Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

But Arthur, though he had scoffed at the suggestion which Ovington had made, could not refrain from turning it over in his mind. He had courage enough for anything, and it was not the lack of that which hindered him from entertaining the project. The storm which was gathering ahead, and which threatened the shipwreck of his cherished ambition and his dearest hopes, was terrible to him, and to escape from its fury he would have faced any man, had that been all. But that was not all. He had other interests. If he applied to the Squire and the Squire took it amiss, as it was pretty certain that he would, then not only would no good be done and no point be gained, but the life-boat, on which he might himself escape, if things came to the worst, would be shipwrecked also.

For that life-boat consisted in the Squire’s influence with Josina. The Squire’s word might still prevail with the girl, silly and unpractical as she was. It was a chance; no more than a chance, Arthur recognized that. But at Garth the old man’s will had always been law, and if he could be brought to put his foot down, Arthur could not believe that Josina would resist him. And amid the wreck of so many hopes and so many ambitions, every chance, even a desperate chance, was of value.

But if he was to retain the Squire’s favor, if he was to fall back on his influence, he must do nothing to forfeit that favor. Certainly he must not hazard it by acting on a suggestion as ill-timed and hopeless as that which the banker had put forward. Not to save the bank, not to save Ovington, not to save anyone! The more, as he felt sure that the application would do none of these things.

Ovington did not know the old man. He did, and he was not going to sink his craft, crank and frail as it already was, by taking in passengers.

CHAPTER XXV

While the leaven of uneasiness, fermenting into fear, and liable at any moment to breed panic, worked in Aldersbury, turning the sallow bilious and the sanguine irritable—while the contents of the mail-bag and the Gazette were awaited with growing apprehension, and inklings of the truth, leaking out, were turning to water the hearts of those who depended on the speculators, life at Garth was proceeding after its ordinary fashion. No word of what was impending, or might be impending, travelled so far. No echo of the alarm that assailed the ears of terrified men, forced on a sudden to face unimagined disaster, broke the silence of the drab room, where the Squire sat brooding, or of the garden where Josina spent hours, pacing the raised walk and looking down on that strip of sward where the water skirted the Thirty Acres wood.

That strip of sward where she had met him, that view from the garden were all that now remained to her of Clement, all that proved to her that the past was not a dream; and they did much to keep hope alive in her breast, and to hold her firm in her resolve. So precious indeed were the associations they recalled, that while, with the hardness of a woman who loves elsewhere, she felt little sympathy with Arthur in his disappointment, she actively resented the fact that he had chosen to address her there, and so had profaned the one spot, on which with some approach to nearness, she could dream of Clement.

Living a life so retired, and with little to distract her, she gave herself to long thoughts of her lover, and lived and lived again the stolen moments which she had spent with him. It was on these that she nourished her courage and strengthened her will; for, bred to submission and educated to obey, it was no small thing that she contemplated. Nor could she have raised herself to the pitch of determination which she had reached had she not gained elevation from the thought that the matter now rested in her own hands, and that all Clement’s trust and all his dependence were on her. She must be true to him or she would fail him indeed. Honor no less than love required her to be firm, let her timid heart beat as it might.

On wet days she sat in the Dutch summer-house, the squat tower with the pyramidal roof and fox-vane on top, which flanked the raised walk, and had, when viewed from below, the look of a bastion. But the day after Ovington’s return happened to be fine. It was one of those days of mild sunshine and soft air, which occur in late autumn or early winter and, by reason of their rarity, linger in the memory; and she was walking in the garden when, an hour before noon, Calamy came to tell her that “the master” was asking for her. “And very peevish,” he added, shaking his head as he stalked away under the apple-trees, “as he’s like to be, more and more till the end.”

She overtook the man in the hall. “Is he alone, Calamy?” she asked.