“Peace, woman!” said the Squire. “Did he ask to see me, or — —” with an effort, “my nephew?”
“Oh, you, sir! Leastwise that’s what Jane said, but she’s no more head than a goose! To let him in when she knows that you’re hardly out of your bed, and can’t see every Jack Harry that comes!”
“I’ll see him,” the Squire said heavily. He bade Calamy take him in.
“But you’ll take your egg-flip, Mr. Griffin? Before you — —”
“Don’t clack, woman, don’t clack!” cried the Squire, and made a blow at her with his stick, but with no intention of reaching her. “Begone! Begone!”
“But, dear sir, the doctor! You know he said”
“D — n you, I’ll not take it! D’you hear? I’ll not take it! Get out!” And he went on through the house, the tap of his stick on the stone flags going before him and announcing his coming. Half-way along the passage he paused. “Did she say,” he asked, lowering his voice, “that he came from the bank?”
“Ay, ay,” Calamy said. “And like enough. Ill news has many feet. Rides apace and needs no spurs. But if your honor will let me see him, I’ll sort him! I’ll sort him, I’ll warrant! One’d think,” grumbling, “they’d more sense than to come here about their dirty business as if we were the bank!” The man was surprised that his master took the matter with any patience, for, to him, with all the prejudices of the class he served, it seemed the height of impertinence to come to Garth about such business. “Let me see him, your honor, and ask what he wants,” he urged.
But the Squire ruled otherwise. “No,” he said wearily, “I’ll see him.” And he went in.
The front door stood open. “There’s a po-chay, right enough,” Calamy informed him. “And luggage. Seems to ha’ come some way, too.”
“Umph! Take me in. And tell me who it is. Then go.”
The butler opened the door, and guided the old man into the room. A glance informed him who the visitor was, but he continued to give all his attention to his master, in this way subtly conveying to the stranger that he was of so little importance as to be invisible. Nor until the Squire had reached the table and set his hand on it did Calamy open his mouth. Then, “It’s Mr. Ovington,” he announced.
“Mr. Ovington?”
“Ay, the young gentleman.”
“Ah!” The old man stood a moment, his hand on the table. Then, “Put me in my chair,” he said. “And go. Shut the door.”
And when the man had done so, “Well!” heavily, “what have you come to say? But you’d best sit. Sit down! So you didn’t go to London? Thought better of it, eh, young man? Ay, I know! Talked to your father and saw things differently? And now you’ve come to give me another dose of fine words to keep me quiet till the shutters go up? And if the worst comes to the worst, your father’s told you, I suppose, that I can’t prosecute — family name, eh? That’s what you’ve come for, I suppose?”
“No, sir,” Clement answered soberly. “I’ve not come for that. And my father — —”
The Squire struck his stick on the floor. “I don’t want to hear from him!” he cried with violence. “I want no message from him, d’you hear? I’m not come down to that! And as for your excuses, young gentleman — —”
“I am not come with any excuses,” Clement answered, restraining himself with difficulty — but after all the old man had had provocation enough to justify many hard words, and he was blind besides. As he sat there, glaring sightlessly before him, his hands on his stick, he was a pathetic figure in his anger and helplessness. “I’ve been to town, as I said I would.”
The Squire was silent for some seconds. “And come back?” he exclaimed.
“Well, yes, sir,” with a smile. “I’m here.”
“Umph? How did you do it?”
“I posted up and came down as far as Birmingham by the Bull and Mouth coach. I posted on this morning.”
“Well, you’ve been devilish quick!” The Squire admitted it reluctantly. He hardly knew whether to believe the tale or not. “You didn’t wait long there, that’s certain. And did as little, I suppose. Bank’s going, I hear?”
“I hope not.”
“Pooh!” the Squire said impatiently. “You may speak out! Speak out, man! There is no one here.”
“There’s some danger, I’m afraid.”
