Ovington's Bank

For Arthur, ever since he had begun to attend at the bank, had been strangely silent. He had looked and smiled and teased her, had pressed her hand or touched her hair, but in sport rather than in earnest, meaning little. And she had been quick to see this, and with the womanly pride, of which, gentle and timid as she was, she had her share, she had schooled herself to accept the new situation. Now, her father had taken Arthur's suit for granted and humbled her. So Jos cried a little. But they were not very bitter tears.

CHAPTER V

Arthur was taken aback by his uncle's harshness, and he made haste to be at the bank early enough on the Monday to anticipate the banker's departure for Garth. He was certain that to approach the Squire at this moment in the matter of the railroad was to invite disaster, and he gave Ovington such an account of the quarrel as he thought would deter him from going over at present.

But the banker had a belief in himself which success and experience in the management of men had increased. He was convinced that self-interest was the spring which moved nine men out of ten, and though he admitted that the family quarrel was untimely, he did not agree that as between the Squire and a good bargain it would have weight.

"But I assure you, sir, he's like a bear with a sore head," Arthur urged.

"A bear will come to the honey if its head be sore," the banker answered, smiling.

"And perhaps upset the hive?"

Ovington laughed. "Not in this case, I think. And we must risk something. Time presses and he blocks the way. However, I'll let it stand over for a week and then I'll go alone. We must have your uncle."

Accordingly a week later, discarding the tilbury and smart man-servant that he had lately set up, he rode over to Garth, considering as he journeyed the man whom he was going to meet and of whom, in spite of his self-assurance, he stood in some awe.

Round Aldersbury were larger landowners and richer men than the Squire. But his family and his name were old, and by virtue of long possession he stood high among the gentry of the county. He had succeeded at twenty-two to a property neglected and loaded with debt, and his father's friends-this was far back in the old King's reign-had advised him to sell; let him keep the house and the home-farm and pay his debts with the rest. But pride of race was strong in him, he had seen that to sell was to lose the position which his forbears had held, and he had refused. Instead he had set himself to free the estate, and he had pared, he had pinched, he had almost starved himself and others. He had become a byword for parsimony. In the end, having benefited much by enclosures in the 'nineties, he had succeeded. But no sooner had he deposited in the bank the money to pay off the last charge than the loss of his only son had darkened his success. He had married again-he was by this time past middle age-but only a daughter had come of the marriage, and by that time to put shilling to shilling and acre to acre had become a habit of which he could not break himself, though he knew that only a woman would follow him at Garth.

Withal he was a great aristocrat, a Tory of the Tories, stern and unbending. Fear of France and of French doctrines and pride in his caste were in his blood. The Quarterly Review ranked with him after his Bible, and very little after it. Reform under the most moderate aspect was to him a shorter name for Revolution. He believed implicitly in his class, and did not believe in any other class. Manufacturers and traders he hated and distrusted, and of late jealousy had been added to hatred and distrust. The inclusion of such men in the magistracy, the elevation of Peel to the Ministry had made him fancy that there was something in the Queen's case after all; when Canning and Huskisson had also risen to power he had said that Lord Liverpool was aging and the Duke was no longer the man he had been.

He was narrow, choleric, proud, miserly; he had been known to carry an old log a hundred yards to add it to his wood-pile, and to travel a league to look for a lost sixpence. He dressed shabbily, which was not so much remarked now that dandies aped coachmen, as it had been in his younger days; and he rode about his fields on an old white mare which he was believed to hold in affection next after his estate and much before his daughter. He ruled his parish with a high hand. He had no mercy for poachers. But he was honest and he was just. The farmers must pay the wage he laid down-it was a shilling above the allowed rate. But the men must work it out, and woe betide the idle; they had best seek work abroad, and heaven help them if a foreign parish sent them home. In one thing he was before his time; he was resolved that no able-bodied man should share in the rates. The farmers growled, the laborers grumbled, there were hard cases. But he was obdurate-work your worth, or starve! And presently it began to be noticed that the parish was better off than its neighbors. He was a tyrant, but a just tyrant.

Such was the man whom Ovington was going to meet, and from whose avarice he hoped much. He had made his market of it once, for it was by playing on it that he had lured the Squire from Dean's, and so had gained one of his dearest triumphs over the old Aldersbury Bank.

His hopes would not have been lessened had he heard a dialogue which was at that moment proceeding in the stable-yard at Garth to an accompaniment of clattering pails and swishing besoms. "He've no bowels!" Thomas the groom declared with bitterness. "He be that hard and grasping he've no bowels for nobody!"

