There was now another Chairman and other Directors; but Mr Mills Happerton's influence had so far remained with the Company as to enable Lopez to become well-known in the Company's offices, and acknowledged as a claimant for the office of resident Manager at San Juan in Guatemala.Now the present project was this,--that Lopez was to start on behalf of the Company early in May, that the Company was to pay his own personal expenses out to Guatemala, and that they should allow him while there a salary of 1,000 pounds a year for managing the affairs of the mine.As far as this offer went, the thing was true enough.It was true that Lopez had absolutely secured the place.But he done so subject to the burden of one very serious stipulation.He was to become the proprietor of fifty shares in the mine, and to pay up 100pounds each on those shares.It was considered that the man who was to get 1,000 pounds a year in Guatemala for managing the affair, should at any rate assist the affair, and show his confidence in the affair, to an extent as great as that.Of course the holder of these fifty shares would be fully entitled as any other shareholder to that twenty per cent which those shares who promoted the mine promised as the immediate result of the speculation.
At first Lopez had hoped that he might be enabled to defer the actual payment of the 5,000 pounds till after he had sailed.
When once out in Guatemala as manager, as manager he would doubtless remain.But by degrees he found that the payment must actually be made in advance.Now there was nobody to whom he could apply but Mr Wharton.He was, indeed, forced to declare at the office that the money was to come from Mr Wharton, and had given some excellent but fictitious reason why Mr Wharton could not pay the money till February.
And in spite of all that had come and gone he still did hope that if the need to go were actually there he might even get the money from Mr Wharton.Surely Mr Wharton would sooner pay such a sum than be troubled at home with such a son-in-law.Should the worst come to the worst, of course he could raise the money by consenting to leave his wife at home.But this was not part of his plan, if he could avoid it.5,000 pounds would be a very low price at which to sell his wife, and all that he might get from his connection with her.As long as he kept her with him he was in possession at any rate of all that Mr Wharton would do for her.He had not therefore as yet made up his final application to his father-in-law for the money, having found it possible to postpone they payment till the middle of February.His quarrel with Mr Wharton this morning he regarded as having little or no effect upon his circumstances.Mr Wharton would not give him the money because he loved him, nor yet from personal respect, nor from any sense of duty as to what he might owe a son-in-law.It would simply be given as the price by which his absence might be purchased, and his absence would not be the less desirable because of this morning's quarrel.
But, even yet, he was not quite resolved as to going to Guatemala.Sexty Parker had been sucked nearly dry, and was in truth at this moment so violent with indignation and fear and remorse that Lopez did not dare to show himself in Little Tankard Yard; but still there were, even yet, certain hopes in that direction from which greater results might come.If a certain new spirit which had just been concocted from the bark of trees in Central Africa, and which was called Bios, could only be made to go up in the market, everything might be satisfactorily arranged.The hoardings of London were already telling the public if it wished to get drunk without any of the usual troubles of intoxication it must drink Bios.The public no doubt does read the literature of the hoardings, but then it reads so slowly! This Bios had hardly been twelve months on the boards as yet! But they were now increasing the size of the letters in the advertisements and the jocundity of the pictures, --and the thing might be done.There was, too, another hope,--another hope of instant moneys by which Guatemala might be staved off, as to which further explanation shall be given in a further chapter.
'I suppose I shall find Dixon a decent sort of fellow?' said Lopez to the Secretary of the Association in Coleman Street.
'Rough, you know,'
'But honest?'
'Oh yes,--he's all that.'
'If he's honest, and what I call loyal, I don't care a straw for anything else.One doesn't expect West-end manners in Guatemala.
But I shall have a deal to do with him,--and I hate a fellow that you can't depend on.'
'Mr Happerton used to think a great deal of Dixon.'
'That's all right,' said Lopez.Mr Dixon was the underground manager out at the San Juan mine, and was perhaps as anxious for a loyal and honest colleague as was Mr Lopez.If so, Mr Dixon was very much in the way to be disappointed.
Lopez stayed at the office all the day studying the affairs of the San Juan mine, and then went to the Progress for dinner.
Hitherto he had taken no steps whatever as to getting lodgings for himself or his wife.