Ovington's Bank Part 14

"When he's here to do it," with a faint sneer. "That is not too often, Betty."

"Well, more often of late, anyway. Do you know what Mr. Rodd says?"

"No."

"He says that he has seen just such a crowd as this in a bank before.

At Manchester seventeen years ago, when he was a boy. There was a run on the bank in which his father worked, and people fought for places as they are fighting to-day. He does not seem to think it--lucky."

"What else does he think?" Arthur retorted with contempt. "What other rubbish? He'd better mind his own business and do his work. He ought to know more than to say such things to you or to anyone."

Betty stared. "Dear me," she replied, "we are high and mighty to-day!

Hoity toity!" And turning her shoulder on him, she became absorbed in the scene before her.

But that evening she was more than usually grave, and when her father, pouring out his fourth and last gla.s.s of port--for he was an abstemious man--told her that the partners.h.i.+p articles had been signed that afternoon, she nodded. "Yes, I knew," she said sagely.

"How, Betty? I didn't tell you. I have told no one. Did Arthur?"

"No, father, not in so many words. But I guessed it." And during the rest of the evening she was unusually pensive.

CHAPTER IX

Spring was late that year. It was the third week in April before the last streak of snow faded from the hills, or the showers of sleet ceased to starve the land. Morning after morning the Squire tapped his gla.s.s and looked abroad for fine weather. The barley-sowing might wait, but the oats would not wait, and at a time when there should have been abundant gra.s.s he was still carrying hay to the racks. The lambs were doing ill.

Morning after morning, with an old caped driving-coat cast about his shoulders and a shabby hunting-cap on his grey head, he would walk down to the little bridge that carried the drive over the stream.

There, a gaunt high-shouldered figure, he would stand, looking morosely out over the wet fields. The distant hills were clothed in mist, the nearer heights wore light caps, down the vale the clear rain-soaked air showed sombre woods and red soil, with here and there a lop-sided elm, bursting into bud, and reddening to match the furrows. "We shall lose one in ten of the lambs," he thought, "and not a sound foot in the flock!"

One morning as he stood there he saw a man turn off the road and come shambling towards him. It was Pugh, the man-of-all-work at the Cottage, and in his disgust at things in general, the Squire cursed him for a lazy rascal. "I suppose they've nothing to do," he growled, "that they send the rogue traipsing the roads at this hour!" Aloud, "What do you want, my man?" he asked.

Pugh quaked under the Squire's hard eyes. "A letter from the mistress, your honor."

"Any answer?"

Reluctantly Pugh gave up the hope of beer with Calamy the butler. "I'd no orders to wait, sir."

"Then off you go! I've all the idlers here I want, my lad."

The Squire had not his gla.s.ses with him, and he turned the letter over to no purpose. Returning to his room he could not find them, and the delay aggravated a temper already oppressed by the weather. He shouted for his spectacles, and when Miss Peac.o.c.k, hurrying nervously to his aid, suggested that they might be in the Prayer Book from which he had read the psalm that morning, he called her a fool. Eventually, it was there that they were found, on which he dismissed her with a flea in her ear. "If you knew they were there, why did you leave them there!"

he stormed. "Silly fools women be!"

But when he had read the letter, he neither stormed nor swore. His anger was too deep. Here was folly, indeed, and worse than folly, ingrat.i.tude! After all these years, after forty years, during which he had paid them their five per cent. to the day, five per cent. secured as money could not be secured in these harum-scarum days--to demand their pound of flesh and to demand it in this fas.h.i.+on! Without warning, without consulting him, the head of the family! It was enough to make any man swear, and presently he did swear after the manner of the day.

"It's that young fool," he thought. "He's written it and she's signed it. And if they have their way in five years the money will be gone, every farthing, and the woman will come begging to me! But no, madam,"

with rising pa.s.sion, "I'll see you farther before I'll pay down a penny to be frittered away by that young jackanapes! I'll go this moment and tell her what I think of her, and see if she's the impudence to face it out!"

He clapped on his hat and seized his cane. But when he had flung the door wide, pride spoke and he paused. No, he would not lower himself, he would not debate it with her. He would take no notice--that, by G--d, was what he would do. The letter should be as if it had not been written, and as to paying the money, why if they dared to go to law he would go all lengths to thwart them! He was like many in that day, violent, obstinate men who had lived all their lives among dependents and could not believe that the law, which they administered to others, applied to them. Occasionally they had a rude awakening.

But the old Squire did not lack a sense of justice, which, obscured in trifles, became apparent in greater matters. This quality came to his rescue now, and as he grew cooler his att.i.tude changed. If the woman, silly and scatterbrained as she was, and led by the nose by that impudent son of hers--if she persisted, she should have the money, and take the consequences. The six thousand was a charge; it must be met if she held to it. Little by little he accustomed himself to the thought. The money must be paid, and to pay it he must sell his cherished securities. He had no more than four hundred, odd--he knew the exact figure--in the bank. The rest must be raised by selling his India Stock, but he hated to think of it. And the demand, made without warning, hurt his pride.

He took his lunch, a hunch of bread and a gla.s.s of ale, standing at the sideboard in the dining-room. It was an airy room, panelled, like most of the rooms at Garth, and the pale blue paint, which many a year earlier had been laid on the oak, was dingy and wearing off in places.

