CHAPTER III
Meanwhile Clement Ovington jogged homeward through the darkness, histhoughts divided between the discussion at which he had made anunwilling third, and the objects about him which were never withoutinterest for this young man. He had an ear, and a very sharp one, forthe piping of the pee-wits in the low land by the river, and the owl'scadenced cry in the trees about Garth. He marked the stars shining ina depth of heaven opened amid the flying wrack of clouds; he pickedout Jupiter sailing with supreme dominion, and the Dog-star travellingacross the southern tract. His eye caught the gleam of water on ameadow, and he reflected that old Gregory would never do any good withthat ground until he made some stone drains in it. Not a sound in thesleeping woods, not the barking of a dog at a lonely homestead--and heknew every farm by name and sight and quality--escaped him; nor theshape of a covert, blurred though it was and leafless. But amid allthese interests, and more than once, his thoughts as he rode turnedinwards, and he pictured the face of the girl at the ball. Longforgotten, it recurred to him with strange persistence.
He was an out-of-door man, and that, in his position, was the pity ofit. Aldersbury School--and Aldersbury was a very famous school inthose days--and Cambridge had done little to alter the tendency:possibly the latter, seated in the midst of wide open spaces, under awide sky, the fens its neighbors, had done something to strengthen hisbent. Bourdillon thought of him with contempt, as a clodhopper, arustic, hinting that he was a throwback to an ancestor, not tooremote, who had followed the plough and whistled for want of thought.But he did Clement an injustice. It was possible that in his love ofthe soil he was a throwback; he would have made, and indeed he was, agood ploughman. He had learnt the trick with avidity, giving goodmoney, solid silver shillings, that Hodge might rest while he worked.But, a ploughman, he would not have turned a clod without noticing itsquality, nor sown a seed without considering its fitness, nor observeda rare plant without wondering why it grew in that position, norlooked up without drawing from the sky some sign of the weather or thehour. Much less would he have gazed down a woodland glade, fleckedwith sunlight, without perceiving its beauty.
He was, indeed, both in practice and theory a lover of Nature;breathing freely its open air, understanding its moods, asking nothingbetter than to be allowed to turn them to his purpose. Though he wasno great reader, he read Wordsworth, and many a line was fixed in hismemory and, on occasions when he was alone, rose to his lips.
But he hated the desk and he hated figures. His thoughts as he stoodbehind the bank counter, or drummed his restless heels against thelegs of his high stool, were far away in fallow and stubble, or wherethe trout, that he could tickle as to the manner born, lay under thecaving bank. And to his father and to those who judged him by the bankstandard, and felt for him half scornful liking, he seemed to be aninefficient, a trifler. They said in Aldersbury that it was lucky forhim that he had a father.
Perhaps of all about him it was from that father that he could expectthe least sympathy. Ovington was not only a banker, he was a banker towhom his business was everything. He had created it. It had made him.It was not in his eyes a mere adjunct, as in the eyes of one born inthe purple and to the leisure which invites to the higher uses ofwealth. Able he was, and according to his lights honorable; but anarrow education had confined his views, and he saw in his moneymerely the means to rise in the world and eventually to become one ofthe landed class which at that time monopolized all power and allinfluence, political as well as social. Such a man could only see inClement a failure, a reversion to the yeoman type, and own with sorrowthe irony of fortune that so often delights to hand on the sceptre ofan Oliver to a "Tumble-down-Dick."
Only from Betty, young and romantic, yet possessed of a woman'sintuitive power of understanding others, could Clement look for anysympathy. And even Betty doubted while she loved--for she had alsothat other attribute of woman, a basis of sound common-sense. Sheadmired her father. She saw more clearly than Clement what he had donefor them and to what he was raising them. And she could not but grievethat Clement was not, more like him, that Clement could not fall inwith his wishes and devote himself to the attainment of the end forwhich the elder man had worked. She could enter into the father'sdisappointment as well as into the son's distaste.
Meanwhile Clement, dreaming now of a girl's face, now of a new drillwhich he had seen that morning, now of the passing sights and soundswhich would have escaped nine men out of ten but had a meaning forhim, drew near to the town. He topped the last eminence, he rode underthe ancient oak, whence, tradition had it, a famous Welshman hadwatched the wreck of his fortunes on a pitched field. Finally he saw,rising from the river before him, the amphitheatre of dim lights thatwas the town. Descending he crossed the bridge.
