Ovington's Bank

The draper, who had showed himself over-confidently, fell back purple with blushes. "Certainly an odd sight," said the banker quietly. "It promises well, I think, Sir Charles."

"Hanged well!" said Acherley.

Sir Charles acquiesced. "Er, I think so," he said. "I certainly think so." But he felt himself a little out of place.

The minute hand touched the half-hour, and the clerks began to distribute the papers. After watching the scene for a moment the Board separated, its members passing out modestly through the house door. They parted on the pavement, even Sir Charles unbending a little and the saturnine Acherley chuckling to himself as visions of fools and fat premiums floated before him. It was a vision which they all shared in their different ways.

Arthur was about to join the workers in the bank when Ovington beckoned him into the dining-room. "You can be spared for a moment," he said. "Come in here. I want to speak to you." He closed the door. "I've been considering the matter I discussed with you some time ago, lad, and I think that the time has come when it should be settled. But you've said nothing about it and I've been wondering if anything was wrong. If so, you had better tell me."

"Well, sir-"

The banker was shrewd. "Is it the money that is the trouble?"

The moment that Arthur had been dreading was come, and he braced himself to meet it. "I'm afraid that there has been some difficulty," he said, "but I think now-"

"Have you given your uncle notice?"

Arthur hesitated. If he avowed that they had not given his uncle notice, how weak, how inept he would appear in the other's eyes! A wave of exasperation shook him, as he saw the strait into which his mother's obstinacy was forcing him. The opportunity which he valued so highly, the opening on which he had staked so much-was he to forfeit them through her folly? No, a hundred times, no! He would not let her ruin him, and, "Yes, we have given it," he said, "but very late, I'm afraid. My mother had her doubts and I had to overcome them. I'm sorry, sir, that there has been this delay."

"But the notice has been given now?"

"Yes."

"Then in three months, as I understand-"

"The money will be ready, sir." He spoke stoutly; the die was cast now, and he must go through with it. After all it was not his fault, but his mother's; and for the rest, if the notice was not already given it should be this very day. "It will be ready in three months, but not earlier, I am afraid."

Ovington reflected. "Well," he said, "that must do. And we won't wait. We will sign the agreement now and it shall take effect from next Monday, the payment to be made within three months. Go through the articles" – he opened his desk and took a paper from it and gave it to Arthur-"and come in with one of the clerks at five o'clock and we will complete it."

Arthur hardly knew what to Bay. "It's uncommonly kind of you, sir!" he stammered. "You may be sure I shall do my best to repay your kindness."

"Well, I like you," the banker rejoined. "And, of course, I see my own advantage in it. So that is settled."

Arthur went out taking the paper with him, but in the passage he paused, his face gloomy. After all it was not too late. He could go back and tell Ovington that his mother-but no, he could not risk the banker's good opinion. His mother must do it. She must do it. He was not going to see the chance of a lifetime wasted-for a silly scruple.

He moved at last, and as he went into the bank he jostled two persons who, sheltered by the cashier's desk, were watching, as the Board had watched a few minutes before, the scene of excitement which the bank presented. The one was Betty, the other was Rodd, the cashier. It had occurred to Rodd that the girl would like to view a thing so unusual, and he had slipped out and fetched her. They faced about, startled by the contact. "Oh, it's you!" said Betty.

"Yes," drily. "What are you doing here, Betty?"

"I came to see the Lottery drawn," she retorted, making a face at him. "Mr. Rodd fetched me. No one else remembered me."

"Well, I should have thought that he-ain't you wanted, Rodd?" There was a new tone in Arthur's voice. "Mr. Clement seems to have his hands full."

Rodd's face reddened under the rebuke. For a moment he seemed about to answer, then he thought better of it. He left them and went to the counter.

"And what would you have thought?" Betty asked pertly, reverting to the sentence that he had not finished.

"Only that Rodd might be better employed-at his work. This is just the job he is fit for, giving out forms."

"And Clement, too, I suppose? It is his job, too?"

"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 glass of port-for he was an abstemious man-told her that the partnership 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 glass 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 grass 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 glasses 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 Peacock, 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, ingratitude! 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 fashion! 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 passion, "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 attitude 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 glass 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 spacious, furnished sparsely 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.