"No," said Josina.
"Yes, I have deserved it, and I am ashamed of myself--and proud of myself. But my father has done nothing and known nothing. And for this money, when he learns the truth, Mr. Griffin, he will not touch one penny of it with one of his fingers. It shall be returned to you, every farthing of it, as soon as we can lay our hands on it. Every penny of it shall be returned to you--at once!"
"Ay," dryly, "when you have had the use of it!"
"No, at once! Without the loss of an hour!"
"You be found out," said the old man bitterly. "You be found out!
That's it!"
Clement read an appeal in Josina's eyes, and he stayed the retort that rose to his lips. "At any rate the money shall be restored," he said--"at once. I will start for town to-night, and if I can overtake"--he paused, unwilling to utter Arthur's name--"if I can overtake him before he transfers the stock, the securities shall be returned to you. In that case no harm will be done."
"No harm!" the Squire ejaculated. He raised his hand and let it fall in a gesture of despair. "No harm?"
But Clement was determined not to dwell on that side of it. "If I am not able to do that," he continued, "the proceeds shall be placed in your hands without the delay of an hour. In which case you must let the signature pass--as good, sir."
"Never!" the old man cried, and struck his hand on the table.
"But after all it is yours," Clement argued. "And you must see, sir----"
"Never! Never!" the Squire repeated passionately.
"You will not say that in cold blood!" Clement rejoined, and from that moment he took a higher tone, as if he felt that, strange as the call was, it lay with him now to guide this unhappy household. "You have not considered, and you must consider, Mr. Griffin," he continued, "before you do that, what the consequences may be. If you deny your signature, and anyone, the India House or anyone, stands to lose, steps may be taken which may prove--fatal. Fatal, sir! A point may be reached beyond which even your influence, and all you may then be willing to do, may not avail to save your nephew."
The Squire groaned. Clement's words called up before him and before Josina, not only the thing which Arthur had done, but the position in which he had placed himself. In this room, in this very room in which men of honor--dull and prejudiced, perhaps, but men of honor, and proud of their honor--had lived and moved for generations, he, their descendant, had done this thing. The beams had stood, the house had not fallen on him. But to Josina's eyes the candles seemed to burn more mournfully, the windows to stare more darkly on the night, the ashes on the hearth to speak of desolation and a house abandoned and fallen.
Clement hoped that his appeal had succeeded, but he was disappointed.
The old man in his bitterness and unreason was not to be moved--at any rate as yet. He would listen to no arguments, and he suspected those who argued with him. "I'll never acknowledge it!" he said. "No, I'll never acknowledge it. I'll not lie for him, come what may! He has done the thing and disgraced our blood, and what matter who knows it--he has done it! He has made his bed and must lie on it! He went into your bank and learned your tricks, and now you'd have me hush it up! But I won't, d--n you! I'll not lie for you, or for him!"
Clement had a retort on his lips--for what could be more unfair than this? But again Josina's eyes implored him to be silent, and he crushed back the words. He believed that by and by the Squire would see the thing differently, but for the moment he could do no more, and he turned to the door.
There in the doorway, and for one moment, Josina's hands met his, she had one word with him. "You will save him if you can, Clement?" she murmured.
"Yes," he promised her, "I will save him if I can."
CHAPTER XXXII
If the news which Arthur had conveyed to the bank on that Monday morning had been much to Clement, it had been more to his father. It had brought to Ovington immense relief at the moment when he had least reason to expect it. The banker had not hidden the position from those who must needs work with him; but even to them he had not imparted the full measure of his fears, much less the extent of the suffering which those fears occasioned him. The anxiety that kept him sleepless, the calculations that tormented his pillow, the regret with which he reviewed the past, the responsibility for the losses of others that depressed him--he had kept these things to himself, or at most had dropped but a hint of them to his beloved Betty.
But they had been very real to him and very terrible. The spectre of bankruptcy--with all the horror which it connoted for the mercantile mind--had loomed before him for weeks past, had haunted and menaced him; and its sudden exorcism on this Monday morning meant a relief which he dared not put into words to others and shrank from admitting even to himself. He who had held his head so high--no longer need he anticipate the moment when he would be condemned as a reckless adventurer, whose fall had been as rapid as his rise, and whom the wiseacres of Aldersbury had doomed to failure from the first! That had been the bitterest drop in his cup, and to know that he need not drain it, was indeed a blessed respite.
Still, he had received the news with composure, and through the day he had moved to and fro doing his work with accuracy. But it was in a pleasant dream that he had followed his usual routine, and many a time he paused to tell himself that the thing was a fact, that Dean's would not now triumph over him, nor his enemies now scoff at him. On the contrary, he might hope to emerge from the tempest stronger than before, and with his credit enhanced by the stress through which he had ridden. Business was business, but in the midst of it the banker had more than once to stand and be thankful.
