Hope awoke in him, and confidence. He squared his shoulders, he threw back his head, he strode on, he became once more the jaunty, gallant, handsome young fellow, whom women’s eyes were wont to follow as he passed through the streets. But, steady, not so fast. There was still room for management. He had no mind to meet Clement, whom he hated for his interference, and he went a little out of the way, until he had seen him pass by on his return journey. Then he went on. But it was now late, and the murmur of the river came up from shadowy depths, the squat tower of the church was beginning to blend with the dark sky, lights shone from the cottage doors, when he passed over the bridge. He hastened on through the dusk, opened the garden-gate, and saw his mother standing in the lighted doorway. She had missed Clement, but had gathered from the servant who had seen him that Arthur might be expected at any moment, and she had come to the door with a shawl about her head, that she might be on the look-out for him.
Poor Mrs. Bourdillon! She had passed a miserable day. She had her own — her private grounds for anxiety on Arthur’s account, and that anxiety had been strengthened by her last talk with Josina. She was sure that something was wrong with him, and this had so weighed on her spirits and engrossed her thoughts, that the danger that menaced the bank and her little fortune had not at first disturbed her. But as the tale of village gossip grew, and the rumors of disaster became more insistent, she had been forced to listen, and her fears once aroused, she had not been slow to awake to her position. Gradually Arthur’s absence and her misgivings on his account had taken the second place. The prospect of ruin, of losing her all and becoming dependent on the Squire’s niggard bounty, had closed her mind to other terrors.
So at noon on this day, unable to bear her thoughts alone, she had walked across the fields and seen Josina. But Josina had not been able to reassure her. The girl had said as little as might be about Arthur, and on the subject of the bank was herself so despondent that she had no comfort for another. The Squire had gone to town — for the first time since he had been laid up — in company with Sir Charles, and Josina fancied that it might be upon the bank business. But she hardly dared to hope that good could come of it, and Mrs. Bourdillon, who flattered herself that she knew the Squire, had no hope. She had returned from Garth more wretched than she had gone, and had she been a much wiser woman than she was, she would have found it hard to meet her son with tact.
When she heard his footsteps on the road, “Is it you?” she cried. And as he came forward into the light, “Oh, Arthur!” she wailed, “what have you brought us to? What have you done? And the times and times I’ve warned you! Didn’t I tell you that those Ovingtons — —”
“Well, come in now, mother,” he said. He stooped and kissed her on the forehead. He was very patient with her — let it be said to his credit.
“But, oh dear, dear!” She had lost control of herself and could not stay her complaints if she would. “You would have your way! And you see what has come of it! You would do it! And now — what am I to say to your uncle?”
“You can leave him to me,” Arthur replied doggedly. “And for goodness’ sake, mother, come in and shut the door. You don’t want to talk to the village, I suppose? Come in.”
He shepherded her into the parlor and closed the door on them. He was cold, and he went to the fire and stooped over it, warming his hands at the blaze.
“But the bank?”
“Oh, the bank’s gone,” he said.
She began to cry. “Then, I don’t know what’s to become of us!” she sobbed. “It’s everything we have to live upon! And you know it wasn’t I signed the order to — to your uncle! I never did — it was you — wrote my name. And now — it has ruined us! Ruined us!”
His face grew darker. “If you wish to ruin us,” he said, “at any rate if you wish to ruin me, you’ll talk like that! As it is, you’ll not lose your money, or only a part of it. The bank can pay everyone, and there’ll be something over. A good deal, I fancy,” putting the best face on it. “You’ll get back the greater part of it.” Then, changing the subject abruptly, “What did Clement Ovington want?”
“I don’t — know,” she sobbed. But already his influence was mastering her; already she was a little comforted. “He asked for you. I didn’t see him — I could not bear it. I suppose he came to — to tell me about the bank.”
“Well,” ungraciously, “he might have spared himself the trouble.” And under his breath he added a curse. “Now let me have some tea, mother. I’m tired — dog tired. I had no sleep last night. And I want to see Pugh before he goes. He must take a note for me — to Garth.”
