Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

“But why not? Now—now that he’s in trouble, Josina?”

“I couldn’t! I couldn’t, indeed.”

The mother’s face fell, and she sighed. She stared for awhile at the faded carpet. When she looked up again, the old anxiety peeped from her eyes. “And you don’t think that—there’s anything else?” she asked, as she prepared to rise.

“I am afraid that that is enough—to make them all anxious!”

But later, when the other was gone, Josina wondered. What had aroused the mother’s misgivings? What had brought that look of alarm to her eyes? Arthur’s sudden departure might have vexed her, but it could hardly have done more, unless he had dropped some hint, or she had other grounds for suspicion? But that was impossible, Josina decided. And she dismissed the thought.

She went slowly upstairs. After all she had troubles enough of her own. She had her father to think of—and Clement. They were her world, hemispheres which, though her whole happiness depended upon it, she could hardly hope to bring together, divided as they were by an ocean of prejudice. How her father now regarded Clement, whether his hatred of the name were in the slightest degree softened, whether under the blow which had stunned him, he thought of her lover at all, or remembered that it was he, and not Arthur, who had saved his life, she had no notion.

Alas! it would be but natural if the name of Ovington were more hateful to him than ever. He would attribute—she felt that he did attribute Arthur’s fall to them. He had said that it was the poison of trade, their trade, their cursed trade, which had entered his veins, and, contaminating the honest Griffin blood, had destroyed him. It was they who had ruined him!

And then, as if the stain were not enough, it was from them again that it could not be hid. They knew of it, they must know of it. There must be interviews about it, dealings about it, dealings with them. They might feign horror of it, they who in the Squire’s eyes were the real cause of it. They might hold up their hands at the fact and pity him! Pity him! If anything, anything, she was sure, could add to her father’s mortification, it was that the Ovingtons were involved in the matter.

With every stair, the girl’s heart sank lower. Once more in her father’s room, she watched him. But she was careful not to let her solicitude appear, and though she was assiduous for his comfort and conduced to it by keeping Miss Peacock and the servants at a distance, she said almost as little to him as he to her. From time to time he sighed, but it was only when she reminded him that it was his hour for bed that he let a glimpse of his feelings appear.

“Ay,” he muttered, “I’m better there! Better there, girl!” And with one hand on his stick and the other on his chair he raised himself up by his arms as old men do. “I can hide my head there.”