Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  She watched him go with his heavy burden and his blunt common-sense down the garden walk; and when he had disappeared behind the pear-tree espaliers she went back to listen outside the parlor door. She had been her father’s pet. He had treated her with an indulgence and a familiarity rare in those days of parental strictness, and she understood him well, better than others, better even than Clement. She knew what failure would mean to him. It was not the loss of wealth which would wound him most sorely, though he would feel that; but the loss of the position which success had gained for him in the little world in which he lived, and lived somewhat aloof. He had been thought, and he had thought himself, cleverer than his neighbors. He had borne himself as one belonging to, and destined for, a wider sphere. He had met the pride of the better-born and the older-established with a greater pride; and believing in his star, he had allowed his contempt for others and his superiority to be a little too clearly seen.

  For all this he would now pay, and his pride would suffer. Betty, lingering in the darker part of the hall, where the servants could not spy on her, listened and longed to go in to him and comfort him. But all the rules forbade this, she might not distract him at such a time. Yet, had she known how deep was his depression as he sat sunk in his chair, had she known how the past mocked him, and the long chain of his successes rose and derided him, how the mirage of long-cherished hopes melted and left all cold before him — had she guessed the full bitterness of his spirit, she had broken through every rule and gone in to him.

  The self-made man! Proudly, disdainfully he had flung the taunt back in men’s faces. Could they make, could they have made themselves, as he had? And now the self-ruined man! He sat thinking of it, and the minutes went by. Twice one of the clerks came in and silently placed a slip beside him and went softly out. He looked at the slip, but without taking in its meaning. What did it matter whether a few more or a few less pounds had been drawn out, whether the drain had waxed or waned in the last quarter of an hour? The end was certain, and it would come when the two men arrived on the Chester coach. Then he would have to bestir himself. Then he would have to resume the lead and play the man, give back hardness for hardness and scorn for scorn, and bear himself so in defeat that no man should pity him. And he knew that he could do it. He knew that when the time came his voice would be firm and his face would be granite, and that he would pronounce his own sentence and declare the bank closed with a high head. He knew that even in defeat he could so clothe himself with power that no man should browbeat him.

  But in the meantime he paid his debt to weakness, and sat brooding on the past, rather than preparing for the future; and time passed, the relentless hand moved round the clock. Twice the clerk came in with his doom-bearing slips, and presently Rodd appeared. But the cashier had nothing to say that the banker did not know. Ovington took the paper and looked at the figures and at the total, but all he said was, “Let me know when Owen and Jenkins come.”

  “Very good, sir.” Rodd lingered a moment as if he would gladly have added something, would have ventured, perhaps, some word of sympathy. But his courage failed him and he went out.

  Nor when Clement, half an hour afterwards, returned from his mission to Garth did he give any sign. Clement laid his hand on his shoulder and said a cheery word, but, getting no answer, or as good as none, he went through to his desk. A moment later his voice could be heard rallying a too conscious customer, greeting another with contemptuous good humor, bringing into the close, heated atmosphere of the bank, where men breathed heavily, snapped at one another, and shuffled their feet, a gust of freer brisker air.

  Another half-hour passed. A clerk brought in a slip. The banker looked at it. No more than seven hundred pounds remained in the till. “Very good,” he said. “Let me know when Mr. Owen and Mr. Jenkins come.” And as the door closed behind the lad he fell back into his old posture of depression. There was nothing to be done.

  But five minutes later Clement looked in, his face concerned. “Sir Charles Woosenham is here,” he said in a low voice. “He is asking for you.”

  The banker roused himself. The call was not unexpected nor quite unwelcome. “Show him in,” he said; and he took up a pen and drew a sheet of paper towards him that he might appear to be employing himself.

  Sir Charles came in, tall, stooping a little, his curly-brimmed hat in his hand; the dignified bearing with which he was wont to fence himself against the roughness of the outer world a little less noticeable than usual. He was a gentleman, and he did not like his errand.

  Ovington rose. “Good morning, Sir Charles,” he said, “you wanted to see me? I am unfortunately busy this morning, but I can give you ten minutes. What is it, may I ask?” He pushed a chair toward his visitor.

  But Woosenham would not sit down. If the man was down he hated to — but, there, he had come to do it. “I am sure it is all right, Mr. Ovington,” he said awkwardly, “but I am concerned about the — about the Railway money, in fact. The sum is large, and — and—” stammering a little— “but I think you will understand my position?”

