Sir Charles went home an unhappy man. He wished that Griffin had not warned him, or that he had warned him earlier. Of what use was a warning when his lot was cast and he was the head and front of the matter, President of the Company, Chairman of the Board?
Meanwhile the Squire stood on the steps of the Court House, cursing his man. The curricle was not there, Thomas was not there, it was growing dark, and a huge pile of clouds, looming above the roofs to westward, threatened tempest. The shopkeepers were putting up their shutters, the packmen binding up their bundles, stall-keepers hurrying away their trestles, and the Market Place, strewn with the rubbish and debris of the day, showed dreary by the failing light. In the High Street there was still some traffic, and in the lanes and alleys around candles began to shine out. A one-legged sailor, caterwauling on a crazy fiddle, had gathered a small crowd before one of the taverns.
"Hang the man! Where is he?" the Squire muttered, looking about him with a disgusted eye, and wishing himself at home. "Where is the rogue?"
Then Thomas, driving slowly and orating to a couple of men who walked beside the carriage, came into view. The Squire roared at him, and Thomas, taken by surprise, whipped up his horses so sharply that he knocked over a hawker's basket. Still storming at him the old man climbed to his seat and took the reins. He drove round the corner into Bride Hill, and stopped at Purslow's door.
The draper was at the carriage wheel before it stopped. He had the bag in his hand, but he did not at once hand it up. "Excuse me, excuse the liberty, sir," he said, lowering his voice and glancing at Thomas, "but it's a large sum, sir, and it's late. Hadn't I better keep it till morning?"
The Squire snapped at him. "Morning? Rubbish, man! Put it in." He made room for the bag at his feet.
But the draper still hesitated. "It will be dark in ten minutes, sir, and the road-it's true, no one has been stopped of late, but-"
"I've never been stopped in my life," the Squire rejoined. "Put it in, man, and don't be a fool. Who's to stop me between here and Garth?"
Purslow muttered something about the safe side, but he complied. He handed in the bag, which gave out a clinking sound as it settled itself beside the Squire's feet. The old man nodded his thanks and started his horses.
He drove down Bride Hill, and by the Stalls, where the taps were humming, and the inns were doing a great business. Passing one or two belated carts, he turned to the right and descended to the bridge, the old houses with their galleries and gables looming above him as for three centuries they had loomed above the traveller by the Welsh road. He rumbled over the bridge, the wide river flowing dark below him. Then he trotted sharply up Westwell, passing by the inns that in old days had served those who arrived after the gates were closed.
Now he faced the open country and the wet west wind, and he settled himself down in his seat and shook up his horses. As he did so his foot touched the bag, and again the gold gave out a clinking sound.
CHAPTER XIII
The Squire in his inmost heart had not derived much satisfaction from his visit to the bank. He had left it with an uneasy feeling that the step he had taken had not produced the intended effect. Ovington had accepted the loss of his custom, not indeed with indifference, but with dignity, and in a manner which left the old man little upon which to plume himself. The withdrawal of his custom wore in the retrospect too much of the look of spite, and he came near to regretting it, as he drove along.
Had he been present at an interview which took place after he had retired, he might have been better pleased. The banker had not been many minutes in the parlor, chewing the cud of the affair, before he was interrupted by his cashier. In this there was nothing unusual; routine required Rodd's presence in the parlor several times in the day. But his manner on the present occasion, and the way in which he closed the door, prepared Ovington for something new, and "What is it, Rodd?" he asked, leaning back in his chair, and disposing himself to listen.
"Can I have a word with you, sir?"
"Certainly." The banker's face told nothing. Rodd's was that of a man who had made up his mind to a plunge. "What is it?"
"I have been wishing to speak for some time, sir," Rodd faltered. "This-" Ovington understood at once that he referred to the Squire's matter-"I don't like it, sir, and I have been with you ten years, and I feel-I ought to speak."
Ovington shrugged his shoulders. "I don't like it either," he said. "But it is of less importance than you think, Rodd. I know why Mr. Griffin did it. And we are not now where we were. The withdrawal of a few hundreds or the loss of a customer-" again he shrugged his shoulders.
"No," Rodd said gravely. "If nothing more follows, sir."
"Why should anything follow? I know his reasons."