“Danger! I should think there was! More than danger, as I hear!” The Squire drummed for a moment with his fingers on the table. He was thinking not of the bank, or even of his loss, but of his nephew and the scandal that would not pass by him. But he would not refer to Arthur, and after a pause, “Well,” with an angry snort, “if that’s all you’ve come to tell me, you might have spared yourself — and me. I cannot say that your company’s very welcome, so if you please, we’ll dispense with compliments. If that’s all — —”
“But that’s not all, sir,” Clement interposed. “I wish I could have brought back the securities, or even the whole of the money.”
The Squire laughed. “No doubt,” he said.
“But I was too late to ensure that. The stock had already been transferred.”
“So he was quick, too!”
“And selling for cash in the middle of such a crisis he had to accept a loss of seven per cent. on the current price. But he suggests that if you reinvest immediately, a half, at least, of this may be recovered, and the eventual loss need not be more than three or four hundred. I ought perhaps to have stayed in town to effect this, but I had to think of my father, who was alone at the bank. However, I did what I could, sir, and — —”
Clement paused; the Squire had uttered an exclamation which he did not catch. The old man turned a little in his chair so as to face the speaker. “Eh?” he said. “Do you mean that you’ve got any of the money — here?”
“I’ve eleven thousand and a bit over,” Clement explained. “Five thousand in gold and the rest — —”
“What?”
“Sir?”
“Do you mean” — the Squire spoke haltingly, after a pause — he did not seem to be able to find the right words. “Do you mean that you’ve brought back the money?”
“Not all. What I’ve told you, sir. There’s six thousand and odd in notes. The gold is in two bags in the chaise.”
“Here?”
“At the door, sir. I’ll bring it in.”
“Ay,” said the Squire passively. “Bring it in.”
Clement went out and returned, carrying in two small leather bags. He set them down at the Squire’s feet “There’s the gold, sir,” he said. “I’ve not counted it, but I’ve no doubt that it is right. It weighs a little short of a hundred pounds.”
The old man felt the bags, then, standing up, he lifted them in turn a few inches from the floor. “What does a thousand pounds weigh?” he asked.
“Between eighteen and nineteen pounds, sir.”
“And the notes?”
“I have them here.” Clement drew a thick packet from the pocket of his inner vest and put it into the Squire’s hands. “They’re Bank of England paper. They were short even at the bank, and wanted Bourdillon to take it in one-pound notes, but he stood out and got these in the end.”
The Squire handled the packet, felt its thickness, weighed it lovingly in his hand. So much money, so much money in so small a space! Six thousand and odd pounds! It seemed as if he could not let it go, but in the end he placed it in the breast pocket of his high-collared old coat, the shabby blue coat with the large gilt buttons that was his common wear at home. The money secured, he sat, looking before him, while Clement, a little mortified, waited for the word of acknowledgment that did not come. At last, “Did you call at your father’s?” the old man asked — irrelevantly, it seemed.
Clement colored. He had not expected the question. “Well, I did, sir,” he admitted. “Bourdillon — —”
“He was with you?”
“As far as the town. He was anxious that the money should be seen to arrive. He thought that it migh
t check the run, and I agreed that it might do some good, and that we might make that advantage of it. So I took it through the bank.”
“Pretty full, I expect, eh? Pretty full?”
“Well,” ruefully, “it was, sir.”
“A strong run, eh?”
“I’m afraid so. It looked like it. It was full to the doors. That’s why,” glancing at his watch as he stood by the window, the table between him and the Squire, “I must get back to my father. We took it through the bank and out by the garden, and put it in the chaise again in Roushill.”
“Umph! He came back to town with you?”
“Bourdillon, sir? Yes — as far as the East Bridge. He left me there.”
“Where is he?”
Clement hesitated. “I hope that he’s gone to the bank, sir,” he said.
