Ovington's Bank

Not that Arthur was without his troubles. Naturally and inevitably a cloud had fallen on the relation, friendly hitherto, between him and Clement. Clement had grown cool to him, and the change was unwelcome, for it was in Arthur's nature to love popularity and to thrive and to bask in the sunshine of it. But it could not be helped. Without breaking eggs one could not make omelettes. Clement blamed him, he knew, feeling, and with reason, that what he had done deserved acknowledgment, and that it lay with Arthur to see that justice was done. And Arthur, for his part, would have gladly acquitted himself of the debt had it consisted with his own interests. But it did not.

Had he suspected the tie between Clement and Josina he might have acted otherwise. He might have foreseen the possibility of Clement's gaining the old man's ear, might have scented danger, and played a more cautious game. But he knew nothing of this. Garth and Clement stood apart in his mind. Clement and Josina were as far as he knew barely acquainted. He was aware, therefore, of no special reason why Clement should desire to stand well at Garth, while he felt sure that his friend was the last person to push a claim, or to thrust himself uninvited on the Squire's gratitude.

Accordingly, and the more as the banker had not himself taken up the quarrel, he put it aside as of no great importance. He shrugged his shoulders and told himself that Clement would come round. The cloud would pass, and its cause be forgotten.

In the meantime he ignored it. He met Clement's hostility with bland unconsciousness, smiled and was pleasant. He was too busy a man to be troubled by trifles. He was not going to be turned from his course by the passing frown of a silly fellow, who could not hold an advantage when he had won it.

Betty was another matter. Betty was behaving ill and showing temper, in league apparently with her brother and sympathizing with him. She was changed from the Betty of old days. He had lost his hold upon her, and though this fell in well enough with the change in his views-or the possible change, for he had not quite made up his mind-it pricked his conceit as much as it surprised him. Moreover, the girl had a sharp tongue and was not above using it, so that more than once he smarted under its lash.

"Fine feathers make fine birds!" she said, as Arthur came bounding into the house one day and all but collided with her. "Only they should be your own, Mr. Daw!"

"Oh, I give your father all the credit," he replied, "only I do some of the work. But you used not to be so critical, Betty."

"No? Well, I'll tell you why if you like."

"Oh, I don't want to know."

"No, I don't think you do!" the girl retorted. "But I'll tell you. I thought your feathers were your own then. Now-I should be uneasy if I were you."

"Why?"

"You might fall among crows and be plucked. I can tell you, you'd be a sorry sight in your own feathers!"

He turned a dusky red. The shaft had gone home, but he tried to hide the wound. "A dull bird, eh?" he said, affecting to misunderstand her. "Well, I thought you liked dull birds. I couldn't be duller than Rodd, and you don't find fault with him."

It was a return shot, aimed only to cover his retreat. But the shot told in a way that surprised him. Betty reddened to her hair, and her eyes snapped.

"At any rate, Mr. Rodd is what he seems!" she cried.

"Oh! oh!"

"He's not hollow!"

"No! Of course not. A most witty, bright, amusing gentleman, the pink of fashion, and-what is it? – the mould of form! Hollow? Oh, no, Betty, very solid, I should say-and stolid!" with a grin. "Not a roaring blade, perhaps-I could hardly call him that, but a sound, substantial, wooden-gentleman! I am sure that your father values him highly as a clerk, and would value him still more highly as-"

"What?"

"I need not put it into words-but it lies with you to qualify him for the post. Rodd? Well, well, times are changed, Betty! But we live and learn."

"You have a good deal to learn," she cried, bristling with anger, "about women!"

He got away then, retiring in good order and pleased that he had not had the worst of it; hoping, too, that he had closed the little spitfire's mouth. But there he found himself mistaken. The young lady was of a high courage, and perhaps had been a little spoiled. Where she once felt contempt she made no bones about showing it, and whenever they met, her frankness, sharpened by a woman's intuition, kept him on tenter-hooks.

"You seem to think very ill of me," he said once. "And yet you trouble yourself a good deal about me."

"You make a mistake!" she replied. "I am not troubling myself about you. I'm thinking of my father."

"Ah! Now you are out of my reach. That's beyond me."

"I wish he were!"

