When he turned again. “Perhaps you may still think better of it,” Ovington said. He had regained command of himself. “I ought to have mentioned that your nephew has consented to act as Secretary to the Company.”
“The more fool he!” the Squire snarled. “My nephew! What the devil is he doing in your Company? Or for the matter of that in your bank either?”
“I think he sees more clearly than you that times are changed.”
“Ay,” the old man retorted, full of wrath, and well aware that the other had found a joint in his armor. “And he had best have a care that these fine times don’t lead him into trouble!”
“I hope not, I hope not. Good-day, Mr. Griffin. I can find my way out. Don’t let me trouble you.”
“I will see you out, if you please. After you, sir.” Then, with an effort which cost him much, but which he thought was due to his position, “You are sure that you will take nothing?”
“Nothing, I thank you.”
The Squire saw his visitor to the door; but he did not stay to see him ride away. He went back to his room and to a side window at which it was his custom to spend much time. It looked over the narrow vale, little more than a glen, which the eminence, on which the house stood, cut off from the main valley. It looked on its green slopes, on the fern-fringed brook that babbled and tossed in its bottom, on the black and white mill that spanned the stream, and on the Thirty Acre covert that clothed the farther side and climbed to the foot of the great limestone wall that towered alike above house and glen and rose itself to the knees of the boundary hills. And looking on all this, the Squire in fancy saw the railroad scoring and smirching and spoiling his beloved acres. It was nothing to him, that in fact the railroad would pass up the middle of the broad vale behind him—he ignored that. He saw the hated thing sweep by below him, a long black ugly snake, spewing smoke and steam over the green meadows, fouling the waters, darkening the air.
“Not in my time, by G—d!” he muttered, his knees quivering a little under him—for he was an aging man and the scene had tried him. “Not in my time!” And at the thought that he, the owner of all, hill and vale, within his sight, and the descendant of generations of owners—that he had been threatened by this upstart, this loan-monger, this town-bred creature of a day, he swore with fresh vigor.
He had at any rate the fires of indignation to warm him, and the satisfaction of knowing that he had spoken his mind and had not had the worst of the bout. But the banker’s feelings as he jogged homewards on his hackney were not so happy. In spite of Bourdillon’s warning he had been confident that he would gain his end. He had fancied that he knew his man and could manage him. He had believed that the golden lure would not fail. But it had failed, and the old man’s gibes accompanied him, and like barbed arrows clung to his memory and poisoned his content.