"But the town doesn't. And if it gets about, sir?"
"It won't do us much damage. We've lost customers before, yet always gained more than we lost. But there, Rodd, that is not what you came in to say. What is it?" He spoke lightly, but he felt more surprise than he showed. Rodd was a model cashier, performing his duties in a precise, plodding fashion that had often excited Arthur's ridicule; but hitherto he had never ventured an opinion on the policy of the bank, nor betrayed the least curiosity respecting its secrets. "What is it?" Ovington repeated. "What has frightened you, man?"
"We've a lot of notes out, sir!"
The banker looked thoughtfully at the glasses he held in his hand. "True," he said. "Quite true. But trade is brisk, and the demand for credit is large. We must meet the demand, Rodd, as far as we can-with safety. That's our business."
"And we've a lot of money out-that could not be got in in a hurry, sir."
"Yes," the banker admitted, "but that is our business, too. If we did not put our money out we might close the bank to-morrow. That much of the money cannot be got in at a minute's notice is a thing we cannot avoid."
The perspiration stood on Rodd's forehead, but he persisted. "If it were all on bills, sir, I would not say a word. But there is a lot on overdraft."
"Well secured."
"While things are up. But if things went down, sir? There's Wolley's account. I suspect that the last bills we discounted for him were accommodation. Indeed, I am sure of it. And his overdraft is heavy."
"We hold the lease of his mill."
"But you don't want to run the mill!" Rodd replied, putting his finger on the weak point.
The banker reflected. "That's the worst account we have. The worst, isn't it?"
"Mr. Acherley's, sir."
"Well, yes. There might be a sounder account than that. But what is it?" He looked directly at the other. "I want to know what has opened your mouth? Have you heard anything? What makes you think that things are going down?"
"Mr. Griffin-"
"No." The banker shook his head. "That won't do, Rodd. You had this in your mind before he came in. You are pat with Wolley and Mr. Acherley; bad accounts both, as all banks have bad accounts here and there. But it's true-we've been giving our customers rope, and they have bought things that may fall. Still, they've made money, a good deal of money, and we've kept a fair margin and obliged them at the same time. All legitimate business. There must be something in your mind besides this, I'm sure. What is it, lad?"
The cashier turned a dull red, but before he could answer the door behind him opened. Arthur came in. He looked at the banker, and from him to Rodd, and his suspicions were aroused. "It's four o'clock, sir," he said, and looked again at Rodd as if to ask what he was doing there.
But Rodd held his ground, and the banker explained.
"Rodd is a little alarmed for us," he said, and it was difficult to be sure whether he spoke in jest or in earnest. "He thinks we're going too fast. Putting our hand out too far. He mentions Wolley's account, and Acherley's.
"I was speaking generally," Rodd muttered. He looked sullen.
Arthur shrugged his shoulders. "I stand corrected," he said. "I didn't know that Rodd ever went beyond his ledgers."
"Oh, he's quite right to speak his mind. We are all in the same boat-though we do not all steer."
"Well, I'm glad of that, sir."
"Still," mildly, "it is a good thing to have an opinion."
"If it be worth anything."
"If opinions are going-" Betty had opened the door behind the banker's chair, and was standing on the threshold-"wouldn't you like to have mine, father?"
"To be sure," Arthur said. "Why not, indeed? Let us have it. Why not have everybody's? And send for the cook, sir, and the two clerks-to advise us?"
Betty dropped a curtsy. "Thank you, I am flattered."
"Betty, you've no business here," her father said. "You mustn't stop unless you can keep your opinions to yourself."
"But what has happened?" she asked, looking around in wonder.
"Mr. Griffin has withdrawn his account."
"And Rodd," Arthur added, with more heat than the occasion seemed to demand, "thinks that we had better put up the shutters!"
"No, no," the banker said. "We must do him justice. He thinks that we are going a little too far, that's all. And that the loss of Mr. Griffin's account is a danger signal. That's what you mean, man, isn't it?"
Rodd nodded, his face stubborn. He stood alone, divided from the other three by the table, for Arthur had passed round it and placed himself at Ovington's elbow.
"His view," the banker continued, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief and looking thoughtfully at them, "is that if there came a check in trade and a fall in values, the bank might find its resources strained-I'll put it that way."
