"Why, you swollen little frog!" losing all control over himself, "you don"t think my support worth buying, don"t you? You don"t think it"s worth a dirty hundred or two of your sc.r.a.pings! Then I tell you I"ll put my foot on you--by G--d, I will! Yes! I"ll tread you down into the mud you sprang from! If you were a gentleman I"d shoot you on the Flash at eight o"clock to-morrow, and eat my breakfast afterwards! You to talk to me! You, you little sp.a.w.n from the gutter! I"ve a good mind to thrash you within an inch of your life, but there"ll be those ready enough to do that for me by and by--ay, and plenty, by G--d!"
He towered over the banker, and he looked threatening enough, but Ovington did not flinch. He went to the door and threw it open.
"There"s the door, Mr. Acherley!" he said.
For a moment the gentleman hesitated. But the banker"s firm front prevailed, and with a gesture, half menacing, half contemptuous, Acherley stalked out. "The worse for you!" he said. "You"ll be sorry for this! By George, you will be sorry for this next week!"
"Good evening," said the banker--he was trembling with pa.s.sion. "I warn you to be careful what you say, or the law will deal with you."
And he stood his ground until the other, shrugging his shoulders and flinging behind him a last curse, had pa.s.sed through the door. Then he closed the door and went back to the fireplace. He sat down.
The matter was no surprise to him. He knew his man, and neither the demand nor the threat was unexpected. But he knew, too, that Acherley was shrewd, and that the demand and the threat were ominous signs.
More forcibly than anything that had yet occurred, they brought before him the desperate nature of the crisis, and the likelihood that, before a week went by, the worst would happen. He would be compelled to put up the shutters. The bank would stop. And with the bank would go all that he had won by a life of continuous labor: the position that he had built up, the status that he had gained, the reputation that he had achieved, the fortune which he had won and which had so much exceeded his early hopes. The things with which he had surrounded himself, they too, tokens of his success, the outward and handsome signs of his rise in life, many of them landmarks, milestones on the path of triumph--they too would go. He looked sadly on them. He saw them, he too, under the hammer: saw the mocking, heedless crowd handling them, dividing them, jeering at his short-lived splendor, gibing at his folly in surrounding himself with them.
Ay, and one here and there would have cause to say more bitter things.
For some--not many, he hoped, but some--would be losers with him. Some homes would be broken up, some old men beggared: and all would be laid at his door. His name would be a byword. There would be little said of the sufferers" imprudence or folly or rashness: he would be the scapegoat for all, he and the bank he had founded. Ovington"s Bank!
They would tell the story of it through years to come--would smile at its rise, deride its fall, make of it a town tale, the tale of a man"s arrogance, and of the speedy Nemesis which had punished it!
He was a proud man, and the thought of these things, the visions that they called up, tortured him. At times, he had borne himself a little too highly, had presumed on his success, had said a word too much.
Well, all that would be repaid now with interest, ay, with compound interest.
The room was growing dark, as dark as his thoughts. The fire glowed, a mere handful of red embers, in the grate. Now and again men went by the windows, talking--talking, it might be, of him: anxious, suspicious, greedy, ready at a word to ruin themselves and him, to cut their own throats in their selfish panic. They had only to use common sense, to control themselves, and no man would lose a penny. But they would have no common sense. They would rush in and destroy all, their own and his. For no bank called upon to pay in a day all that it owed could do so, any more than an insurance office could at any moment pay all its lives. But they would not blame themselves. They would blame him--and his!
He groaned as he thought of his children. Clement, indeed, might and must fend for himself. And he would--he had proved it of late days by his courage and cheerfulness, and the father"s heart warmed to him.
But Betty? Gay, fearless, laughing Betty, the light of his home, the joy of his life! Who, born when fortune had already begun to smile on him, had never known poverty or care or mean shifts! For whom he had been ambitious, whom he had thought to see well married--married into the county, it might be! Poor Betty! There would be an end of that now. Past his prime and discredited, he could not hope to make more than a pittance, happy if he could earn some two or three pounds a week in some such situation as Rodd"s. And she must sink with him and accept such a home as he could support, in place of this s.p.a.cious old town-house, with its oaken wainscots and its wide, shallow stairs, and its cheerful garden at the back.
His love suffered equally with his pride.
He was thinking so deeply that he did not hear the door open, or a light foot cross the room. He did not suspect that he was observed until a pair of warm young arms slid round his neck, and Betty"s curls brushed his check. "In the dumps, father?" she said. "And in the dark--and alone? Poor father! Is it as bad as that? But you have not given up hope? We are not ruined yet?"