“I’m afraid the Squire — —”
“Oh, hang the Squire! It’s not to him,” impatiently. “It’s to Josina, if you must know.”
She perked up a little at that — she had always some hope of Josina; and the return to everyday life, the clatter of the tray as it was brought in, the act of giving him his tea and seeing that he had what he liked, the mere bustling about him, did more to restore her. The lighted room, the blazing fire, the cheerful board — in face of these things it was hard to believe in ruin, or to fancy that life would not be always as it had been. She began again to have faith in him.
And he, whose natural bent it was to be sanguine, whose spirits had already rebounded from the worst, shared the feeling which he imparted. That she knew the worst was something; that, at any rate, was over, and confidently, he began to build his house again. “You won’t lose,” he said, casting back the locks from his forehead with the gesture peculiar to him. “Or not more than a few hundreds at worst, mother. That will be all right. I’ll see to that. And my uncle — you may leave him to me. He’s been vexed with me before, and I’ve brought him round. Oh, I know him. I’ve no doubt that I can manage him.”
“But Josina?” timidly. “D’you know, she was terribly low, Arthur — about something yesterday. She wouldn’t tell me, but there was something. She didn’t seem to want to talk about you.”
He winced, and for a moment his face fell. But he recovered himself, and, “Oh, I’ll soon put that right,” he answered confidently. “I shall see her in the morning. She’s a good soul, is Josina. I can count on her. Don’t you fret, mother. You’ll see it will all come right — with a little management.”
“Well, I know you’re very clever, Arthur. But Jos — —”
“Jos is afraid of him, that’s all.” And laughing, “Oh, I’ve an arrow in my quiver, yet, mother. We shall see. But I must see Jos in the morning. Is Pugh there? I’ll write to her now and ask her to meet me at the stile at ten o’clock. Nothing like striking while the iron is hot.”
On the morrow he did not feel quite so confident. The sunshine and open weather of the day before had given place to rain and fog, and when, after crossing the plank-bridge at the foot of the garden, he took the field path which led to Garth, mist hid the more distant hills, and even the limestone ridge which rose to her knees. The vale had ceased to be a vale, and he walked in a plain, sad and circumscribed, bounded by ghostly hedges, which in their turn melted into grey space. That the day should affect his spirits was natural, and that his position should appear less hopeful was natural, too, and he told himself so, and strove to rally his courage. He strode along, swinging his stick and swaggering, though there was no one to see him. And from time to time he whistled to prove that he was free from care.
After all, the fact that it rained did not alter matters. Wet or dry he had saved the Squire’s life, and a man’s life was his first and last and greatest possession, and not least valued when near its end. He who saved it had a claim, and much — much must be forgiven him. Then, too, he reminded himself that the old man was no longer the hard, immovable block that he had been. The loss of sight had weakened him; he had broken a good deal in the last few months. He could be cajoled, persuaded, made to see things, and surely, with Josina’s help, it would not be impossible to put such a color on the — the loan of the securities as might make it appear a
trifle. Courage! A little courage and all would be well yet.
He was still hopeful when he saw Josina’s figure, muffled in a cloak and poke-bonnet, grow out of the mist before him. The girl was waiting for him on the farther side of the half-way stile, which had been their trysting place from childhood; and what slight doubt he had felt as to her willingness to help him died away. He whistled a little louder, and swung his stick more carelessly, and he spoke before he came up to her.
“Hallo, Jos!” he cried cheerfully. “You’re before me. But I knew that I could count on you, if I could count on any one. I only came from London last night, and” — his stick over his shoulder, and his head thrown back— “I knew the best thing I could do was to see you and get your help. Why?” In spite of himself his voice fell a tone. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, Arthur!” she said. That was all, but the two words completed what her look had begun. His eyes dropped. “How could you? How would you do it?”
“Why — why, surely you’re not going to turn against me?” he exclaimed.
“And he was blind! Blind! And he trusted you. He trusted you, Arthur.”
