But Nadin's man shook his head. "We'd be weeks and not get him," he said. "You'd best leave him to us, sir. We'll bill him in Manchester and make the flash kens too hot for him. But there's no knowing which way he'll turn. May be to Liverpool, or as like as not to Aldersbury.
Chaps like him are pigeons for homing. Back they go, though they know they'll be taken."
In the end Clement decided to stand content, and having given his assistant a liberal fee, he took his seat next morning on the Victory coach, travelling by Chester to Aldersbury. He was not vain, but it was with some exultation that he began his journey, that he faced again the free-blowing winds and the open pastures, heard the cheery notes of the bugle, and viewed the old-fashioned marketplaces and roistering inns, some of which he had passed three days before. He had not failed. He had done something; and he thought of Jos, and he thought of the Squire, and he thanked Providence that had put it in his power to turn the tables on the old man. Surely after what he had done the Squire must consider him. Surely after services so notable--and Lord, what luck he had had--the Squire would be willing to listen to him? He recalled the desperate struggle in the road, and the old man's "At him, good lad! At him!" and he thought of the sum--no small sum, and the old man was avaricious--which his promptness had recovered. His hopes ran high.
To be sure, there was another side to it. The Squire might not recover, and then--but he refused to dwell on that contingency. No, the Squire must recover, must receive and reward him, must own that after all he was something better than a clerk or a shopboy. And all things would be well, all roads be made smooth, all difficulties be cleared away. And in time he and Jos--his eyes shone.
Of course in the elation of the hour and flushed by success, he ignored facts which he would have been wiser to remember, and over-leapt obstacles which were not small. A little thought would have taught him that the Squire was not the man to change his views in an hour, or to swallow the prejudices of a life-time because a young chap had done him a service. To be beholden to a man, and to give him your daughter, are things far apart.
And this Clement in cooler moments would have seen. But he was young and in love, and he had done something; and the sun shone and the air was sweet, and if, as the coach swung gaily up the Foregate between School and Castle, his heart beat high and he already foresaw a triumphant issue, who shall blame him? At any rate his case was altered, and in comparison with his position a few days before, he stood well.
He alighted at the door of the Lion, and by a coincidence which was to have its consequences the first person he met in the High Street was Arthur Bourdillon. "Hallo!" Arthur cried, his face lighting up. "Back already, man? Have you done anything?"
"I've got the money," Clement replied. And he waved the bag.
"And Thomas?"
"No, he gave us the slip for the time. But I've got the money, except a dozen pounds or so."
"The deuce you have!" the other answered--and it was not quite clear whether he were pleased or not. "How did you do it? Tell us all about it." He drew Clement aside on to some steps at the foot of St.
Juliana's church.
Clement ran briefly over his adventures. When he had done, "Deuced sharp of you," Arthur said. "Devilish sharp, I must say! Now, if you'll hand over I'll take it out to Garth. I am on my way there, I'm just starting, and I haven't a moment to spare. If you'll hand over----"
But Clement made no move to hand over. Instead, "How is he?" he asked.
"Oh, pretty bad."
"Will he get over it?"
"Farmer thinks so. But there's no hope for the eye, and he doubts about the other eye. He's not to use it for six weeks at least."
"He's in bed?"
"Lord, yes, and will be in bed for heaven knows how long--if he ever gets up from it. Why, man, he's had the deuce of a shake. The wonder is that he's alive, and it's long odds that he'll never be the same man again."
"That's bad," Clement said. "And how is----" He was going to inquire after Miss Griffin, but Arthur broke in on him.
"Ask the rest another time," he said. "I can't stay now. I'm taking out things that are wanted in a hurry and the curricle is waiting.
This is the first day I've been in town, for there's no one there to do anything except my cousin and the old Peahen. So hand over, old chap, and I'll take the stuff out. It will do the old man more good than all the doctor's medicine."
Clement hesitated. If he had not been carrying the money, he might have made an excuse. He might at any rate have delayed the act. But the money was the Squire's, he could give no reason for taking it to the bank, and he had not that hardness of fibre, that indifference to the feelings of others which was needed if he was to say boldly that it was he who had recovered the money and he who was going to hand it over. Still he did hesitate, something telling him that the demand was unreasonable. Then Arthur's coolness, his assumption that what he proposed was the natural course did its work. Clement handed over the bag.
"Right," Arthur said, weighing it in his hand. "You counted it, I suppose? Four hundred and thirty, or thereabouts?"
"That's it."
"Good! See you soon. Good-bye!" And well pleased with himself, chuckling a little--for Clement's discomfiture had not escaped him--Arthur hurried away.