Arthur sneered. "Singular wisdom! But a fall-a general fall at any rate-what sign is there of it?" He was provoked by the banker's way of taking it. Ovington seemed to be attaching absurd weight to Rodd's suggestion. "None!" contemptuously. "Not a jot."
"There's been a universal rise," Rodd muttered.
"In a moment? Without warning?"
"No, but-"
"But fiddlesticks!" Arthur retorted. Of late it seemed as if his good humor had deserted him, and this was not the first sign he had given of an uncertain temper. Still, the phase was so new that two of those present looked curiously at him, and his consciousness of this added to his irritation. "Rodd's no better than an old woman," he continued. "Five per cent. and a mortgage in a strong box is about his measure. If you are going to listen to every croaker who is frightened by a shadow, you may as well close the bank, sir, and put the money out on Rodd's terms!"
"Still Rodd means us well," the banker said thoughtfully, "and a little caution is never out of place in a bank. What I want to get from him is-has he anything definite to tell us? Wolley? Have you heard anything about Wolley, Rodd?"
"No, sir."
"Then what is it? What is it, man?"
But Rodd, brought to bay, only looked more stubborn. "It's no more than I've told you, sir," he muttered, "it's just a feeling. Things must come down some day."
"Oh, damn!" Arthur exclaimed, out of patience, and thinking that the banker was making altogether too much of it-and of Rodd. "If he were a weather-glass-"
"Or a woman!" interjected Betty, who was observing all with bright inscrutable eyes.
"But as he isn't either," Arthur continued impatiently, "I fail to see why you make so much of it! Of course, things will come down some day, but if he thinks that with your experience you are blind to anything he is likely to see, he's no better than a fool! Because my uncle, for reasons which you understand, sir, has drawn out four hundred pounds, he thinks every customer is going to leave us, and Ovington's must put up the shutters! The truth is, he knows nothing about it, and if he wishes to damage the bank he is going the right way to do it!"
"Would you like my opinion, father?" Betty asked.
"No," sharply, "certainly not, child. Where's Clement?"
"Well, I'm afraid he's away."
"Again? Then he is behaving very badly!"
"That was the opinion I was going to give," the girl answered. "That some were behaving better than others."
"If," Arthur cried, "you mean me-"
"There, enough," said her father. "Be silent, Betty. You've no business to be here."
"Still, people should behave themselves," she replied, her eyes sparkling.
Arthur had his answer ready, but Ovington forestalled him. "Very good, Rodd," he said. "A word on the side of caution is never out of place in a bank. But I am not blind, and all that you have told me is in my mind. Thank you. You can go now."
It was a dismissal, and Rodd took it as such, and felt, as he had never felt before, his subordinate position. Why he did so, and why, as he withdrew under Arthur's eye, he resented the situation, he best knew. But it is possible that two of the others had some inkling of the cause.
When he had gone, "There's an old woman for you!" Arthur exclaimed. "I wonder that you had the patience to listen to him, sir."
But Ovington shook his head. "I listened because there are times when a straw shows which way the wind blows."
"But you don't think that there is anything in what he said?"
"I shall remember what he said. The time may be coming to take in sail-to keep a good look-out, lad, and be careful. You have been with us-how long? Two years. Ay, but years of expansion, of rising prices, of growing trade. But I have seen other times-other times." He shook his head.
"Still, there is no sign of a change, sir?"
"You've seen one to-day. What is in Rodd's head may be in others, and what is in men's heads soon reflects itself in their conduct."
It was the first word, the first hint, the first presage of evil; of a fall, of bad weather, of a storm, distant as yet, and seen even by the clearest eyes only as a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. But the word had been spoken. The hint had been given. And to Arthur, who had paid a high price for prosperity-how high only he could say-the presage seemed an outrage. The idea that the prosperity he had bought was not a certainty, that the craft on which he had embarked his fortune was, like other ships, at the mercy of storm and tempest, that like other ships it might founder with all its freight, was entirely new to him. So new that for a moment his face betrayed the impression it made. Then he told himself that the thing was incredible, that he started at shadows, and his natural confidence rebounded. "Oh, damn Rodd!" he cried-and he said it with all his heart. "He's a croaker by nature!"
