Ovington's Bank

"There will be the devil to pay!"

"Well, we must try to pay him!"

"Bravo, sir!" Clement cried. "That's the way to talk."

"Yes, it is no use to dwell on the dark side," his father agreed. "All the same" – he was silent a while, reviewing the position and making calculations which he had made a hundred times before-"all the same, it would make all the difference if we had that twelve thousand pounds in reserve."

"By Jove, yes!" Arthur exclaimed. For a moment hope animated his face. "Can you think of no way of getting it, sir?"

The banker shook his head. "I have tried every quarter," he said, "and strained every resource. I cannot. I'm afraid we must fight our battle as we are."

Arthur gazed at the floor. The elder man looked at him and thought again of the Squire. But he would not renew his suggestion. Arthur knew better than he what was possible in that quarter, and if he saw no hope, there doubtless was no hope. At best the idea had been fantastic, in view of the prejudice which the Squire entertained against the bank.

While they pondered, the door opened, and all three looked sharply round, the movement betraying the state of their nerves. But it was only Betty who entered-a little graver and a little older than the Betty of eight or nine months before, but with the same gleam of humor in her eyes. "What a conclave!" she cried. She looked round on them.

"Yes," Arthur answered drily. "It wants only Rodd to be complete."

"Just so." She made a face. "How much you think of him lately!"

"And unfortunately he's taken his little all and left us."

The shot told. Her eyes gleamed, and she colored with anger. "What do you mean? Dad" – brusquely-"what does he mean?"

"Only that we thought it better," the banker explained, "to make Rodd safe by paying him the little he has with us."

"And he took it-of course?"

The banker smiled. "Of course he took it," he said. "He would have been foolish if he had not. It was only a deposit, and there was no reason why he should risk it with us-as things are."

"Oh, I see. Things are as bad as that, are they? Any other rats?" – with a withering look at Arthur.

"I am afraid that there is no one else who can leave," her father answered. "The gangway is down now, my dear, and we sink or swim together."

"Ah! Well, I fancy there's one of the rats in the dining-room now. That is what I came to tell you. He wants to see you, dad."

"Who is it?"

"Mr. Acherley."

Ovington shrugged his shoulders. "Well, it is after hours," he said, "but-I'll see him."

That broke up the meeting. The banker went out to interview his visitor, who had been standing for some minutes at one of the windows of the dining-room, looking out on the slender stream of traffic that passed up and down the pavement or slid round the opposite corner into the Market Place.

Acherley was not of those who go round about when a direct and more brutal approach will serve. Broken fortunes had soured rather than tamed him, and though, when there had been something to be gained by it, he had known how to treat the banker with an easy familiarity, the contempt in which he held men of that class made it more natural to him to bully than to fawn. Before he had turned to the street for amusement he had surveyed the furniture of the room with a morose eye, had damned the upstart's impudence for setting himself up with such things, and consoled himself with the reflection that he would soon see it under the hammer. "And a d-d good job, too!" he had muttered. "What the blazes does he want with a kidney wine-table and a plate-chest! It will serve Bourdillon right for lowering himself to such people!"

When the banker came to him he made no apology for the lateness of his visit, but "Hallo!" he said bluntly, "I want a little talk with you. But short's the word. Fact is, I find I've more of those railway shares than it suits me to keep, Ovington, and I want you to take a hundred off my hands. I hear they're fetching two-ten."

"One-ten," the banker said. "They are barely that."

"Two-ten," Acherley repeated, as if the other had not spoken. "That's my price. I suppose the bank will accommodate me by taking them?"

Ovington looked steadily at him. "Do you mean the shares you pledged with us? If so, I am afraid that in any event we shall have to put them on the market soon. The margin has nearly run off."

"Oh, hang those!" – lightly. "You may as well account for them at the same price-two and a half. I'll consider that settled. But I've a hundred more that I don't want to keep, and it's those I am talking about. You'll take them, I suppose-for cash, of course? I'm a little pressed at present, and want the money."

