Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

The Squire groaned. Clement’s words called up before him and before Josina, not only the thing which Arthur had done, but the position in which he had placed himself. In this room, in this very room in which men of honor—dull and prejudiced, perhaps, but men of honor, and proud of their honor—had lived and moved for generations, he, their descendant, had done this thing. The beams had stood, the house had not fallen on him. But to Josina’s eyes the candles seemed to burn more mournfully, the windows to stare more darkly on the night, the ashes on the hearth to speak of desolation and a house abandoned and fallen.

Clement hoped that his appeal had succeeded, but he was disappointed. The old man in his bitterness and unreason was not to be moved—at any rate as yet. He would listen to no arguments, and he suspected those who argued with him. “I’ll never acknowledge it!” he said. “No, I’ll never acknowledge it. I’ll not lie for him, come what may! He has done the thing and disgraced our blood, and what matter who knows it—he has done it! He has made his bed and must lie on it! He went into your bank and learned your tricks, and now you’d have me hush it up! But I won’t, d—n you! I’ll not lie for you, or for him!”

Clement had a retort on his lips—for what could be more unfair than this? But again Josina’s eyes implored him to be silent, and he crushed back the words. He believed that by and by the Squire would see the thing differently, but for the moment he could do no more, and he turned to the door.

There in the doorway, and for one moment, Josina’s hands met his, she had one word with him. “You will save him if you can, Clement?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he promised her, “I will save him if I can.”

CHAPTER XXXII

If the news which Arthur had conveyed to the bank on that Monday morning had been much to Clement, it had been more to his father. It had brought to Ovington immense relief at the moment when he had least reason to expect it. The banker had not hidden the position from those who must needs work with him; but even to them he had not imparted the full measure of his fears, much less the extent of the suffering which those fears occasioned him. The anxiety that kept him sleepless, the calculations that tormented his pillow, the regret with which he reviewed the past, the responsibility for the losses of others that depressed him—he had kept these things to himself, or at most had dropped but a hint of them to his beloved Betty.

But they had been very real to him and very terrible. The spectre of bankruptcy—with all the horror which it connoted for the mercantile mind—had loomed before him for weeks past, had haunted and menaced him; and its sudden exorcism on this Monday morning meant a relief which he dared not put into words to others and shrank from admitting even to himself. He who had held his head so high—no longer need he anticipate the moment when he would be condemned as a reckless adventurer, whose fall had been as rapid as his rise, and whom the wiseacres of Aldersbury had doomed to failure from the first! That had been the bitterest drop in his cup, and to know that he need not drain it, was indeed a blessed respite.

Still, he had received the news with composure, and through the day he had moved to and fro doing his work with accuracy. But it was in a pleasant dream that he had followed his usual routine, and many a time he paused to tell himself that the thing was a fact, that Dean’s would not now triumph over him, nor his enemies now scoff at him. On the contrary, he might hope to emerge from the tempest stronger than before, and with his credit enhanced by the stress through which he had ridden. Business was business, but in the midst of it the banker had more than once to stand and be thankful.

And with reason. For if he who has inherited success and lives to see it threatened suffers a pang, that pang is as nothing besides the humiliation of the man who has raised himself; who has outstripped his fellows, challenged their admiration, defied their jealousy, trampled on their pride; who has been the creator of his own greatness, and now sees that greatness in ruins. He had escaped that. He had escaped that, thank God! More than once the two words passed his lips; and in secret his thoughts turned to the great chief of men to whom in his own mind and with a rather absurd vanity he had compared himself. Thank God that his own little star had not sunk like his into darkness!