  The banker smiled. “You wish to know if it’s safe?” he said.

  “Well, yes — precisely,” with relief. “You’ll forgive me, I am sure. But people are talking.”

  “They are doing more,” Ovington answered austerely — he no longer smiled. “They are doing their best to ruin me, Sir Charles, and to plunge themselves into loss. But I need not go into that. You are anxious about the Railroad money? Very good.” He rang the bell and the clerk came in. “Go to the strong-room,” the banker said, taking some keys from the table, “with Mr. Clement, and bring me the box with the Railway Trust.”

  “I am sorry,” Sir Charles said, when they were alone, “to trouble you at this time, but — —”

  Ovington stopped him. “You are perfectly in order,” he said. “Indeed, I am glad you have come. The box will be here in a minute.”

  Clement brought it in, and Ovington took another key and unlocked it. “It is all here,” he explained, “except the small sum already expended in preliminary costs — the sum passed, as you will remember, at the last meeting of the Board. Here it is.” He took a paper which lay on the top of the contents of the box. “Except four hundred and ten pounds, ten shillings. The rest is invested in Treasury Bills until required. The bills are here, and Clement will check them with you, Sir Charles, while I finish this letter. We have, of course, treated this as a Trust Fund, and I think that the better course will be for you to affix your seal to the box when you have verified the contents.”

  He turned to his letter, though it may be doubted whether he knew what he was writing, while Sir Charles and Clement went through the box, verified the securities, and finally sealed the box. That done, Woosenham would have offered fresh apologies, but the banker waved them aside and bowed him out, directing Clement to see him to the door.

  That done, left alone once more, he sat thinking. The incident had roused him and he felt the better for it. He had been able to assert himself and he had confirmed in good will a man who might yet be of use to him. But he was not left alone very long. Sir Charles had not been gone five minutes before Rodd thrust a pale face in at the door, and in an agitated whisper informed him that Owen and Jenkins were coming down the High Street. A scout whom the cashier had sent out had seen them and run ahead with the news. “They’ll be here in two minutes, sir,” Rodd added in a tone which betrayed his dismay. “What am I to do? Will you see them, sir?”

  “Certainly,” Ovington answered. “Show them in as soon as they arrive.”

  He spoke firmly, and made a brave show in Rodd’s eyes. But he knew that up to this moment he had retained a grain of hope, a feeling, vague and baseless, that something might yet happen, something might yet occur at the last moment to save the bank. Well, it had not, and he must steel himself to face the worst. The crisis had come and he must meet it like a man. He rose from his chair and stood waiting, a little paler than usual, but composed and master
of himself.

  He heard the disturbance that the arrival of the two men caused in the bank. Some one spoke in a harsh and peremptory tone, and something like an altercation followed. Raised voices reached him, and Rodd’s answer, civil and propitiatory, came, imperfectly, to his ear. The peremptory voice rose anew, louder than before, and the banker’s face grew hard as he listened. Did they think to browbeat him? Did they think to bully him? If so, he would soon — but they were coming. He caught the sound of the counter as Rodd raised it for the visitors to pass, and the advance of feet, slowly moving across the floor. He fixed his eyes on the door, all the manhood in him called up to meet the occasion.

  The door was thrown open, widely open, but for a moment the banker could not see who stood in the shadow of the doorway. Two men, certainly, and Rodd at their elbow, hovering behind them; and they must be Owen and Jenkins, though Rodd, to be sure, should have had the sense to send in one at a time. Then it broke upon the banker that they were not Owen and Jenkins. They were bigger men, differently dressed, of another class; and he stared. For the taller of the two, advancing slowly on the other’s arm, and feeling his way with his stick, was Squire Griffin, and his companion was no other than Sir Charles, mysteriously come back again.

  Prepared for that which he had foreseen, Ovington was unprepared for this, and the old man, still feeling on his unguarded side with his stick, was the first to speak. “Give me a chair,” he grunted. “Is he here, Woosenham?”

  “Yes,” Woosenham said, “Mr. Ovington is here.”

