Ovington's Bank Part 17

And through all, she who was so weak, so timid, so subject, must be firm. She must not flinch.

As she sat at table she was conscious of her pale cheeks, and trembled lest the others should notice them. She fancied that her father's face already wore an ominous gloom. "If you've orders for town," he flung at Miss Peac.o.c.k as he rose, "you'll need be quick with them. I'm going in at ten."

Miss Peac.o.c.k was all of a flutter. "But I thought, sir, that the Bench did not sit----"

"You'd best not think," he retorted. "Ten, I said."

That seemed to promise a blessed respite, and the color returned to Josina's cheeks. Clement could hardly arrive before eleven, and for this day she might be safe. But on the heels of relief followed reflection. The respite meant another sleepless night, another day of apprehension, more hours of fear; the girl was glad and she was sorry.

The spirit warred with the flesh. She did not know what she wished.

And, after all, Clement might appear before ten. She watched the clock and watched her father and in returning suspense hung upon his movements. How he lingered, now hunting for a lost paper, now grumbling over a seed-bill, now drawing on his boots with the old horn-handled hooks which had been his father's! And the clock--how slowly it moved! It wanted eight, it wanted five, it wanted two minutes of ten. The hour struck. And still the Squire loitered outside, talking to old Fewtrell--when at any moment Clement might ride up!

The fact was that Thomas was late, and the Squire was saying what he thought of him. "Confound him, he thinks, because he's going, he can do as he likes!" he fumed. "But I'll learn him! Let me catch him in the village a week after he leaves, and I'll jail him for a vagrant!

Such impudence as he gave me the other day I never heard in my life!

He'll go wide of here for a character!"

"I dunno as I'd say too much to him," the old bailiff advised. "He's a queer customer, Squire, as you'd ought to have seen before now!"

"He'll find me a queer customer if he starts spouting again! Why, damme," irritably, "one might almost think you agreed with him!"

Old Fewtrell screwed up his face. "No," he said slowly, "I'm not saying as I agree with him. But there's summat in what he says, begging your pardon, Squire."

"Summat? Why, man," in astonishment, "are you tarred with the same brush?"

"You know me, master, better'n that," the old man replied. "An' I bin with you fifty years and more. But, certain sure, times is changed and we're no better for the change."

"But you get as much?"

"Mebbe in malt, but not in meal. In money, mebbe--I'm not saying a little more, master. But here's where 'tis. We'd the common before the war, and run for a cow and geese, and wood for the picking, and if a lad fancied to put up a hut on the waste 'twas five shillings a year; and a rood o' potato ground--it wasn't missed. 'Twas neither here nor there. But 'tisn't so now. Where be the common? Well, you know, Squire, laid down in wheat these twenty years, and if a lad squatted now, he'd not be long of hearing of it. We've the money, but we're not so well off. That's where 'tis."

The Squire scowled. "Well, I'm d--d!" he said. "You've been with me fifty years, and----" and then fortunately or unfortunately the curricle came round and the Squire, despising Fewtrell's hint, turned his wrath upon the groom, called him a lazy scoundrel, and cursed him up hill and down dale.

The man took it in silence, to the bailiff's surprise, but his sullen face did not augur well for the day, and when he had climbed to the back-seat--with a scramble and a grazed knee, for the Squire started the horses with no thought for him--he shook his fist at the old man's back. Fewtrell saw the gesture, and felt a vague uneasiness, for he had heard Thomas say ugly things. But then the man had been in liquor, and probably he didn't mean them.

The Squire rattled the horses down the steep drive with the confidence of one who had done the same thing a thousand times. Turning to the left a furlong beyond the gate, he made for Garthmyle where, at the bridge, he fell into the highway. He had driven a mile along this when he saw a horseman coming along the road to meet him, and he fell to wondering who it was. His sight was good at a distance, and he fancied that he had seen the young spark before, though he could not put a name to him. But he saw that he rode a good nag, and he was not surprised when the other reined up and, raising his hat, showed that he wished to speak.

It was Clement, of course, and with a little more wisdom or a little less courage he would not have stopped the old man. He would have seen that the moment was not propitious, and that his business could hardly be done on the highway. But in his intense eagerness to set himself right, and his anxiety lest chance should forestall him, he dared not let the opportunity pa.s.s, and his hand was raised before he had well considered what he would say.

The Squire pulled up his horses. "D'you want me?" he asked, civilly enough.

"If I may trouble you, sir," Clement answered as bravely as he could.

"It's on important business, or--or I wouldn't detain you." Already, his heart in his mouth, he saw the difficulty in which he had placed himself. How could he speak before the man? Or on the road?

The Squire considered him. "Business, eh?" he said. "With me? Well, I know your face, young gentleman, but I can't put a name to you."

"I am Mr. Ovington's son, Clement Ovington, sir."

All the Squire's civility left him. "The devil you are!" he exclaimed.

"Well, I'm going to the bank. I like to do my business across the counter, young sir, to be plain, and not in the road."

"But this is business--of a different sort, sir," Clement stammered, painfully aware of the change in the other's tone, as well as of the servant, who was all a-grin behind his master's shoulder. "If I could have a word with you--apart, sir? Or perhaps--if I called at Garth tomorrow?"