"Still, we won't damn him," the banker answered mildly. "On the contrary, we will profit by his warning. But go now. I have a letter to write. And do you go, too, Betty, and make tea for us."
He turned to his papers, and Arthur, after a moment's hesitation, followed Betty into the house. Overtaking her in the hall, "Betty, what is the matter?" he asked. And when the girl took no notice, but went on with her chin in the air as if he had not spoken, he seized her arm. "Come," he said, "I am not going to have this. What is it?"
"What should it be! I don't know what you mean," she retorted.
"Oh yes, you do. What took you-to back up that ass in the bank just now?"
Then Betty astonished him. "I didn't think he wanted any backing," she said, her eyes bright. "He seemed to me to talk sense, and someone else nonsense."
"But you're not-"
"A partner in Ovington's? No, Mr. Bourdillon, I am not-thank heaven! And so my head is not turned, and I can keep my temper and mind my manners."
"Oh, it's Mr. Bourdillon now, is it?"
"Yes-if you are going to behave to my friends as you did this afternoon."
"Your friends!" scornfully. "You include Rodd, do you? Rodd, Betty?"
"Yes, I do, and I am not too proud to do so. Nor too proud to be angry when I see a man ten years younger than he is slap him in the face! I am not so spoiled that I think everyone beneath me!"
"So it's Rodd now?"
"It's as much Rodd now," her cheeks hot, her eyes sparkling, "as it was anyone else before! Just as much and just as little. You flatter yourself, sir!"
"But, Betty," in a coaxing tone, "little spitfire that you are, can't you guess why I was short with Rodd? Can't you guess why I don't particularly love him? But you do guess. Rodd is what he is-nothing! But when he lifts his eyes above him-when he dares to make eyes at you-I am not going to be silent."
"Now you are impertinent!" she replied. "As impertinent as you were mean before. Yes, mean, mean! When you knew he could not answer you! Mean!"
And without waiting for a reply she ran up the stairs.
He went to one of the windows of the dining-room and looked across Bride Hill and along the High Street, full at that hour of market people. But he did not see them, his thoughts were busy with what had happened. He could not believe that Betty had any feeling for Rodd. The man was dull, commonplace, a plodder, and not young; he was well over thirty. No, the idea was preposterous. And it was still more absurd to suppose that if he, Arthur, threw the handkerchief-or even fluttered it in her direction, for dear little thing as she was, he had not quite made up his mind-she would hesitate to accept him, or would let any thought of Rodd weigh with her.
Still, he would let her temper cool, he would not stay to tea. Instead, he would by and by ride his new horse out to the Cottage. He had not been home for the weekend. He had left Mrs. Bourdillon to come to herself and recover her good humor in solitude. Now he would make it up with her, and while he was there he might as well get a peep at Josina-it was a long time since he had seen her. If Betty chose to adopt this unpleasant line, why, she could not blame him if he amused himself.
CHAPTER XIV
For a time after the Squire had driven away, Clement had sat his horse and stared after him, and in his rage had wished him dead. He had prepared himself for opposition, he had looked to be repulsed-he had expected nothing else. But in the scene which his fancy had pictured, his part had been one of dignity; he had owned his aspirations like a man, he had admitted his insufficiency with modesty, he had pleaded the power of love with eloquence, he had won even from the Squire a meed of unwilling approbation.
But the scene, as played, had run on other lines. The old man had crushed him. He had sworn at him, refused to listen to him, had insulted him, had treated him as no better than a shop-boy. And all this had cut to the quick. For Clement, born after Ovington had risen from the ranks, had his pride and his self-respect, and humiliated, he cursed with all his soul the prejudice and hide-bound narrowness of the Squire and all his caste. For the time he was more than a radical, he was a republican. If by a gesture he could have swept away King and Commons, lords and justices, he would not have held his hand.
It took him some time to recover, and it was only when he found himself, he hardly knew how, upon the bridge at Garthmyle that he grew more cool. Even then he was not quite himself. He had vowed that he would not see Josina again until he had claimed her from her father; but the Squire's treatment, he now felt, had absolved him from this, and the temptation to see her was great. He longed to pour out his mind to her, and to tell her how he had been insulted, how he had been treated. Perhaps, even, he must say farewell to her-he must give her up.
