Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

“But it’s not time—by an hour, man!”

“No, but it’s a special case, and will take all day, I’m afraid. His lordship says that he won’t begin until you come. It’s that case of——” the lawyer whispered a few words. “And the Chief Constable does not quite trust—you understand? He’s anxious that you should be there.”

The Squire resigned himself, “Very well, I’ll come,” he said.

He could go to the bank afterwards, but he might not have complied so readily if his vanity had not been tickled. The Justices of that day bore a heavier burden than their successors—hodie nominis umbrae. With no police force they had to take the initiative in the detection as well as in the punishment of crime. Marked men, belonging to a privileged class, they had to do invidious things and to enforce obnoxious laws. They represented the executive, and they shared alike its odium and its fearlessness. For hardly anything is more remarkable in the history of that time than the courage of the men who held the reins. Unpopular, assailed by sedition, undermined by conspiracy, and pressed upon by an ever-growing public feeling, the few held on unblenching, firm in the belief that repression was the only policy, and doubting nothing less than their right to rule. They dined and drank, and presented a smiling face to the world, but great and small they ran their risks, and that they did not go unscathed, the fate of Perceval and of Castlereagh, the collapse of Liverpool, and the shortened lives of many a lesser man gave proof.

But even among the firm there are degrees, and in all bodies it is on the shoulders of one or two that the onus falls. Of the one or two in Aldshire, the Squire was one. My lord might fill the chair, Sir Charles might assent, but it was to Griffin that their eyes wandered when an unpleasant decision had to be taken or the public showed its teeth. And the old man knew that this was so, and was proud of it.

To-day, however, as he watched the long hand move round the clock, he had less patience than usual. Because he must be at the bank before it closed, everything seemed to work against him. The witnesses were sullen, the evidence dragged, Acherley went off on a false scent, and being whipped back, turned crusty. The Squire fidgeted and scowled, and then, twenty minutes before the bank closed, and when with his eyes on the clock he was growing desperate, the chairman suggested that they should break off for a quarter of an hour. “Confound me, if I can sit any longer,” he said. “I must have a mouthful of something, Griffin.”

The Squire seldom took more than a hunch of bread at mid-day and could do without that, but he was glad to agree, and a minute later he was crossing the Market Place towards the bank. It happened that business was brisk at the moment. Rodd, at a side desk, was showing a customer how to draw a cheque. At the main counter a knot of farmers were producing, with protruding tongues and hunched shoulders, something which might pass for a signature. Two clerks were aiding them, and for a moment the Squire stood unseen and unregarded. Impatiently he tapped the counter with his stick, on which Rodd saw him, and, deserting his task, came hurriedly to him.

The Squire thrust his cheque across the counter. “In gold,” he said.

The cashier scanned the cheque, his hand in the till. “Four, seven, six-ten,” he murmured. Then his face grew serious, and without glancing at the Squire he consulted a book which lay beside him. “Four, seven, six-ten,” he repeated. “I am afraid—one moment, if you please, sir!” Breaking off he made two steps to a door behind him and disappeared through it.

He returned a moment later, followed by Ovington himself. The banker’s face was grave, but his tone retained its usual blandness. “Good day, Mr. Griffin,” he said. “You are drawing the whole of your balance, I see. I trust that that does not mean that you are—making any change?”