Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

Presently a man, passing over the bridge, looked curiously at him, paused and went on again, and the incident recalled him to himself. He remembered that he was in a place where all knew him, where his movements and his looks would be observed, where every second person who saw him would wonder why he was not at the bank. He must be going. He composed his face and walked on.

But whither? The question smote him with a strange and chilly sense of loneliness. Whither? To the bank certainly, if he had courage, where the battle was even now joined. He might fling himself into the fray, play his part as if nothing had happened, smile with the best, ignore what he had done and, if challenged, face it down. And there had been a time when he could have done this. There had been a time, when Clement had first alighted on him in town, when he had decided with himself to play that rôle, and had believed that he could carry it off with a smiling face. And now, now, as then, he maintained that he had done nothing that the end did not justify, since the means could harm no one.

But at that time he had believed that he could count on the complicity of others, he had believed that they would at least accept the thing that he had done and throw in their lot with his, and the failure of that belief, brag as he might, affected him. It had sapped his faith in his own standards. The view Clement had taken had slowly but surely eclipsed his view, until now, when he must face the bank with a smile, he could not muster up the smile. He began to see that he had committed not a crime, but a blunder. He had been found out!

He walked more and more slowly, and when he came, some eighty yards from the bridge and at the foot of the Cop, to a lane on his left which led by an obscure shortcut to his rooms, he turned into it. He did not tell himself that he was not going to the bank. He told himself that he must change his clothes, and wash, and eat something before he could face people. That was all.

He reached his lodgings, beneath the shadow of an old tower that looked over the meadows to the river, without encountering any one. He even stole upstairs, unseen by his landlady, and found the fire alight in his sitting-room, and some part of a meal laid ready on the table. He washed his hands and ate and drank, but instinctively, as he did so, he hushed his movements and trod softly. When he had finished his meal he stood for a moment, his eyes on the door, hesitating. Should he or should he not go to the bank? He knew that he ought to go. But the wear and tear of three days of labor and excitement, during which he had hardly slept as many hours, had lowered his vitality and sapped his will, and the effort required was now too much for him. With a sigh of relief he threw up the sponge, he owned himself beaten. He sank into a chair and, moody and inert, he sat gazing at the fire. He was very weary, and presently his eyes closed, and he slept.

Two hours later his landlady discovered him, and the cry which she uttered in her astonishment awoke him. “Mercy on us!” she exclaimed. “You here, sir! And I never heard a sound, and no notion you were come! But I was expecting you, Mr. Bourdillon. ‘He won’t be long,’ I says to myself, ‘now that that plaguy bank’s gone and closed—worse luck to it!”

“Closed, has it?” he said, dully.

“Ay, to be sure, this hour past.” Which of course was not true, but many things that were not true were being said in Aldersbury that day. “And nothing else to be expected, I am told, though there’s nobody blames you, sir. You can’t put old heads on young shoulders, asking your pardon, sir, as I said to Mrs. Brown no more than an hour ago. It was her Johnny told me—he came that way from school and stopped to look. Such a sight of people on Bride Hill, he said, as he never saw in his life, ’cept on Show Day, and the shutters going up just as he came away.”

He did not doubt the story—he knew that there was no other end to be expected. “I am only just from London,” he said, feeling that some explanation of his ignorance was necessary. “I had no sleep last night, Mrs. Bowles, and I sat down for a moment, and I suppose I fell asleep in my chair.”

“Indeed, and no wonder. From London, to be sure! Can I bring you anything up, sir?”