He sighed as he did so. For to him to pass from the silent lands andto enter the brawling streets where apprentices were putting up theshutters and beggars were raking among heaps of market garbage was tofall half way from the clouds. To right and left the inns were roaringdrunken choruses, drabs stood in the mouths of the alleys--dubbed inAldersbury "shuts"--tradesmen were hastening to wet their profits atthe Crown or the Gullet. When at last he heard the house door clangbehind him, and breathed the confined air of the bank, redolent forhim of ledgers and day-books, the fall was complete. He reached theearth.
If he had not done so, his sister's face when he entered thedining-room would have brought him to his level.
"My eye and Betty Martin!" she said. "But you've done it now, my lad!"
"What's the matter?"
"Father will tell you that. He's in his room and as black as thunder.He came home by the mail at three--Sir Charles waiting, Mr. Acherleywaiting, the bank full, no Clement! You are in for it. You are to goto him the moment you come in."
He looked longingly at the table where supper awaited him. "What didhe say?" he asked.
"He said all I have said and d--n besides. It's no good looking at thetable, my lad. You must see him first and then I'll give you yoursupper."
"All right!" he replied, and he turned to the door with something of aswagger.
But Betty, whose moods were as changeable as the winds, and whosethoughts were much graver than her words, was at the door before him.She took him by the lapel of his coat and looked up in his face. "Youwon't forget that you're in fault, Clem, will you?" she said in asmall voice. "Remember that if he had not worked there would be nowalking about with a gun or a rod for you. And no looking at newdrills, whatever they are, for I know that that is what you had inyour mind this morning. He's a good dad, Clem--better than most. Youwon't forget that, will you?"
"But after all a man must----"
"Suppose you forget that '_after all_,'" she said sagely. "The truthis you have played truant, haven't you? And you must take yourmedicine. Go and take it like a good boy. There are but three of us,Clem."
She knew how to appeal to him, and how to move him; she knew that atbottom he was fond of his father. He nodded and went, knocked at hisfather's door and, tamed by his sister's words, took his scolding--andit was a sharp scolding--with patience. Things were going well withthe banker, he had had his usual four glasses of port, and he mightnot have spoken so sharply if the contrast between the idle and theindustrious apprentice had not been thrust upon him that day with aforce which had startled him. That little hint of a partnership hadnot been dropped without a pang. He was jealous for his son, and hespoke out.
"If you think," he said, tapping the ledger before him, to give pointto his words, "that because you've been to Cambridge this job is belowyou, you're mistaken, Clement. And if you think that you can do it inyour spare time, you're still more mistaken. It's no easy task, I cantell you, to make a bank and keep a bank, and manage your neighbor'smoney as well as your own, and if you think it is, you're wrong. Tomake a hundred thousand pounds is a deal harder than to make Latinverses--or to go tramping the country on a market day with your gun!That's not business! That's not business, and onc
e for all, if you arenot going to help me, I warn you that I must find someone who will!And I shall not have far to look!"
"I'm afraid, sir, that I have not got a turn for it," Clement pleaded.
"But what have you a turn for? You shoot, but I'm hanged if you bringhome much game. And you fish, but I suppose you give the fish away.And you're out of town, idling and doing God knows what, three days inthe week! No turn for it? No will to do it, you mean. Do you everthink," the banker continued, joining the fingers of his two hands ashe sat back in his chair, and looking over them at the culprit, "whereyou would be and what you would be doing if I had not toiled for you?If I had not made the business at which you do not condescend to work?I had to make my own way. My grandfather was little better than alaborer, and but for what I've done you might be a clerk at a pound aweek, and a bad clerk, too! Or behind a shop-counter, if you liked itbetter. And if things go wrong with me--for I'd have you remember thatnothing in this world is quite safe--that is where you may still be!Still, my lad!"
For the first time Clement looked his father fairly in the face--andpleased him. "Well, sir," he said, "if things go wrong I hope youwon't find me wanting. Nor ungrateful for what you have done for us. Iknow how much it is. But I'm not Bourdillon, and I've not got his headfor figures."