“The devil!” roughly — for how could he meet this save by bluster? “If we’re going to talk like that — but you don’t understand, Jos. It was business, and you don’t understand, I tell you. Business, Jos.”
“He does.”
Two words only, but they rang a knell in his ears. They gripped him in the moment of his swagger, left him bare before her, a culprit, dumb.
“He has felt it terribly! Terribly,” she continued. “He was blind, and you deceived him. Whom can he trust now, Arthur?”
He strove to rally his confidence. He could not meet her gaze, but he tapped a rail of the stile with his stick. “Oh, but that’s nonsense!” he said. “Nonsense! But, of course, if you are against me, if you are not going to help me — —”
“How can I help you? He will not hear your name.”
“I can tell you how — quite easily, if you will let me explain?”
She shook her head.
“But you can. If you are willing, that is. Of course, if you are not — —”
“What can I do? He knows all.”
“You can remind him of what I did for him,” he answered eagerly. “I saved his life. He would not be alive now but for me. You can tell him that. Remind him of that, Jos. Tell him that sometime after dinner, when he is in a good humor. He owes his life to me, and that’s not a small thing — is it? Even he must see that he owes me something. What’s a paltry thousand or two thousand? And I only borrowed them; he won’t lose a penny by it — not a penny!” earnestly. “What’s that in return for a man’s life? He must know — —”
“He does know!” she cried; and the honest indignation in her eyes, the indignation that she could no longer restrain, scorched him. For this was too much, this was more than even she, gentle as she was, could bear. “He does know all — all, Arthur!” she repeated severely. “That it was not you — not you, but Clement, Mr. Ovington, who saved him! And fought for him — that night! Oh, Arthur, for shame! For shame! I did not think so meanly of you as this! I did not think that you would rob another — —”
“What do you mean?” He tried to bluster afresh, but the stick shook in his hand. “Confound it, what do you mean?”
“What I say,” she answered firmly. “And it is no use to deny it, for my father knows it. He knows all. He has seen Clement — —”
“Clement, eh?” bitterly. “Oh, it’s Clement now, is it?” He was white with rage and chagrin, furious at the failure of his last hope. “It’s that way, is it? You have gone over to that prig, have you? And he’s told you this?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe him?”
“I do.”
“You believe him against me?”
“Yes,” she said, “for it is the truth, Arthur. I know that he would not tell me anything else.”
“And I? Do you mean to say that I would?”
She was silent.
It was check and mate, the loss of his last piece, the close of the game — and he knew it. With all in his favor he had made one false move, then another and a graver one, and this was the end.
He could not face it out. There was no more to be said, nothing more to be done, only shame and humiliation if he stayed. He flung a word of passionate incoherent abuse at her, and before she could reply he turned his back on her and strode away. Sorrowfully Jos watched him as he hurried along the path, cutting at the hedge with his stick, cursing his luck, cursing the trickery of others, cursing at last, perhaps, his own folly. She watched him until the ghostly hedges and the misty distances veiled him from sight.
Ten minutes later he burst in upon his mother at the Cottage and demanded twenty pounds. “Give it me, and let me go!” he cried. “Do you hear? I must have it! If you don’t give it me, I shall cut my throat!”
Scared by his manner, his haggard eyes, his look of misery, the poor woman did not even protest. She went upstairs and fetched the sum he asked for. He took it, kissed her with lips still damp with rain, and bidding her send his clothes as he should direct — he would write to her — he hurried out.
CHAPTER XLII
“I wun’t do it! I wun’t do it!” the Squire muttered stubbornly. “Mud and blood’ll never mix. Shape the chip as you will, ’tis part of the block! Girls’ whimsies are women’s aches, and they that’s older must judge for them. She’d only repent of it when ’twas too late, and I’ve paid my debt and there’s an end of it.”