And Clement went his way. But reality had touched his golden dreams, and they had melted. The sun still shone, but it did not shine for him, and he no longer walked with his head in the air. It was not only that, by resigning the money and entrusting its return to another, he had lost the advantage on which he had counted, but he had been worsted. He had failed, in the contest of wits and wills, and, abuse his ill-luck as he might, he owed the failure to himself--to his own weakness. He saw it.
It was possible that Arthur had acted in innocence. But Clement doubted this, and he doubted it the more the longer he thought of it.
He fancied that he recognized a thing which had happened before: that this was not the first time that Arthur had taken the upper hand with him and jockeyed him into the worse position. As he crossed the threshold of the bank, his self-confidence fell from him, he felt himself slip into the old atmosphere, he became once more the inefficient.
Nor was it any comfort to him that his father saw the matter in the same light, and after listening with an appreciative face and some surprise to his earlier adventures, made no effort to hide the chagrin that he felt at the _denouement_. "But why--why in the world did you do that?" he exclaimed. "Give up the money after you had done the work? And to Bourdillon, who had no more right to it than you had?
Good heavens, lad, it was the act of a fool! I'd not be surprised if old Griffin never heard your name in connection with it!"
"Oh, I don't think Arthur----"
"Well, I do." The banker was vexed. "It's clear that Arthur is a deal sharper than you. As for the Squire, I hear that he is only half-conscious, and what he hears, if he ever hears the tale at all, will make little impression on him. Now if he had seen you, and you'd handed over the money--if he had seen you, then the bank and you would have got the credit."
"Still, Clem did recover it," Betty said.
"Ay, but who will ever know that he did?"
"Still he did, and I believe that he'll get a message from Garth to-morrow. Now, see if you don't, Clem. Or the next day."
But no message came on the morrow, or on the next day. No message came at all; and though it was possible to attribute this to the Squire's condition--for he was reported to be very ill--and Clement did his best to attribute it to that and to keep up his spirits, the tide of time wears away even hope, and presently he began to see that he had built on the sand.
At any rate no message and no acknowledgment came, unless a perfunctory word of thanks dropped by Arthur counted as such. And Clement had soon to recognize that what he had done, he might as well, for any good it was likely to do him, have left undone. His father, who had no thought of anything but his son's credit, was merely chagrined. But with Clement, who had built high hopes upon the event, hopes of which his father and Betty little dreamed, the wound went far deeper.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Squire raised himself painfully on his elbow and hid the bag between pillow and tester, where he could assure himself of its presence by a touch. Then he sank back with a grunt of relief and his hand went to the keys, which also had their home under his pillow. He clung to them--they were his badge of authority, of power. While he had them, sightless as he was, he was still master; about his room, the oak-panelled chamber, spacious but shabby, with the uneven floor and the low wide casement, the life of the house still circled.
"Good lad!" he muttered. "Good lad! Jos?"
"Yes, father." She rose and came towards him.
"Where's Arthur?"
"He went out with your message."
"To be sure! To be sure! I'm forgetting."
But, once started on the road to recovery, he did not forget much.
From his high, four-post bed with the drab hangings in which his father and grandfather had died, he gripped house and lands in a firm grip. Morning by morning he would have his report of the lambs, of the wheat, of the hay-corps, of the ploughing on the eight acres where the Swedish turnips were to go. He would know what corn went to the mill, what mutton to the house. The bounds-fence that Farmer Bache had neglected was not forgotten, nor the young colt that he had decided to take against Farmer Price's arrears, nor the lease for lives that involved a knotty point of which he proved himself to be in complete possession.
Indeed, he showed himself indomitable, the old heart in him still strong; so that neither the shock that he had borne, nor the pain that he had suffered, nor the possibility of permanent blindness which they could not wholly hide from him, sufficed to subdue or unman him.
Only in one or two things was a change apparent. He reverted more often to an older and ruder form of speech familiar to him when George the Third was young, but which of late he had only used when talking with his tenants. He said "Dunno you do this!" and "I wunt ha' that!"
used "ship" for sheep, and "goold" for gold, called Thomas a "gallus bad rascal," and the like.
And in another and more important point he was changed. For eyes he must now depend on someone, and though he showed that he liked to have Jos about him and bore with her when the Pea-hen's fussiness drove him to bad words, it was soon clear that the person he chose was Arthur.
Arthur was restored, and more than restored to favor. It was "Where's Arthur?" a score of times a day. Arthur must come, must go, must be ever at his elbow. He must check such and such an account, see the overseers about such an one, speak to the constable about another, go into Aldersbury about the lease. Even when Arthur was absent the Squire's thoughts ran on him, and often he would mutter "Good lad!
Good lad!" when he thought himself alone.