Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

She watched him go with his heavy burden and his blunt common-sense down the garden walk; and when he had disappeared behind the pear-tree espaliers she went back to listen outside the parlor door. She had been her father’s pet. He had treated her with an indulgence and a familiarity rare in those days of parental strictness, and she understood him well, better than others, better even than Clement. She knew what failure would mean to him. It was not the loss of wealth which would wound him most sorely, though he would feel that; but the loss of the position which success had gained for him in the little world in which he lived, and lived somewhat aloof. He had been thought, and he had thought himself, cleverer than his neighbors. He had borne himself as one belonging to, and destined for, a wider sphere. He had met the pride of the better-born and the older-established with a greater pride; and believing in his star, he had allowed his contempt for others and his superiority to be a little too clearly seen.

For all this he would now pay, and his pride would suffer. Betty, lingering in the darker part of the hall, where the servants could not spy on her, listened and longed to go in to him and comfort him. But all the rules forbade this, she might not distract him at such a time. Yet, had she known how deep was his depression as he sat sunk in his chair, had she known how the past mocked him, and the long chain of his successes rose and derided him, how the mirage of long-cherished hopes melted and left all cold before him—had she guessed the full bitterness of his spirit, she had broken through every rule and gone in to him.

The self-made man! Proudly, disdainfully he had flung the taunt back in men’s faces. Could they make, could they have made themselves, as he had? And now the self-ruined man! He sat thinking of it, and the minutes went by. Twice one of the clerks came in and silently placed a slip beside him and went softly out. He looked at the slip, but without taking in its meaning. What did it matter whether a few more or a few less pounds had been drawn out, whether the drain had waxed or waned in the last quarter of an hour? The end was certain, and it would come when the two men arrived on the Chester coach. Then he would have to bestir himself. Then he would have to resume the lead and play the man, give back hardness for hardness and scorn for scorn, and bear himself so in defeat that no man should pity him. And he knew that he could do it. He knew that when the time came his voice would be firm and his face would be granite, and that he would pronounce his own sentence and declare the bank closed with a high head. He knew that even in defeat he could so clothe himself with power that no man should browbeat him.

But in the meantime he paid his debt to weakness, and sat brooding on the past, rather than preparing for the future; and time passed, the relentless hand moved round the clock. Twice the clerk came in with his doom-bearing slips, and presently Rodd appeared. But the cashier had nothing to say that the banker did not know. Ovington took the paper and looked at the figures and at the total, but all he said was, “Let me know when Owen and Jenkins come.”

“Very good, sir.” Rodd lingered a moment as if he would gladly have added something, would have ventured, perhaps, some word of sympathy. But his courage failed him and he went out.

Nor when Clement, half an hour afterwards, returned from his mission to Garth did he give any sign. Clement laid his hand on his shoulder and said a cheery word, but, getting no answer, or as good as none, he went through to his desk. A moment later his voice could be heard rallying a too conscious customer, greeting another with contemptuous good humor, bringing into the close, heated atmosphere of the bank, where men breathed heavily, snapped at one another, and shuffled their feet, a gust of freer brisker air.

Another half-hour passed. A clerk brought in a slip. The banker looked at it. No more than seven hundred pounds remained in the till. “Very good,” he said. “Let me know when Mr. Owen and Mr. Jenkins come.” And as the door closed behind the lad he fell back into his old posture of depression. There was nothing to be done.

But five minutes later Clement looked in, his face concerned. “Sir Charles Woosenham is here,” he said in a low voice. “He is asking for you.”

The banker roused himself. The call was not unexpected nor quite unwelcome. “Show him in,” he said; and he took up a pen and drew a sheet of paper towards him that he might appear to be employing himself.

Sir Charles came in, tall, stooping a little, his curly-brimmed hat in his hand; the dignified bearing with which he was wont to fence himself against the roughness of the outer world a little less noticeable than usual. He was a gentleman, and he did not like his errand.