If I speaks at night he gets cross;--and in the morning when he gets up, which he always do regular, though it's ever so bad with him, then I haven't the heart to scold him.It's very hard sometimes for a wife to know what to do, Mrs Lopez.'
'Yes, indeed.' Emily could not but think how soon she herself had learned that lesson.
'Of course I'd anything for Sexty,--the father of my bairns, and has always been a good husband to me.You don't know him, of course, but I do.A right good man at bottom; but so weak!'
'If he,--if he,--injures his health, shouldn't you talk to him about it?'
'It isn't the drink as is the evil, Mrs Lopez, but that which makes him drink.He's not one as goes a mucker merely for the pleasure.When things are going right he'll sit out in our arbour at home, and smoke pipe after pipe, playing with the children, and one glass of gin and water will see him to bed.Tobacco, dry, do agree with him, I think.But when he comes to three or four goes of hot toddy, I know it's not as it should be.'
'You should restrain him, Mrs Parker.'
'Of course I should;--but how? Am I to walk off with the bottle and disgrace him before the servant girl? Or am I to let the children know as their father takes too much? If I was as much as to make one fight of it, it'd be all over Ponder's End that he's a drunkard;--which he ain't.Restrain him;--oh yes! If Icould restrain that gambling instead of regular business.That's what I would like to restrain.'
'Does he gamble?'
'What is it but gambling that he and Mr Lopez is a-doing together? Or course, ma'am, I don't know you, and you are different from me.I ain't foolish enough not to know all that.
My father stood in Smithfield and sold hay, and your father is a gentleman as has been high up in the Courts all his life.But it's your husband is a-doing this.'
'Oh, Mrs Parker!'
'He is then.I don't know about commerce, Mrs Lopez, because I'm only a woman; but it can't be fair.They goes and buys things that they haven't got the money to pay for, and then waits to see if they'll turn up trumps.Isn't that gambling?'
'I cannot say.I do not know.' She felt now that her husband had been accused, and that part of that accusation had been levelled at herself.There was something in her manner of saying these few words which the poor complaining woman perceived, feeling immediately that she had been inhospitable and perhaps unjust.She put out her hand softly, touching the other woman's arm, and looking up into her guest's face.'If this is so, it's terrible,' said Emily.
'Perhaps I shouldn't speak so free.'
'Oh, yes;--for your children, and yourself, and your husband.'
'It's them,--and him.Of course it's not your doing, and Mr Lopez, I'm sure, is a very fine gentleman.And if he gets wrong one way, he'll get himself right in another.' Upon hearing this Emily shook her head.'Your papa is a rich man, and won't see you and yours come to want.There's nothing more to come to me or Sexty let it be ever so.'
'Why does he do it?'
'Why does who do it?'
'Your husband.Why don't you speak to him as you do to me, and tell him to mind only his proper business?'
'Now you are angry with me.'
'Angry! No;--indeed I am not angry.Every word that you say is good and true, and just what you ought to say.I am not angry;but I am terrified.I know nothing of my husband's business.Icannot tell you that you should trust to it.He is very clever, but-'
'But what, ma'am?'
'Perhaps I should say that he is ambitious.'
'You mean he wants to get rich too quick, ma'am.'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Then it's just the same with Sexty.He's ambitious too.But what's the good of being ambitious, Mrs Lopez, if you never know whether you're on your head or your heels? And what's the good of being ambitious if you're to get into the workhouse? I know what that means.There's one or two of them sort of men gets into Parliament, and has houses as big as the Queen's palace, while hundreds of them has their wives and children in the gutter.Who ever hears of them? Nobody.It don't become any man to be ambitious who has got a wife and family.If he's a bachelor, who, of course, he can go to the Colonies.There's Mary Jane and the two little ones right down on the sea, with their feet in the water.She we put on our hats, Mrs Lopez, and go and look after them?' To this proposition Emily assented, and the two ladies went out after the children.
'Mix yourself another glass,' said Sexty to his partner.
'I'd rather not.Don't ask me again.You know I never drink, and I don't like being pressed.'
'By George,--you're particular.'
'What's the use of teasing a fellow to do a thing he doesn't like?'
'You won't mind me having another?'
'Fifty if you please, so that I'm not forced to join you.'
'Forced! It's liberty 'all here, and you can do as you please.
Only when a fellow will take a drop with me, he's better company.'
'Then I'm d-d bad company, and you'd better get somebody else to be jolly with.To tell you the truth, Sexty, I suit you better at business than at this sort of thing.I'm like Shylock, you know.'
'I don't know about Shylock, but I'm blessed if I think you suit me very well at anything.I'm putting up with a deal of ill-usage, and when I try to be happy with you, you won't drink, and you tell me about Shylock.He was a Jew, wasn't he?'
'That is the general idea.'
'Then you ain't much very like him, for they're the sort of people that always has money about them.'
'How do you suppose he made his money to begin with? What an ass you are!'
'That's true, I am.Ever since I began putting my name on the same bit of paper with yours, I've been an ass.'
'You'll have to be one a bit longer yet;--unless you mean to throw up everything.At this present moment you are six or seven thousand pounds richer than you were before you first met me.'
'I wish I could see the money.'
'That's like you.What's the use of money you can see? How are you to make money out of money by looking at it? I like to know that my money is fructifying.'
'I like to know that it's all there,--and I did know it before Iever saw you.I'm blessed if I know it now.Go down and join the ladies, will you? You ain't much of a companion up here.'
Shortly after that Lopez told Mrs Parker that he had already bade adieu to her husband, and then he took his wife to their own lodgings.