Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

“A bear will come to the honey if its head be sore,” the banker answered, smiling.

“And perhaps upset the hive?”

Ovington laughed. “Not in this case, I think. And we must risk something. Time presses and he blocks the way. However, I’ll let it stand over for a week and then I’ll go alone. We must have your uncle.”

Accordingly a week later, discarding the tilbury and smart man-servant that he had lately set up, he rode over to Garth, considering as he journeyed the man whom he was going to meet and of whom, in spite of his self-assurance, he stood in some awe.

Round Aldersbury were larger landowners and richer men than the Squire. But his family and his name were old, and by virtue of long possession he stood high among the gentry of the county. He had succeeded at twenty-two to a property neglected and loaded with debt, and his father’s friends—this was far back in the old King’s reign—had advised him to sell; let him keep the house and the home-farm and pay his debts with the rest. But pride of race was strong in him, he had seen that to sell was to lose the position which his forbears had held, and he had refused. Instead he had set himself to free the estate, and he had pared, he had pinched, he had almost starved himself and others. He had become a byword for parsimony. In the end, having benefited much by enclosures in the ’nineties, he had succeeded. But no sooner had he deposited in the bank the money to pay off the last charge than the loss of his only son had darkened his success. He had married again—he was by this time past middle age—but only a daughter had come of the marriage, and by that time to put shilling to shilling and acre to acre had become a habit of which he could not break himself, though he knew that only a woman would follow him at Garth.

Withal he was a great aristocrat, a Tory of the Tories, stern and unbending. Fear of France and of French doctrines and pride in his caste were in his blood. The Quarterly Review ranked with him after his Bible, and very little after it. Reform under the most moderate aspect was to him a shorter name for Revolution. He believed implicitly in his class, and did not believe in any other class. Manufacturers and traders he hated and distrusted, and of late jealousy had been added to hatred and distrust. The inclusion of such men in the magistracy, the elevation of Peel to the Ministry had made him fancy that there was something in the Queen’s case after all; when Canning and Huskisson had also risen to power he had said that Lord Liverpool was aging and the Duke was no longer the man he had been.

He was narrow, choleric, proud, miserly; he had been known to carry an old log a hundred yards to add it to his wood-pile, and to travel a league to look for a lost sixpence. He dressed shabbily, which was not so much remarked now that dandies aped coachmen, as it had been in his younger days; and he rode about his fields on an old white mare which he was believed to hold in affection next after his estate and much before his daughter. He ruled his parish with a high hand. He had no mercy for poachers. But he was honest and he was just. The farmers must pay the wage he laid down—it was a shilling above the allowed rate. But the men must work it out, and woe betide the idle; they had best seek work abroad, and heaven help them if a foreign parish sent them home. In one thing he was before his time; he was resolved that no able-bodied man should share in the rates. The farmers growled, the laborers grumbled, there were hard cases. But he was obdurate—work your worth, or starve! And presently it began to be noticed that the parish was better off than its neighbors. He was a tyrant, but a just tyrant.

Such was the man whom Ovington was going to meet, and from whose avarice he hoped much. He had made his market of it once, for it was by playing on it that he had lured the Squire from Dean’s, and so had gained one of his dearest triumphs over the old Aldersbury Bank.

His hopes would not have been lessened had he heard a dialogue which was at that moment proceeding in the stable-yard at Garth to an accompaniment of clattering pails and swishing besoms. “He’ve no bowels!” Thomas the groom declared with bitterness. “He be that hard and grasping he’ve no bowels for nobody!”

Old Fewtrell, the Squire’s ancient bailiff, sniggered. “He’d none for you, Thomas,” he said, “when you come back gallus drunk from Baschurch Fair. None of your Manchester tricks with me, says Squire, and, lord, how he did leather ’ee.”