Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

For as long as the Squire lay bedridden and ill he could not go to him. Even when the report came that he was mending, Clement hesitated. To go to him, basing his claim on what had happened, to go to him and tell the story, as he must, with his own lips—this presented difficulties from which a man with delicate feelings might well shrink!

Meanwhile a veil had fallen between him and Josina. He had sworn that he would not see her again until he could claim her, and he supposed her to be engrossed by her father’s illness and tied to his bedside. He even, with a lover’s insight, inferred the remorse which she felt and her recoil from a continuance of their relations. Meanwhile he did not know what to do. He did not see any outlet. He was in an impasse with no prospect of delivery. And while he felt that Arthur had behaved ungenerously, while he even suspected that his friend had taken the credit which was his own due, he had no clue to his motives, or his schemes.

It was Betty who first saw into the dark place. For one day, longing as lovers long for a confidante, he had told her all, from the first meeting with Josina to his final parting from the girl by the brook, and his brief and unfortunate interview with her father on the road. The romance charmed Betty, the audacity of it dazzled her; for, a woman, she perceived more clearly than Clement the gulf between the town and the country, the new and the old. She listened to his tale with sighs and tears and little endearments, and led him on from one thing to another. She could not hear too much of a story that hardly a woman alive could have heard with indifference. She praised Josina to the top of his bent, and if she could not give him much hope, she gave sympathy.

And, shrewdly, in her own mind she put things together. “Arthur is off with the old love,” she thought, “and on with the new.” He had changed sides, and that explained many things. So, with hardly any premises, she jumped to a conclusion so nearly correct that, could Arthur have read her mind, he would have winced even more than he did under the thrusts of her satire.

But she did not tell Clement. Her suspicions were not founded on reason, and they would only alarm him, and he was gloomy enough as it was. Instead, she cheered him and bade him be patient. Something might turn up, and in no case could much be done until the Squire was well enough to leave his room.

At bottom she was not hopeful. She saw arrayed between Clement and his love a host of difficulties, apart from Arthur’s machinations. The pride of class, the old man’s obstinacy, the young girl’s timidity, Josina’s wealth—these were obstacles hard to surmount. And Arthur was on the spot ready to raise new barriers, should these be overcome.

CHAPTER XX

The money for Arthur’s share in the bank had been paid over in the early part of June, but the transaction had not gone through with the smoothness which he had anticipated. He had found himself up against a thing which he had not taken into his reckoning; the jealousy with which the old and the rich are apt to guard the secret of their wealth, a jealousy in the Squire’s case aggravated by his blindness. Arthur had felt the check and was forced to own, with some alarm, that high as he stood in favor, a little thing might upset him.

He had written to the brokers, requesting them to sell sufficient India Stock to bring in a sum of six thousand pounds. They had replied that they could not carry out the order unless they had the particulars of the Stock and of the amount standing in the Squire’s name at the India House. But when Arthur took the letter to the Squire’s room and read it to him, the outcome surprised him. The old man sat up in bed and confounded him by the vigor of his answer. “Want to know how much I hold?” he cried. “D—n their impudence! Then they’ll not know! Want to look at my books and see what I’m worth! What next? What is it to them what I hold? You bid ’em sell—” beating the counterpane with his stick—“you bid ’em sell two thousand two hundred pounds—at two hundred and seventy-five, that’s near the mark! That’s all they’ve got to do, the impudent puppies! Do you write, d’you hear, and tell ’em to do it!”

Arthur cursed the old man’s unreasonableness, and wondered what he was to do. If there was going to be all this difficulty about the particulars, what about the certificates? How was he to get them? For the Squire as he sat erect, thrusting forward his bandaged head, and clutching the stick that lay beside him, grew almost threatening. He was in arms in defence of his moneybags and his secrets, and his nephew saw that it would take a bolder man than himself to cross him.