Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

“And he’s going to fail? To rob hundreds instead of borrowing from one money that you know will be returned—returned with interest in a month? You fool! You fool!” with savage scorn. “That’s your virtue, is it? That’s your honesty that you brag so much about? Your clean hands? You’ll rob Aldersbury right and left, bring half the town to beggary, strip the widow and the orphan, and put on a smug face! ‘All honest and above board, my lord!’ when you might save all at no risk by borrowing this money for a month. Why, you make me sick! Sick!” Arthur repeated, with an indignation that went far to prove that this really was his opinion, and that he did honestly see the thing in that light. “But you are not going to do it. You shall not do it,” he continued, defiantly. “I’ll see you—somewhere else first! You’ll not touch a penny of this money until I choose, and that will not be until I have seen your father. If I can’t persuade you I think I can persuade him!”

“You’ll not have the chance!” Clement retorted. He was very angry by now, for some of the shafts which the other had loosed had found their mark. “You’ll hand it over to me, and now!”

“Not a penny!”

“Then you’ll take the consequences,” was Clement’s reply. “For as heaven sees me, I shall give you in charge, and you will go to Bow Street. The officer is here. I shall tell him the facts, and you know best what the result will be. You can choose, Bourdillon, but that is my last word.”

Arthur stared. “You are mad!” he cried. “Mad!” But he was taken aback at last. His voice shook, and the color had left his cheeks.

“No, I am not mad. But we will not be your accomplices. That is all. That is the bed-rock of it,” Clement continued. “I give you two minutes to make up your mind.” He took out his watch.

Rage and alarm do not better a man’s looks, and Arthur’s handsome face was ugly enough now, had Clement looked at it. Two passions contended in him: rage at the thought that one whom he had often out-manœuvred and always despised should dare to threaten and thwart him; and fear—fear of the gulf that he saw gaping suddenly at his feet. For he could not close his eyes, bold and self-confident as he was, to the danger. He saw that if Clement said the word and made the thing public, his position would be perilous; and if his uncle proved obdurate, it might be desperate. His lips framed words of defiance, and he longed to utter them; but he did not utter them. Had they been alone, it had been another matter! But they were not alone; the Bow Street man, idly inquisitive, was watching him, and a stream of people, immersed each in his own perplexities, and unconscious of the tragedy at his elbow, was continually brushing by them.

To do him justice, Arthur had hitherto seen the thing only by his own lights. He had looked on it as a case of all for fortune and the rest well lost, and he had even pictured himself in the guise of a hero, who took the risks and shared the benefits. If the act were ill, at least, he considered, he did it in a good cause; and where, after all, was the harm in assuming a loan of something which would never be missed, which would be certainly repaid, and which, in his hands, would save a hundred homes from ruin? The argument had sounded convincing at the time.

Then, for the risk, what was it, when examined? It was most unlikely that the Squire would discover the trick, and if he did he could not, hard and austere as he was, prosecute his own flesh and blood. Nay, Arthur doubted if he could prosecute, since he had signed the transfer with his own hand—it was no forgery. At the worst, then and if discovery came, it would mean the loss of the Squire’s favor and banishment from the house. Both of these things he had experienced before, and in his blindness he did not despair of reinstating himself a second time. He had a way with him, he had come to think that few could resist him. He was far, very far, from understanding how the Squire would view the act.

But now the mists of self-deception were for the moment blown aside, and he saw the gulf on the edge of which he stood, and into which a word might precipitate him. If the pig-headed fool before him did what he said he would, and preferred a charge, the India House might take it up; and, pitiless where its interests were in question, it might prove as inexorable as the Bank had proved in the case of Fauntleroy only the year before. In that event, what might not be the end? His uncle had signed the transfer, and at the time that had seemed enough; it had seemed to secure him from the worst. But now—now when so much hung upon it, he doubted. He had not inquired, he had not dared to inquire how the law stood, but he knew that the law’s uncertainties were proverbial and its ambages beyond telling.