From the hour of that scene at Ovington’s he had begun to recover. From that moment he began to wear a stiff upper lip and to give his orders in hard, sharp tones, as he had been wont to give them in days when he could see; as if, in truth, his irruption into the life of the town and his action at the bank had re-established him in his own eyes. Those about him were quick to see the change — he had taken, said they, a new lease of life. “Maybe, ’tis just a flicker,” Calamy observed cautiously; but even he had to admit that the flame burned higher for a time, and privately he advised the new man who filled Thomas’s place “to hop it when the master spoke,” or he’d hop it to some purpose.
The result was that there was a general quickening up in the old house. The master’s hand was felt, and things moved to a livelier time. To some extent pride had to do with this, for the rumor of the Squire’s doings in Aldersbury had flown far and wide and made him the talk of the county. He had saved the bank. He had averted ruin from hundreds. He had saved the country-side. He had paid in thirty, forty, fifty thousand pounds. Naturally his people were proud of him.
And doubtless the bold part he had played had given the old man a fillip; others had stood by, while he, blind as he was, had asserted himself, and acted, and rescued his neighbors from a great misfortune. But the stiffness he showed was not due to this only. It was assumed to protect himself. “I wun’t do it! I wun’t do it! It’s not i’ reason,” he told himself over and over again; and in his own mind he fought a perpetual battle. On the one side contended the opinions of a lifetime and the prejudices of a caste, the beliefs in which he had been brought up, and a pride of birth that had come down from an earlier day; on the other, the girl’s tremulous gratitude, her silence, the touch of her hand on his sleeve, the sound of her voice, the unceasing appeal of her presence.
Ay, and there were times when he was so hard put to it that he groaned aloud. No man was more of a law to himself, but at these times he fell back on the views of others. What would Woosenham say of it? How would he hold up his hands? And Chirbury — whose peerage he respected, since it was as old as his own family, if he thought little of the man? And Uvedale and Cludde? Ay, and Acherley, who, rotten fellow as he was, was still Acherley of Acherley? They had held the fort so stoutly in Aldshire, they had repelled the moneyed upstarts so proudly, they had turned so cold a shoulder on Manchester and Birmingham! They had found in their Peninsular hero, and in that little cou
ntry churchyard where the maker of an empire lay resting after life’s fever, so complete a justification for their own claims to leadership and to power! And no one had been more steadfast, more dogged, more hide-bound in their pride and exclusiveness than he.
Now, if he gave way, what would they say? What laughter would there not be from one end of the county to the other, what sneers, what talk of an old man’s folly and an old man’s weakness! For it was not even as if the man’s father had been a Peel or the like, a Baring or a Smith! A small country banker, a man just risen from the mud — not even a stranger from a distance, or a merchant prince from God knows where! Oh, it was impossible. Impossible! Garth, that had been in the hands of gentlefolk, of Armigeri from Harry the Eighth, to pass into the hands, into the blood of — no, it was impossible! All the world of Aldshire would jeer at it, or be scandalized by it.
“I wun’t do it!” said the Squire for the hundredth time. It was more particularly at the thought of Acherley that he squirmed. He despised Acherley, and to be despised by Acherley — that was too much!
“Of course,” said a small voice within him, “he would take the name of Griffin, and in time — —”
“Mud’s mud,” replied the Squire silently. “You can’t change it.”
“But he’s honest,” quoth the small voice.
“So’s Calamy!”
“He saved — —”
“And I ha’ paid him! Damme, I ha’ paid him! Ha’ done!” And then, “It’s that blow on the head has moithered me!”
Things went on in this way for a month, the Squire renewing his vigor and beginning to tramp his fields again, or with the new man at his bridle-hand to ride the old grey from point to point, learning what the men were doing, inquiring after gaps, and following the manure to the clover-ley, where the oats and barley would presently go in. Snow lay on the upper hills, grizzling the brown sheets of bracken, and dappling the green velvet of the sloping ling; the valley below was frost-bound. But the Squire had a fire within him, a fire of warring elements, that kept his blood running. He was very sharp with the men and scolded old Fewtrell. As for Thomas’s successor, the lad learned to go warily and kept his tongue between his teeth.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 677