"G.o.d forbid!" he said, hardly able, on finding her so close to him, to control his voice. "But we may be, Betty."
"And what then?" She clasped him more closely to her. "Might not worse things happen to us? Might you not die and I be left alone? Or might I not die, and you lose me? Or Clement? You are pleased with Clement, father, aren"t you? He may not be as clever as--as some people. But you know he"s there when you want him. Suppose you lost us?"
"True, child. But you don"t know what poverty is--after wealth, Betty--how narrowing, how irksome, how it galls at every point! You don"t know what it is to live on two or three pounds a week, in two or three rooms!"
"They will bring us the closer together," said Betty.
"And to be looked down upon by those who have been your equals, and shunned by those who have been your friends!"
"Nice friends! We shall do better without them!"
"And things will be said of me, things it will be hard to listen to!"
"They won"t say them to me," said Betty. "Or look out for my nails, ma"am! Besides, they won"t be true, and who cares, father! Lizzie Clough said yesterday I"d a cast in one eye, but does it worry me? Not a sc.r.a.p. And we"ll shut the door on our two or three rooms and let them--go hang! As long as we are together we can face anything, father--we can live on two pounds or two shillings or two pence. And consider! You might never have known what Clement was, how lively, how brave, how"--with a funny little laugh--"like me," hugging him to her, "if this had not happened--that"s not going to happen after all."
He sighed. He dealt with figures, she with fancy. "I hope not," he said. "At any rate I"ve two good children, and if it does come to the worst----"
"We"ll lock ourselves in and our false friends out!" she said; and for a moment after that she was silent. Then, "Tell me, father, why did Mr. Rodd take that money--when you need all that you can get together, and he knows it? For he"s taking the plate to Birmingham to pledge, isn"t he? So he must know it."
"He is, if----"
"If it comes to the worst? I know. Then why did he take his money, when he knew how things stood?"
"Why did he take his own when we offered it?" the banker replied. "Why shouldn"t he, child? It was his own, and business is business. He would have been very foolish if he had not taken it. He"s not a man who can afford to lose it."
"Oh!" said Betty. And for some minutes she said no more. Then she roused herself, poked the fire, and rang for the lamp.
CHAPTER XXVII
"Well," said the Squire peevishly, "I can do no more. Girls ha" their whimsies, and it"s much if you can hinder "em running after Mr. Wrong without forcing "em to take Mr. Right. At any rate I"ve said what I could for you, lad, and the end was as if I hadn"t. You must fight your own battle. Jos hasn"t"--this would never have occurred to the Squire in his seeing days--"too gay a life of it, and if you"re not man enough to get on the soft side of her, with a clear field, why, damme, you don"t deserve to have her."
"I was well enough with her," Arthur said resentfully, "till lately.
But she is changed, sir."
"Well, like enough. Girls are like that."
"There may be--someone else."
The Squire snorted. "Who?" he said. "Who?"--more roughly. "You"re talking nonsense."
Arthur could not say who. He could not name anyone. So far as he knew there could not be anyone. But his temper, chafed by a week of suspense and anxiety, was not smoothed by the old man"s refusal to do more. And then to fail with Josina! To be rejected by Josina, the simple girl whom, in his heart, he had regarded as a _pis alter_, on whom he had designed to confer a half-contemptuous affection, on whose youthful fancy he had played for his pastime! This was enough to try him, apart from the fact that things in Aldersbury looked black, and that, losing her, he lost the consolation prize to which he had looked forward to make all good. So, taken to task by the Squire, he did not at once a.s.sent. "Who?" he repeated gloomily. "Ah, I don"t know."
"Nor I!" the Squire retorted. "There is n.o.body. Truth is, my lad, the man who has been robbed sees a face in every bush. However, there "tis. I"ve said my say, and I"ve done with it. Did you bring those deeds from Welsh"s?"
Arthur swallowed his mortification as best he might--fortunately the old man could not see his face. "Yes," he said. "I left them downstairs." The Squire had caught a cold, sitting out on the hill on the Sat.u.r.day, and had been for some days in his bedroom.