And with reason. For if he who has inherited success and lives to see it threatened suffers a pang, that pang is as nothing besides the humiliation of the man who has raised himself; who has outstripped his fellows, challenged their admiration, defied their jealousy, trampled on their pride; who has been the creator of his own greatness, and now sees that greatness in ruins. He had escaped that. He had escaped that, thank God! More than once the two words passed his lips; and in secret his thoughts turned to the great chief of men to whom in his own mind and with a rather absurd vanity he had compared himself.
Thank God that his own little star had not sunk like his into darkness!
It was relief, it was salvation. And that evening, as the banker sat after his five o'clock dinner and sipped his fourth and last glass of port and basked in the genial heat of the fire, while his daughter knitted on the farther side of the hearth, he owned himself a happy man. He measured the danger, he winced at the narrow margin by which he had escaped it--but he had escaped! Dean's, staid, long-established, slow-going Dean's, which had viewed his notes askance, had doubted his stability and predicted his failure, Dean's which had slyly put many a spoke in his wheel, would not triumph. Nay, after this, would not he, too, rank as sound and staid and well established, he who had also ridden out the storm? For in crises men and banks age rapidly; they are measured rather by events than by years. Those who had mistrusted him would mistrust him no longer; those who had dubbed him new would now count him old. As he stretched his legs to meet the genial heat and sank lower in his chair he could have purred in his thankfulness. Things had fallen out well, after all; he saw rosy visions in the fire. Schemes which had lain dormant in his mind awoke. His London agents had failed, but others would compete for his business, and on better terms. The Squire who had so marvellously come to his aid would bring back his account, and his example would be followed. He would extend, opening branches at Bretton and Monk's Castle and Blankminster, and the railroad? He was not quite sure what he would do about the railroad; possibly he might decide that the time was not ripe for it, and in that case he might wind up the company, return the money, and himself meet the expenses incurred. The loss would not be great, and the effect would be prodigious. It would be a Napoleonic stroke--he would consider it. He lost himself in visions of prosperity.
And it would be all for Clement and Betty. He looked across the hearth at the girl who sat knitting under the lamp-light, and his eyes caressed her, his heart loved her. She would make a great match.
Failing Arthur--and of late Arthur and she had not seemed to hit it off--there would be others. There would be others, well-born, who would be glad to take her and her dowry. He saw her driving into town in her carriage, with a crest on the panels.
It was she who cut short his thoughts. She looked at the clock. "I can't think where Clement is," she said. "You don't think that there is anything wrong, dad?"
"Wrong? No," he answered. "Why should there be!"
"But he disappeared so strangely. He said nothing about missing his dinner."
"He was to check some figures with Rodd this evening. He may have gone to his rooms."
"But--without his dinner?"
But the banker was not in the mood to trouble himself about trifles.
The lamp shone clear and mellow, the fire crackled pleasantly, a warm comfort wrapped him round, the port had a flavor that he had not perceived in it of late. Instead of replying to Betty's question he measured the decanter with his eye, decided that it was a special occasion, and filled himself another glass. "Ovington's Bank," he said as he raised it to his lips. But that to which he really drank was the home that he saw about him, saved from rain, made secure.
Betty smiled. "You're relieved to-night, dad."
"Well, I am, Betty," he admitted. "Yes, I am--and thankful."
"And that queer old man! I wonder," as she turned her knitting on her knee, "why he did it."
"I suppose for Arthur's sake. He'd have lost pretty heavily--for him."
"But you didn't expect that Mr. Griffin would come forward?"
The banker allowed it. "No," he said. "I don't know that I ever expected anything less. Such things don't happen, my girl, very often.
But he will be no loser, and I suppose Arthur convinced him of that.
He is shrewd, and, once convinced, he would see that it was the only thing to do."
"But not many people would have been convinced?"
"No, perhaps not."
Betty knitted awhile. "I thought that he hated the bank?" she said, as she paused to rub her chin with a needle.
"He does--and me. But he loves his money, my dear."
"Still it isn't his. It is Arthur's."
"True. But he's a man who cannot bear to see money lost. He thinks a good deal of it."
"He is not alone in that," Betty exclaimed. "Sometimes I feel that I hate money! People grow so fond of it. They think only of themselves, even when you've been ever so good to them."
"Well, it's human nature," the banker replied equably. "I don't know who it is that you have in your mind, my dear, but it applies to most people." He was going to say more when the door opened.
"Mr. Rodd is here, asking for Mr. Clement, sir," the maid said. "He was to meet him at half after six, and----"