Ovington's Bank

For once she wavered-she feared what might happen between the two. But "Do you hear?" the Squire growled. "Go when you are told."

She went then, but Arthur could not restrain his indignation. "Poor Jos!" he muttered.

Unluckily the Squire heard the words, and "Poor Jos!" he repeated, scowling at the offender. "What the devil do you mean, sir? Poor Jos, indeed? Confound your impudence! What do you mean?"

Arthur quailed, but he was not lacking in wit. "Only that women like a secret, sir," he said. "And a woman, shut out, fancies that there is a secret."

"Umph! A devilish lot you know about women!" the old man snarled. "But never mind that. I saw your mother yesterday."

"So she told me, sir."

"Ay! And I dare say you didn't like what she told you! But I want you to understand, young man, once for all, that you've got to choose between Aldersbury and Garth. Do you hear? I've done my duty. I kept the living for you, as I promised your father, and whether you take it or not, I expect you to do yours, and to live as the Griffins have lived before you. Who the devil is this man Ovington? Why do you want to mix yourself up with him? Eh? A man whose father touched his hat to me and would no more have thought of sitting at my table than my butler would! There, pass the bottle."

"Would you have no man rise, sir?" Arthur ventured.

"Rise?" The Squire glared at him from under his great bushy eyebrows. "It's not to his rise, it's to your fall I object, sir. A d-d silly scheme this, and one I won't have. D'you hear, I won't have it."

Arthur kept his temper, oppressed by the other's violence. "Still, you must own, sir, that times are changed," he said.

"Changed? Damnably changed when a Griffin wants to go into trade in Aldersbury."

"But banking is hardly a trade."

"Not a trade? Of course it's a trade-if usury is a trade! If pawn-broking is a trade! If loan-jobbing is a trade! Of course it's a trade."

The gibe stung Arthur and he plucked up spirit. "At any rate, it is a lucrative one," he rejoined. "And I've never heard, sir, that you were indifferent to money."

"Oh! Because I'm going to charge your mother rent? Well, isn't the Cottage mine? Or because fifty years ago I came into a cumbered estate and have pinched and saved and starved to clear it? Saved? I have saved. But I've saved out of the land like a gentleman, and like my fathers before me, and not by usury. Not by money-jobbing. And if you expect to benefit-but there, fill your glass, and let's hear your tongue. What do you say to it?"

"As to the living," Arthur said mildly, "I don't think you consider, sir, that what was a decent livelihood no longer keeps a gentleman as a gentleman. Times are changed, incomes are changed, men are richer. I see men everywhere making fortunes by what you call trade, sir; making fortunes and buying estates and founding houses."

"And shouldering out the old gentry? Ay, damme, and I see it too," the Squire retorted, taking the word out of his mouth. "I see plenty of it. And you think to be one of them, do you? To join them and be another Peel, or one of Pitt's money-bag peers? That's in your mind, is it? A Mr. Coutts? And to buy out my lord and drive your coach and four into Aldersbury, and splash dirt over better men than yourself?"

"I should be not the less a Griffin."

"A Griffin with dirty hands!" with contempt. "That's what you'd be. And vote Radical and prate of Reform and scorn the land that bred you. And talk of the Rights of Men and money-bags, eh? That's your notion, is it, by G-d?"

"Of course, sir, if you look at it in that way-"

"That's the way I do look at it!" The Squire brought down his hand on the table with a force that shook the glasses and spilled some of his wine. "And it's the way you've got to look at it, or there won't be much between you and me-or you and mine. Or mine, do you hear! I'll have no tradesman at Garth and none of that way of thinking. So you'd best give heed before it's too late. You'd best look at it all ways."

"Very well, sir."

"Any more wine?"

"No, thank you." Arthur's head was high. He did not lack spirit.

"Then hear my last word. I won't have it! That's plain. That's plain, and now you know. And, hark ye, as you go out, send Peacock to me."

But before Arthur had made his way out, the Squire's voice was heard, roaring for Josina. When Miss Peacock presented herself, "Not you! Who the devil wants you?" he stormed. "Send the girl! D'you hear? Send the girl!"

And when Josina, scared and trembling, came in her turn, "Shut the door!" he commanded. "And listen! I've had a talk with that puppy, who thinks that he knows more than his betters. D-n his impertinence, coming into my pew when he thought I was elsewhere! But I know very well why he came, young woman, sneaking in to sit beside you and make sheep's eyes when my back was turned. Now, do you listen to me. You'll keep him at arm's length. Do you hear, Miss? You'll have nothing to say to him unless I give you leave. He's got to do with me now, and it depends on me whether there's any more of it. I know what he wants, but by G-d, I'm your father, and if he does not mend his manners, he goes to the right-about. So let me hear of no more billing and cooing and meeting in pews, unless I give the word! D'you understand, girl?"

"But I think you're mistaken, sir," poor Jos ventured. "I don't think that he means-"

"I know what he means. And so do you. But never you mind! Till I say the word there's an end of it. The puppy, with his Peels and his peers! Men my father wouldn't have-but there, you understand now, and you'll obey, or I'll know the reason why!"

"Then he's not to come to Garth, sir?"

But the Squire checked at that. Family feeling and the pride of hospitality were strong in him, and to forbid his only nephew the family house went beyond his mind at present.

"To Garth?" angrily. "Who said anything about Garth? No, Miss, but when he comes, you'll stand him off. You know very well how to do it, though you look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth! You'll see that he keeps his distance. And let me have no tears, or-d-n the fellow, he's spoiled my nap. There, go! Go! I might as well have a swarm of wasps about me as such folks! Pack o' fools and idiots! Go into a bank, indeed!"