"You've not got his application. That's the mischief! Your heart's notin it."
"Well, I don't know that it is," Clement admitted. "I suppose youcouldn't----" he hesitated, a new hope kindled within him. He lookedat his father doubtfully.
"Couldn't what?"
"Release me from the bank, sir? And give me a--a very small capitalto----"
"To go and idle upon?" the banker exclaimed, and thumped the ledger inhis indignation at an idea so preposterous. "No, by G--d, I couldn't!Pay you to go idling about the country, more like a dying duck in athunder-storm, as I am told you do, than a man! Find you capital andsee you loiter your life away with your hands in your pockets? No, Icouldn't, my boy, and I would not if I could! Capital, indeed? Giveyou capital? For what?"
"I could take a farm," sullenly, "and I shouldn't idle. I can workhard enough when I like my work. And I know something about farming,and I believe I could make it pay."
The other gasped. To the banker, with his mind on thousands, with hisplans and hopes for the future, with his golden visions of LombardStreet and financial sway, to talk of a farm and of making it pay! Itseemed--it seemed worse than lunacy. His son must be out of his mind.He stared at him, honestly wondering. "A farm!" he ejaculated at last."And make it pay? Go back to the clodhopping life your grandfatherlived before you and from which I lifted you? Peddle with pennies andsell ducks and chickens in the market? Why--why, I don't know what tosay to you?"
"I like an outdoor life," Clement pleaded, his face scarlet.
"Like a--like a----" Ovington could find no word to express hisfeelings and with an effort he swallowed them down. "Look here,Clement," he said more mildly; "what's come to you? What is it that isamiss with you? Whatever it is you must straighten it out, boy; theremust be an end of this folly, for folly it is. Understand me, the daythat you go out of the bank you go to stand on your own legs, withouthelp from me. If you are prepared to do that?"
"I don't say that I could--at first."
"Then while I keep you I shall certainly do it on my own terms. So, ifyou please, I will hear no more of this. Go back to your desk, go backto your desk, sir, and do your duty. I sent you to Cambridge atButler's suggestion, but I begin to fear that it was the biggestmistake of my life. I declare I never heard such nonsense except froma man in love. I suppose you are not in love, eh?"
"No!" Clement cried angrily, and he went out.
For he could not own to his father that he was in love; in love withthe brown earth, the woods, and the wide straggling hedge-rows, withthe whispering wind and the music of the river on the shallows, withthe silence and immensity of night. Had he done so, he would havespoken a language which his father did not and could not understand.And if he had gone a step farther and told him that he felt drawn tothose who plodded up and down the wide stubbles, who cut and bound thethick hedge-rows, who wrought hand in hand with Nature day in and dayout, whose lives were spent in an unending struggle with the soiluntil at last they sank and mingled with it--if he had told him thathe felt his kinship with those humble folk who had gone before him, hewould only have mystified him, only have angered him the more.
Yet so it was. And he could not change himself.
He went slowly to his supper and to Betty, owning defeat;acknowledging his father's strength of purpose, acknowledging hisfather's right, yet vexed at his own impotence. Life pulsed stronglywithin him. He longed to do something. He longed to battle, the windin his teeth and the rain in his face, with some toil, some labor thatwould try his strength and task his muscles, and send him home atsunset weary and satisfied. Instead he saw before him an endlesssuccession of days spent with his head in a ledger and his heels onthe bar of his stool, while the sun shone in at the windows of thebank and the flies buzzed sleepily about him; days arid and tedious,shared with no companion more interesting than Rodd, who, excellentfellow, was not amusing, or more congenial than Bourdillon, whopatronized him when he was not using him. And in future he would haveto be more punctual, more regular, more assiduous! It was a drearyprospect.
He ate his supper in morose silence until Betty, who had been quick toread the upshot of the interview in his face, came behind him andruffled his hair. "Good boy!" she whispered, leaning over him. "Hisdays shall be long in the land!"
"I wish to heaven," he answered, "they were in the land! I am surethey will be long enough in the bank!" But after that he recovered histemper.
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