"He knows his own business."

"I hope he does!" she riposted. And though it was the memory of Rodd's warning that supplied the dart, the animosity that sped it had another source. The truth was that her brother had at last taken her into his confidence.

It was not without great unhappiness that he had seen all the hopes which he had built upon the Squire's gratitude come to nothing. He had hoped, and for a time had been even confident; but nothing had happened, no message, no summons had reached him. The events of that night might have been a dream, as far as he was concerned. Yet he could not see his way to blow his own trumpet, or proclaim what he had done. He stood no better than before, and indeed his position was worse.

For as long as the Squire lay bedridden and ill he could not go to him. Even when the report came that he was mending, Clement hesitated. To go to him, basing his claim on what had happened, to go to him and tell the story, as he must, with his own lips-this presented difficulties from which a man with delicate feelings might well shrink!

Meanwhile a veil had fallen between him and Josina. He had sworn that he would not see her again until he could claim her, and he supposed her to be engrossed by her father's illness and tied to his bedside. He even, with a lover's insight, inferred the remorse which she felt and her recoil from a continuance of their relations. Meanwhile he did not know what to do. He did not see any outlet. He was in an impasse with no prospect of delivery. And while he felt that Arthur had behaved ungenerously, while he even suspected that his friend had taken the credit which was his own due, he had no clue to his motives, or his schemes.

It was Betty who first saw into the dark place. For one day, longing as lovers long for a confidante, he had told her all, from the first meeting with Josina to his final parting from the girl by the brook, and his brief and unfortunate interview with her father on the road. The romance charmed Betty, the audacity of it dazzled her; for, a woman, she perceived more clearly than Clement the gulf between the town and the country, the new and the old. She listened to his tale with sighs and tears and little endearments, and led him on from one thing to another. She could not hear too much of a story that hardly a woman alive could have heard with indifference. She praised Josina to the top of his bent, and if she could not give him much hope, she gave sympathy.

And, shrewdly, in her own mind she put things together. "Arthur is off with the old love," she thought, "and on with the new." He had changed sides, and that explained many things. So, with hardly any premises, she jumped to a conclusion so nearly correct that, could Arthur have read her mind, he would have winced even more than he did under the thrusts of her satire.

But she did not tell Clement. Her suspicions were not founded on reason, and they would only alarm him, and he was gloomy enough as it was. Instead, she cheered him and bade him be patient. Something might turn up, and in no case could much be done until the Squire was well enough to leave his room.

At bottom she was not hopeful. She saw arrayed between Clement and his love a host of difficulties, apart from Arthur's machinations. The pride of class, the old man's obstinacy, the young girl's timidity, Josina's wealth-these were obstacles hard to surmount. And Arthur was on the spot ready to raise new barriers, should these be overcome.

CHAPTER XX

The money for Arthur's share in the bank had been paid over in the early part of June, but the transaction had not gone through with the smoothness which he had anticipated. He had found himself up against a thing which he had not taken into his reckoning; the jealousy with which the old and the rich are apt to guard the secret of their wealth, a jealousy in the Squire's case aggravated by his blindness. Arthur had felt the check and was forced to own, with some alarm, that high as he stood in favor, a little thing might upset him.

He had written to the brokers, requesting them to sell sufficient India Stock to bring in a sum of six thousand pounds. They had replied that they could not carry out the order unless they had the particulars of the Stock and of the amount standing in the Squire's name at the India House. But when Arthur took the letter to the Squire's room and read it to him, the outcome surprised him. The old man sat up in bed and confounded him by the vigor of his answer. "Want to know how much I hold?" he cried. "D-n their impudence! Then they'll not know! Want to look at my books and see what I'm worth! What next? What is it to them what I hold? You bid 'em sell-" beating the counterpane with his stick-"you bid 'em sell two thousand two hundred pounds-at two hundred and seventy-five, that's near the mark! That's all they've got to do, the impudent puppies! Do you write, d'you hear, and tell 'em to do it!"

Arthur cursed the old man's unreasonableness, and wondered what he was to do. If there was going to be all this difficulty about the particulars, what about the certificates? How was he to get them? For the Squire as he sat erect, thrusting forward his bandaged head, and clutching the stick that lay beside him, grew almost threatening. He was in arms in defence of his moneybags and his secrets, and his nephew saw that it would take a bolder man than himself to cross him.

