第84章

It was late in the afternoon before they reached Manchester Square, and they were both happy to find that they were not troubled by Mr Lopez at the first moment.Everett was at home and in bed, and had not indeed as yet recovered the effect of the man's knuckles at his windpipe; but he was well enough to assure his father and sister that they need not have disturbed themselves or hurried their return from Hertfordshire on his account.'To tell the truth,' said he, 'Ferdinand Lopez was more hurt than I was.'

'He said nothing of being hurt himself,' said Mr Wharton.

'How was he hurt?' asked Emily in the quietest, stillest voice.

'The fact is,' said Everett, beginning to tell the whole story after his own fashion, 'if he hadn't been at hand then, there would have been an end of me.We had separated, you know--'

'What could make two men separate from each other in the darkness of St James's Park?'

'Well,--to tell you the truth, we had quarrelled.I had made an ass of myself.You need not go into that any further, except that you should know that it was all my fault.Of course it wasn't a real quarrel,'--when he said this Emily, who was sitting close to his bed-head, pressed his arm under the clothes with her hand,--'but I had said something rough, and he had gone on just to put an end to it.'

'It was uncommonly foolish,' said the old Wharton.'It was very foolish going round the park at that time of night.'

'No doubt, sir,--but it was my doing.And if he had not gone with me, I should have gone alone.' Here there was another pressure.'I was a little low in spirits, and wanted the walk.'

'But how is he hurt?' asked the father.

'The man who was kneeling on me and squeezing the life out of me jumped up when he heard Lopez coming, and struck him over the head with a bludgeon.I heard the blow, though I was pretty well done for at the time myself.I don't think they hit me, but they got something round my neck, and I was half strangled before Iknew what they were doing.Poor Lopez bled horribly, but he says he is none the worse for it.' Here there was another little pressure under the bed-clothes; for Emily felt that her brother was pleading for her in every word that he said.

About ten on the following morning Lopez came and asked for Mr Wharton.He was shown into the study, where he found the old man, and at once began to give his account of the whole concern in an easy, unconcerned manner.He had the large black patch on the side of the head, which had been so put on as almost to become him.But it was so conspicuous as to force a question concerning it from Mr Wharton.'I am afraid you got rather a sharp knock yourself, Mr Lopez?'

'I did get a knock, certainly;--but the odd part of it is that Iknew nothing about it till I found the blood in my eyes after they had decamped.But I lost my hat, and there is a rather long cut just above the temple.It hasn't done me the slightest harm.

The worst of it was that the got off with Everett's watch and money.'

'Had he much money?'

'Forty pounds!' And Lopez shook his head, thereby signifying that forty pounds at the present moment was more than Everett Wharton could afford to lose.Upon the whole he carried himself very well, ingratiating himself with the father, raising no question about the daughter, and saying as little as possible about himself.He asked whether he could go up and see his friend, and or course was allowed to do so.A minute before he entered the room Emily left it.They did not see each other.At any rate he did not see her.But there was a feeling with both of them that the other was close,--and there was something present to them, almost amounting to conviction, that the accident of the park robbery would be good for them.

'He certainly did save Everett's life,' Emily said to her father the next day.

'Whether he did or not, he did his best,' said Mr Wharton.

'When one's dearest relation is concerned,' said Emily, 'and when his life has been saved, one feels that one has to be grateful even if it has been an accident.I hope he knows, at any rate, that I am grateful.'