Jos did go, and shutting herself up in her room would not open to Miss Peacock, who came fluttering to the door to learn what was amiss. And she cried a little, but it was as much in humiliation as grief. Her father was holding her on offer, to be given or withheld, as he pleased, while all the time she doubted, and more than doubted, if he to whom she was on offer, he from whom she was withheld, wanted her. There was the rub.

For Arthur, ever since he had begun to attend at the bank, had been strangely silent. He had looked and smiled and teased her, had pressed her hand or touched her hair, but in sport rather than in earnest, meaning little. And she had been quick to see this, and with the womanly pride, of which, gentle and timid as she was, she had her share, she had schooled herself to accept the new situation. Now, her father had taken Arthur's suit for granted and humbled her. So Jos cried a little. But they were not very bitter tears.

CHAPTER V

Arthur was taken aback by his uncle's harshness, and he made haste to be at the bank early enough on the Monday to anticipate the banker's departure for Garth. He was certain that to approach the Squire at this moment in the matter of the railroad was to invite disaster, and he gave Ovington such an account of the quarrel as he thought would deter him from going over at present.

But the banker had a belief in himself which success and experience in the management of men had increased. He was convinced that self-interest was the spring which moved nine men out of ten, and though he admitted that the family quarrel was untimely, he did not agree that as between the Squire and a good bargain it would have weight.

"But I assure you, sir, he's like a bear with a sore head," Arthur urged.

"A bear will come to the honey if its head be sore," the banker answered, smiling.

"And perhaps upset the hive?"

Ovington laughed. "Not in this case, I think. And we must risk something. Time presses and he blocks the way. However, I'll let it stand over for a week and then I'll go alone. We must have your uncle."

Accordingly a week later, discarding the tilbury and smart man-servant that he had lately set up, he rode over to Garth, considering as he journeyed the man whom he was going to meet and of whom, in spite of his self-assurance, he stood in some awe.

Round Aldersbury were larger landowners and richer men than the Squire. But his family and his name were old, and by virtue of long possession he stood high among the gentry of the county. He had succeeded at twenty-two to a property neglected and loaded with debt, and his father's friends-this was far back in the old King's reign-had advised him to sell; let him keep the house and the home-farm and pay his debts with the rest. But pride of race was strong in him, he had seen that to sell was to lose the position which his forbears had held, and he had refused. Instead he had set himself to free the estate, and he had pared, he had pinched, he had almost starved himself and others. He had become a byword for parsimony. In the end, having benefited much by enclosures in the 'nineties, he had succeeded. But no sooner had he deposited in the bank the money to pay off the last charge than the loss of his only son had darkened his success. He had married again-he was by this time past middle age-but only a daughter had come of the marriage, and by that time to put shilling to shilling and acre to acre had become a habit of which he could not break himself, though he knew that only a woman would follow him at Garth.

Withal he was a great aristocrat, a Tory of the Tories, stern and unbending. Fear of France and of French doctrines and pride in his caste were in his blood. The Quarterly Review ranked with him after his Bible, and very little after it. Reform under the most moderate aspect was to him a shorter name for Revolution. He believed implicitly in his class, and did not believe in any other class. Manufacturers and traders he hated and distrusted, and of late jealousy had been added to hatred and distrust. The inclusion of such men in the magistracy, the elevation of Peel to the Ministry had made him fancy that there was something in the Queen's case after all; when Canning and Huskisson had also risen to power he had said that Lord Liverpool was aging and the Duke was no longer the man he had been.

He was narrow, choleric, proud, miserly; he had been known to carry an old log a hundred yards to add it to his wood-pile, and to travel a league to look for a lost sixpence. He dressed shabbily, which was not so much remarked now that dandies aped coachmen, as it had been in his younger days; and he rode about his fields on an old white mare which he was believed to hold in affection next after his estate and much before his daughter. He ruled his parish with a high hand. He had no mercy for poachers. But he was honest and he was just. The farmers must pay the wage he laid down-it was a shilling above the allowed rate. But the men must work it out, and woe betide the idle; they had best seek work abroad, and heaven help them if a foreign parish sent them home. In one thing he was before his time; he was resolved that no able-bodied man should share in the rates. The farmers growled, the laborers grumbled, there were hard cases. But he was obdurate-work your worth, or starve! And presently it began to be noticed that the parish was better off than its neighbors. He was a tyrant, but a just tyrant.

Such was the man whom Ovington was going to meet, and from whose avarice he hoped much. He had made his market of it once, for it was by playing on it that he had lured the Squire from Dean's, and so had gained one of his dearest triumphs over the old Aldersbury Bank.

His hopes would not have been lessened had he heard a dialogue which was at that moment proceeding in the stable-yard at Garth to an accompaniment of clattering pails and swishing besoms. "He've no bowels!" Thomas the groom declared with bitterness. "He be that hard and grasping he've no bowels for nobody!"

Old Fewtrell, the Squire's ancient bailiff, sniggered. "He'd none for you, Thomas," he said, "when you come back gallus drunk from Baschurch Fair. None of your Manchester tricks with me, says Squire, and, lord, how he did leather 'ee."

Thomas did not like the reminiscence. "What other be I saying!" he snarled. "He've no bowels even for his own flesh and blood! Did'ee ever watch him in church? Well, where be he a-looking? At his son's moniment as is at his elbow? Never see him, never see him, not once!"

"Well, I dunno as I 'ave, either," Fewtrell admitted.