He hesitated. "I am afraid, sir," he ventured at last, "there's a difficulty here that I had not foreseen. The certificates-"

"They don't want the certificates-yet! Don't they say so? Plain as a pikestaff!"

"Perhaps, sir," doubtfully. "If Welshes have got them-"

"Welshes have not got them!"

Arthur did not know what to say to that. At last, in a tone as reasonable as he could compass, "I am afraid the difficulty is, sir," he said, "that they cannot make out a transfer until they have the particulars; which I fancy we can only get from the certificates."

"Then they may go to blazes!" the Squire replied, and he lay down with his face to the wall. Not he! There might be officials at the India House who knew this or that and Welshes, who had acted for him in making one purchase or another, might know a part. But to no living man had he ever entrusted the secret of his fortune, or the result of those long years of stinting and sparing and saving that had cleared the mortgaged estate, and had been continued because habit was strong and age is penurious. No, to no man living! That was his secret while the breath was in him. Afterwards-but he was not going to give it up yet.

Presently he bade Arthur go, and Arthur went, troubled in his mind, and much less assured of his position than he had been an hour before. He thanked his stars that he had not given way to the temptation to cut loose from the bank. It would never have done, he saw that now. And how was he going to extract his money, his six thousand, from this unreasonable old dotard-for so he styled him in his wrath?

However, the riddle solved itself before many hours had passed.

That afternoon he was absent, and Jos, about whom Miss Peacock was growing anxious, had gone out to take the air. The butler, left on guard, occupied himself with laying the table in the dining-room, where, if the Squire tapped the floor, he could hear him. He heard no summons, but presently as he went about his work he heard someone moving upstairs and he pricked up his ears. Surely the Squire was not getting out of bed? Weak and blind as he was-but again he heard heavy footsteps, and, thoroughly alarmed, the man lost no time. He hurried up the stairs, and entered his master's room. The Squire was out of bed. He was on his feet, clinging to the post at the foot of the bed, and feeling helplessly about him with the other hand.

"Lord, ha' mercy!" Calamy cried, eying the gaunt figure with dismay. He hastened forward to support it.

The Squire collapsed on the bed as soon as he was touched. "I canna do it," he groaned, "I canna do it. It's going round wi' me. Who is it?"

"Calamy, sir," the butler answered, and added bluntly, "If you want to get into your coffin, master, you're going the right way to do it!"

"Anyway, I canna do it," the Squire repeated, and remained motionless for a moment. "I couldn't manage the stairs if 'twere ever so."

"You'd manage 'em one way. You'd fall down 'em. You get to bed, sir. You get to bed. There, I'll heave you up."

"I'm weaker than I thought," the Squire muttered. He suffered himself to be put into bed.

"You've lost blood, sir, that's what it is," the butler said. "And at your age it's not to be replaced in a week, nor a fortnight. You lie still, sir. Maybe in a month you'll be tramping the stairs. But blindfold-it's the Lord's mercy as you didn't fall and only stop in Kingdom Come! For if fall you did, I don't know where else you'd stop."

"I'm afraid so. Anyway I canna do it!"

"Only feet foremost."

The Squire sighed and turned himself to the wall, perhaps to hide the tear that helplessness forced from old eyes. He couldn't do it, and he must put up with the consequences. He could not any longer be sufficient to himself. It was a sad thought, but apparently he made up his mind to it, for twenty-four hours later, when Jos and Arthur were with him, he sent the girl away. When she had gone he sought under the pillow for his keys, and after handling them for a time, "Is the door shut? And no one here but you?"

"We are quite alone, sir."

"No one within hearing, lad?"

"Not a soul, sir."

"It's not that I mistrust the wench," the Squire muttered. "She's a Griffin and a good girl, a good girl. But she's a tongue like other women." By this time he had found what he wanted, and holding the bunch by one of the keys he offered it to Arthur. "That's the key. Now you listen to me. Go down to the dining-room, and don't you do anything till you've locked the door and seen there's no one at the windows. The panel, right side of the fireplace-are you minding me? Ay? Well, pass your hand down the moulding next the hearth and you'll feel a crack across it, and, an inch below, another. They're so small you as good as can't see them, when you know they're there. Twist that bit, top part to the right, and you'll see a key-hole. Turn the key and pull, and the panel comes open, and you'll see a cupboard door behind it. Same key unlocks it. Are you minding me?"