He did not add, as he might have, that, after Arthur and he had left the coach at Birmingham and posted on, there had been a passionate scene between them. No doubt Arthur had never given up hope, but from the first had determined to make another fight for it; and there was no police officer at their elbows now. He had appealed to Clement by all that he loved to take the money to the bank, and there to deal with it as his father should decide. Finding Clement firm and his appeals useless, he had given way to passion, he had stormed and threatened and even shed tears; and at last, seizing the pistol case that lay at their feet, he had sworn that he would shoot himself before the other’s eyes if he did not give way. In his rage he had seemed to be capable of anything, and there had been a struggle for the pistol, blows had been exchanged, and worse might have come of it if the noise of the fracas had not reached the postboy’s ears. He had pulled up, turned in his saddle, and asked what the devil they would be at; he would have no murder in his master’s carriage.
That had shamed them. Arthur had given way, had flung himself back, white and sullen, in his corner, and they had continued the journey on such terms as may be imagined. But even so, Arthur had proved his singular power of adaptation. The environs of the town in sight, he had suggested that at least they should take the money through the bank. Clement, anxious to make peace, had consented to that, and on the East Bridge Arthur had called on the postboy to stop, had jumped out, and, turning his back on his companion, had made off without a word.
Clement said nothing of this to the Squire, though the scene had been painful, and though he felt that something was due to him, were it but a word of thanks, or an expression of acknowledgment. It had not been his fault or his father’s, that the money had been taken; it was through him that the greater part of it had been recovered, and now reposed safe in the Squire’s pocket or in the bags at his feet.
At the least, it seemed to him, the old man might remember that his father was alone and needing him — was facing trouble, and, it might be, ruin. He took up his hat. “Well, sir, that’s all,” he said curtly. “I must go now.”
“Wait!” said the Squire. “And ring the bell, if you please.”
Clement stepped to the hearth, and pulled the faded drab cord, which once had been blue, that hung near it. The bell in the passage had hardly tinkled before Calamy entered. “Bid your mistress come here,” said the old man. “Where is she? Fetch her?”
The blood mounted to Clement’s face, and his pulses began to throb, his ideas to tumble over one another. The old man, who sat before him, his hands on his stick, stubbornly confronting the darkness, the old man, whom he had thought insensible, took on another hue, became instead inscrutable, puzzling, perplexing. Why had he sent for his daughter? What was in his mind? What was he going to say? What had he — but even while Clement wondered, his thoughts in a whirl, strange hopes jostling one another in his brain, the door opened, and Josina came in.
She came in with a timid step, but as soon as her eyes met Clement’s, the color rose vividly to her cheeks, then left her pale. Her lip trembled. But her look — fleeting as it was and immediately diverted to her father — how he blessed her for that look! For it bade him take confidence, it bade him have no fear, it bade him trust her. Silently and incredibly, it took him under her protection, it pledged her faith to him.
And how it changed all for him! How it quelled, in a moment, the disappointment and anger he was feeling, ay, and even the vague hopes which the Squire’s action in summoning her had roused in him! How it gave calmness and assurance where his aspirations had been at best to the extravagant and the impossible.
But, whatever his feelings, to whatever lover’s heaven that look raised him, he was speedily brought to earth again. The old man had proved himself thankless; now, as if he were determined to show himself in the worst light, he proceeded to prove himself suspicious. “Come here, girl,” he said, “and count these notes.” Fumbling, he took the parcel from his pocket and handed it to her. “Ha’ you got them? Then count them! D’you hear, wench? Count them! And have a care to make no mistake! Lay ‘em in piles o’ ten. They are hundreds, are they? Hundreds, eh?”
She untied the parcel, and brought all her faculties to bear on the task, though her fingers trembled, and the color, rising and ebbing in her cheeks, betrayed her consciousness that her lover’s eyes were upon her. “Yes, sir, they are hundred-pound notes,” she said.
“All?”
“Yes, all, I think, sir.”
“Bank of England?” He poked at her skirts with his stick. “Bank of England, eh? Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir, so far as I can see.”
“Ay, ay. Well, count ‘em! And mind what you are doing, girl!”
Clement did not know whether to smile or to be angry, but a moment later he felt no bent towards either. For with a certain dignity, “I ha’ been deceived once,” the Squire continued. “I ha’ signed once and paid for it. I’m in the dark. But I don’t act i’ the dark again. If I can’t trust my own flesh and blood, I’ll not trust strangers. No, no! I don’t know as there’s any one I can trust.”
