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.