His den lay behind it. On the farther side of the hall was the drawing-room, white-panelled and s.p.a.cious, furnished spa.r.s.ely and stiffly, with spindle-legged tables, and long-backed Stuart chairs set against the wall. It opened into a dull library never used, and containing hardly a book later than Junius' letters or Burke's speeches. Above, under the sloping roofs of the attics, were chests of discarded clothes, wig-boxes and queerly-shaped carriage-trunks, which nowadays would furnish forth a fancy-ball, an old-time collection almost as curious as that which Miss Berry once viewed under the attics of the Villa Pamphili, but dusty, moth-eaten, unregarded, unvalued. Cold and bare, the house owned everywhere the pinch of the Squire's parsimony; there was nothing in it new, and little that was beautiful. But it was large and shadowy, the bedrooms smelled of lavender, the drawing-room of potpourri, and in summer the wind blew through it from the hay-field, and garden scents filled the lower rooms.

An hour later, having determined how he would act, the old man walked across to the Cottage. As he approached the plank-bridge which crossed the river at the foot of the garden he caught a glimpse of a petticoat on the rough lawn. He had no sooner seen it than it vanished, and he was not surprised. His face was grim as he crossed the bridge, and walking up to the side door struck on it with his cane.

She was all of a tremble when she came to him, and for that he was prepared. That did not surprise him. It was due to him. But he expected that she would excuse herself and fib and protest and s.h.i.+ft her ground, and pour forth a torrent of silly explanations, as in his experience women always did. But Mrs. Bourdillon took him aback by doing none of these things. She was white-faced and frightened, but, strange thing in a woman, she was dumb, or nearly dumb. Almost all she had to say or would say, almost all that he could draw from her was that it was her letter--yes, it was her letter. She repeated that several times. And she meant it? She meant what she had written? Yes, oh yes, she did. Certainly, she did. It was her letter.

But beyond that she had nothing to say, and at length, harshly, but not as harshly as he had intended, "What do you mean, then," he asked, "to do with the money, ma'am, eh? I suppose you know that much?"

"I am putting it into the bank," she replied, her eyes averted.

"Arthur is going--to be taken in."

"Into the bank?" The Squire glared at her. "Into Ovington's?"

"Yes, into Ovington's," she answered, with the courage of despair.

"Where he will get twelve per cent. for it." She spoke in the tone of one who repeated a lesson.

He struck the floor with his cane. "And you think that it will be safe there? Safe, ma'am, safe?"

"I hope so," she faltered.

"Hope so, by G--d? Hope so!" he rapped out, honestly amazed. "And that's all. Hope so! Well, all I can say is that I hope you mayn't live to regret your folly. Twelve per cent. indeed! Twelve----"

He was going to say more, but the silly woman burst into tears and wept with such self-abandonment that she fairly silenced him. After watching her a moment, "Well, there, there, ma'am, it's no good crying like that," he said irritably. "But damme, it beats me! It beats me.

If that is the way you look at it, why do you do it? Why do you do it?

Of course you'll have the money. But when it's gone, don't come to me for more. And don't say I didn't warn you! There, there, ma'am!" moved by her grief, "for heaven's sake don't go on like that! Don't--G.o.d bless me, if I live to be a hundred, if I shall ever understand women!"

He went away, routed by her tears and almost as much perplexed as he was enraged. "If the woman feels like that about it, why does she call up the money?" he asked himself. "Hope that it won't be lost! Hope, indeed! No, I'll never understand the silly fools. Never! Hope, indeed! But I suppose that it's that son of hers has befooled her."

He saw, of course, that it was Arthur who had pushed her to it, and his anger against him and against Ovington grew. He would take his balance from Ovington's on the very next market day. He would go back to Dean's, though it meant eating humble pie. He thought of other schemes of vengeance, yet knew that when the time came he would not act upon them.

He was in a savage mood as he crossed the stable-yard at Garth, and unluckily his eye fell upon Thomas, who was seated on a shaft in a corner of the cart-shed. The man espied him at the same moment and hurried away a paper--it looked like a newspaper--over which he had been poring. Now, the Squire hated idleness, but he hated still more to see a newspaper in one of his men's hands. A laborer who could read was, in his opinion, a laborer spoiled, and his wrath blazed up.

"You d--d idle rascal!" he roared, shaking his cane at the man.

"That's what you do in my time, is it! Read some blackguard twopenny trash when you should be cleaning harness! Confound you, if I catch you again with a paper, you go that minute! D'you hear? D'you think that that's what I pay you for?"

The worm will turn, and Thomas, who had been spelling out an inspiring speech by one Henry Hunt, did turn. "Pay me? You pay me little enough!" he answered sullenly.

The Squire could hardly believe his ears. That one of his men should answer him!

"Ay, little enough!" the man repeated impudently. "Beggarly pay, and 'tis time you knew it, Master."

The Squire gasped. Thomas was a Garthmyle man, who ten years before had migrated to Lancas.h.i.+re. Later he had returned--some said that he had got into trouble up north. However that may be, the Squire had wanted a groom, and Thomas had offered himself at low wages and been taken. The village thought that the Squire had been wrong, for Thomas had learned more tricks in Manchester than just to read the newspaper, and, always an ill-conditioned fellow, was fond of airing his learning in the ale-house.

Perhaps the Squire now saw that he had made a mistake; or perhaps he was too angry to consider the matter. "Time I knew it?" he cried, as soon as he could recover himself. "Why, you idle, worthless vagabond, do you think that I do not know what you're worth? Ain't you getting what I've always given?"

"That's where it be!"