Old Fewtrell, the Squire's ancient bailiff, sniggered. "He'd none for you, Thomas," he said, "when you come back gallus drunk from Baschurch Fair. None of your Manchester tricks with me, says Squire, and, lord, how he did leather 'ee."

Thomas did not like the reminiscence. "What other be I saying!" he snarled. "He've no bowels even for his own flesh and blood! Did'ee ever watch him in church? Well, where be he a-looking? At his son's moniment as is at his elbow? Never see him, never see him, not once!"

"Well, I dunno as I 'ave, either," Fewtrell admitted.

"No, his eyes is allus on t'other side, a-counting up the Griffins before him, and filling himself up wi' pride."

"Dunno as I couldn't see it another way," said the bailiff thoughtfully.

"What other way? Never to look at his own son's moniment?"

"Well, mebbe-"

"Mebbe?" Thomas cried with scorn. "Look at his darter! He ain't but one, and he be swilling o' money! Do he make much of her, James Fewtrell? And titivate her, and pull her ears bytimes same as you with your grand-darters? And get her a horse as you might call a horse? You know he don't. If she's not quick, it's a nod and be damned, same as to you and me!"

Old Fewtrell considered. "Not right out the same," he decided.

"Right out, I say. You've been with him all your life. You've never knowed no other and you're getting old, and Calamity, he be old too, and may put up with it. But I don't starve for no Squire, and I'm for more wage. I was in Aldersbury Saturday and wages is up and more work than men! While here I'm a-toiling for what you got twenty year ago. But not me! I bin to Manchester. And so I'm going to tell Squire."

The bailiff grinned. "Mebbe he'll take a stick same as before."

"He'd best not!" Thomas said, with an ugly look. "He'd best take care, or-"

"Whist! Whist! lad. You be playing for trouble. Here be Squire."

The Squire glared at them, but he did not stop. He stalked into the house and, passing through it, went out by the front door. He intended to turn right-handed, and enter the high-terraced garden facing south, in which he was wont to take, even in winter, a few turns of a morning. But something caught his eye, and he paused. "Who's this?" he muttered, and shading his eyes made out a moment later that the stranger was Ovington. A visit from him was rare enough to be a portent, and the figure of his bank balance passed through the Squire's mind. Had he been rash? Ovington's was a new concern; was anything wrong? Then another idea, hardly more welcome, occurred to him: had the banker come on his nephew's account?

If so-however, he would soon know, for the visitor was by this time half-way up the winding drive, sunk between high banks, which, leaving the road a third of a mile from the house, presently forked, the left branch swerving through a grove of beech trees to the front entrance, the right making straight for the stables.

The Squire met his visitor at the gate and, raising his voice, shouted for Thomas. "I am sorry to trespass on you so early," Ovington said as he dismounted. "A little matter of business, Mr. Griffin, if I may trouble you."

The old man did not say that it was no trespass, but he stood aside punctiliously for the other to precede him through the gate. Then, "You'll stay to eat something after your ride?" he said.

"No, I thank you. I must be in town by noon."

"A glass of Madeira?"

"Nothing, Squire, I thank you. My business will not take long."

By this time they stood in the room in which the Squire lived and did his business. He pointed courteously to a chair. He was shabby, in well-worn homespun and gaiters, and the room was shabby, walled with bound Quarterlies and old farm books, and littered with spurs and dog leashes-its main window looked into the stable yard. But there was about the man a dignity implied rather than expressed, which the spruce banker in his shining Hessians owned and envied. The Squire could look at men so that they grew uneasy under his eye, and for a moment, owning his domination, the visitor doubted of success. But then again the room was so shabby. He took heart of grace.

"I shouldn't trouble you, Mr. Griffin," he said, sitting back with an assumption of ease, while the Squire from his old leather chair observed him warily, "except on a matter of importance. You will have heard that there is a scheme on foot to increase the value of the woollen industry by introducing a steam railroad. This is a new invention which, I admit, has not yet been proved, but I have examined it as a business man, and I think that much is to be expected from it. A limited company is being formed to carry out the plan, if it prove to be feasible. Sir Charles Woosenham has agreed to be Chairman, Mr. Acherley and other gentlemen of the county are taking part, and I am commissioned by them to approach you. I have the plans here-"

"What do you want?" The Squire's tone was uncompromising. He made no movement towards taking the plans.

"If you will allow me to explain?"

The old man sat back in his chair.

"The railroad will be a continuation of the Birmingham and Aldersbury railroad, which is in strong hands at Birmingham. Such a scheme would be too large for us. That, again, is a continuation of the London and Birmingham railroad."