For he was not all hero, and the task before him seemed for the time too prodigious, the labor too little hopeful. The Hydra had so many heads, and roared so fearfully that for a moment his courage sank before it-and his love. He felt that he must yield, that he must see Josina and tell her so. In any event she ought to know what had happened, and presently he put up his horse at the inn and made by a roundabout road for their meeting-place by the brook.
There was but a chance that she would visit it, and in the meantime he had to exercise what patience he might. His castles in the air had fallen and he had not the spirit to rebuild them. He sat gazing moodily on the rippling face of the water, or watched the ousel curtsying on its stone; and he almost despaired. He had known the Squire to be formidable, he now knew him to be impossible. He looked down the stream to where Garth, lofty and fortress-like, raised its twisted chimneys above the trees, and he shook his fist at it. Remote and islanded on its knoll, rising amid ancestral trees, it stood for all that the Squire stood for-governance, privilege, tradition, the past-all the things he had not, all the things that mocked him.
He lingered there, savoring his melancholy, until the sun went down behind the hills, and then, attacked by the pangs of hunger, he made his way back to the village inn. Here he satisfied his appetite on such home-baked bread and yellow butter and nut-brown ale as are not in these degenerate times; and for wellnigh an hour he sat brooding in the sanded parlor surrounded by china cats and dogs-they too, would be of value nowadays. At length with a heavy heart-for what was he to do next? – he rode out of the yard, and crossing the bridge under the shadowy bulk of the squat church tower, he set his horse's head for home. It was nearly dark.
What was he to do next? He did not know, but as he rode through the gloom, the solemn hills falling back on either side and the dark plain widening before him, he took courage; he began to consider, with some return of hope, what lay before him, and how he must proceed-if he were not to give up. Clearly he must face the Squire, but it must be in the Squire's own house, where the Squire must hear him. The old man might insult him, rave at him, order him out, but before he was put out he would speak and ask for Josina, though the roof fell. There should be no further mistake. And he would let the Squire know, if it came to that, that he was a man, as good as other men. By heaven he would!
He was not all hero. But there were some heroic parts about him, and he determined that the very next morning he would ride out and would beard the Hydra in its den, be its heads ever so many. He would win his lady-love or perish!
By this time he was half-way home. The market traffic on the road had ceased, the moon had not yet risen, the night lay calm and still about him. Presently as he crossed a wet, rushy flat, one of the loneliest parts of the way, he saw the lights of a vehicle coming towards him. The road at that point had not been long enclosed, and a broad strip of common still survived on either hand, so that moving on this the horse's hoofs made no sound save a soft plop-plop where the ground was wettest. He could hear, therefore, while still afar off, the tramp of a pair of horses driven at a trot, and it occurred to him that this might be the Squire returning late. If he could have avoided the meeting he would have done so, though it was unlikely that the Squire would recognize him in the dark. But to turn aside would be foolish. "Hang me if I am going to be afraid of him!" he thought. And he touched up his horse with his heel.
Then an odd thing happened. While the carriage was still fifty yards from him, one of the lights went out. His eyes missed it, but his brain had barely taken in the fact when the second vanished also, as if the vehicle had sunk into the ground. At the same moment a cry reached his ears, followed by a clatter of hoofs on the road as if the horses were being sharply pulled up.
Clement took his horse by the head and bent forward, striving to make out what was passing. A dull sound, as of a heavy body striking the road reached him, followed by a silence that seemed ominous. Even the wind appeared to have hushed its whisper through the rushes.
"Hallo!" he shouted. "What is it? Is anything the matter?" He urged his horse forward.
His cry was lost in the crack of a whip, he heard the horses break away, and without farther warning they came down upon him at a gallop, the carriage bounding wildly behind them. He had just time to thrust his nag to the side, and they were on him and past him, and whirling down the road-a mere shadow, but as perilous and almost as noisy as a thunderbolt. There was no doubt now that an accident had happened, but before he could give help he had to master his horse, which had wheeled about; and so a few seconds elapsed before he reached the scene-reached it with his heart in his mouth-for who could say with what emergency he might not have to deal?
