“Ay, for then we should share the blame,” Clement answered drily. “That wouldn’t do, would it? But let me get the money, and I’ll not be robbed, sir.”
They parted, hurrying to and fro on their several errands, the banker fetching money for the journey, Rodd loading the pistols, Betty setting food before the traveller and cutting sandwiches for the journey, Clement himself making some change in his dress. For ten minutes a cheerful stir reigned in the house. But Ovington, though he yielded to this and watched his son at his meal and filled his glass, and played his part, did but feign. He knew that within a few minutes the door would close on Clement, the house would relapse into silence, the lights would go out, and he would be left to face the failure of all the hopes, the plans and expectations which he had entertained through the day. The odds against him, which had not seemed overwhelming twenty-four hours before, now appeared invincible and not to be resisted. He felt that the fates were opposed to him. He had had his chance, and it had been withdrawn. As he climbed the stairs to bed, climbed them slowly and with heavy feet, he read ruin in the flame of his candle. As he undressed he heard the voices of revellers passing the house at midnight, on their way from the Raven or the Talbot, and he suspected derision in their tones. He fancied that they were talking of him, jeering at him, rejoicing in his fall. In bed he lay long awake, calculating, and trying to make of four, five. Could he hold out till Wednesday? Till Thursday? Or would panic running through the town on the morrow, like fire amid tinder, kindle the crowd and hurl it, inflamed with greed and fear, upon his slender defences?
He was buying honesty at a great price. But he thought of Clement and Betty, and towards morning he fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Travelling in the old coaching days was not all hardship. It had its own, its peculiar pleasures. A writer of that time dwells with eloquence on the rapture with which he viewed a fine sunrise from the outside of a fast coach on the Great North Road; on the appetite with which he fell to upon a five o’clock breakfast at Doncaster, on the delight with which he heard the nightingales sing on a fine night as he swept through Henley, on the satisfaction of seeing old Shoreditch Church, which betokened the end of the journey. Men did not then hurry at headlong speed along iron rails, with their heads buried in a newspaper or in the latest novel. They learned to know and had time to view the objects of interest that fringed the highway—to recognize the farm at which the Great Durham Ox was bred, and the house in which the equally great Sir Isaac Newton was born. If these things were strange to the travellers and their appearance promised a good fee, the coachman condescended from his greatness and affably pointed them out.
But to sit through the long winter night, changing each hour from one damp and musty post-chaise to another, to stamp and fume and fret while horses were put to at every stage, to scold an endless succession of incoming and fee an endless series of out-going postboys, each more sleepy and sullen than the last—this was another matter. To be delayed here and checked there and overcharged everywhere, to be fobbed off with the worst teams—always reserved for night travellers—and to find, once started on the long fourteen-mile stage, that the off-wheeler was dead lame, to fall asleep and to be aroused with every hour—these were the miseries, and costly miseries they were, of old-world journeying. This was its seamy side. And many a time Clement, stamping his stone-cold feet in wind-swept inn yards, or ringing ostlers’ bells in stone-paved passages, repented that he had started, repented that he had ever undertaken the task.
Why had he, he asked himself more than once that bitter night. What was Arthur Bourdillon to him that he should spend himself in an effort as toilsome as it promised to be vain, to hold him back from the completion of his roguery? Would Arthur ever thank him? Far from it. And Josina? Josina, brave, loving Josina, who had risen to heights of which he thrilled to think, she might indeed thank him—and that should be enough for him. But what could she do to requite him, apart from her father? And the Squire at Garth had stated his position, nor even if he relented was he one to pour himself out in gratitude—he who hated the name of Ovington, and laid all this at their door. It would be much if he ever noticed him with more than a grunt, or ever gave one thought to his exertions or their motive.
No, he had let a quixotic, a foolish impulse run away with him! He should have waited until Arthur had brought down the money, and then he should have returned it. That had been the simple, the matter-of-fact course, and all that it had been incumbent on him to do. As it was, for what was he spending himself and undergoing these hardships? To hasten the ruin of the bank, to meet failure half-way, to render his father penniless a few hours earlier, rather than later. To mask a rascality that need never be disclosed, since no one would hear of it unless the Squire talked. Yes, he had been a fool to hurl himself thus through the night, chilled to the bone, with fevered head and ice-cold feet, when he might have been a hundred times better employed in supporting his father in his need, in putting a brave front on things, and smiling in the face of suspicion.
To be sure, it was only as the night advanced, or rather in the small hours of the morning, when his ardor had died down and Josina’s pleading face was no longer before him, and the spirit of adventure was low in him, that he entertained these thoughts. For a time all went well. He found his relay waiting for him at the Heygate Inn by Wellington, where the name of the Lion was all-powerful; and after covering at top speed the short stage that followed, he drove, still full of warmth and courage, into Wolverhampton at a quarter before eleven. Over thirty miles in three hours! He met with a little delay there; the horses had to be fetched from another stable, in another street. But he got away in the end, and ten minutes later he was driving over a land most desolate by day, but by night lurid with the flares of a hundred furnace-fires. He rattled up to the Castle at Birmingham at half an hour after midnight, found the house still lighted and lively, and by dint of scolding and bribing was presently on the road again with a fresh team, and making for Coventry, with every inclination to think that the difficulties of posting by night had been much exaggerated.
But here his good luck left him. At the half-way stage he met with disaster. He had passed the up coach half an hour before, and no orders now anticipated him. When he reached the Stone Bridge there were no horses; on the contrary, there were three travellers waiting there, clamorous to get on to Birmingham. Unwarily he jumped out of his chaise, and “No horses?” he cried. “Impossible! There must be horses!”