  “Then let me sit down.” And as Sir Charles let him down with care into the chair which the astonished banker hastened to push forward, “Umph!” he muttered, as he settled himself and uncovered his head. “Tell my man” — this to Rodd— “to bring in that stuff when I send for it. Do you hear? You there? Tell him to bring it in when I bid him.” Then he turned himself to the banker, who all this time had not found a word to say, and indeed had not a notion what was coming. He could only suppose that the Squire had somehow revived Woosenham’s fears, in which case he should certainly, Squire or no Squire, hear some home truths. “You’re surprised to see me?” the old man said.

  “Well, I am, Mr. Griffin. Yes.”

  “Ay,” drily. “Well, I am surprised myself, if it comes to that. I didn’t think to be ever in this room again. But here I am, none the less. And come on business.”

  The banker’s eyes grew hard. “If it is about the Railroad moneys,” he said, “and Sir Charles is not satisfied — —”

  “It’s none of his business. Naught to do with the Railroad,” the Squire answered. Then sharply, “Where’s my nephew? Is he here?”

  “No, he is not at the bank to-day.”

  “No? Well, he never should ha’ been! And so I told him and told you. But you would both have your own way, and you know what’s come of it. Hallo!” breaking off suddenly, and turning his head, for his hearing was still good. “What’s that? Ain’t we alone?”

  “One moment,” Ovington said. Rodd had tapped at the door and put in his head.

  The cashier looked at the banker, over the visitors’ heads. “Mr. Owen and Mr. Jenkins are here,” he said in a low tone. “They wish to see you. I said you were engaged, sir, but — —” his face made the rest of the sentence clear.

  Ovington reddened, but retained his presence of mind. “They can see me in ten minutes,” he said, coldly. “Tell them so.”

  But Rodd only came a little farther into the room. “I am afraid,” he said, dropping his voice, “they won’t wait, sir. They are — —”

  “Wait?” The word came from the Squire. He shot it out so suddenly that the cashier started. “Wait? Why, hang their infernal impudence,” wrathfully, “do they think their business must come before everybody’s? Jenkins? Is that little Jenkins — Tom Jenkins of the Hollies?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then d — n his impudence!” the old man burst forth again in a voice that must have wellnigh reached the street. “Little Tom Jenkins, whose grandfather was my foot-boy, coming and interrupting my business! God bless my soul and body, the world is turned upside-down nowadays. Fine times we live in! Little — but, hark you, sirrah, d’you go and tell him to go to the devil! And shut the door, man! Shut the door!”

  “Tell them I will see them in ten minutes,” said the banker.

  But the old man was still unappeased. “That’s what we’re coming to, is it?” he fumed. “Confound their impudence,” wiping his brow, “and they’ve put me out, too! I dunno where I was. Is the door closed? Oh, ‘bout my nephew! I didn’t wish it, I’ve said that, and I’ve said it often, but he’s in. He’s in with you, banker, and he’s lugged me in! For, loth as I am to see him in it, I’m still lother that any one o’ my name or my blood should be pointed at as the man that’s lost the countryside their money! Trade’s bad, out of its place. But trade that fails at other folks’ cost and ruins a sight of people who, true or false, will say they’ve been swindled — —”

  “Stop!” the banker could bear it no longer, and he stepped forward, his face pale. “No one has swindled here! No one has been robbed of his money. No one — if it will relieve your feelings to know it, Mr. Griffin will lose by the bank in the end. I shall pay all demands within a few weeks at most.”

  “Can you pay ‘em all to-day?” asked the Squire, at his driest.

  “It may be that I cannot. But every man to whom the bank owes a penny will receive twenty shillings in the pound and interest, within a few weeks — or months.”

  “And who will be the loser, then, if the bank closes? Who’ll lose, man?”

  “The bank. No one else.”

  “But you can’t pay ‘em to-day, banker?”

  “That may be.”

  “How much will clear you? To pay ‘em all down on the nail,” truculently, “and tell ‘em all to go and be hanged? Eh? How much do you need for that?”

  Ovington opened his mouth, but for a moment, overpowered by the emotions that set his temples throbbing, he could not speak. He stared at the gaunt, stooping figure in the chair — the stooping figure in the shabby old riding-coat with the huge plated buttons that had weathered a dozen winters — and though hope sprang up in him, he doubted. The man might be playing with him. Or, he might not mean what he seemed to mean. There might be some mistake. At last, “Five thousand pounds would pull us through,” he said in a voice that sounded strange to himself, “as it turns out.”