“I quite understand, sir,” Clement said — though it was the last thing he had had it in his mind to say a moment earlier.
“I don’t mind whether you understand or not,” the Squire retorted. “Ha’ you done, girl?” after an interval of silence.
“Not quite, sir. I have five heaps of ten.”
“Well, well, get on. We are keeping the young man.”
He spoke as he would have spoken of any young man in a shop, and Clement winced, and Josina knew that he winced and she reddened. But she went on with her work. “There are sixty-one, sir,” she said. “That makes — —”
“Six thousand one hundred pounds. Ay, it’s right so far. Right so far. And the gold” — he paused and seemed to be at a nonplus— “I’m afraid ’twould take too long to count it. Well, let it be. Get some paper and write a receipt as I tell you.”
“There is no need, sir,” Clement ventured.
“There’s every need, young man. I’m doing business. Ha’ you got the pen, girl? Then write as I tell you. ‘I, George Griffin of Garth, in the County of Aldshire, acknowledge that I have this 16th day of December 1825 received from Messrs. Ovington of Aldersbury, six thousand one hundred pounds in Bank of England notes, and’ — ha’ you got that? Ha’ you got that?— ‘two bags stated by them to contain five thousand pounds in gold.’ Ha’ you got that down? Then show me the place, and — —”
But as she put the pen in his hand he let it drop. He sat back in his chair. “Ay, he showed me the place before,” he muttered, his chin on his breast. “It was he gave me the pen, then, girl. And how be I to know? How be I to know?”
It came home to them — to them both. In his voice, his act, his attitude was the pathos of blindness, its helplessness, its dependence, its reliance on others — on the eyes, the hand, the honesty of others. The girl leant over him. “Father,” she said, tears in her voice, “I wouldn’t deceive you! You know I wouldn’t. I would never deceive you!”
“Ha’ you never deceived me? Wi’ that young man?” sternly.
“But — —�
��
“Ay, you have! You have deceived me — with him.”
She could not defend herself, and, suppressing her sobs, “I will call Calamy,” she said. “He can read. He shall count the notes.”
But he put out his hand and grasped her skirts. “No,” he said. “What’ll I be the better? Give me the pen. If you deceive me in this, wench — what matter if the notes be short or not, or what comes of it?”
“I would cut off my hand first!” she cried. “And Clement — —”
“Eh?” He sat up sharply.
She was frightened, and she did not continue. “This is the place, sir,” she said meekly.
“Here?”
“Yes, sir, where you are now.”
He wrote his name. “Dry it,” he said. “And ring the bell. And there, give it to him. He wants to be off. Odds are the shutters’ll be up afore he gets there. Calamy!” to the man who had appeared at the door, “see this gentleman off, and be quick about it. He’s no time to lose. And, hark you, come back to me when he’s gone. No, girl,” sternly, “you stay here. I want you.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
In ordinary times, news is slow to make its way to the ears of the great. Protected from the vulgar by his deer park, looking out from the stillness of his tall-windowed library on his plantations and his ornamental water, Sir Charles Woosenham was removed by six miles of fine champaign country from the common fret and fume of Aldersbury. He no longer maintained, as his forefathers had maintained, a house in the town, and in all likelihood he would not have heard the talk about the bank, or caught the alarm in time, if one of his neighbors had not made it his business to arouse him.
Acherley, baffled in his attempt at blackmail, and thirsting for revenge, had bethought him of the Chairman of the Valleys Railroad. He had been quick to see that he could use him, and perhaps he had even fancied that it was his duty to use him. At any rate, one fine morning, some days before this eventful Wednesday, he had mounted his old hunter, Nimrod, and had cantered across country by gaps and gates from Acherley to Woosenham Park. He had entered by a hunting wicket, and leaping the ha-ha, he had presented himself to Sir Charles ten minutes after the latter had left the breakfast table, and withdrawn himself after his fashion of a morning, into a dignified seclusion.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 672