"I am, sir, I quite understand."

"Well, on the middle shelf-you'll see a box. The key to that box is the next on the bunch. Open it and you will have the India Stock Certificates." The Squire sighed and for a moment was silent. "There's one for two thousand two hundred, which will do it. Bring it here. You needn't," drily, "go routing among the others, once you've found it. Then lock up, and slip the moulding into place. But be sure, lad, before you do aught, that the door is locked."

"I will be careful," Arthur assured him. "I quite understand, sir."

"It's not that I distrust Jos," the Squire repeated-as if he defended himself against an accusation. "But tell a secret to a woman, and you tell it to the parish."

"Shall I do it now, sir?"

"Ay. And bring back the keys. Don't let 'em out of your hands."

Arthur went downstairs, and as he descended the shallow steps he smiled. Men, even the sharpest of men, were easy to manage if you had patience.

The afternoon was drawing in. The corners in the hall were growing dim. The sky seen through the open door was pale green. The air came in from the garden, sweet but chilly, laden with the scent of lilac and gilly flowers. A single rook cawed. The peace of the country was upon all. He could hear his mother and Josina talking somewhere within the house.

He slipped into the dining-room and, locking himself in, looked round him. The paint on the panelled walls was faded, blistered in places by the sun, or soiled where elbows had rubbed it or the butler's tray standing against it through long years, had marked it. The panels were large, dating from Dutch William or Anne, of chestnut and set in heavy mouldings.

Arthur glanced at the windows to make sure that he was unseen, then he stepped to the hearth and felt for and found the bit of moulding, in front of which, though he had forgotten to mention it, the Squire had hung an old almanac. Arthur twisted the upper end to the right, uncovered the key-hole, and within a minute had the inner door open.

It masked a cupboard, contrived in the thickness of the chimney-breast, perhaps at the time when the open shaft had been closed and a smaller fireplace had been inserted. Inside, two shelves formed three receptacles. In the uppermost were parcels of old letters secured with dusty and faded ribands, and piled at random one on another-the relics of the love-letters or law-letters of past generations. In the lowest compartment were bigger bundles secured with straps, which Arthur judged to contain leases and farm agreements, and the like. Some were of late date-he took up one or two bundles and looked at the endorsements-none of them appeared to be very old.

The middle space displayed a row of old ledgers and farm books, and standing alone before them a small iron box. It was with this no doubt that his business lay and he tried his key in it. The key fitted. He opened the box.

It contained three certificates and, though he had been bidden not to rout among them, he felt it his duty to ascertain-for he would probably have to inform the brokers-what was the total of the Squire's holding. They all three represented India Stock, and Arthur's eyes glistened as he noted the amount and figured up the value in his mind. One, as the Squire had said, was for two thousand two hundred, the other two were for two thousand five hundred each. Arthur calculated that at the price of the day they were worth little short of twenty thousand pounds. He withdrew the smallest certificate and locked the box. He had done his errand, but as he went about to close the cupboard-door he paused. He had seen old letters, and modern agreements and the like. But no old deeds. Where did the Squire keep the title deeds of Garth? They were not here.

At Welshes? Perhaps.

Arthur glanced at the other side of the fireplace. There, precisely corresponding with the almanac which he had removed, hung an old-fashioned silver sconce with a flat back serving for a reflector. A pair of snuffers flanked the candle-holder on one side, an extinguisher on the other. It was a piece which Arthur had admired for its age but had never seen in use. He stared at it, and as he closed the cupboard and panel by which he stood, and replaced the bit of moulding, he hesitated. With the keys in his hand he cast a glance at the windows, then he crossed the hearth, took down the sconce, and ran his fingers down the moulding.

Yes, here were the cracks, barely to be discovered by the fingers and not at all by the eye. The bit of moulding, when he twisted it, moved stiffly, but it moved. With another glance over his shoulder he inserted the key, then he listened. All was quiet in the house. Outside, a wood-pigeon coo'd in a neighboring tree while a solitary rook uttered a shrill "Bah-doo! Bah-doo!" not the common caw, but a cry that he had often heard.