"Built?"

"Oh no. Not yet, of course."

"Begun, then?"

"No, but-"

"Projected?"

"Precisely, projected, the plans approved, the Bill in preparation."

"But nothing done?"

"Nothing actually done as yet," the banker admitted, somewhat dashed. "But if we wait until these works are finished we shall find ourselves anticipated.

"Ah!"

"We wish, therefore, to be early in the field. Much has appeared in the papers about this mode of transport, and you are doubtless familiar with it. I have myself inquired into it, and the opinion of financial men in London is that these railroads will be very lucrative, paying dividends of from ten to twenty-five per cent."

The Squire raised his eyebrows.

"I have the plans here," the banker continued, once more producing them. "Our road runs over the land of six small owners, who have all agreed to the terms offered. It then enters on the Woosenham outlying property, and thence, before reaching Mr. Acherley's, proceeds over the Garth estate, serving your mills, the tenant of one of which joins our board. If you will look at the plans?" Again Ovington held them out.

But the old man put them aside. "I don't want to see them," he said.

"But, Squire, if you would kindly glance-"

"I don't want to see them. What do you want?"

Ovington paused to consider the most favorable light in which he could place the matter. "First, Mr. Griffin, your presence on the Board. We attach the highest importance to that. Secondly, a way-leave over your land for which the Company will pay-pay most handsomely, although the value added to your mills will far exceed the immediate profit."

"You want to carry your railroad over Garth?"

"Yes."

"Not a yard!" The old man tapped the table before him. "Not a foot!"

"But our terms-if you would allow me to explain them?"

"I don't want to hear them. I am not going to sell my birthright, whatever they are. You don't understand me? Well, you can understand this." And abruptly the Squire sat up. "I'll have none of your d-d smoking, stinking steam-wagons on my land in my time! Oh, I've read about them in more places than the papers, sir, and I'll not sell my birthright and my people's birthright-of clean air and clean water and clean soil for any mess of pottage you can offer! That's my answer, Mr. Ovington."

"But the railroad will not come within a mile of Garth."

"It will not come on to my land! I am not blind, sir. Suppose you succeed. Suppose you drive the mails and coaches and the stage-wagons off the road. Where shall I sell my coach-horses and hackneys and my tenants their heavy nags? And their corn and their beans? No, by G-d," stopping Ovington, who wished to interrupt him. "You may delude some of my neighbors, sir, and you may know more about money-making, where it is no question how the money is made, than I do! But I'll see that you don't delude me! A pack of navigators upsetting the country, killing game and robbing hen-roosts, raising wages and teaching honest folks tricks? Not here! If Woosenham knew his own business, and Acherley were not up to his neck in debt, they'd not let themselves be led by the nose by-"

"By whom, sir?" Ovington was on his feet by this time, his eyes smoldering, his face paler than usual. They confronted each other. It was the meeting, the collision of two powers, of two worlds, the old and the new.

"By whom, sir?" the Squire replied sternly-he too had risen. "By one whose interests and breeding are wholly different from theirs and who looks at things from another standpoint! That's by whom, sir. And one word more, Mr. Ovington. You have the name of being a clever man and I never doubted it until to-day; but have a care that you are not over clever, sir. Have a care that you do not lead your friends and yourself into more trouble than you think for! I read the papers and I see that everybody is to grow rich between Saturday and Monday. Well, I don't know as much about money business as you do, but I am an old man, and I have never seen a time when everybody grew rich and nobody was the loser."

Ovington had controlled himself well; and he still controlled himself, but there was a dangerous light in his eyes. "I am sorry," he said, "that you can give me no better answer, Mr. Griffin. We hoped to have, and we set some value on your support. But there are, of course-other ways."

"You may take your railroad any way you like, so long as you don't bring it over Garth."

"I don't mean that. If the railroad is made at all it must pass over Garth-the property stretches across the valley. But the Bill, when presented, will contain the same powers which are given in the later Canal Acts-a single proprietor cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the public interests, Mr. Griffin."

"You mean-by G-d, sir," the Squire broke out, "you mean that you will take my land whether I will or no?"

"I am not using any threat."

"But you do use a threat!" roared the Squire, towering tall and gaunt above his opponent. "You do use a threat! You come here-"

"I came here-" the other answered-he was quietly drawing on his gloves-"to put an excellent business investment before you, Mr. Griffin. As you do not think it worth while to entertain it, I can only regret that I have wasted your time and my own."

