The Prime Minister | Page 6

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.
It was known to some few that he occupied rooms in a flat at

Westminster,--but to very few exactly where the rooms were situate.
Among all his friends no one was known to have entered them. In a
moderate way he was given to hospitality,--that is to infrequent but
when the occasion came, to graceful hospitality. Some club, however,
or tavern perhaps, in the summer, some river bank would be chosen as
the scene of these festivities. To a few,--if, as suggested, amidst
summer flowers on the water's edge to men and women mixed,--he
would be a courtly and efficient host; for he had the rare gift of doing
such things well.
Hunting was over, and the east wind was still blowing, and a great
portion of the London world was out of town taking its Easter holiday,
when on an unpleasant morning, Ferdinand Lopez travelled into the
city by the Metropolitan railway from Westminster Bridge. It was his
custom to go thither when he did go,--not daily like a man of business,
but as chance might require, like a capitalist or a man of pleasure,--in
his own brougham. But on this occasion he walked down the river side,
and then walked from the Mansion House into a dingy little court
called Little Tankard Yard, near the Bank of England, and going
through a narrow dark long passage got into a little office at the back of
a building, in which there sat at a desk a greasy gentleman with a new
hat on one side of his head, who might perhaps be about forty years old.
The place was very dark, and the man was turning over the leaves of a
ledger. A stranger to city ways might probably have said that he was
idle, but he was no doubt filling his mind with that erudition which
would enable him to earn his bread. On the other side of the desk there
was a little boy copying letters. These were Mr Sextus Parker,--
commonly called Sexty Parker,--his clerk. Mr Parker was a gentleman
very well known and at the present moment favourably esteemed on the
Stock Exchange. 'What, Lopez!' said he. 'Uncommon glad to see you.
What can I do for you?'
'Just come inside,--will you?' said Lopez. Now within Mr Parker's very
small office there was a smaller office, in which there were a safe, a
small rickety Pembroke table, two chairs, and an old washing-stand
with a tumbled towel. Lopez led the way into this sanctum as though he
knew the place well, and Sexty Parker followed him.

'Beastly day, isn't it?' said Sexty.
'Yes,--a nasty east wind.'
'Cutting one in two, with a hot sun at the same time. One ought to
hybernate at this time of the year.'
'Then why don't you hybernate?' said Lopez.
'Business is too good. That's about it. A man has to stick to it when it
does come. Everybody can't do like you;--give up regular work, and
make a