"Well, I"m going to pay wages now," he rejoined. "Bring "em up after dinner and I"ll sign "em. You and the girl or Peac.o.c.k can witness them. And, hark you--here, wait a minute!" irascibly, for Arthur, giving as much rein to his temper as he dared, had turned on his heel and was marching off. "Take my keys and open the safe-cupboard downstairs, and bring me up the agreement. I"ve got to compare it with the lease--I shan"t sign it without! Lock the door, d"you hear, before you open the cupboard, and have a care no one sees you."
"Very well," Arthur said, and was half-way to the door when again, as if to try his patience, the old man stopped him. "What"s this they"re saying about Ovington"s, eh? "Bout the bank? Pretty thing, if he"s let you in and your money too! But I"m not surprised. I told you you were a fool, young man, to dirty your hands in that bag, whatever you thought to get out of it. And if you"re not going to get anything out of it, but to leave your own in, as I hear talk of--what then? Come, let"s hear what you have to say about it! I"d like to know."
"I don"t know what you"ve heard, sir," Arthur answered, sparring for time. For self-control, provoking as the old man was, he had no longer need to fight. For he had seen, the moment the Squire spoke, that here, here if he chose to avail himself of it, was his chance of the twelve thousand! Here was an opening, if he had the courage to seize it. Granted the chance was desperate, and the opening unpromising--a poorer or less promising could hardly be. And the courage necessary was great. But here it was. The Squire himself had brought up the subject. He knew of the rumors: he had broken the ice. Here it was, and for a moment, uncertain, wavering, giddy with the swift interchange of _pros_ and _cons_, Arthur tried for time--time to think. "What was it? What did you hear, sir?" he asked.
"What did I hear?" the Squire answered. "Why, that they"re d--d suspicious of them in the town. And I don"t wonder. Up in a night, and cut off in a day, like a rotten mushroom!" He spoke with gusto, forgetting for the moment what this might mean to his listener; who, on his side, hardly heeded the brutality, so absorbed was he in the question which he must answer--the question whether it would be wise or foolish, ruin or salvation, to ask the Squire for help. "He"ll be another Fauntleroy, "fore he"s done," the old man went on with relish.
"He"ll stretch a rope, you"ll see if he won"t! I told him as much myself. I told him as much in those very words the day he came here about his confounded silly toy of a railroad. He might take in Woosenham and a lot of other fools, I told him, but he did not deceive me. Now I hear that he"s going to burst up, and where"ll you be, my lad? Where"ll you be? By Gad, you may be in the dock with him!"
Certainly he might speak on that. The old man was harsh and hard-fisted, but he was also hard-headed and very shrewd; and conceivably the case might be so put to him that he might see his profit in it. Certainly it might be so put that he might see a fair prospect of saving his nephew"s five thousand at no great risk to himself. The books might be laid before him, the figures be taken out.
the precise situation made clear. There was--it could not be put higher than this--just a slender chance that he would listen, prejudiced as he was.
But twelve thousand! It was such a stupendous sum to name. It needed such audacity to ask for it. And yet it was that or nothing. Less might not serve; while to ask for less, to ask for anything at all, might cost the pet.i.tioner the favor he had won--his standing in the house, and the advantages which the Squire"s support might still gain for him. And then it was such a forlorn hope, such a desperate, f.e.c.kless venture! No, he would be a fool to risk it. He dared not do it. He had not the face.
Yet, for a few seconds after the Squire had ceased to speak, Arthur hesitated, confession trembling on his lips. The twelve thousand would make all good, save all, redeem all--ay, and bind Ovington to him in bonds of steel. But no, he dared not. He would be a fool to speak. And instead of the words that had risen to his lips, "I think you mistake, sir," he said coldly. "I think you"ll find that this is all cry and little wool! Of course money is tight, and there is trouble in the City. I"ve heard talk of two or three weak banks being in difficulties, and I should not wonder if one or two of them stopped payment between this and Christmas. We are told that it is likely. But we are perfectly solvent. It will take more than talk to bring Ovington"s down."
"Umph!" the Squire grumbled. "Well, maybe, maybe. You talk as if you knew, and you ought to know. I hope you do know. After all--I don"t want you to lose your money--Gad, a pretty fool you"d look, my lad! A pretty fool, indeed! But as for Ovington, a confounded rascal, who thinks himself a gentleman because he has filled his purse at some poor devil"s expense--I"d see him break with pleasure."
"I don"t think you"ll have the pleasure this time!" Arthur retorted with a bitterness which he could not repress--a bitterness caused as much by his own doubts as by the other"s harshness. He left the room without more, the keys in his hand, and went downstairs.