Something in the stealthiness of his movements and the stillness of the house, whispered a warning to him, and he paused, his arm raised. Yet-why not? What could come of it? Knowledge was always useful, and if his business had lain with this second cupboard his uncle would have sent him to it as freely as to the other. With an effort he shook off his scruples, and to satisfy himself that he was doing no wrong he laughed. He turned the key and swung back the panel. He unlocked and opened the inner door.

Here there were but two divisions. The lower one was piled high with plate; with a part, of a dinner-service, cups, bowls, candlesticks, wine-jugs, salt-cellers-a collection that, tarnished and dull as the pieces were, made Arthur's mouth water. Among them lay half a dozen leather cases which he fancied held jewellery, and more than a dozen bulky parcels-spoons and forks and the like. They had not been disturbed, it was plain, for years, and he dared not touch them.

On the shelf were two iron boxes, and arrayed before them four parcels of deeds, old and discolored, with ends of green riband hanging from them, and here and there a great seal-one seal was of lead. They gave out a damp, sour smell, the odor of slowly decaying sheepskin. Three of the parcels related to farms which the Squire had bought within Arthur's memory. The fourth and largest bundle, in a coarse wrapper, neatly bound about with straps, had a label attached to it, "The Title Deeds of the Garth Estate," and thrust under one of the straps was a folded slip of parchment. Arthur opened this and saw that it was a memorandum, dated fifty years before, of the deposit of the deeds to secure the repayment of thirty-eight thousand pounds and interest. Below were receipts for instalments repaid at intervals of years, and opposite the last receipt appeared, in the Squire's hand "Cancelled and deeds returned-Thank God for His mercies!"

Arthur felt a thrill of sympathy as he read the words. He returned the slip to its place and softly closed the door. He swung back the panel and secured it. He replaced the silver sconce.

But though two inches of wood now intervened, he retained a vision of the bundle of deeds. It was not large, he could have carried it under his arm. But it meant, that little parcel, power, wealth, position, the Garth Estate! It spoke to Arthur the banker-for whom wealth lay in broad acres themselves, the farms and water-mills, the pieces of paper, not in gold and silver-as eloquently as the coverts and dingles, the wide-flung hill-side that he loved, spoke to the Squire. For the first time Arthur coveted Garth, valuing it not as the Squire did for what it was, hill and dale spread under heaven, but for what it was worth, for what might be made of it, for the uses to which it might be put.

"He has added to it. One could raise fifty thousand on it," he thought. And with fifty thousand what could one not do? With fifty thousand pounds, free money, added to the bank's resources, what might not be done? It was a golden vision that he saw, as he stood in the evening stillness with the scent of roses stealing into the room, and the wood-pigeon cooing softly in the tree outside. Ay, what might he not do!

But the Squire might be growing suspicious. He roused himself, saw that all was as he had found it, and unlocking the door, he went upstairs.

"You've been a long time about it, young man," the Squire grumbled. "What's amiss?"

But Arthur was ready with his answer. "You told me to go about it quietly, sir. So I waited until the coast was clear. It's a capital hiding-place. It's not to be found in a minute even when you know where it is."

"Ay, ay. It would take a clever rogue to find it," complacently.

"I suppose it's old, sir?"

"My grandfather put it in when the Scots were at Derby. And, mark ye, no one knows of it but Frederick Welsh-and now you. D'you be careful and keep your mouth shut, lad. You ha' got the certificate?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, go about the business and get it done. And now do you send Jos to me."

Arthur made a mental note that the old man was changing at last-was losing that hard grip on all about him which he had maintained for half a century; and he was confirmed in this idea by the ease with which the India Stock transaction presently went through. The brokers showed themselves unusually complaisant. They wrote that, as the matter was personal to him, they were anxious that nothing should go wrong; and, as his customer was blind, they were forwarding with the transfer on which the particulars had been inserted a duplicate in blank, in order that if the former were spoiled in the execution delay might be avoided. This was irregular, but if the duplicate were not needed, it could be returned and no harm done.