"I am afraid that I must say, no," Ovington said. "We are not buying any more, even at thirty shillings. As to those we hold, if you wish us to sell them at once-and I am inclined to think that we ought to-"

"Steady, steady! Not so fast!" Acherley let the mask fall, and, drawing himself to his full height-and tall and lean, in his long riding coat shaped to the figure, he looked imposing and insolent enough-he tapped his teeth with the handle of his riding whip. "Not so fast, man! Think it over!" – with an ugly smile. "I've been of use to you. It is your turn to be of use to me. I want to be rid of these shares."

"Naturally. But we don't wish to take them, Mr. Acherley."

Acherley glowered at him. "You mean," he said, "that the bank can't afford to take them? If that's your meaning-"

"It does not suit us to take them."

"But by G-d you've got to take them! D'you hear, sir? You've got to take them, or take the consequences! I went into this to oblige you."

"Not at all," Ovington said. "You came into it with your eyes open, and with a view to the improvement of your property, if the enterprise proved a success. No man came into it with eyes more open! To be frank with you-"

But Acherley cut him short. "Oh, d-n all that!" he cried. "I did not come here to palaver. The long and short of it is you've got to take the shares, or, by Gad, I go out of this room and I say what I think! And you'll take the consequences. There's talk enough in the town already as you know. It only needs another punch, one more good punch, and you're out of the ring and in the sponging house. And your beautiful bank you know where. You know that as well as I do, my good man. And if you want a friend instead of an enemy you'll oblige me, and no words about it. That's flat!"

The room was growing dark. Ovington stood facing such light as there was. He looked very pale. "Yes, that's quite flat," he said.

"Very good. Then what do you say to it?"

"What I said before-No! No, Mr. Acherley!"

"What? Do you mean it? Why, if you are such a fool as not to know your own interests-"

"I do know them-very well," Ovington said, resolutely taking him up. "I know what you want and I know what you offer. It is, as you say, quite flat, and I'll be equally-flat! Your support is not worth the price. And I warn you, Mr. Acherley, and I beg you to take notice, that if you say a word against the solvency of the bank after this-after this threat-you will be held accountable to the law. And more than that, I can assure you of another thing. If, as you believe, there is going to be trouble, it is you and such as you who will be the first to suffer. Your creditors-"

"The devil take them! And you!" the gentleman cried, stung to fury. "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 scrapings! 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 spawn 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 passion. "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 passed 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 spacious 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?"

"God 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 scrap. 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 assent. "Who?" he repeated gloomily. "Ah, I don't know."

"Nor I!" the Squire retorted. "There is nobody. 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 Saturday, 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 Peacock 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 petitioner 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, feckless 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.

It wanted about an hour of the Squire's dinner-time, but Calamy had laid the table early, and the dining-room was dark. Arthur carried in a lamp from the hall, and himself closed the shutters. He locked the door. Then he opened the nearer panel and the cupboard behind it, and sought for and found the agreement-but all mechanically, his mind still running on the Squire's words, and now approving of the course he had taken, now doubting if he had not missed his opportunity. The agreement in his hand, his errand done, he closed the cupboard door, and was preparing to close the panel, when, with his hand still on it, he paused. More clearly than when his bodily eyes had rested upon them he saw the contents of the cupboard.

And one thing in particular, a small thing, but it was on this that his mind focussed itself-the iron box containing the India Stock. He saw it before him; it stood out dark, its every outline sharp. And with equal clearness he saw its contents, the two certificates that remained in it. He recalled the value of them, and almost against his will he calculated their worth at the price of the day. India Stock, sound and safe security as it was, had fallen more than thirty points since the Squire had sold. It stood to-day, he thought, at two hundred and forty or a little over or a little under-somewhere about that. At the lowest figure five thousand pounds would fetch-just twelve thousand, he calculated.

Twelve thousand!

He stood staring at the door, and even by the yellow light of the lamp his face looked pale. Twelve thousand! And upstairs in a pigeon-hole of the old bureau, where he had carelessly thrust it, was the blank transfer.

It seemed providential. It seemed as if the stock-stock to the precise amount he required-had been placed there for a purpose. Twelve thousand! And realizable, no matter what the pinch. If he borrowed it for a month, what harm would there be? Or what risk? The bank was solvent, he knew that: give it time, and it would stand as strong as ever. Within a month, or two months at the most, he could replace the stock, and no one would be the wiser. And the bank and his own fortune would be saved.