world.What does he want me to do now?'
'I don't know that he wants you to do anything,' said Lopez.
'Did he send you to me?'
'Well;--no; I can't say that he did.I told him that I should see you as a matter of course, and he said something rough,--about your being an ass.'
'I dare say he did.'
'But if you ask me,' said Lopez, 'I think he would take it kindly of you if you were to go and see him.Come and dine to-day, just as if nothing had happened.'
'I could not do that,--unless he asked me.'
'I can't say that he asked you, Everett, I would say so, in spite of its being a lie, if I didn't fear that your father might say something unkind, so that the lie would be detected by both of you.'
'And yet you ask me to go and dine there!'
'Yes, I do.It's only going away if he does cut up rough.And if he takes it well,--why then,--the whole thing is done.'
'If he wants me, he can ask me.'
'You talk about it, my boy, just as if a father were the same as anybody else.If I had a father with a lot of money, by George he should knock me about with his stick if he liked, and I would be just the same next day.'
'Unfortunately I am of a stiffer nature,' said Everett, taking some pride to himself for his stiffness, and being perhaps as little 'stiff' as any young man of his day.
That evening after dinner at Manchester Square, the conversation between the father-in-law and the son-in-law turned almost exclusively to the son and brother-in-law.Little or nothing was said about the election, and the name of Arthur Fletcher was not mentioned.But out of his full heart the father spoke.He was wretched about Everett.Did Everett mean to cut him?
'He wants you to withdraw some name you called him,' said Lopez.
'Withdraw some name,--as he might ask some hot-headed fellow to do, if his own age, like himself, some fellow that he had quarrelled with! Does he expect his father to send him a written apology? He had been gambling, and I told him that he was a gambler.Is that too much for a father to say?' Lopez shrugged his shoulders, and declared that it was a pity.'He will break my heart if he goes on like this,' said the old man.
'I asked him to come and dine to-day, but he didn't seem to like it.'
'Like it! No.He likes nothing but that infernal club.'
When the evening was over Lopez felt that he had done a good stroke of work.He had not exactly made up his mind to keep the father and son apart.That was not a part of his strategy,--at any rate as yet.But he did intend to make himself necessary to the old man,--to become the old man's son, and if possible the favourite son.And now he thought that he had already done much towards the achievement of his object.
