第2章

At the time with which we are now concerned Ferdinand Lopez was thirty-three years old, and as he had begun life early he had been long before the world.It was known of him that he had been at a good English private school, and it was reported, on the solitary evidence of one of who had been there as his schoolfellow, that a rumour was current in the school that his school bills were paid by an old gentleman who was not related to him.Thence, at the age of seventeen, he had been sent to a German university, and at the age of twenty-one had appeared in London, in a stockbroker's office, where he was soon known as an accomplished linguist, and as a very clever fellow,--precocious, not given to many pleasures, apt for work, but considered hardly trustworthy by employers, not as being dishonest, but as having a taste for being a master rather than a servant.Indeed his period of servitude was very short.It was not in his nature to be active on behalf of others.He was soon active for himself, and at one time it was supposed that he was making a fortune.

Then it was known that he had left his regular business, and it was supposed that he had lost all that he had ever made or had ever possessed.But nobody, not even his own bankers, or his own lawyer,--not even the old woman who looked after his linen,--ever really knew the state of his affairs.

He was certainly a handsome man,--his beauty being of a sort which men are apt to deny and women to admit lavishly.He was nearly six feet tall, very dark and very thin, with regular well-cut features, indicating little to the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of self-possession.His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond an absolutely black moustache.His teeth were perfect, in form and in whiteness,--a characteristic which though it may be a valued item in a general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally recommend a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance.But about the mouth and chin of this man there was a something of a softness, perhaps in the play of his lips, perhaps in the dimple, which in some degree lessened the feeling of hardness which was produced by the square brow and bold, unflinching, combative eyes.They who knew him and like him were reconciled by the lower face.The greater number who knew him and did not like him, felt and resented,--even though in nine cases out of ten they might, express no resentment even to themselves,--the pugnacity of his steady glance.

For he was essentially one of those men who are always, in the inner workings of their minds, defending themselves and attacking others.He could not give a penny to a woman at a crossing without a look which argued at full length her injustice in making her demand, and his freedom from all liability let him walk the crossing as often as he might.He could not seat himself in a railway carriage without a lesson to his opposite neighbour that in all the mutual affairs of travelling, arrangement of feet, disposition of bags, and opening of windows, it would be that neighbour's duty to submit and his to exact.It was, however, for the spirit rather than for the thing itself that he combatted.The woman with the broom got her penny.The opposite gentleman when once by a glance he had expressed submission was allowed his own way with the legs and with the window.I would not say that Ferdinand Lopez was prone to do ill-natured things; but he was imperious, and he had learned to carry his empire in his eye.

The reader must submit to be told one or two further and still smaller details respecting the man, and then the man shall be allowed to make his own way.No one of those around him knew how much care he took to dress himself well, or how careful he was that no one should know it.His very tailor regarded him as being simply extravagant in the number of his coats and trousers, and his friends looked upon him as one of those fortunate beings to whose nature belongs a facility of being well dressed, or almost an impossibility of being ill dressed.We all know the man,--a little man generally, who moves seldom and softly,--who looks always as though he had just been sent home in a bandbox.

Ferdinand Lopez was not a little man, and moved freely enough;but never, at any moment,--going into the city or coming out of it, on horseback or on foot, at home over his book or after the mazes of the dance,--was he dressed otherwise than with perfect care.Money and time did it, but folk thought that it grew with him, as did his hair and his nails.And he always rode a horse which charmed good judges of what a park nag should be;--not a prancing, restless, giggling, sideway-going, useless garran, but an animal well made, well bitted, with perfect paces, on whom a rider if it pleased him could be as quiet as a statue in a monument.It often did please Ferdinand Lopez to be quiet on horseback; and yet he did not look like a statue, for it was acknowledged through all London that he was a good horseman.He lived luxuriously too,--though whether at his ease or not nobody knew,--for he kept a brougham of his own, and during the hunting season, he had two horses down at Leighton.There had once been a belief abroad that he was ruined, but they who interest themselves in such matters had found out,--or at any rate believed that they had found out,--that he paid his tailor regularly: and now there prevailed an opinion that Ferdinand Lopez was a monied man.