  “You’d better take ten,” the Squire answered. “There,” fumbling in his inner pocket and extracting with effort a thick packet, “count five out of that. And there’s five in gold that my man will bring in. D’you give me a note for ten thousand at six months — five per cent.”

  “Mr. Griffin — —”

  “There, no words!” testily. “It ain’t for you I’m doing it, man. Understand that! It ain’t for you. It’s for my name and my nephew, little as he deserves it! Count it out, count it out, and give me back the balance, and let’s be done with it.”

  Ovington hesitated, his heart full, his hands trembling. He was not himself. He looked at Woosenham. “Perhaps, Sir Charles,” he said unsteadily, “will be good enough to check the amount with me!”

  “Pshaw, man, if I didn’t think you honest I shouldn’t be here, whether or no. No such fool! I satisfied myself of that, you may be sure, before I came in. Count it, yourself. And there! Bid ‘em bring in the gold.”

  The banker rang the bell and gave the order. He counted the notes, and by the time he had finished, the bags had been brought in. “You’ll ha’ to take that uncounted,” the Squire said, as he heard them set down on the floor, “as I took it myself.”

  “My son will have seen to that,” Ovington replied. He was a little more like himself now. He sat down and wrote out the note, though his hand shook.

  “Ay,” the Squire agreed, “I’m thinking he will have.” And turning his head towards Woosenham, “He’s a rum chap, that,” he continued, with a chuck
le and speaking as if the banker were not present. “He gave me a talking-to — me! D’you know that he got to London in sixteen hours, in the night-time?”

  “Did he, by Jove! Our friend at Halston could hardly have beaten that.”

  “And nothing staged either! Railroads!” scornfully. “D’you think there’s any need o’ railroads when a man can do that? Or that any railroad that’s ever made will beat that? Sixteen hours, by George, a hundred and fifty-one miles in the night-time!”

  Sir Charles, who had been an astonished spectator of the scene, gave a qualified assent, and by that time Ovington was ready with his note. The Squire pouched it with care, but cut short his thanks. “I’ve told you why I do it,” he said gruffly. “And now I’m tired and I’ll be getting home. Give me your arm, Woosenham. But as we pass I’ve a word to say to that little joker in the bank.”

  He had his word, and a strange scene it was. The two great men stood within the counter, the old man bending his hawk-like face and sightless eyes on the quailing group beyond it, while the clerks looked on, half in awe and half in amusement. “Fools!” said the Squire in his harshest tone. “Fools, all of ye! Cutting your own throats and tearing the bottom out of your own money-bags! That’s what ye be doing! And you, Tom Jenkins, and you, Owen, that should know better, first among ‘em! You haven’t the sense to see a yard before you, but elbow one another into the ditch like a pair of blind horses! You deserve to be ruined, every man of you, and it’s no fault o’ yourn that you’re not! Business men? You call yourselves business men, and run on a bank as if all the money was kept in a box under the counter ready to pay you! Go home! Go home!” poking at them with his stick. “And thank God the banker has more sense than you, and a sight more money than your tuppenny ha’penny accounts run to! Damme, if I were master here, if one single one o’ you should cross my door again! But there, take me out, Woosenham; take me out! Pack o’ fools! Pack o’ dumb fools, they are!”

  The two marched out with that, but the Squire’s words ran up and down the town like wild-fire. What he had said and how he had said it, and the figure little Tom Jenkins of the Hollies had cut, was known as far as the Castle Foregate before the old man had well set his foot on the step of his carriage. The crowd standing about Sir Charles’s four bays in the Market Place and respectfully gazing on the postillions’ yellow jackets had it within two minutes. Within four it was known at the Gullet that the old Squire was supporting the bank, and had given Welsh Owen such a talking-to as never was. Within ten, the news was being bandied up and down the long yard at the Lion, where they stabled a hundred horses, and was known even to the charwomen who, on their knees, were scrubbing the floors of the Assembly Rooms that looked down on the yard. Dean’s, at which a persistent and provoking run had been prosecuted since morning, got it among the first; and Mr. Dean, testy and snappish enough before, became for the rest of the day a terror and a thunder-cloud to the junior clerks. Nay, the news soon passed beyond Aldersbury, for the three o’clock up-coach swept it away and dropped it with various parcels and hampers at every stage between the Falcon at Heygate and Wolverhampton. Not a turn-pike man but heard it and spread it, and at the Cock at Wellington they gave it to the down-coach, which carried it back to Aldersbury.