Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

He paused as if he still listened, still expected more. Then in a low voice, “The girl is mad,” he muttered. “My God, the girl is mad! Or I am mad! Blind and mad, like the old king! Ay, blind and mad!” He let the pipe fall from his hand to the floor, and he groped for his stick that he might rap and summon assistance. But in his agitation he could not find the stick.

Then, as he still felt for it with a flurried hand, nature or despair prompted her, and the girl who had never caressed him in her life, never taken a liberty with him, never ventured on the smallest familiarity, never gone beyond the morning and evening kiss, timidly given and frigidly received, sank on the floor and clasped his knees, pressed herself against him. “Oh, father, father! I am not mad,” she cried, “I am not mad. Hear me! Oh, hear me!” A pause, and then, “I have deceived you, I am not worthy, but you are my father! I have only, only you, who can help me! Have mercy on me, for I do love him. I do love him! I——” Her voice failed her, but she continued to cling to him, to press her head against his body, mutely to implore him, and plead with him.

“My God!” he ejaculated. He sat upright, stiff, looking before him with sightless eyes; as far as he could withholding himself from her, but not actively repelling her. After an interval, “Tell me,” he muttered.

That, even that, was more than she had expected from him. He had not struck her, he had not cursed her, and she took some courage. She told him in broken words, but with sufficient clearness, of her first meeting with Clement, of the gun-shot by the brook, of her narrow escape and the meetings that had followed. Once, in a burst of rage, he silenced her. “The rascal! Oh, the d—d rascal!” he cried, and she flinched. But she went on, telling him of Clement’s resolve that he must be told, of that unfortunate meeting with him on the road, and then of that second encounter the same night, when Clement had come to his rescue. There he stopped her.

“How do you know?” he asked. “How do you know? How dare you say——” And now he did make a movement as if to repel her and put her from him.

But she would not be repulsed. She clung to him, telling him of the coat, of the great stains that she had seen upon it; and at last, “Why did you hide this?” broke from him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She told him that she had not known, that the part which Clement had taken on that night was new to her also.

“But you see him?” he snarled, speaking a little more like himself. “You see him!”

“Twice only—twice only since that night,” she vowed. “Indeed, indeed, sir, only twice. Once he came to speak to you and tell you, but you were ill, and I would not let him. And yesterday he came to—to give me up, to say good-bye. Only twice, sir, as God sees me! He would not. He showed me that we had been wrong. He said,” sobbing bitterly, “that we must be open or—or we must be nothing—nothing to one another!”

“Open? Open!” the Squire almost shouted. “D—d open! Shutting the stable door when the horse is gone. D—n his openness!” And then, “Good Lord! Good Lord!” with almost as much amazement as anger in his voice. That all this should have been going on and he know nothing about it! That his girl, this child as he had deemed her, should have been doing this under his very eyes! Under his very eyes! “Good Lord!” But then rage got the upper hand once more, and he cursed Clement with passion, and again made a movement as if he would rise and throw her off. “To steal a man’s child! The villain!”