"Why?"

"It is upon private business, Mr. Griffin," Clement replied, his face burning.

"Did your father send you?"

"No."

"Then I don't see," the Squire replied, scowling at him from under his bushy eyebrows, "what business you can have with me. There can be none, young man, that can't be done across the counter. It is only upon business that I know your father, and I don't know you at all. I don't know why you stopped me."

Clement was scarlet with mortification. "If I could see you a few minutes--alone, sir, I think I could explain what it is."

"You will see me at the bank in an hour," the old man retorted.

"Anything you have to say you can say there. As it is, I am going to close my account with your father, and after that the less I hear your name the better I shall be pleased. At present you're wasting my time.

I don't know why you stopped me. Good morning." And in a lower tone, but one that was perfectly audible to Clement, "D--d young counterskipper," he muttered, as he started the horses. "Business with me, indeed! Confound his impudence!"

He drove off at speed, leaving Clement seated on his horse in the middle of the road, a prey to feelings that may be imagined. He had made a bad beginning, and his humiliation was complete.

"Young counterskipper!" That rankled--yet in time he might smile at that. But the tone, and the manner, the conviction that under no circ.u.mstances could there be anything between them, any relations, any equality--this bit deeper and wounded more permanently. The Squire's view, that he addressed one of another cla.s.s and another grade, one with whom he could have no more in common than with the servant behind him, could not have been made more plain if he had known the object of the lad's application.

If he had known it! Good heavens, if he said so much now, what would he have said in that case? Certainly, the task which love had set this young man was not an easy one. No wonder Josina had been frightened.

He had--he had certainly made a mess of it. His ears burned, as he sat on his horse and recalled the other's words.

Meanwhile the Squire drove on, and with the air and movement he recovered his temper. As he drew near to the town the market-traffic increased, and sitting high on his seat he swept by many a humble gig and plodding farm-cart, and acknowledged with a flicker of his whip-hand many a bared head and hasty obeisance. He was not loved; men who are bent on getting a pennyworth for their penny are not loved.

But he was regardful of his own people, and in all companies he was fearless and could hold his own. Men did not love him, but they trusted him, knowing exactly what they might expect from him. And he was Griffin of Garth, one of the few in whose hands were all county power and all county influence. As he drove down the hill toward the West Bridge, seeing with the eye of memory the airy towers and lofty gateways of the older bridge that had once stood there and for centuries had bridled the wild Welsh, his bodily eyes noted the team of the out-going coach which he had a share in horsing. And the coachman, proudly and with respect, named him to the box-seat.

From the bridge the town, girdled by the shining river, climbs pyramid-wise up the sides of a cleft hill, an ancient castle guarding the one narrow pa.s.s by which a man may enter it on foot. The smiling plain, in the midst of which it rises, is itself embraced at a distance by a ring of hills, broken at one point only, which happens to correspond with the guarded isthmus; on which side, and some four miles away, was fought many centuries ago a famous battle. It is a proud town, looking out over a proud county, a county still based on ancient tradition, on old names and great estates, standing solid and four-square against the invasion that even in the Squire's day threatened it--invasion of new men and new money, of Birmingham and Liverpool and Manchester. The airy streets and crowded shuts run down on all sides from the Market Place to the green meadows and leafy gardens that the river laps: green meadows on which the chapels and quiet cloisters of religious houses once nestled under the shelter of the walls.

The Squire could remember the place when his father and his like had had their town houses in it, and in winter had removed their families to it; when the weekly a.s.semblies at the Lion had been gay with cards and dancing, and in the c.o.c.kpit behind the inn mains of c.o.c.ks had been fought with the Gentlemen of Cheshire or Staffordshire; when fine ladies with long canes and red-heeled shoes had promenaded under the lime trees beside the river, and the town in its season had been a little Bath. Those days, and the lumbering coaches-and-six which had brought in the families, were gone, and the staple of the town, its trade in woollens and Welsh flannels, was also on the decline. But it was still a thriving place, and if the county people no longer filled it in winter, their stately houses survived, and older houses than theirs, of brick and timber, quaint and gabled, that made the streets a joy to antiquaries.

The Squire pa.s.sed by many a one, with beetling roof and two-storied porch, as he drove up Maerdol. His first and most pressing business was at the bank, and he would not be himself until he had got it off his mind. He would show that d--d Ovington what he thought of him! He would teach him a lesson--luring away that young man and pouching his money. Ay, begad he would!

CHAPTER XII

But as the Squire turned to the left by the Stalls he saw his lawyer, Frederick Welsh--rather above most lawyers were the Welsh brothers, by-blows it was said of a great house--and Welsh stopped him. "You're wanted at the Bench, Squire, if you please," he said. "His lordship is there, and they are waiting for you."

"But it's not time--by an hour, man!"

"No, but it's a special case, and will take all day, I'm afraid. His lordship says that he won't begin until you come. It's that case of----" the lawyer whispered a few words. "And the Chief Constable does not quite trust--you understand? He's anxious that you should be there."

The Squire resigned himself, "Very well, I'll come," he said.