"Pish!" said the Squire.

"Very good. Then with your permission I will seek my horse."

The old man turned to the window and opened it. "Thomas," he shouted violently. "Mr. Ovington's horse."

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.

It was not the worst that he must return and own that Arthur had been wiser than he; that he must inform his colleagues that his embassy had failed. Worse than either was the hurt to his pride. Certain things that the Squire had said about money-making, his sneer about the difference in breeding, his warning that the banker might yet find that he had been too clever-these had pricked him to the quick, and the last had even caused him a pang of uneasiness. And then the Squire had shown so clearly the gulf that in his eyes lay between them!

Ay, it was that which rankled: the knowledge, sharply brought home to him, that no matter what his success, no matter what his wealth, nor how the common herd bowed down to him, this man and his like would ever hold themselves above him, would always look down on him. The fence about them he could not cross. Add thousands to thousands as he might, and though he conquered Lombard Street, these men would not admit him of their number. They would ever hold him at arm's length, would deal out to him a cold politeness. He could never be of them.

As a rule Ovington was too big a man to harbor spite, but as he rode and fumed, a plan which he had already considered put on a new aspect, and by and by his brow relaxed and he smote his thigh. Something tickled him and he laughed. He thought that he saw a way to avenge himself and to annoy his enemy, and by the time he reached the bank he was himself again. Indeed, he had not been human if he had not by that time owned that whatever Garth thought of him he was something in Aldersbury.

Three times men stopped him, one crossing the street to intercept him, one running bare-headed from a shop, a third seizing his rein. And all three sought favors, or craved advice, all, as they retreated, did so, eyed askance by those who lacked their courage or their impudence.

For the tide of speculation was still rising in the country, and even in Aldersbury had reached many a back-parlor where the old stocking or the money-box was scarcely out of date. Thousands sold their Three per cents., and the proceeds had to go somewhere, and other proceeds, for behind all there was real prosperity. Men's money poured first into a higher and then into a lower grade of security and raised each in turn, so that fortunes were made with astonishing speed. The banks gave extended credit; everything rose. Many who had bought in fear found that they had cleared a profit before they had had time to tremble. They sold, and still there were others to take their place. It seemed as if all had only to buy and to sell and to grow rich. Only the very cautious stood aside, and one by one even these slid tempted into the stream.

The more venturesome hazarded their money afar, buying shares in steamship companies in the West Indies, in diamond mines in Brazil, or in cattle companies in Mexico. The more prudent preferred undertakings which they could see and which their limited horizon could compass, and to these such a local scheme as the Valleys Railroad held out a tempting bait. They knew nothing about a railroad, but they knew that steam had been applied to ocean travel, and they knew Aldersbury and the woollen district. Here was something the growth and progress of which they could watch, and which once begun could not vanish in a night.

Then the silence of those within and the rumors spread without added to its attractions. Each man felt that his neighbor was stealing a march upon him, and that if he were not quick he would not get in on equal terms.

One of Ovington's waylayers wished to know if the limit at which he had been advised to sell his stock was likely to be reached. "I sold on Saturday," the banker answered, "two pounds above your limit, Davies. The money will be in the bank in a week." He spoke with Napoleonic curtness, and rode on, leaving the man, amazed and jubilant, to calculate his gains.

The next wanted advice. He had a hundred in hand if Mr. Ovington would not think it too small. "Call to-morrow-no, Thursday," Ovington said, hardly looking at him. "I'll see you then."

The third ran bare-headed out of a shop. He was a man of more weight, Purslow the big draper on Bride Hill, who had been twice Mayor of Aldersbury; a tradesman, bald and sleek, whom fortune had raised so rapidly that old subservience was continually at odds with new importance. "Just a word, Mr. Ovington," he stuttered, "a word, sir, by your leave? I'm a good customer." He had not laid aside his black apron but merely twisted it round his waist, a sure sign, in these days of his greatness, that he was flustered.

The banker nodded. "None better, Purslow," he answered. "What is it?"

"What I says, then-excuse me-is, if Grounds, why not me? Why not me, sir?"

"I don't quite-"

"If he's to be on the Board, he and his mash-tubs-"

"Oh!" The banker looked grave. "You are thinking of the Railroad, Purslow?"

"To be sure! What else? – excuse me, sir! And what I say is, if Grounds, why not me? I've been mayor twice and him not even on the Council? And I'm not a pauper, as none knows better than you, Mr. Ovington. If it's only that I'm a tradesman, why, there ought to be a tradesman on it, and I'll be bound as many will follow my lead as Grounds'."